Was Africa saved by AIDS?

[Luciana]

Of course anyone can start a thread about anything, as long as it doesn't break rules.

I'm also in my right to point out how ridiculous this thread can be. If some regard that as a personal attack, too bad. It was not meant as one, specially because the poster apologized right away.

If I was too blunt - "you should never have started this thread" - is because I found the OP not only poorly thought-out and in bad taste, but also quite dismissive of lives in Africa. Because if you think I went into attack mode... well, here goes what I could have posted in answer to that DUMB OP. See how it started:

We hear alot about the incredibly high percentage of the African population currently afflicted with AIDS, and while I do feel sympathy for some of these people (namely the children born of HIV-infected parents), I offer the following point.

And the poster does not feel sympathy for the elderly? And of those who are uneducated, malnourished, and simply cannot exercise any democratic rights, maybe because they are too heavily dependent on someone's "kindness" ot too uneducated to realize there's a path to progress?

And then, after pointing out the specificity of his sympathy, the poster came up with an extremely obnoxious and offensive proposition, that is, that Africans are better off with AIDS!!?!! This is just fundamentally cynical. It is as if they are so at the bottom - and considering only their natural resources, it is obvious they have potential - that AIDS could be good.

Surely new posters are welcome blah blah and think for themselves blah blah blah and make questions blah blah but surely they could make more of an effort to think critically before making a question with such potential for offense.

Having said that ... welcome to the forum, di Malebranche. I can see you took criticism well and that's always positive. No one, including those who jumped to defend you, need to bother with doing that again, because I'm sure you can do it yourself.

 

[El_Spectre]

Having said that ... welcome to the forum, di Malebranche. I can see you took criticism well and that's always positive. No one, including those who jumped to defend you, need to bother with doing that again, because I'm sure you can do it yourself.

Heh, and if we do so, will we be told we shouldn't have made THAT post?

 

[Luciana]

• Africa's problems are not basically the result of overpopulation, but of political conflicts and corruption

• 
  
  Africa's basic problem is underdevelopment. And all it implies - low educational levels, insufficient infrastructure, few investments in industrial development, poor health, unstable or unexistant democratic institutions, concentration of income and those two you mentioned, political conflicts and corruption. But I believe those two factors are consequences of underdevelopment, and they are symptoms as much as causes for their backwardedness.
  
  Low educational levels make accountability, one of the tenets of democracy, entirely fictitious. Political conflicts and corruption are rampant without a strong middle-class demanding the rule of law, equality, putting pressure for better quality of life. Investments flee without a skilled workforce, minimally adequate infrastructure and stable macroeconomic environment (always a weakness of underdeveloped country). Add a sick workforce, diminished consumer market and corruption and political conflicts, and competition from what other peripheric countries like China and India, and Africa will keep being underdeveloped for a long while.
  
  eta: to add a comma.

 

[Luciana]

Heh, and if we do so, will we be told we shouldn't have made THAT post?

If you ever say "I shouldn't have made this post", I might agree with you entirely. Watch out.

 

[Soapy Sam]

In science fiction, we discuss grand, collaborative scientific programmes to terraform Mars and settle the Moon. Yet in reality we can't sustain basic health among our population on our native world.
How many children die of diarrhoea in Africa every year? No need for pricy antivirals- just some salt, sugar, bicarbonate and a clean water supply. 19th century stuff for most of us.

Africa's problems are too complex for a single thread, I think.

 

[epepke]

Africa's basic problem is underdevelopment. And all it implies - low educational levels, insufficient infrastructure, few investments in industrial development, poor health, unstable or unexistant democratic institutions, concentration of income and those two you mentioned, political conflicts and corruption. But I believe those two factors are consequences of underdevelopment, and they are symptoms as much as causes for their backwardedness.

Yeah, this is probably true, but as we are reminded every time this comes up, humans have lived in Africa longer than anywhere else on the planet.

So "underdevelopment" isn't "oh, wait, this is a new continent, and people have only been on it for a couple of hundred years." If Africa be underdeveloped, there has to be another reason for it.

 

[SteveGrenard]

Yeah, this is probably true, but as we are reminded every time this comes up, humans have lived in Africa longer than anywhere else on the planet.

Yeah, but they had the misfortune of not inventing gun powder.

So "underdevelopment" isn't "oh, wait, this is a new continent, and people have only been on it for a couple of hundred years." If Africa be underdeveloped, there has to be another reason for it.

In Africa it has always been who has the most and biggest guns. When Europeans discovered Africa and its mineral (originally diamonds & gold, later, bauxite, oil and others) wealth they used their armies to grab it and the best land for themselves, subjugating the natives, even selling them into slavery. When the colonial govenrments of Europe finally conceded independance to their former colonies, they were replaced with corrupt black men also with more of the biggest guns so nothing really changed in Africa except for the color of its leaders (sic: subjugators). Constitutional democracies like that of the U.S. including the constitutional right for the "people" to bear arms has probably saved us from a similar fate during our formative years.

 

[DanishDynamite]

Yeah, this is probably true, but as we are reminded every time this comes up, humans have lived in Africa longer than anywhere else on the planet.

So "underdevelopment" isn't "oh, wait, this is a new continent, and people have only been on it for a couple of hundred years." If Africa be underdeveloped, there has to be another reason for it.

It's the same reason that the area now called the United States was a primitive, backwards part of the globe before the Europeans arrived.

May I suggest you read the book "Guns, Germs and Steel" for an intro.

 

[Tez]

I'm too lazy to look up the figures, but when I left Malawi in '84 its population was about 7 million - on my most recent trip back I was told the population is around 11 million. This is a country with a very high HIV incidence. Has any african country reduced in population due to HIV? If not then all we have is suppostional blather about what the population may have been without HIV (such predictions are notoriously trite, as Ehrlich will tell you...)

 

[SteveGrenard]

I'm too lazy to look up the figures, but when I left Malawi in '84 its population was about 7 million - on my most recent trip back I was told the population is around 11 million. This is a country with a very high HIV incidence. Has any african country reduced in population due to HIV? If not then all we have is suppostional blather about what the population may have been without HIV (such predictions are notoriously trite, as Ehrlich will tell you...)

AIDS stats from Africa are here:

http://www.avert.org/subaadults.htm

Malawi Population by Year including future predictions (courtesy of Sylvia Browne) are here:

http://www.library.uu.nl/wesp/populstat/Africa/malawic.htm

Additional Info here:

http://www.library.uu.nl/wesp/populstat/Africa/malawig.htm

According to these records the population for Malawi has a doubling rate , that is it doubles, every 23 years. Annual population growth is now +2% per annum.

The est.population of Malawi seems to be 12.7 million in 2005.

Net changes in a country's population, globally, are the result of births versus deaths regardless of cause.

Confounding death rate predictions from HIV in Africa is the widespread presence of HIV-2, strains of which are less virulent according to
researchers at the University of Alabama. Alabama researchers also determined that the practice of butchering and eating bush meat from non-human primates is the source from which HIV jumped from NHPs to man. This politically incorrect finding pissess off African nationalists no end.

 

[epepke]

It's the same reason that the area now called the United States was a primitive, backwards part of the globe before the Europeans arrived.

May I suggest you read the book "Guns, Germs and Steel" for an intro.

Um, I've read it.

But the United States was sparsely populated, and only for a few tens of thousands of years. No wonder it was primitive.

Africa, on the other hand, had huge civilizations milliennia before some of my ancestors were running down from the hills with nothing but blue paint on.

 

[jj]

My logic is completely flawed, I now realize.

Any chance this thread can be locked? I've shoved my leg down my throat far enough for my first day here, now.

Well, I give you quite a bit of credit for recognizing this, at least.

 

[TriangleMan]

Has any african country reduced in population due to HIV?

This 2000 paper noted that there was negative population growth in Guyana in 2000, and that Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe should have negative population growth by 2003, but only around -0.1 to -0.3% so that could be hard to track. Even having a few thousand people migrate to Botswana looking for work would erase any negative growth. I'm not sure if South Africa's population actually declined from 2001-2005.

The CIA World Factbook currently lists Botswana's population growth rate at 0%.

 

[Luciana]

Yeah, this is probably true, but as we are reminded every time this comes up, humans have lived in Africa longer than anywhere else on the planet.

So "underdevelopment" isn't "oh, wait, this is a new continent, and people have only been on it for a couple of hundred years." If Africa be underdeveloped, there has to be another reason for it.

And this would be...?

One reason I prefer the term "underdevelopment", even though it's too encompassing and, therefore, prone to being meaningless, is that, after all, it is the most accurate. Because problems like "corruption", "inequality" , and even "violence" (to the extent that people fight more when there's less to compete for) have their roots in underdevelopment. And what is that? Lack of capital, that's what underdevelopment is. Wealth is neither generated nor injected in those countries. As Soapy pointed out, some of the population live in 19th century conditions, aggravated by 20th problems like environmental damage and "overpopulation", that is, more people being born than their economies is able to accommodate.

And the reason I dislike a term like "corruption" being freely used whenever the subject of Africa comes up is that it's too simplistic and, sometimes, depending on the speaker, can very well be racism under a rational disguise. It is obvious that a country with no democratic institutions, with a rich elite and vastly uneducated population will be corrupt. The reason corruption is so commonplace is that governments feel entitled to it and there is no middle-class to stop that, of if there is, is too small to be politically important. Illiteracy rates in Africa are staggering, even if, in some cases, they seem to be diminishing. After the 1960s, when most of the African states became independent, their cry of freedom was to build a university and an airline company. This goes to show how backwards they were regarding education, and the effort they will have to make to catch up with the other nations in terms of development.

 

[Luciana]

Yeah, but they had the misfortune of not inventing gun powder.



In Africa it has always been who has the most and biggest guns.

Hasn't this been always true, anywhere in the world?

When Europeans discovered Africa and its mineral (originally diamonds & gold, later, bauxite, oil and others) wealth they used their armies to grab it and the best land for themselves, subjugating the natives, even selling them into slavery.

I know the Portuguese bought the support of African leaders by giving guns that they would later use to crush other tribes and enslave people. I suspect other European settlers did the same. To say that "In Africa it has always been who has the most and biggest guns." is quite misleading, at the very least because they were not alone.

 

[Luciana]

The CIA World Factbook currently lists Botswana's population growth rate at 0%.

Even though I use the CIA World Factbook once in a while for a quick check, I don't trust it much, as too often I see info about my country that is either outdated or simply wrong.

Botswana is such a small country, and I do not think it would make a dent in Africa's general population growth, still, it's a disgrace indeed, as 1 out 3 adults have AIDS. The country is collapsing. That's another subject entirely but... if that does not warrant international intervention, then what does? 1 out of 3!!! And people simply do not hear about it often enough. It is a shame for our planet.

 

[TriangleMan]

I found a UN Report that gives projections for 2003-2015 of population growth rates for various countries. In Africa they project that Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland will have slight negative population growth over the period.

 

[Morrigan]

The state of affairs not being the assets available throughout the world, but rather, the assets that the rest of the world is willing to give to Africa to fix the problem.

So you're saying that the current African crisis ("state of affairs") is due to the rest of the world not helping Africa enough? Because if so, I have a big problem with that.
African nations need to grow up and deal with their own problems like adults, instead of constantly relying on foreign aid. They are dependent on it, and it does little to help them except make them more dependent.
I'm not saying "screw 'em, let 'em all rot" or anything, but I don't think Africa (mainly, sub-saharan Africa) will ever get out of its mess if we simply keep "giving them assets".

In Africa it has always been who has the most and biggest guns.

Been said before, but that's no different than the rest of the world.

When Europeans discovered Africa [snip] subjugating the natives, even selling them into slavery.

Yes, but let us not forget that many Africans enslaved Africans themselves, and sold them to Europeans as well.

 

[SteveGrenard]

So you're saying that the current African crisis ("state of affairs") is due to the rest of the world not helping Africa enough? Because if so, I have a big problem with that.
African nations need to grow up and deal with their own problems like adults, instead of constantly relying on foreign aid. They are dependent on it, and it does little to help them except make them more dependent.
I'm not saying "screw 'em, let 'em all rot" or anything, but I don't think Africa (mainly, sub-saharan Africa) will ever get out of its mess if we simply keep "giving them assets".

Agreed. In addition, since there since is no sure fire cure for AIDS and Africa is not the only continent with the disease, there is nothing much that the world can offer them other than what is already on tap. Prevention requires safe sex and abstinence and banning of other risky behaviors such as mass ritual scarification using unsterilized instruments between recipients.

Africa is getting AIDS drugs at cheaper prices but corruption locally results in a lot of that diverted to richer markets .....

Been said before, but that's no different than the rest of the world.

Of course.

Yes, but let us not forget that many Africans enslaved Africans themselves, and sold them to Europeans as well.

Africans in power, armed with guns (obtained from Europeans) and other weaponry were complicit in the slave trade but the trade itself existed because Europeans including Americans (even after Europe ended the trade) provided the money and the work for slaves. Trafficking in humans continues until today, not a subject people like to talk about.

 

[pipelineaudio]

Are we arguing from fact or emotion?

Fact: if a large number of humans just up and died, nearly every problem we now face would be lowered to a possibly very large degree if not eliminated completely

Emotion:This might not sit so well with those targeted for destruction