Descent Into Chaos
It was historically called the Dark Continent. And that was because so little was known of the interior of that vast continent, before it was thoroughly explored. It might also, during the pre-Victorian era, have been termed that because of the complexion of its inhabitants. At the present time, Africa presents as a dark continent for other reasons. A continent of starvation and war, tribal and clan violent unrest, disease, and failed governments.The developed world has traditionally felt both fascination for the continent, and pity, alongside the guilt that former imperialists now succumb to when regarding the countries they had once colonized, enslaved and raped of their natural resources. Missionaries did their best to wrest the populations from their animist-inspired spirituality toward Christianity.
The world community has long since poured countless billions of humanitarian aid into the continent, countless non-governmental humanitarian organization have stationed themselves there, in a widely-dispersed sometimes-effective attempt to better the lives of desperately hungry, inadequately housed and health-served populations.
The United Nations food fund has congratulated itself for the partial success of its strenuous efforts to bring desperately needed food aid to Africa, along with medical assistance and peacekeeping missions. Their peacekeeping missions have been largely unsuccessful, while food filtering into the country has ensured that fewer people starve to death.
The result has been an explosion of population growth over the past 60 years; in contrast to declining birth rates everywhere else in the developing world, in Africa the population quadrupled through an epic baby boom. Subsistence-level food availability may exist, but little else; health care, stable governments, freedom from oppression and ongoing wars auger a feeble future for the young.
And there certainly exist vastly-impressive demographics of the young, since approximately 50% of Africans are aged fifteen or under. Where will they find employment to support their evolution into parents in the not-so-distant future? Currently, parents without employment struggle to find basic nutrition to feed their children simple once-a-day meals.
In Somalia and Congo, torn by incessant wars millions of children live in refugee camps; schools are inadequate or simply don't exist and death is always imminent in the dangerous places and times in which they live. In Mozambique as elsewhere in Africa young girls are sold into marriage; uneducated but prepared to bear children.
In West Africa, desperate parents with too many hungry stomachs send their boys to madrasas which teach religion through readings of the Koran, and nothing else. The students are dispatched after their lessons into the mean streets, to beg for paltry coins which they must then take back to their school instructors.
It is anticipated by demographers at the Population Reference Bureau that Nigeria will eventually surpass Bangladesh and Brazil in population, to become the world's sixth-most populous country. The major ethnic group feel offspring represent the kind of wealth that no developed nation would recognize but India; a living safety-net for parents in their old age.
Hungry children are sent out with brightly coloured plastic bowls to beg for food scraps. There are no prospects for their education. They exist for the simple purpose of defying death. Does anyone, living anywhere in the world ever become inured to privation? The infant death rate soars, but more babies are conceived.
Where to, Africa? Can those feeble nations, so many of them struggling under dictators, thugs, autocratic rule, and violence-afflicted tribal affiliation ever lift themselves into anything resembling hope for the future of their young?
Labels: Human Relations, Human Rights, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, January 14, 2010
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