Africa (was ...10 trillion people in this solar system?)

On 01/06/06, Omar E. Vega wrote:
> Corruption does not explain everything. Africa is a huge continent.
> However, the land is not as fertile as the Americas, and large part
> of Africa is desert. They got lot of troubles with the lack of
> water, for instance.

Africa has lots of problems:

a) it's a north-south continent, whereas Europe and America are
east-west continents.

b) diseases like malaria are endemic

c) water problems

d) lack of natural foodstuffs relating to a)

The first problem is the worst. What that means is that any foodstuffs
or domesticated animals that are produced at one latitude can't be
spread far North-south. That makes living there much harder, new foods
have to be produced *everywhere* throughout the continent. Developing
foods is very hard. So the people living there have to make do with
second best, and are condemned to poverty.

It's when you have lots of excess produce that capitalism can start
up. In Africa they don't have much excess.

You should read 'Gun, germs and steel' by Jared Diamond. He goes
through it in a whole heap of detail.

> The problem with Africa is very simple. A population can't grow in
> an exponential rate forever. Population growth is what has kept
> Africa in poverty and is getting worst as times goes by. If Africa
> stop population growth the economy will improves fast.

The population growth is a function of poor infant mortality- if they
don't have a high growth rate they die out.

> Omar Vega

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