What’s wrong with Africa?

In the latest of FrontPage Magazine’s valuable series of symposia hosted by Jamie Glazov, panelists discuss the seemingly hopeless situation of Africa. They all agree that the usual suspects—colonialism, racism, artificial borders, debt—are not to blame. They identify a rather confusing host of what they see as the real culprits, ranging from the dirigiste political tradition which fosters corrupt and despotic leaders, to a solidarity (they don’t call it a racial solidarity) that prevents African leaders from criticizing each other, to a truly astonishing backwardness in much of the continent. As John Eibner of Christian Solidarity International describes it:

Most of my African travels take me far away from neo-imperial, frontier outposts of globalization, like Khartoum, Nairobi, Addis Ababa and Kampala, to vast regions where the outside world has had marginal influence. One finds in such places large communities whose indigenous technology does not include the wheel, whose family life is based on polygamy, whose local economy is characterized by primeval methods of husbandry and agriculture, and whose communal laws do not encompass the private ownership of land. Yet another important characteristic of such communities is the powerful influence of anti-modern religious forces such as the occult and, in northern Africa, Islamic law…. If the destabilizing gulf between ancient and modern is to be bridged, it will be the work of centuries—not of utopian quick fixes, such as the imposition of socialism, market economies, Islamism, debt relief or massive Western investment.

Not once in the 4,700 word symposium do the words “IQ,” “intelligence,” or “cognitive” appear.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 19, 2005 01:26 PM | Send