"Africa's natural resources have been raped and pillaged by the west for many decades. " Wrong. If you mean 'Oil (or some other commodity) was extracted mostl

"Africa's natural resources have been raped and pillaged by the west for many decades. " Wrong. If you mean 'Oil (or some other commodity) was extracted mostly by Africans and sold to Westerners or Asians' - then sure. There is no 'raping' or 'pillaging' done by anyone, if there are negative consequences, it's almost invariably by the African 'leaders' themselves who are among the most corrupt and brutal in the world. 'The West' would be very happy if the leader/warlords invested in industry, and distributed their wealth more fairly. We'd be very happy if they took their billion dollar IMF loans - which were designed for infrastructure projects - and actually built those infrastructure projects as opposed to squandering it in so many ways from top to bottom - leaving the various countries with an ugly balance sheet. Where there has been more responsibility - such as in Botswana 's diamond extraction - we've seen more intelligent distribution of wealth, and as a result, higher standard of living etc..