Paul Jackson adds his brain-power to the brainy-right’s take on Live-8 (see previous blog entry), in our Columnist section.
[…] Before getting all weepy-eyed over the Live 8 stunt, I’d advise everyone to read Peter Goodspeed’s probing series on Africa in the National Post. Few will be enthralled with the Live 8 circuses after that.
Goodspeed points that out over the past several decades, the western industrial democracies have poured $500 billion in foreign aid into Africa. Totalled with loans, which are frequently written off, the sum is a staggering $1 trillion U.S.
Yet, despite this largesse, Africa has become steadily poorer. In sub-Sahara Africa, the number of poor increased from 164 million in 1981 to 316 million in 2001. In 40 years Africa’s share of world trade fell from 6% in 1980 to 2% today.
That’s despite, Goodspeed explains, Africa having 90% of the world’s cobalt, 90% of the world’s platinum, 50% of its gold, 98% of its chromium, and 64% of its manganese. It has one-third of the world’s uranium, and, Alberta’s oil sands aside, more oil than North America. It is, in short, a fabulously rich continent. […]
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