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Comment by madiathomas | Hacker News Reader

Not sure if it is ignorance that is making you to utter such words about Africa. Do you seriously think all African people are dying of hunger and waiting for food aid from your governments? Have you ever been to any African country? Majority of countries with food and hunger problems are those who are at war. Rest of us, citizens pf this wonderful and arable continent, can feed ourselves and don't need any food aid.

The only aid we need is for Western countries who sponsor African wars to stay away from Africa. I have been living in Africa since birth(35 years old). I have never seen anyone dying of hunger.

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All of Africa is not starving, sure, but hopefully you can understand how people can reasonably believe that there are issues with food supplies in much of Africa[1][2], and that a large number of people are suffering as a consequence. It is a tagline that has been thrown about in the Western world for decades and can be remedied with counterpoints - I was frankly having trouble finding any good stats re food supply in Africa.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/world/africa/famine-somal...

[2] http://mgafrica.com/article/2016-02-12-africa-food-crisis-20...

Then why must Africa receive millions in aid from the West every single year? Why can't they help themselves?

http://www.chronicle.co.zw/one-million-receive-food-aid

In 2015, the U.S. provided more than $8 billion in assistance to 47 sub-Saharan countries; and USAID maintains 27 regional and bilateral missions in Africa.

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/323198-...

USAID "assistance" to Africa and other countries is more of a gimme to the US big agriculture lobby than to Africa. The US pays big agriculture to send food and agriculture equipment to Africa and other countries. The temporary food abundance often destroys the country's ability to build up its agriculture. Also, it comes with strings attached where the country has to use patented seeds in order to get the aid, making the local farmers dependent on sending money to Monsanto every year - this happened in Haiti and Monsanto is doing it in Africa as well.

Also, USAID is infamous for spreading money around in order to destabilize governments who do not follow the US's dictates.

This notion that USAID is some benevolent aid program is ridiculous. It is a brutal instrument of US foreign policy and big business, cloaked in a very thin veil of liberalism/charity/humanitarianism.

Majority is truly just that, benevolent aid. You want to spin some tall tales conspiracy then let's see some citation on the matter.

http://www.care.org/our-impact/usaid-technical-project-brief...

Sure American companies benefit, sure there's some fraud, sure some of it is a foreign policy decision in the US best interests. But a lot of good is done.

Because West is stealing gazillion times more from Africa in return. When you refuse, war and/or sanctions follow to cripple your country. Then they can loot in peace. You seriously think USA is just helping out of their good hearts?

Alas, if only it was even a zero-sum game were eg Africa only loses what the USA steals from them.

The reality is far bleaker---but also more hopeful: rich countries don't benefit from (causing) bad conditions in poor countries, at least nearly not as much as the bad conditions cost the poor countries.

Instability is profitable to rich countries. That's a well-known fact. Those bad conditions were artificially craeted by colonisers. Colonisers who still refuse to exit Africa because the only way they know how to make money is through exploiting African countries.

'The best time to buy is when there is blood on the streets' - Baron Rothschild.

I don't know, lots more companies are investigating in stable China than they ever did when Mao's reigned with open terror. And also more than in less stable countries.

India also got more investments since the liberalisation in the 90s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalisation_in_Ind...).

(I know less about Africa---but I suspect relatively stable and rich South Africa gets the lion's share of investments?)

Which instabilities are profitable to rich countries?

China isn't a profitable country to the US. China fate is in their hands. That's why they are even able to kick out big US companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Uber.

South Africa is very a profitable country to the West, not the other way round. It was even more profitable during the dark days of apartheid. That's why USA was sponsoring apartheid government with intelligence and arms. Google about Mandela arrest and CIA's involvement. They even listed Nelson Mandela as a terrorist. Even when he was President, he was still listed as a terrorist. US only removed him from the terrorist list few years ago.

I live in South Africa.

Wait til you hear how much Israel gets alone. Aid isn't a no-strings attached handout, it's policy in dollar units.

To Israel it's military spending.

https://explorer.usaid.gov/cd/ISR

It's not a secret.

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