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A24 News

Voice of Africa a vision of hope for continent
Salim Amin
August 27 2007

In 1984 images of the famine in Ethiopia changed the world. They prompted the greatest act of giving in the 20th century. They changed the way governments and non-government organisations operated in Africa and other developing continents. More importantly, they saved the lives of more than 3 million people.

I grew up with those images. They were taken by my father, Mohamed Amin. He covered this famine, and every other disaster in Africa, for four decades. He died negotiating with terrorists aboard a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed in the Comoros 11 years ago.

My father had to struggle to get his images covered in the international media; a media with no interest in Africa, even in the catastrophic famine and desperation of the Ethiopians. Twenty years ago, when making a speech in the United States while receiving one of his many awards for the famine coverage, he said: "You may find it hard to believe now, but when my first report about the famine in Ethiopia was offered to Europe and America's broadcasters they turned it down � but when the viewers saw it they proved beyond all question they were not as small-minded as some of the people who run the media.

"The power of television news could not be demonstrated more clearly � but there is a responsibility that goes with that power. We fail in that responsibility if we do not report the often horrendous problems of development facing the people of Africa.

"We must report them courageously, without favour � if we can do that we can then trust the people of the world to see that their governments will take their responsibilities to the Third World seriously."

Twenty years on, I am asking Africans, and anyone interested in Africa, to take our responsibility to our continent seriously by raising the voice of Africans. I have a vision for the first truly independent pan-African 24-hour news and information channel. To be called A24, it will be a voice for Africa by Africans. This commercial entity that will prove we can set up a successful business model will not only tell the real story of Africa but be a financial success.

The channel will train hundreds of journalists, set a new and balanced African news agenda, communicate relevant information about health care, the environment, business, art, music and other cross-border issues. The channel will be transmitted into rural Africa on a variety of platforms including direct-to-home satellite platforms, the internet, radio and mobile phones.

In a world with perhaps too many 24-hour news channels you may ask: "Why do we need another one?" The answer is that Africa does not have one and we continue to have to rely on the international media to determine what is newsworthy in Africa, to shape our own vision of ourselves. India alone has 32 such 24-hour networks.

Al Jazeera in Qatar changed the way the Middle East saw itself, as well as how the rest of the world viewed the Middle East. It provided a platform and forum for Arabs to tell their own stories and comment on the issues that affected their lives.

There has been much talk about the damaging impact of the stereotypical portrayal of Africa in the media. The photos my father took still represent much of what people think of Africa, reflecting the typical images of Africa that we continue to see on international news channels - starving children with flies in their eyes, executions, genocide.

Overcoming these stereotypes is one of the key challenges that we in Africa face. We can only combat that trend if we have true influence on what is reported, covered and said about Africa.

We are different in each corner of Africa; we have different histories, cultures and many different languages. But we need to talk to each other, we need to understand all these differences, we need to share our successes, and jointly fight our problems and failures - many of which are similar - HIV, malaria, corruption, poverty, human rights and education.

We will empower Africans with the most powerful tool in the world - knowledge. And we hope the channel's presence and reporting will create an impetus for good governance - both in public life and in commerce. For many Africans for many years it was almost embarrassing to own up to being an African. No more. We are proud of what we have built and achieved.

Salim Amin is a photojournalist and entrepreneur based in Nairobi. A24 is due to be launched next year.
SMH
Copyright � 2007


His hearts in the right place, it'd be a monumental achievement to get it off the ground and producing news as an independent, I thought I'd post it here because such things probably won't register anywhere else as far as being 'newsworthy' goes. Which is a pity, Africa deserves bipartisan information as much as anyone else does and I'd hope that it's presence might cause a lot of things to stop happening when placed under a spotlight, as well as highlight the fact that it's not all negative there.

As a testament to the truth in this article every other thread today has recieved posts except this one. Africa truly is the forgotten continent. So many people dying of famine, of AIDs, of war and the rest of the world looks the other way. China, the Arabs, the Persians, all more important apparently. As long as Africa doesn't explode some western property people won't care. But we've covered our ass on that one too, there isn't much in the way of western property in Africa anyways.

Sad article.

Why is it that if 'The West' doesn't care, nobody cares?
Where's the rest of the world when things need to get done?

Awesome.

quote:

Originally posted by Fir3start3r Sad article. Why is it that if 'The West' doesn't care, nobody cares? Where's the rest of the world when things need to get done?

Well most of the money and international diplomacy capital is accumulated in the west. China is investing heavily in Africa, but there style is not the best one, although there is something to be said about their investment in infrastructure around the places where they have other investments and their initiatives on establishing factories in African countries for value added products such as cement. Apart from that I'm not aware of many other countries doing anything to help African countries progress.

quote:

Originally posted by Fir3start3r Sad article. Why is it that if 'The West' doesn't care, nobody cares? Where's the rest of the world when things need to get done?

Because it is the fault of the West that Africa is so fucked up?

Why do you always need to find someone else to blame?!

Only the West can help Africa because it's the West the African countries owe shit loads of money too...

quote:

Originally posted by venomX As a testament to the truth in this article every other thread today has recieved posts except this one.

The fact it got any replies at all restores a little bit of faith in things. I honestly didn't expect it to get any interest in it what so ever and sincerely thought it would be well and truly buried under US domestic affairs, republican shennanigans, conspiracies and the middle east threads.
Which would be ironic how often we criticise our (often biased) sources of information here in the PDD, but I also understand that people have very little emotional, economic or personal stake in the place.
We're all kind of guilty of that at some level even if it is a nothing more than a polite, curious interest, I for one just simply don't have any emotional, economic or personal interest about the middle east at all, even less with US domestic politics.
I don't even live in Africa any more, but I was born there, travelled fairly widely through it (mostly the south, some of the north and eastern coast) and have something of an emotional interest in seeing the place start to rise above at least the stereotypical opinion most westerners tar anyone from there as being the first step.

quote:

Because it is the fault of the West that Africa is so fucked up? Why do you always need to find someone else to blame?! Only the West can help Africa because it's the West the African countries owe shit loads of money too...

It would be very easy to say yes, yes and yes to all 3.
If you think it's that easy, history shows that the continent was widely colonised by the English, German, French, Belgium, Holland and a couple of other countries as well. Those countries in particular owe a great deal of their economic strength to Africa, they could simply move resources out off the continent without having to pay any tariffs or taxes and didn't need to put anything back into their colonies short of basic assurance the supply chain would keep flowing. I won't go into the debate about the slave trade, but needless to say a lot of those former colonial countries also owe a fair amount of their development to workforces that didn't need to be paid and could do the very heavy, manual labour that was required in the pre-industrial era.

What essentially turned Africa into what it is today is a case of those colonial powers in charge deciding to leave, often under duress, very recently and leaving a vacuum of power.
By that you would have to imagine what would happen to your own country which was functioning for many years, possibly several generations of people under say, an extremely totalitarian government which just literally disappeared overnight.
No one is paying the cops, the military, shopkeepers, corporations, the public servants, all the politicians left and you're down to what exactly?
Personal survival, family unit, extended family or tribal unit.
No infrastructure what so ever to buy food (the money is worth toilet paper anyway) there is no law, no protection for you, your family or and friends.
I can get you a 30 year old M16, FN-SLR or AK for about $15-30US that was left behind by the departing government or for a little less something even older and that's all that's standing between you and anyone wanting to take away your home, kill you or your family or for your possession and food.
24 hours a day
Every day

It's not that people want to be shooting each other over there, but when you're down to nearly nothing and you don't want to die or lose what you have it's a case of literally do or die. What that produces from the vacuum of power is attrition for awhile, the toughest, meanest and most organised end up at the top over a pile of corpses and zero accountability for their actions. No one will arrest them, no ones going to see the UN fly in to save the day, the army or national guard isn't going to stop them and it isn't going to be on TV, the radio or newspaper.
After the dull roar of gunfire dies down, things are pretty rotten, mostly because all the medical professionals and what infrastructure there was is gone, along with even basic subsistence farming which was disturbed by powers trying to fill the vacuum of control over the country. You'll have sporadic in-fighting once in awhile and it's only really pot-luck if the people in charge are naughty or nice and much less competent. Someone who's only real formal qualification of leadership coming from the barrel of a firearm is rarely a good leader so you can understand why things don't work very well and rarely last past their lifetime.

That level of social implosion is very hard to overcome, it's lasted many generations of both internecine warfare and a distinct lack of education, skills above the level of subsistence survival and crippling lack of most everything... except?
Except it seems to be profoundly easy to get your hands on US, Chinese or European personal firepower, you will literally find it easier to get an automatic rifle than it is to find toilet paper or condoms, its quite possible to find an armoured vehicle of some sort before you'll find a tractor or combine harvester and ammunition is far easier to get a hold of than medicine which will stop you or your kids from dying.
The developing world does a very good trade in guns there, especially the US and Russia, some degree China... they aren't selling books, medicine, farming implements in any large amounts and they're more than happy to loan the money because there's still plenty of resources over there to be traded for it.
That is Africa at it's worst and why it ends up like that in some places and I'm not even going to touch on the massive amounts of human suffering which are a result of it. It's overwhelming, someone once asked me about going over there for humanitarian aid if a refugee camp was as terrible as it was on TV or in pictures. I told them it looks like that, sometimes worse and what mostly gets to you after being bludgeoned by the visual and emotional images to the point they don't register, is the smell. They didn't like that I insinuated that they smell because it's not really polite, but frankly the smell of death and illness is something I never really got over.

The successes are there, it's not always a negative as some countries survive their trial by fire and begin to claw their way back up from chaos to subsistence to developing countries. It just takes a lot of time, effort to get there. And as shown by a number of countries in Africa, they're far more happy to send their children to a school rather than a militia, buy rather than steal and certainly more than happy to just know the country will not disintegrate around their ears due to infighting or invasion from their neighbours.
Given a chance, a fair go just like you've been given and probably never truly appreciated and never will truly appreciate until you have literally seen the worst life can inflict. They're not going to be 'savages' or basket cases living day to day off charity like the popular media often depicts them as, they end up just like everyone else you might know living in your country. Some good, some bad, but most everyone just wants to get by where the worst thing they have to face when they get up in the morning is the boss at work and paying the bills on time.

We're all African originally.

quote:

Originally posted by George Smiley Because it is the fault of the West that Africa is so fucked up? Why do you always need to find someone else to blame?! Only the West can help Africa because it's the West the African countries owe shit loads of money too...

Sorry it's the West's fault for a whole continent huh?

quote:

Originally posted by DJ Shibby We're all African originally.

Had to be done...

quote:

Originally posted by Fir3start3r Sorry it's the West's fault for a whole continent huh?

More or less. Go read Lillith's post, it's pretty accurate I think. Since the slave trade, and everything after it, affected negatively the whole continent. Don't be so amazed, after all about 5 or 6 nations controlled the whole of Africa, large parts of Asia and the whole of America not many centuries ago. So saying that the 'west' is at fault for a whole continent is not that far of a stretch.

quote:

Originally posted by Fir3start3r Sorry it's the West's fault for a whole continent huh?

Well what exaxctly is it you want Peru to do about the mess Africa is in?!

IMO there are two factors prolonging the mess in Africa (altho I exclude most of the North African Arab states because I think they fall into a different category):

Bad governance and dependency on the West.

If we want to talk about historical blame, then yes, it is entirely the fault of the West.

Laying blame is easy, everyone does it, history books are full of subjective versions of blame based on 'who won' about it and most people don't seem to learn from what causes it.
Being practical rather than whining, the best you can do is just try to fix what's broken and hope someone doesn't undo it all. Which is more pertinent about the topic at hand than laying simple blame. Besides, what's the point of blaming those responsible, most of them are buried in the ground and all we're down too now is hopefully throwing back the ignorance of what goes on... in the somewhat vain hope it isn't repeated.
Again.

I did give two reasons why why the continent continues to remain in a poor state of affairs - bad governance and a dependancy on the West

I was just replying to Firestarter who suggested the fault was not of the West

The two reasons I gave (if correct) give rise to possible solutions to sort the mess out

I guess dependency on the West is the easier of the two, but the issue over bad governance is very tricky indeed

See Zimbabwe for example, having Mugabe dependent on the West is a good thing imo, as that gives us some leverage over him. But then it keeps the country from developing. But wiping out that dependency allows Mugabe to strengthen his power. Basically, these governments need to change before the West changes their activities in Africa, but that's the problem - people don't wanna give up power, so how do you change these oppressive governments in some African countries?

Educate the people living in them, governments regardless of where they are or the principles of their party agenda, behave a lot better in the interests of people with a nice big, bipartisan spotlight on their every activity.
Zimbabwe was a perfectly fine, functional country before it was nationalised, I felt safer there in the 90's than I ever did in most large, western cities.

quote:

Originally posted by George Smiley Well what exaxctly is it you want Peru to do about the mess Africa is in?! IMO there are two factors prolonging the mess in Africa (altho I exclude most of the North African Arab states because I think they fall into a different category): Bad governance and dependency on the West. If we want to talk about historical blame, then yes, it is entirely the fault of the West.

Bad governance is not the West's fault.
For every local warlord that falls, another takes his place.
This is the cycle that has to stop and that has to happen on their end.
Problem is that once someone comes to power, they get a fat head and it starts all over.
It's hard to trust anyone and I don't blame the West when it's obvious THEY DON'T WANT OUR HELP
Ask yourself, why would Sudan send home our Canadian diplomats?
Does that sound like a country that wants help??
From CANADA no less; the country of peace keepers and negotiation.

If you mean by dependency, our philanthropic ways of throwing billions of dollars at them, I do agree.
Much of that goes to first paying off local warlords (again the problem) even before any of that aid ever reaches it's intended audience.

That doesn't mean that there aren't groups (from the West) in Africa helping them cope with their dire situations however.
In fact, there are lots but they don't get the support they deserve.

In short, those countries in Africa that want help, will help to step forward with good intentions.
It's not that the West is ignoring them totally, I believe it has more to do with being let down, time and time again; we've become dumb to their plight.


...How long ago was BAND-AID again?

quote:

Originally posted by Fir3start3r Bad governance is not the West's fault. For every local warlord that falls, another takes his place. This is the cycle that has to stop and that has to happen on their end. Problem is that once someone comes to power, they get a fat head and it starts all over. It's hard to trust anyone and I don't blame the West when it's obvious THEY DON'T WANT OUR HELP Ask yourself, why would Sudan send home our Canadian diplomats? Does that sound like a country that wants help?? From CANADA no less; the country of peace keepers and negotiation. If you mean by dependency, our philanthropic ways of throwing billions of dollars at them, I do agree. Much of that goes to first paying off local warlords (again the problem) even before any of that aid ever reaches it's intended audience. That doesn't mean that there aren't groups (from the West) in Africa helping them cope with their dire situations however. In fact, there are lots but they don't get the support they deserve. In short, those countries in Africa that want help, will help to step forward with good intentions. It's not that the West is ignoring them totally, I believe it has more to do with being let down, time and time again; we've become dumb to their plight. ...How long ago was BAND-AID again?

You seem to have quite a problem accepting responsibility for things! It's always "their own fault" they find themselves in the situations they are in!

You also show a lack of understanding about what "dependency" on the West means

And when you say "they" and "their" and "those countries" are you talking about the governments/rulers or the general public?

Bad governance is a catch 22 situation, because once someone seizes power its hard for a population to take power and install democracy. It's pointless you saying "it has to change at their end" - well great, how do they "change their end"? Never one to offer solutions are you?! Perhaps a strengthened pluralist society can be built up through Western aid and investment somehow avoiding the ruling elite. Strong pluralist societies tend to develop into democracies but still, it's a very long shot as undemocratic rulers tend to have ways of keeping a grip on power. But at the end of the day, countries indebted to the West will have an impossible task creating the viable economies needed to improve their situation.

The EU has a fairly good system of trade agreements with African countries where economic arrangements are agreed with political conditions, such as improving democratic structures in society

i think everyone in this thread should read a book, the state of africa. a very good insight into the recent history of the african nations, starting with the european colonial powers dividing the continent, ignoring the existing tribal regions. it then moves on to the post-colonial era, and the problems when a few, mostly western educated people, came to power and held on to it by any means possible.
For the most part, the poverty in africa is not so much to do with a lack of resources being sent there from the west, but with the corruption in government. presidents who take the money from state banks, not just millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. the common practice of stacking government positions with cronies means things are being run for the benefit of the few, not the good of the country.
things are slowly turning around in several countries, and heading backwards in others.

quote:

Originally posted by George Smiley You seem to have quite a problem accepting responsibility for things! It's always "their own fault" they find themselves in the situations they are in

No I don't and I never said it was always their own fault.
If you think that by putting words in my mouth makes you any more correct you're sadly mistaken.
And by not answering my question regarding the dismissal of the Canadian ambassador to Sudan, I'll have to guess that you think Africa can do no wrong and that somehow, evil Western capitalism is the root of all their ills.
You think I'm blaming others; I'm not. I'm blaming others for their own missing sense of responsibility to their own country!
Again, think Sudan and years of famine before trying to understand that.

quote:

You also show a lack of understanding about what "dependency" on the West means

I don't have a lack of understanding about what "dependency" means.
I do however, have a lack understanding of what your version of "dependency" is and the lack of explanation in a second post.
What are you trying to say here?

quote:

And when you say "they" and "their" and "those countries" are you talking about the governments/rulers or the general public?

There's nothing grammatically incorrect with what I wrote; read it again.
"They", "Their" and "Those countries" are all in context when you read the whole sentence / paragraph in which they reside.
HINT: Separate paragraphs mean separate points...English 101 dood

quote:

Bad governance is a catch 22 situation, because once someone seizes power its hard for a population to take power and install democracy. It's pointless you saying "it has to change at their end" - well great, how do they "change their end"? Never one to offer solutions are you?! Perhaps a strengthened pluralist society can be built up through Western aid and investment somehow avoiding the ruling elite. Strong pluralist societies tend to develop into democracies but still, it's a very long shot as undemocratic rulers tend to have ways of keeping a grip on power. But at the end of the day, countries indebted to the West will have an impossible task creating the viable economies needed to improve their situation.

You forget that the West pardoned BILLIONS of dollars in debt to Africa?
At least we agree that there is a very big problem with local warlords; until they can be controlled somehow, the West can't do anything significant to help; it's not that they don't want to, but why flush millions of dollars in investment only to have to annexed by a bunch of little dictators with guns?

quote:

The EU has a fairly good system of trade agreements with African countries where economic arrangements are agreed with political conditions, such as improving democratic structures in society

It's a start and sort of like throwing the guard dog a bone while getting a chance to do some good before the dog comes back.
I'm not too keen on this because it doesn't actually solve the problem. This just makes the dog more bold, and soon, that lousy bone just isn't going to cut it anymore as the base level of appeasement is risen with every offer.

Any way we look at this, the West is handcuffed and short of landing troops (which I don't believe will solve anything here) Africa's people are going to have to, somehow, revolt from within.
Pretty hard to do when they can't even get past their most basic needs in most places where they need to the most.
And if the West 'helps' with this revolt, it just looks like foreign countries meddling in the affairs of others and then compassion looks like conspiracy.
A Catch 22 indeed.

Ummm, last time I checked the West supports some of these brutal African regimes ... for resources, for oil, for strategic alliances, and most of all, because these regimes owe a lot of money to the West - and their end could really shake the way the West collects their interest money off the billions Africa owes to them. Dictators offer more security and stability to Western corporations than in democratic, or warlord African states where political alliances and leaders change like the weather.

Firestarter, I recommend reading a great book "Confessions Of An Economic Hitman" by John Perkins. It will then make it all clear to you.

Lot of books come close to a bipartisan view of events, however not all of them are written by historians, most are written by journalists and virtually all are written by people who aren't from Africa. Now I'm not a journo and certainly not a historian (Laz is, it's his secret shame, aside from house music ) but I think it important to point out that you will find the focus of these books selling is to describe the negative events, horrors and blame game.
Very few will be selling because they focus on the successes, the good things that happen and the view of the people living there and how they think things can be improved. Not a western viewpoint on fixing things, as much as you like to make everyone else like you, its just not the way the world works, like the Americans 'fixed' Iraq from tyranny or how the Russians tried to 'fix' Afghanistan from being backwards hill billys or how everyone decided on the best way of fixing communism and democracy was to chop Korea in half.

And I will tell you why this is from my perspective.
People only get a genuine appreciation of what they have, be it material objects, a system of government or pride in each other and their country if they have earned it with their own hard work.
Don't try to foist ideals on people, it really doesn't work and the only way they sort it out is by themselves, trial and error. I don't really expect to be taken on the same literary level as a professional writer, but I leave it really up to you who you want to listen too and I won't take it personally.
A long term forum member of 7 years most people know, selling you nothing, or a journalist/writer you don't know selling you a book they think you should read.

There's a lot of things I won't ever write about Africa some of them so horrific I won't even tell my closest partner or what's left of my family about and they still give me nightmares. In any case, most people don't listen, they'll never truly understand and from where they are in the world, never have to experience.
But someone in Africa isn't so much different from yourself, given the same chance as you, there is no difference, if your social structure, government and culture was ripped away like theirs, you'd be no different to them.

Put aside your macho BS'ing for a moment and honestly imagine yourself in their shoes, (or lack there of) lack of education, working sun-up to sun down on a patch of earth to grow enough to eat. It is immensely difficult to grow food on a subsistence level and ten times harder with no industrialisation, no fertiliser, no irrigation and at the mercy of the seasons.
How would you have become as a person if you where taken in the middle of the night at 12 or 13, parents killed if they resisted, all you ever knew from then on was how to maintain your weapon, march up to 20km a day on sometimes no water, very little food. Would the wake up call to being an adult be when you pulled the trigger and watched as your weapon ripped the life out of someone or when your own commanders assaulted and violated you to do as they say if you objected?

Do you really appreciate how lucky you are to be where you are or would you have to lose everything to understand that?

There's no more I can say.

quote:

Originally posted by Lilith Lot of books come close to a bipartisan view of events, however not all of them are written by historians, most are written by journalists and virtually all are written by people who aren't from Africa. Now I'm not a journo and certainly not a historian (Laz is, it's his secret shame, aside from house music ) but I think it important to point out that you will find the focus of these books selling is to describe the negative events, horrors and blame game. Very few will be selling because they focus on the successes, the good things that happen and the view of the people living there and how they think things can be improved. Not a western viewpoint on fixing things, as much as you like to make everyone else like you, its just not the way the world works, like the Americans 'fixed' Iraq from tyranny or how the Russians tried to 'fix' Afghanistan from being backwards hill billys or how everyone decided on the best way of fixing communism and democracy was to chop Korea in half. And I will tell you why this is from my perspective. People only get a genuine appreciation of what they have, be it material objects, a system of government or pride in each other and their country if they have earned it with their own hard work. Don't try to foist ideals on people, it really doesn't work and the only way they sort it out is by themselves, trial and error. I don't really expect to be taken on the same literary level as a professional writer, but I leave it really up to you who you want to listen too and I won't take it personally. A long term forum member of 7 years most people know, selling you nothing, or a journalist/writer you don't know selling you a book they think you should read. There's a lot of things I won't ever write about Africa some of them so horrific I won't even tell my closest partner or what's left of my family about and they still give me nightmares. In any case, most people don't listen, they'll never truly understand and from where they are in the world, never have to experience. But someone in Africa isn't so much different from yourself, given the same chance as you, there is no difference, if your social structure, government and culture was ripped away like theirs, you'd be no different to them. Put aside your macho BS'ing for a moment and honestly imagine yourself in their shoes, (or lack there of) lack of education, working sun-up to sun down on a patch of earth to grow enough to eat. It is immensely difficult to grow food on a subsistence level and ten times harder with no industrialisation, no fertiliser, no irrigation and at the mercy of the seasons. How would you have become as a person if you where taken in the middle of the night at 12 or 13, parents killed if they resisted, all you ever knew from then on was how to maintain your weapon, march up to 20km a day on sometimes no water, very little food. Would the wake up call to being an adult be when you pulled the trigger and watched as your weapon ripped the life out of someone or when your own commanders assaulted and violated you to do as they say if you objected? Do you really appreciate how lucky you are to be where you are or would you have to lose everything to understand that? There's no more I can say.

I am a bit confused ... how does all that have anything to do with my post? Are you blatantly implying that I dont know those things? Of course I know. And it will continue happening as long as these dictators get supported and business dealings with from the West ... otherwise they would have crumbled by now if cut off from the rest of the world. Hey, I almost forgot ... how many of these dictators are American friends, btw? And whats being done on the government or economic level to do about it? Why do we the individuals have to pay the price for government ignorance?

You might support a child today, but another 5 million will die. Feeding them while not fixing their country and infrastructure is a waste of money, thats like using buckets to stop the leaking water dam. You can support one child, while the family will then bear 10 more children and of course not only do they lack food they actually have even more children. While in the West most families cant "afford" to have even two. Its more than just giving money, money is never going to fix this problem ...

Like what do you expect me to do, seriously? I can talk pretty about this issue too, you know. But the Live 8 thing has done little to help the Africans. They need to help themselves first. Otherwise the problems will remain the same.

If we stop supporting, arming and funding the warlords, dictators and so on in Africa, they will falter. Then eventually better people will come to power. They will then decide and start programs to fix their countries. If we continue to meddle in their affairs, we will continue the conflicts. What we think is rarely in the best interests of African people, my friend, we usually think whats best FOR US. We dont live there, thats right, so we dont know whats good for them. You the tourist might have the good intentions, but giving money to homeless people doesnt make their lives better either.

You can gather the poor Africans and continue sending endless shipments of food and feed them, and so on. But once the food is gone they will be hungry again. What is the likely to happen is other people joining them to get the free food. Why not? Its been documented the abuse of UN humanitarian shipments, that feed these brutal regimes as well on the way. Does that really help Africa?

Also, I disagree that the problems in Africa have to do with their reliance on the West, that's the biggest misconception ... its actually the other way around - the West has set Africa up to spend the rest of its existence merely paying off debt and interests on massive loans taken, which were once conveniently lobbied and given to African dictators some time ago, and the rest is history. We have their asses. And they signed on the dotted line that they have greater obligations to do these payments than do anything for their own country. Or else IMF or WTO comes in and seizes economic interests or fucks them up. Plus, why does the African elite care - they live very well, and with Western support they are not abliged to do anything for the country - because if they do, it will undermine their own way of life and standards, undermine the leadership and control. So they choose to maintain the current situation ...

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