Comment by Maktab | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Maktab | Hacker News Reader

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At the same time, this also sheds some more light on Africa's problems. One of which is logistics.

The continent's security is hampered by its sheer size and the massive borders of many of its countries. What this means it that few countries have the funds for large and capable enough security forces to exercise control over the whole of their territory. So outside the cities, large parts of the countryside exist in a security vacuum where thugs, rebels, criminals and assorted other unsavoury types essentially have free reign.

It also hampers trade and communication. With communities being spread out over such huge distances, transport infrastructure and the associated costs become vital. But few African nations can afford to maintain proper highway networks and even if they could, there's a lack of sufficient transport capability to effectively utilise it. As a result, intra-state trade is severely limited and inter-state trade even more so. This logistics problem also affects the delivery of aid.

To be fair, this isn't true of all African countries. South Africa and Egypt, for example, are notable exceptions for having a security presence throughout the country, a well-developed and advanced transport infrastructure and so on. But bringing countries like the DRC, CAR & Uganda up to the same level is not going to be an easy task.

One hope lies in having less of a top-down socialist central-planning approach and more encouragement of a federal self-organising entrepreneurial environment to encourage communities to grow themselves and gradually build their own transport and communications networks outwards. Technology will make this easier, but I think anybody expecting an economic revolution in Africa anytime soon is holding on to a false hope.

> What this means it that few countries have the funds for large and capable enough security forces to exercise control over the whole of their territory.

Through the majority of US and Canadian history, the same could be said of both countries. (Canada did send the mounties out in advance of the settlers, but there weren't enough of them.)

Let me suggest that the problem is not the lack of security forces but the need for them, especially since they tend to turn into "thugs, rebels, criminals and assorted other unsavoury types".

Interesting comparison, but it's not really the same situation. In the case of the US and Canada there were large border regions that were essentially frontier societies with little protection offered by the state, but the major population centres and the areas between them were generally safe. And as time went on, the expansion of both countries were driven in large part by the expansion of their armed forces and the gradual extension of control over more and more of the country. Aside from a few hardy settlers, there were no large population groupings living in areas in which the state had not yet established a basic level of control. The societies expanded their territory only as the security umbrella which protected them grew larger.

For many African countries, such as the DRC, this is not the case. They have inherited borders and population groupings that date from colonial eras and have more to do with arbitrary lines drawn on a map than the actual ability of each country to enforce or protect them. As a result there is seldom a single point of origin from which to begin the creation of a security umbrella and then expand outwards; instead they have to individually try to secure a number of cities and towns situated far apart from each other while trying desperately to get a hand on the largely undeveloped and un-patrolled areas in between. To use the DRC as an example, the national army has virtually no control over the land between Kinshasa, the capital, and cities like Goma and North Kivu. There is no proper level of internal security.

To be fair, your point about the quality (or lack thereof) of African security forces is valid. There's no doubt that if more African armies were well-trained, disciplined and professional they would be able to make far more effective use of the limited resources available to them. Unfortunately, most are as useless and corrupt as the political hierarchies governing their countries. But my point was that even with well-trained forces, the vast distances across which many African countries stretch make an already difficult situation so much harder to deal with on the tiny budgets most African countries have available. And that even those who do attempt to get their act together are dragged down by the fact that trade, the one thing that could lift them out of poverty, is often severely restricted by geography.

I think your analysis is way off. The problems you cite are not problems of size but of population density. And I would not think that anybody in their right mind would argue that the cure for Africa's many problems is more population

You cite length of borders as an issue. Borders grow as the square root of the size of a country, and if we assume that population & resources grow linearly with the area of a country, securing borders is actually easier for big countries.

The cost of having a strong enough security forces and of building adequate transport infrastructure should not depend on the size of the countries, but on the population density -- when expressed as percentage of GDP.

Africa's population density is not exceptional in any way: Africa: 30 person per km^2 (and this includes the Sahara where basically nobody lives -- almost a third of Africa) South America: 21 USA: 31 Mexico: 55

if we assume that population & resources grow linearly with the area of a country

Why would you assume that?

Africa's population density is not exceptional in any way

But Earth's population density is off the chart compared to other planets. Africa is too big to generalize. The USA has both New York City and Wyoming. Population and economic value are intensely concentrated in cities, so being big or small doesn't matter. Having productive cities does.

But Earth's population density is off the chart compared to other planets.

You don't say...

Two rather depressing maps of Africa:

http://uuorld.com/gallery?image=166

http://vimeo.com/2131732

Why do you feel compelled to prepend 'depressing' to Africa? Don't you think a focus on the positive is more helpful than a constant focus on the negative?

If you can look at that image and that video and not call it depressing than the word should be retired.

The really depressing thing are people who have no idea how Africa really is making blanket judgements on the continent. If there were less of that, and more people who are willing to actually do research about the continent, there would be more trade. As-is, people like you just have some 2 paragraph opinion of the continent, and never ever see it as a place where one can invest or otherwise communicate with.

Excuse me, but you don't know anything about me or my opinions on the continent. I mentioned visualizations of two stats, one from the World Bank and One From the CIA with the word "depressing" in front of them. You have made a bunch of assumptions here...

We could also stop crushing democracy in Africa with money for brutal dictators.

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