Posted on 07/16/2014 5:34:29 AM PDT by Beowulf9
Western countries are using aid to Africa as a smokescreen to hide the "sustained looting" of the continent as it loses nearly $60bn a year through tax evasion, climate change mitigation, and the flight of profits earned by foreign multinational companies, a group of NGOs has claimed.
Although sub-Saharan Africa receives $134bn each year in loans, foreign investment and development aid, research released on Tuesday by a group of UK and Africa-based NGOs suggests that $192bn leaves the region, leaving a $58bn shortfall.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Maybe we should stop sending that money then.
WHAT! There’s corruption on the dark continent? Holy cow. When did that start? ;>}
interesting that the guardianistas admit that “climate change mitigation” is nothing more than a smokescreen to move aid money into the bank accounts of globalist mostly western elites running smokescreen tax exempts
Oh, those awful, thieving western corporations. Just taking and taking and taking from the poor Africans who would be much better off if the foreign nationals had never set foot on their wonderful progressive continent. (snicker)
This is a completely erroneous evaluation. After all, profits come from somewhere: mainly industry. They are part of the size of an industry. Not mentioned is the wages, the licensing fees, &c., paid by the companies.
If an African country really believes what these NGOs are saying, then they should clamor to cut off all foreign connections. Instead, they welcome foreign enterprise, even from China.
The Guardian is just a fount of warmed-over communism: this article makes the same “imperialism” argument that Lenin and his buddies promoted, and which has done more harm in developing countries than anything (including even malaria).
If the NGOs quoted (anonymously) in this article should have noticed, is that if lack of foreign investment is a good thing, then Eritrea and Somalia should be the richest parts of Africa.
Yep. For some strange reason, the only functional parts of African society are what their Colonial masters left behind.
Note that the biggest trading partners of wealthy countries are: other wealthy countries! Trade with Africa is minor: way down the list.
The fact is that to have something to trade, you must be able to produce something. Since Africa has very little manufacturing (except in South Africa), what they have to trade is raw materials, and in some cases agricultural products.
Africa has also a big problem with internal corruption and modernized tribal warfare. So do other countries around the world, which is either very discouraging, or very hopeful, which ever way you look at it.
“Oh, those awful, thieving western corporations. Just taking and taking and taking from the poor Africans who would be much better off if the foreign nationals had never set foot on their wonderful progressive continent. (snicker)”
In the few fertile and low-disease areas of Africa, you could probably agree with that statement. Except that it wasn’t “progressive”. Primitive man simply grazed the land like animals and the population stabilized over many millenia. I think that is better than artificial/unsustainable population growth in infertile/disease-ridden areas, the resulting AK-47 toting gangs, and industrial-scale destruction of the environment.
You think the corporations actually give a damn? You think they want Africans to be wealthy, educated and demand high pay for their time and resources? You think they want Africans to demand accountability for their environment? Hell no.
At best the corporations want to maintain mutually beneficial relationships with warlords who keep the mines wide open at a pittance and the people enslaved. Their contributions are nothing but bare minimum smoke/mirrors to cover up an inevitable PR nightmare and most are designed to eventually only benefit the warlords anyway.
It’s not only Western. The Chinese are doing this at en exponentially increasing rate.
And it get’s better. The same is slowly being done to us...
Your post made me think..
.obama is now our “warlord”
What does that mean?
If a French corporation has an operation in, say, Chad; of course its profits are retained in France. It's a French company -- not a Chadian company.What else would anyone expect?
Ah. The crux of it -- old fashioned nationalization of foreign owned businesses.
Never worked in the past -- probably even less likely to work today.
Africa’s corrupt.
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