Asia. Try again.

Sincerely,
the West

PS: In case that wasn’t clear enough, if your points are accurate, explain why Asia has been both A. heavily Westernized and B. heavily industrialized and become economically successful in many (if not most) nations.

The most populated continent on the face of the planet utterly disproves the bulk of your points, which is probably why O. Tongoi didn’t posit them.

Nevertheless, I am shocked that not a single person on this page, including the author of the article, mentioned anything about the artificial colonial boundaries imposed on Africa and the unnatural heterogeneous states that resulted from them. It is really a tragedy that on an entire internet forum devoted to Africa’s ills, it did not cross the mind of a single person the one distinct characteristic of Africa that separates it from the rest of the world and to which most, if not all, of Africa’s modern crises can be traced: unnatural “countries” with arbitrary boundaries housing disparate ethnic groups.

This is another big source of frustration for me. People always throw up the word “leaders” to explain the problems of Africa. It is the world’s biggest cliché. But they rarely ask the question: WHY exactly is Africa, with a few exceptions like Botswana, constantly plagued with bad leaders who do not give a hoot about their own countries? There is a racist implication behind the “leadership” explanation that is constantly given. The implication is that there is something wrong with African people themselves that makes them unable to produce righteous leaders while the rest of the world is blessed with abundant saints and angels who readily fill up their leadership positions.

Of course, Africa’s leaders are by no means stupid people. Many of them are very intelligent individuals, even if they may be lacking in formal education in some cases. The one thing they are missing with regards to properly governing and developing their countries is not the intelligence but the WILL to do so. And why do they lack the will? Very simple: because they feel no sense of nationalism or patriotism whatsoever. And how can they when they are acutely aware that the countries that they govern are not real countries but merely gigantic reservation parks containing ethnic groups that they feel no kinship with? But rather than push for separation or secession, they take the easiest and most natural route to life-fulfillment by enriching themselves in whatever way they can. Even when certain groups do push for secession, their goals are thwarted by imperialist western powers conniving with local beneficiaries who seek to preserve the status quo. See the Biafra war, for example.

You see, Africa is a mess for the same reason that countries like Iraq are a mess: deep feelings of nationalism and patriotism among the populace do not exist because their countries do not represent who they are. That is why Africans cannot have serious governments, but Europeans and Asians, who generally enjoy the basic luxury of having essentially homogeneous nations, can. Incidentally, note that Botswana, which is perhaps the only essentially homogenous country in sub-Saharan Africa, is the only African country that is free of conflict, bad governance and corruption.