IH SBQ 23/4/08

Sec 407 Zhang Yangfan 33

Internal problems faced by African nations are the major cause of poverty in Africa. To what extent do the sources agree with this statement? Explain your answer.

In 2006, 34 of the 50 nations on the UN list of least developed countries are in Africa. Internal problems, such as racial discrimination and war and conflicts, faced by African nations are the major cause of poverty in Africa. I agree with this statement to a large extent.

The structural discrimination against Africa’s black population has caused poverty. “79 per cent of the country’s population” is blacks (c. f. Source B). Half of this population “lives in abject poverty” because the working age people among them are “either unemployed” or have no land to farm. (c. f. Source B). The blacks are being discriminated because 87 per cent of the country’s agricultural land is owned by the predominantly 60,000 farmers who are white South Africans, and the government did little to help to redistribute the land. This is strong evidence as it is supported by Source D. “Black unemployment is up to 40 per cent, one of the world’s highest rates” (c. f. Source D). The government are bias towards the white, as it “delays farming transfers“and only aims to complete “land redistribution by 2014” (c. f. Source D). This shows that blacks are treated unfairly and they receive little help from the government. As a result, the blacks will remain poor as they are isolated from income source. For showing anger, some of them may turn out to commit crimes “rampantly”, such as rapes and murder, with the hope that the government will be aware of their poor situation and take action to improve their life standard. Nonetheless, a reverse effect is caused as an image of an unstable society “without secure property rights” is shown. Therefore, foreign investors will loss confidence and are discouraged to invest in the region. This leads to slower economic growth and fewer jobs in the market, eventually causes severer poverty in Africa.

In addition, as the author of Source B is a senior researcher working on fragile states, at the Centre for International governance Innovation (CIGI) in Waterloo, Canada, he is believed to have the knowledge on the racial discrimination problem in Africa through years of research. Moreover, being a foreign senior researcher, through this piece of objective writing, he may want to raise international awareness regarding the racial discrimination issue in Africa, so that the African governments may take action to improve the situation under international peer pressure. Hence, Source B is reliable. In short, the structural discrimination against Africa’s black population will lead to unstable society and less foreign investments, ultimately causing severer poverty.

Furthermore, long-term conflicts, including civil wars and conflicts between countries in Africa cause poverty. Residents’ normal lives will be affected when war and armed conflicts break out. Military forces may deliberately “displaced populations” and ‘remove people from their land” during a conflict (c. f. Source F). Consequently, these people become refugees. Without jobs and land, they may not be able to earn a living and thus “live in abject poverty” (c.f. Source F). Also, because some conflicts “continue for 20 or 30 years” and consume a lot of money, society will probably become disordered and the economy will be affected severely as well. Under such circumstances, the government may focus more on finding solutions to end the conflicts rather than improving the civilians’ living standard. Therefore, it is difficult to “make long-term plans” to help the refugees to break out the poverty cycle. As a result, some of the refugees “have been living in refugee camps for decades” (c. f. Source F). This is strong evidence as it is confirmed by my contextual knowledge. The Eritrean-Ethiopian War took place from May 1998 to June 2000 between Ethiopia and Eritrea, forming one of the conflicts in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea and Ethiopia - two of the world’s poorest countries - spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the war and suffered the loss of tens of thousands of their citizens killed or wounded as a direct consequence of the conflict which resulted in minor border changes. Hence it is clear that war and conflicts cause poverty in Africa.

However, other than the internal problems mentioned, receiving insufficient and ineffective aid from United Nations and the rich countries also causes poverty in Africa.

In Source A, a bony and skinny person is showing a gesture that asking for aid and help to a relatively strong man. This tiny person may symbolize the Africa nations in poverty because he does not have proper clothes to wear. Also, the strong man may represent the United Nations as he is wearing a shirt with “UN” printed on it. According to his words and action, he is busy “designing a website on poverty” and refuses to help the thin man immediately. The cartoonist may be trying to show us that UN’s aid such as designing website to advocate worldwide donations is indirect and impractical to help the poor African countries. This is strong evidence as it is supported by Source C. In Jeffrey Sachs, a famous economist’s opinion, “for twenty years”, the World Bank and IMF keep asking the African countries to balance their budgets, assuming the international “markets” will solve Africa’s poverty problem. Yet these organizations may fail to consider that most of the Africans are even too poor to demand and such “markets” may not even exist in Africa. Thus the people in Africa are believed to be “isolated” and “left to die”, without receiving actual aid from World Bank and IMF.

Moreover, according to Source E, many developed countries provide less than half of the amount of funding which they promised at the Monterrey Financing for Development Conference in 2002. If these richest countries keep their promises, there will be sufficient aid to “get the world on track to ending extreme poverty throughout the world”. In other words, many African nations may find their way out of poverty. Therefore, these better-off countries should be blamed for leaving African nations in poverty as well.

A point to note is that Source E is a view expressed by an academic in the Earth Institute, University of Columbia. The academic may be trying to convince the world that the richest countries are not doing enough to help the poor countries so that more people will be aware and thus pressurize these richest countries into increasing their funding, eventually providing the poor countries with more aid in the future. Working in the Earth Institute under University of Columbia, this academic has the opportunities to do relevant researches and gather information. Hence his view, Source E, is believed to be credible.

In a word, African nations remain poor because the richest countries in the world are not providing sufficient aid to them.

In conclusion, I feel that the poverty in Africa is mostly caused by the internal problems. Although the richest countries and the United Nations have a role to play to help the poor African nations in order to construct a more harmonious earth village, the situation will not improve significantly if the internal problems such as racial discrimination against the blacks and the ongoing war and conflicts are not solved. No matter how much fund the African nations receive, the blacks who make up more than half of the population there are not likely to break out of the poverty cycle if structural racial discrimination still exists. Similarly, if long-term war and conflicts continue in the region, the fund received seems helpless to improve the millions of refugees’ living situations. These major internal problems are the root cause of poverty because they prevent many people from earning themselves a living and impede economic growth. Therefore, I agree that internal problems, such as racial discrimination and war and conflicts, faced by African nations are the major cause of poverty in Africa.