[Quantum]

They were lacking literacy and civilization, and now they have to cope the changes too fast.

Literacy and civilisation did exist in certain parts of Africa before European contact. Ethiopia had an indigenous script for its own language, for example.

[Harmattan]

I understand different levels of development but why do Africans starve? How is it possible that they can't even produce low quality food from farms? It's a techonology of centuries ago.

First of all Africa is a whole continent and very diverse, not everyone starves. Wars excepted, those who starve are mostly found in Africa's horn and south-eastern Africa. Here are some maps, I invite you to match them with this GDP map.


a) Half of Africa is a desert and the continent suffers from periodic droughts and floods.
Desertification map
Besides of this map, be aware that South-Eastern Africa experiences periodic extreme droughts and floods because of El Nino while the Sahel experiences periodic droughts that can sometimes last a few decades or centuries.


b) Half of Africa has a hostile relief
Elevation map
Note that the lower half is a giant plateau that is disconnected from the shores, which makes long-distance trade hard to impossible.


c) The few hospitable areas are usually littered with tropical rain forest.
Vegetation map
And tropical rain forest is very dense, it is hard to occupy, it is full of diseases and, maybe more importantly, it considerably harms river navigation, which prevents trade and communication.


d) It is too big
Peters projection
On most continents the wealth is concentrated near the shores. The further you go from the shores, the poorest the territories.

NB: the maps you're accustomed to use the Mercator projection, which mostly preserves angles but greatly distorts surface sizes, while the Peters projection mostly preserve surfaces sizes at the expense of angles. See map projections.


e) Sub-Saharan Africa restarted from nowhere fifty years ago.
Africa was only freed from colonization a half-century ago (a single second on the scale of History). Then they were left with arbitrary borders, no national identities, no linguistic unity, ethnic rivalries, few infrastructures, a very low literacy rate. It simply couldn't go well. It already progressed a lot but it will take time before ethnicities completely fade away in favor of national identities. Until then corruption, tax evasion, civil wars and defiance will still be rampant parts of the dynamics of many African countries.

Let's add that many kids have been and are educated in another language than the one spoken by the kids (e.g. French in French Africa). This is detrimental to scholarship success.


f) Africa has been imposed counter-productive measures by richer countries.
Africa was a net food exporter in the 60's, now it is a net importer and its per-capita production decreased and the world prices crumbled. There are explicit reports from the IMF and the World Bank that emphasize the disastrous effects of the IMF and World Bank's policies on African agriculture and health as they imposed cuts on public services and protectionism (our own products are usually cheaper than theirs on their own markets while we prohibit their importations on our own).

And more recently we saw purely financial actors invading the raw resources markets with great consequences, which is now banned for food resources in some financial places.

But, just as there's no sign that European IQs will converge with East Asian IQ, it is highly uncertain whether full convergence will occur.

According to whom? The IQ rose by about 30 points in the US throughout the XXth century, by 21 points in Netherlands between 52 and 82, while your map only indicates a 10 points difference.
Source

They were lacking literacy and civilization, and now they have to cope the changes too fast.

At the end of the Middle-Age, the city with the most writings in the world was Timbuctu.
(well, I am not totally sure about where Asia stood at this time)

[Ombrageux]

Harmattan - Some convergence is not full convergence. I am sure there will be significant convergence with rising IQs in the Third World as childhood nutrition and health improve. But what evidence is there that environmental factors are holding back Europeans and European-Americans from having the same IQ as East Asians and Asian-Americans?

[Political Interest]

Africa is poor because it has had consistently poor leadership during its post-colonial history. There have of course been a few exceptions to this but in general most African leaders were never very good. None of this has been helped by the constant meddling of old colonial powers and the superpowers during the Cold War.

[Harmattan]

But what evidence is there that environmental factors are holding back Europeans and European-Americans from having the same IQ as East Asians and Asian-Americans?

a) What evidence is there of a significant IQ superiority within East Asia ? The only serious study I am aware of is this one that only exhibits a few points of difference between our respective continents' leader, hardly significant.

b) What evidence is there that those differences are NOT environmental? Do not put burden of the proof upon me.

c) What evidence is there that any difference between our continents' leaders, both having high literacy rates, would be comparable to Africa with its very low and quickly increasing literacy rate and could teach us something about it?

Africa is poor because it has had consistently poor leadership during its post-colonial history.

It's a much a consequence than it is a cause.

[Kapanda]

It's a much a consequence than it is a cause.

But it is, nevertheless, the crux of the matter. And today, the most relevant factor in this terrible situation.

[Political Interest]

It's a much a consequence than it is a cause.

When we look at disasters like Mobutu Sese Seko or Jean Bedel Bokassa could we not argue that many African countries wasted many decades under such corrupt leadership?

If only there had been more leaders like Senghor.

The West and USSR are to blame for offering support to such corrupt leadership.

In Asia there were also many cases of corrupt government which existed with the support of foreign actors.

[Harmattan]

When we look at disasters like Mobutu Sese Seko or Jean Bedel Bokassa could we not argue that many African countries wasted many decades under such corrupt leadership?

Certainly but those men did not appear from nowhere, they were put on power by the systems underlying them and those systems supported them. No dictator can rule alone. It's not that those leaders were corrupt, those countries were corrupt and they did chose someone that would perpetuate this in favor of a large oligarchy including the police, the army, the civil agents, the business and political elites, and foreign powers and corporations. Such leaders do not appear in our countries for a reason.

Sometimes some individuals have the opportunity to have significant impacts, but most of the time it's first and foremost about the system. If you look at most of the western leaders in the past decades, almost all of them only acted as the system drove them to act. And by system I do not mean just some oligarchy, I mean the set of conflicting national and global dynamics.

[Kapanda]

^ Completely agree.

It is a matter of time, although not at all inevitable, that better leadership appears in Africa. Aside from the Singapore-like oddities, most nations have endured periods of time of weak institutions coupled with bad leadership. The result is what we witness today in most of Africa.

Actually, almost completely agree. Some were not supported by external powers seeking the continuation of corruption. In many situations, like all of the former Portuguese colonies that come to mind, an internal power struggle produced the current reality. But again, it is not really that surprising that in a power vacuum, the leader that rises to the top is the one most willing to do whatever it takes, by any means necessary.

[Quantum]

What Africa needs to get rid of is tribalism. Africa doesn't need so many useless languages and cultures that don't contribute to economic growth and global exchange of ideas. Why waste your life over some ethnic or tribal BS that achieves nothing in the long run? It would be much easier if everyone in Africa spoke international languages like English, French, Arabic, Portuguese or Swahili as a first language.

[Bosnjak]

6-8 children per women... you can not even in west with one wage feed a basketball club...

instead to invest money... they burn it at wedding parties...

anti-intelectualism (like many parts of the world, the poorer the more hate people intelectualism)

[Godstud]

A very good documentary on this subject.
[youtube]36BQW1SuHQ8[/youtube]

[Paradigm]

Africa is a mess for many of the same reasons the Middle East is a mess. European colonialists conquered the continent and divided it up according to their own economic interests rather than the tribal boundaries that existed there previously. So you might have a mountain tribe that has more in common with the mountain tribe across the border than with their fellow countrymen living in the valley. And those tribes compete for power over this artificially imposed nation-state that European powers helped create. Another way European colonialism screwed Africa is that they took the agricultural base that was originally meant to feed the local population, and changed it to export-led agriculture, which placed local farmers at the mercy of volatile global markets and led to a situation where countries were exporting food even in the midst of widespread famine. Africa is rich in natural resources, which is why European countries scrambled for it, and why capitalist industries do the same today.

During the Cold War, Africa became a battleground for the two superpowers, with each side propping up dictators who supported their interests. At the same time, the Bretton-Woods institutions promised them loans to develop their infrastructure. But that infrastructure mainly helped enrich a few private landowners (a disproportionate amount of which were white settlers), and when these countries found themselves unable to pay off these debts, they underwent "economic restructuring" in a way that favored Western financial markets. It didn't help that many of these dictators went to European universities and studied ideas from neoclassical economics that the West itself does not actually follow. At this point, China is becoming a major player in Africa, building itself an economic empire in its own interests, so it's no longer just "the West," but it is still capitalism. In short, there are numerous ways, both direct and indirect, that Africa has been exploited and pillaged by outsiders, with the complicity of ruling elites that the West is more than happy to play off against one another.

[Truth To Power]

But what evidence is there that environmental factors are holding back Europeans and European-Americans from having the same IQ as East Asians and Asian-Americans?

Although the situation is improving, alcohol and tobacco consumption is still much commoner among pregnant women in European-based populations than in East Asian-based populations. That alone could be responsible for much of the IQ difference.

[Truth To Power]

c) The few hospitable areas are usually littered with tropical rain forest.
Vegetation map
And tropical rain forest is very dense, it is hard to occupy, it is full of diseases and, maybe more importantly, it considerably harms river navigation, which prevents trade and communication.

More importantly, heavily leached rainforest soils are very low in iodine, lack of which is the world's major cause of congenital intellectual deficiency.

According to whom? The IQ rose by about 30 points in the US throughout the XXth century, by 21 points in Netherlands between 52 and 82, while your map only indicates a 10 points difference.
Source

Mental deficiency in Africa is usually linked to prenatal and neonatal malnutrition, especially lack of iodine and vitamin A. These IQ effects of nutrient deficiencies are permanent, and cannot be compensated for later.

[ThirdTerm]

River Mae Klong bridge, Burma Railway

Uganda was a British colony, while Malaysia and South Korea were colonised by the Japanese, which made the difference later in their economic performances. When Imperial Japan invaded Malaya, a former British colony, the Indians and Malays, Malaya's major ethnic groups, were generally cooperative and treated well as comrades. But European colonialism in Africa was largely exploitative and European powers put their nations' economic interests first, leaving nothing tangible behind when they left Africa. The Thai-Burma Railway was one of many infrastructure projects that helped Asian countries prosper economically in the post-war era, even though 61,000 Allied POWs were conscripted to work for the railway project. Many of the railways constructed during Japanese rule continue to be used today in Taiwan, Japan's model colony. In Korea, following liberation in 1945, the state invested in maintaining the machinery left by the earlier Japanese firms, while temporarily operating the plants under state protection (McNamara 2006).

South Korean conglomerates, or "chaebol," such as Hyundai and Samsung play a far more important role in Korean economy than do comparable large firms in the United States' and Japanese economies. Despite the importance of the chaebol to the rapid postwar development of the Korean economy, little has been written about their origins during the Japanese occupation. Through case studies of local ownership in major financial, commercial and industrial ventures, this book provides a detailed picture of indigenous capitalism during Japanese colonization. Drawing on Japanese government sources, Korean biographies and diaries, interviews, and United States intelligence material, the author gives a compelling account of key personalities in the Korean business elite and of the personal dilemmas of balancing nationalism against success under dependent, colonial conditions. The author concludes that dependent rather than comprador capitalism characterized leading Korean business through 1945. Patterns of concentration within family enterprises, close ties with the colonial state, and mutual support among a Korean inner circle of business leaders constitute a legacy of the colonial period important to the subsequent development of Korean conglomerates.
http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/su ... ?format=PB

[Drlee]

As usual TTP has brought up his racist IQ bullshit. Ignore it. There is not a shred of truth in it.

IF TTP was an epidemiologist he might understand just how laughable his notions are. I could take the time to detail his ignorance but that would do him too much honor. The fact is that even if one embraces IQ as a reliable predictor of effectiveness (and no serious scientist does) the differences between world populations are statistically insignificant. That is unless we imagine a nation composed entirely of engineers, mathematicians and physicists.

No. Racism runs deep and is always foraging for excuses. But the real deal is that it is just garden variety ignorance or culpable racism.

[Truth To Power]

As usual TTP has brought up his racist IQ bullshit. Ignore it. There is not a shred of truth in it.

<yawn> The usual ignorant swill from you. On which specific factual point can you refute what I wrote?

<crickets>

IF TTP was an epidemiologist he might understand just how laughable his notions are.

<yawn> I studied genetics with David Suzuki. Remember?

I could take the time to detail his ignorance but that would do him too much honor.

So you are aware that you are unable to refute a single sentence I wrote. Good.

The fact is that even if one embraces IQ as a reliable predictor of effectiveness (and no serious scientist does)

Wrong:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

the differences between world populations are statistically insignificant.

Now that is definitely just factually false, as some of the Ns are enormous.

That is unless we imagine a nation composed entirely of engineers, mathematicians and physicists.

That's just some irrelevant silliness from you.

No. Racism runs deep and is always foraging for excuses.

Race is real, and based on statistical fact. You would appear to be referring to bigotry, a completely different phenomenon.

But the real deal is that it is just garden variety ignorance or culpable racism.

Of course a lot of racism is just ignorance, fear, or hatred. But there is an indisputable core of fact.

[Drlee]

<yawn> I studied genetics with David Suzuki. Remember?

[Ombrageux]

There is only one plausible explanation for why Africa south of the Sahara and Haiti are the poorest nations, not only in the world, but even relative to the Third World: racism.

Think about it: members of the Sub-Saharan African Diaspora tend to be among the poorest (and most violent) communities in Brazil, Cuba, the U.S., Canada, France, Britain, Sweden, Israel, etc. And what do all these places have in common? You guessed it: racism.

Consider Google: 30% of employees are Asian but only 2% are black!


Facebook is even worse, 38% Asian but still only 2% black!


The only explanation for these is the vicious structural racism which pervade these organizations and which Sergei Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sheryl Sandberg have allowed to flourish under their watch! This racism, evident among the racist oligarchs that rule the West today, is clearly behind most of the development lag Africa is still facing today. This must stop!