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Comment by rustyboy | Hacker News Reader

It's not about economics, it's about private capital.

Nations and International Institutions loan out money to small countries which seem reasonable, however when they start to slip on payments they're offered relief in exchange for privatizing their resources and government services so capital around the world can extract rent. See Latin America in the last 30 years, and Africa for the last 50.

You're right though - it's just as insulting to say that these countries can't spot the trap. However some of these deals take literal armies of lawyers and economists to understand, and even when they understand, geo-politics can change around a country a lot more than a "first-world" nation.

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Don't forget that it's not only about spotting a bad deal when you see it. We're not talking about a deal between two individuals. To oppose the deals, you need political power. I.e convincing the populus. These deals are backed with enormous investments in propoganda to neutralize the masses, and corruption to neutralize the politicians.

Thanks for your response; I was mainly aggravated by OP's original post that's essentially propaganda with no backing evidence so commonly found on Reddit.

> however when they start to slip on payments they're offered relief in exchange for privatizing their resources and government services so capital around the world can extract rent.

Fair enough, but consider the following. China's infrastructure is also allowing Africa to expand and build their own ecosystems in fintech [1]. Furthermore, there is actually discussion about Africa leapfrogging in to green initiatives [2], "The paper uses examples of how China managed to improve initially polluting infrastructure to help Africa leapfrog directly into cleaner solutions."

Sure, I'll conceded the worries about network sovereignty, etc. But if you follow the data coming out of Africa, you'll see progress is really being made. Most people making remarks like OP literally know nothing about Africa.

[1] https://www.brinknews.com/fintech-in-sub-saharan-africa-a-po... [2] https://saiia.org.za/research/can-africa-build-greener-infra...

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