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AFRICA...is calling...


Mahuta ♥

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I see your point, but do you think countries that are starving to death could spend money on medical researches?

Besides, the drugs that calm down the HIV are available, its just that infected people arent getting them.

The cure for AIDS is basically available but its not put together. Apparently there are two main companies for finding AIDS cure. They just dont want to collaborate, if they did, we would have had the cure ages ago. It's simply greed, each company is lacking the part the other company has, and they jsut don want to collaborate, which just pisses me off. Thats what money does sometimes.

Oh, and drewrow, I thin you just became VIP, congrats:D. If you have been one before, then sorry I didnt notice,lol.

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  • 1 month later...

I want to visit Africa ! It's one of the places I want to go.

I don't know when but I will go there somewhere.

AND when I go, I am not going to take any of my stuff .,

I am going to take presents for the little kids and fill my suitcase with fresh water and medicines and so on.

hope someone else in the world is helping them over there.

I feel bad not able to go there right now. :

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that's just like asking why the US government spent such a huge amount of money on military in comparison to health services (compared to australia, they have a REALLY crappy health system).

and what's even more ironic is that they charge into countries, destroy them. and then spend money on rebuilding them?

all the world's problems right now could be solved, it's just that greed seems to run the world and people and tend to develop an attitude of "i'm not in africa so it's not my problem so i shouldn't have to pay to help fix it".

your absolutely right, they are humans, they deserve to have basic human rights and a decent lifestyle.

but...i'm afraid to say that no major changes can be made without decent sums of money.

i'm currently a member of amnesty international and we're currently organising a fundraiser at my school where all profits will be donated to africa :P hope it goes well, afterall, every little bit counts.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I think a very important issue in trying to help Africa is trying to find long term solutions; solutions that can strengthen the Africans and help them become more independent. It's like that saying about giving a poor man a fisher will feed him for a day but teaching him how to fish will feed him for the rest of his life. So basically I think its more important for us to help them by building schools, businesses, improving the infrastructure and other such things that will last a long time and will help the Africans much more.

And unfortunately the economic problems going on right now are taking an even worse toll on Africa and hindering the efforts of helping cure the disease and poverty in Africa, because now that people do not have money whose going to give donations and aid Africa?

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Even when people had the money, there wasnt enough money and aid going to africa, let alone when people are going through an economic crisis.

I totally agree about building the infra-structure and stuff. But there's no point in doing that if people are dying like..every minute.

Saving people from diseases is the first thing that should be done.

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It is definitely the moral obligation of citizens in more developed countries to help these people. However, at the same time, you have to take into consideration of the fact that each country already has a lot on its plate. As developed as a country may seem, many have national debts of billions or more on their hands (ahem - United States) and they're just not in a position to help others. You can look at the development of Africa pessimistically and of course, without a doubt, many of these countries are poor, sick, and just some of the worst places to live in the world. However, imo, Africa is just undergoing the transition from an economy dominated by primary industries to one that is dominated by tertiary and secondary industries, as Britain and numerous other developed nations have done so during the Industrial Revolution. They AREdeveloping, albeit at a slow rate.

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Ok, I see your point. But thats not really mine.

My main argument is, that highly developped countries that assume war on 'terror' is extremely important, should use those billions of dollars to help people rather than use it to kill others. We arent really saying that they have to take from the money that is meant to be for the citizens.

Despite this economic crisis, countries should start realizing that they are literalyl killing of the global population very slowly: Using money for war to kill innocent people, AND, not attempting to help african countries which means they are technically killing them as well.

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Aid.

I dont see why not. SERIOUSLY..from my point of view there's absolutly no excuse for leaving people starve to death and die from diseases.

Alot of people in africa die due to starvation. It is so easy to save a lot of lives, so easy! Give them food.

I dont think the developped countries are in that much of a crisis to not be able to provide the least nutrition that could keep people alive, just alive.

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Aid.

I dont see why not. SERIOUSLY..from my point of view there's absolutly no excuse for leaving people starve to death and die from diseases.

Alot of people in africa die due to starvation. It is so easy to save a lot of lives, so easy! Give them food.

I dont think the developped countries are in that much of a crisis to not be able to provide the least nutrition that could keep people alive, just alive.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. - Chinese Proverb

If we give food aid to a country where there a state of famine, once that food is gone, the benefit is gone. We'd be smarter to encourage trade, like South Africa has done with Lesotho. Lesotho exports it's excess water, creating wealth, allowing them to buy/produce more food. Also, by trading with impoverished countries, not only do we increase their standard of living, but we also reap some benefit ourselves, as S.A has done in this example.

OK, clearly we cant like get rid of aid entirely, or all at once, but by increasing trade, we reduce the dependence on our own money.

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Yes but in order to actually start 'teaching' them how to live, you need to help them survive first.

You shouldn't expect anything from a country that is starving to death.

They have the right to live and they have the right to learn how to be independent. But first, they have to literally stay alive first maybe?

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  • 2 weeks later...
Yes but in order to actually start 'teaching' them how to live, you need to help them survive first.

You shouldn't expect anything from a country that is starving to death.

They have the right to live and they have the right to learn how to be independent. But first, they have to literally stay alive first maybe?

I guess it's a choice between never moving from a constant state of poverty, always hovering over the danger line, or doing something dynamic.

... the person holding the rope can keep on grabbing on until they're tired, or they can drop and wait for it to pull tight, to put it another way.

The big problem with aid is that it's not motivating. I absolutely agree with why we should give aid, but the problem isn't the people. It's the fact that, if we give aid to help a starving people, the government of those starving people doesn't have to react. Moreover, generally the aid GOES to the government to be distributed, and often doesn't reach where it's supposed to go (see: Zimbabwe). If somebody came in and fed your family every day, you'd probably not do anything yourself. I'm not saying that it's lazy in terms of the people, but it's institutionally lazy. Often these places are not democratic in the sense that they have high levels of corruption (hence them not sorting themselves out before). A corrupt government does not represent the people, and does not work for the people. Places like Nigeria, even, where there are high levels of crime and gang crime-- that is not a democracy in the sense we know it. Where power is not held exclusively by the government as to how things work in the country, it's not a democracy, and where the people aren't fairly represented by a government working for them, that's not a democracy.

Cruel and evil as it may sound, cruel and evil things are going on. Thousands of people in Zimbabwe (to quote it again, given that it's example number one of this sort of thing) are dying of cholera. Nobody is trying to prevent it-- the government isn't doing anything about it. We can keep giving aid, but at the end of the day, it's pouring money into a black hole. It's doing good for individuals (provided the aid money skips the government and is given by NGOs) but what about when we stop giving so much aid? What then?

It's a land of vicious cycles, and it's not a simple question of keeping people alive so we can sort things out, because the two don't necessarily go hand in hand. We keep people alive, but nothing gets sorted out. Actually, we deincentivise things being sorted out by maintaining other states for them. Short of some sort of military effort, it's not fixable as easily as you suggest. Cruel to be kind.

Doing things like opening up trade and increasing incentives to become self-reliant are the things with the big potential to snap the situation out of itself-- but then you're supporting corrupt governments at a damage to our own economies, so there's yet another ethical dilemma. In that instance, is it better to continue maintaining the innocent, even though you're never going to achieve anything for the better by it?

That is the great tragedy of most of African poverty, insofar as I am concerned.

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  • 1 month later...

I have been to 8 countries in Africa from one of the richest on the continent to the poorer ones and if you look at the lives that those people live, yes they may not be able to afford eveything that we can- however if you could ask a tribe who had never been in contact with the priveleges that we have had, then they would probably be reasonably contented. My point is that, perhaps it is our materialistic view that makes us think that they need help.

Don't get me wrong, I think that a lot of these people need to be helped to develop their own countries rather than be spoon fed money that only goes to the corrupt and a small percentage goes to those that actually need it. When many of the 'western' countries were becoming more developed the were not give aid- in our time we walked around killing eachother and had epidemics, pandemics and wars. We developed through learning from our mistakes, yet when Africa makes a mistake all these good willed people rush to help.

Perhaps we should stop intervening, since our contributions- by that i mean slavery, unfair trades of diamonds for beads etc... have had a hand in slowing their development. You could say that for a long period of time it has been in the western world's advantages to ensure that africa does not develop. Not only that but many of the border disputes and tribal disputes have occured because the british, french and german empires together with the arabs sat down and drew lines on a map of which places we want, not considering for a moment the human factor, leaving some tribes split between two countries with no way to get back to their lands.If anything the borders should be rethought out, however it is too late now.

Thats my rant done now :)

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I dont know what african countries you've been to, but I am Tunisian thus african, and I have seen wealthy people there as well as poor ones. Your point to say that they dont know what we have and therefore are contented, I kind of disagree with. I have lots of family member living in bad conditions, even though they dont know the luxery we have, they are finding difficulty to spend money on anything but the things they realllyy need. Although these people may not be anything like the people in poorer african countries, its still bad, these people will not buy more than one outfit a year, this is, if they consider themselves lucky.

I see that just as we have the right to spend money on thing we want (not need) I think they do too. I dont believe that because they dont know about the 'other' life, we should just leave them as they are.

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I have been to:

South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, Botswana, Kenya, Egypt and Morocco. So i have seen a variety of different incme levels as it were. And i did not mean any offense.

And point taken, however there is no easy fix since thanks to the reasons i was ranting about earlier and others Africa has ended up being the most undeveloped continent in the world (where a large number of people live).

Probably the best way to help all those in Africa would be to educate them in the long term, however this too comes with its cons- people would rather work on their farms than go to school since they wont get fed if they go to school, also once they have got an education, they can't always do anything with that education since it wont help them to feed themselves. Thus if we are to help people in Africa perhaps we should educate them, but not in the usual subjects such as Maths english, sciences but how to use the land successfully to grow the food that they need, rather than trying to only grow produce they can sell. This would allow them to feed themselves but also sell/trade the rest of their produce finally allowing them to make a living. Once the majority of the people are above the poverty line they can begin to become better educated and eventually become more developed tapping into the tertiary business sector.

BUT this is very difficult to implement and takes a great deal of time. There is no quick fix to a problem such as this since it has been allowed to develop for so long, as with most things any somlution that can be found would take years if not generations before the full positive effects were seen, just the nature of life.

As for the problem of diseases- there are cures as was said earlier, and yes perhaps if the companies had gotten together earlier on there would be a cure for AIDS/HIV, however how would you get to everyone that needed it since there are not that many transport links to some areas, and the numbers of cures that would need to be produced at a loss make it completely impossible- the numbers are too large and the costs too high. Again the only real fix would be to educate them on HIV since it does not necessarily have to pass from mother to child if the birth is carried out properly since there is no time when the blood of the mother and the child touch, except at birth. Education would allow midwives to help women give birth to children who did not have AIDS. This could potentially be solved or at least reduced within a few generations however it would leave behind orphans- a whole other issue.

Finally- AID

The theory behind it is good but there are so many disadvantages- dependency, through to corruption. I think that the only type of aid that is given to countries is that aimed at education and schemes that improve the quality of life for the people. The world Bank has not helped matters by lending to debt ridden countries, where the money is used to pay for the corrupt politicians and officials to live a full life on. If the world bank did not constantly lend money most countries would be in a better place anyway since they would not have spent the last god knows how many years trying to pay back the bank at extortionate percentage rates which make it virtually impossible.

Feel free to point out more mistakes in judgement/opinion i am thouroughly enjoying this :)

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