Why is Africa Poor?

[Southern]

@MMMark

@Southern

Botswana even with all of these great policies is one of the poorest nations of the planet.

By what, and whose, measure?

Well, there are all sorts of measure that you could use… per capita income, infant mortality, literacy rates, life expectancy, etc.

Are you contending that Botswana is not one of poorest nations on earth?

@MMMark

@Southern

But they are still a very, very long way away from them.

Okay, but “where they are now” is perhaps not as important as “if they are headed anywhere,” “where they are headed” and “at what rate.”

I alluded earlier to the fact that every government survives and thrives by parasitically extracting the wealth produced by the host or slave class. Just as producers must learn better ways of creating wealth, so must governments learn better ways of parasitically extracting that wealth. Perhaps some of Africa’s governments are finally learning that, by allowing the host class to grow more wealthy, there is more wealth to be extracted.

Perhaps. And time will tell. But when you look at african populations outside of africa they are relatively poor. This is in western nations where both european, african, and asian populations are subject to the same economic and political systems. Yet the asian populations have out performed the europeans and the africans have lagged far behind the europeans. So governments everywhere can impoverish it population. Yet when the variable of government is the same you still have major disparities in economic performance.