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Why are you saying that ;) there are right now several cyclists from Morocco traveling a long the coast, true Nigeria had problems in the east with extortionist

• boeingUH60 3y ago
  > But overall our continent is beautiful and full of lovely people. Mehn spare me, I have heard this over and over again, and yes it’s true. But being “beautiful and lovely” doesn’t build a nation. Hidden behind this facade of beauty is a horrible culture that celebrates corruption, tribalism and lack of cooperation, backbiting, and shortsightedness, which is why our continent remains poor. Africa will remain a basket case until we reform our culture into one that celebrates honest work and mutual cooperation over corruption and cheating to earn a living, which is doable :) But, no matter how much lipstick a pig wears…
  • camdat 3y ago
    >Hidden behind this facade of beauty is a horrible culture that celebrates corruption, tribalism and lack of cooperation, backbiting, and shortsightedness These are all acute problems in Western nations. The fundamental impediment which Africa faces are it's rich natural resources and the nations which exploit them. Any "anti-corruption" cultural efforts will be snuffed out long before it becomes a threat to this lucrative expropriation There is no cultural solution to the boot of political and economic struggle.
    • boeingUH60 3y ago
      I’m not buying this but sure, we Africans never take responsibility. We’ll first blame the other tribe, then the country next to us, then long-gone colonial powers, and finally the devil when we run out of excuses. As if it’s not our leaders selling out the country to foreign interests for pocket change. Maybe they could pick up a book from Lee Kuan Yew and learn how he rejected a bribe from the CIA.
      • camdat 3y ago
        And these leaders are all fairly and democratically elected? Without the influence of the money of former colonial states (or their puppets in the form of expropriative enterprises)? Consider the trillions of dollars made by other countries from Africa's people and resources. Why _wouldnt_ they spend a fraction of that killing any chance that a cultural movement picks up. This isn't fantasy, Nestle, Chiquita, etc have a long history of funding anti-revolutionary agencies for exactly this reason. One man rejecting one bribe will do nothing, a single cup cannot drain an ocean.
        • boeingUH60 3y ago
          I wonder why those rich Middle Eastern petro states aren’t being controlled and kept poor by the Western powers if that’s the case. We can all go back to the past and find excuses of how someone did bad and blame them for the present even if they’re long gone…we Africans are very good at that. What we’re not good at is ever taking responsibility for f**ing once instead of blaming invisible conspiracists hiding in thin air.
          • Der_Einzige 3y ago
            You’re getting these responses because Americans have been trained Pavlovian style to never ever claim that some cultures are better than others. This is despite most, including those who think they don’t, implicitly believing this
            • camdat 3y ago
              I'm curious which cultures you believe are worst than others? Which one is the worst?
              • churchill 3y ago
                Radical Islam for one is rabidly anti-intellectual. The only conservative Muslim countries that are anything to write home about are oil-rich and have extremely small populations. As a result, it's easy for the government to subsidize their citizens heavily and build lots of shiny skyscrapers to attract western tourists without developing human capital significantly. Call me Islamophobic but I say this as a Nigerian, living in a country with the largest Muslim population in Africa (second-largest in the world after Indonesia) where people still get lynched and burned for "blasphemy."
  • martopix 3y ago
    Typically, I believe that sufficient welfare and prosperity are what reduces corruption and crime, not the other way around.
    • argentinian 3y ago
      As an argentinean citizen I believe that corruption and crime are what impede prosperity. How can prosperity arise when power is in the hands of corrupts?
      • kouru225 3y ago
        Welfare is a method of fighting corruption though. Corruption means taking money from the public. Welfare is giving money to the public.
        • argentinian 3y ago
          But when the ones in power are corrupt, they are the same people who would have to implement the welfare. And of course they steal a big percentage of the welfare money. And also inflation. Look at inflation numbers in Argentina. Look what "giving money to the public" can do. Don't be blind to the consequences of economically unsound intentions of welfare.
      • Aerbil313 3y ago
        Do you think the West earned its prosperity through hard work? Fossil fuels and colonization built their civilizations, not them. Humans are no more genius than they were a millenia ago. They just accessed a new free energy source, which is soon to deplete, taking the civilization it built with it, into a horrible famine.
        • argentinian 3y ago
          It's an unrealistic reduction to talk about "The West" as if it was an homogeneous entity. The whole world used fossil fuels, and you should read the history of the big nations of the East too. What's your point? Are you defending Argentina's corrupt politicians?
  • argentinian 3y ago
    That description of the culture also describes very well Argentina's culture, and I also believe that it's what causes Argentina to remain poor.