I’M always amused at how most Brits view Africa.
They think a Kenyan is an average Englishman with an exotic name. They think a starving Ethiopian is a Londoner in the dole queue. Or an AK-toting Somali pirate is just like a misunderstood fisherman from Cornwall who needs a group hug. They fervently believe that every crisis can be solved with a few feel-good pennies dropped into the begging bowl.
Take the current drought in Somalia for example. This is not a humanitarian disaster; it’s an evolutionary tragedy. It’s not crop failure that’s the cause of the famine, but too many people around eating those crops. It is not, as the BBC sagely puts it, the biggest crisis since Sir Bob Geldof and his mates sang, ‘Do they know it’s Christmas’; instead it’s a baby boom in an unsustainable area.
As anyone with a couple of brain cells can grasp, Somalia is semi-desert. It doesn’t rain much there. But the ever-exploding population, which now cannot feed itself in a normal year, is kept alive by famine relief.
The even bigger tragedy is that poor nutrition in the formative years of a child’s life seriously stunts development and these innocent victims won’t attain a normal IQ. They will never be properly educated or have a decent job. And we’re not talking about one or two kids – we’re talking about entire generations.
It’s not only in failed states like Somalia that this is happening. Up north, Africa’s exploding population bomb is far outstripping resources, resulting in environmental ruin. In three decades time the population of Ethiopia will be 177 million; the equivalent of France, Germany and Benelux combined, but unable to feed itself on the arid wastelands of the Great Rift Valley.
But here in England, all the chattering class believes is that we need Sir Bob Geldof to sing more songs for famine relief.
Another example is the current civil war in the Central Africa Republic. The BBC is portraying it as Christians slaughtering Muslims, forgetting that the reverse happened just three years ago. It’s true that Christian are on the rampage, but for starving peasants, it’s payback time against a Muslim invading force organised by Jihadis from Nigeria’s Boko Haram and the Sudan’s Janjaweed, who raped and pillaged at will against the indigenous Christian majority.
US President Barak Obama has waded into the morass on behalf of the West with a ‘stern message’. ‘It doesn’t have to be this way,’ he says. ‘You — the proud citizens of the Central African Republic — have the power to choose a different path. Show your love for your country by rejecting the violence that would tear it apart.’
In other words, Africa’s problems can be solved by everyone sitting on Oprah’s sofa and singing Kumbaya.
These fundamental differences are explained away in glib terms straight out the politically correct handbook: ‘religious bigotry’, ‘lack of understanding’, ‘insufficient love for your country’, instead of what they really are: avenging injustices of previous regimes; tribalism; power-struggles fuelled by diamonds and oil; and, for most, the everyday essentials of survival in very rough neighbourhoods.
So we turn to the sclerotic United Nations for solutions. The UN is designed to do precisely nothing but offer aspirin and meaningless bang-on luvvie formulae. In fact, truces and ceasefires and UN Peacekeeping forces usually benefit the aggressors, and even worse, they leave the victims without justice and exponentially increasing their hatred.
As the poet WH Auden once wrote, ‘Those to whom evil is done; Do evil in return.’
What is the solution? It’s right there in front of us. The flip side of the coin is that much of Africa is now experiencing the green shoots of a global economic phenomenon. Their economies are rocketing; democracy is expanding.
Nigeria, for example, is being labelled a MINT country (Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey), the successors to the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) as the next economic giants. Investment is flowing in.
There you have it. Africa is not populated by Westerners with exotic names. It’s time for the Bob Geldofs to stand aside and let Africans solve their own problems.
Only if Africa had real leaders..