Why African Nations Are Poor, And Others Are Wealthy

Why African Nations Are Poor, And Others Are Wealthy
Why African Nations Are Poor, And Others Are Wealthy | Image Source: Pexels

The world is estimated to have around 196 countries today, with about 25 of them being termed to be extremely wealthy by having an average per capita wealth of each individual sitting at over $100,000 a year, while 20 of the poorest countries in the world are located in Africa, with the average per capita wealth sitting at less than $1,000 a year.

While the planet today is a very prosperous one with great potentials to make the lives of everyone in it better than average, many countries continue to fall behind, with some being even over 2,000 years in growth behind the elite nations of today.

It is no surprise that most of the poorest countries in the world are domiciled in Africa, with the average American being 40 times wealthier than the average African who survives at under $3 a day.

These extreme problems creates protests on the continent, increases crime rates, creates poor access to education, electricity and healthcare, and much more problems, which have led to countless attempts by millions of Africans to try to illegally flee the continent by road, sea, and air in search of a better future in the Western World, leading to the death of thousands in the process.

What is the cause of this problem that has plagued the continent for so long and appears to have no apparent end? And what can be done to chart a course of inevitable growth for the poor African nations and Her citizens?

In this article, I highlight 5 key problems or curses as some people in Africa prefer to call them, that are plaguing the continent and preventing the growth of the nations in it:

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1). Poorly Managed Institutions:

The primary objective of every country’s government is to create an enabling environment that ensures human capital development, industrialization, security, and much more. But these objectives have always been poorly executed by African nations.

African countries have continued to run grossly mismanaged institutions which have led to bad policing, poor tax collection, pitiful education standards, poor healthcare, terrible transportation networks, little to no access to electricity, and much more.

Institutions form the foundation of every country’s growth and development, and when they’re poorly managed or even ignored, the country continues to fall into worse states than it already is.

The wealthy countries have great institutions which have been built over time from a well-managed and carefully monitored tax-collection system. The institutions they manage to build up for themselves range from an uninterrupted access to electricity to world-class education, effective healthcare services, good policing which invariable guarantees security to a great extent, excellent transportation networks, and much more.

The institutions they build creates an attractive haven for foreign investors who are assured of a security of investment, and so, are willing to invest their money into these nations, while providing more jobs for the citizens at the same time.

African nations, on the other hand, appear to have no clue on how to manage the resources because too many people are always fighting for power, and so, keep their minds off the ultimate goal of truly serving the people.

They have poor tax collection schemes, and so, cannot properly develop their nations since the funds required to do so have either not be adequately collected, or have been squandered through corrupt practices.

Corruption continues to kill African nations, and so, it’s a no-brainer that the least corrupt countries in the world are the most successful, while the most corrupt countries in the world are the least successful.

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2). Religious, Tribalistic, and Nepotic Sentiments:

Religion, tribalism, and nepotism are some of the biggest problems facing the African continent.

Most people in Africa choose not to work hard or better their lives because they have the connotation that the physical world does not matter, but rather only what lies in the afterlife. While there may be nothing wrong with that school of thought, they forget they’ll be leaving behind children who will go on to suffer because their parents chose to be grossly negligent.

A way to approach this way of thinking is to know that your hard work and effort to build wealth and grow a prosperous nation in the world you’re in isn’t because you want to be materialistic, but because you want to ensure that everyone who comes after you never has to suffer because of your myopic mindset.

A deeper look at the situation also shows that most people who think this way are those who believe they’ve either already failed in life or can never be wealthy. And since they’ve unconsciously accepted defeat, they decide to feign a feeling of contentment by deeply honing those values and passing their unfortunate failure to the next generation.

Another angle that Africans have misrepresented religion in is the fact that all they do is pray, but put in little to no real efforts to fix their problems. Whenever there’s a personal or nationwide problem, the whole country is called into prayer, but people do little to no effective action on the issue. They expect manner to fall from heaven without them planting the seeds of progress in the ground and watering it till its fruits sprout.

The religious problem comes to more light when extremely religious countries are compared with countries that are less religious or that are neither Christian nor Muslim nations. It is interesting to also know that out of the top 25 richest countries in the world, over half of them are neither Christian nor Muslim nations.

Does this mean that God isn’t answering Africa’s prayers? Absolutely not! It means one thing: And that is most Africans lack an understanding of how things work!!

But what about Tribalism and Nepotism? How do they collectively work with wrong Religious beliefs to affect Africa’s growth?

Growth occurs when there’s a collective impartial effort put in by everyone irrespective of their tribe, family ties, religion, or race.

On the African continent, the opposite appears to be the case as jobs, political appointments, contracts, and much more are awarded to people based on what tribe, family, or religion they belong to, instead of whether they’re more qualified for the job than the other guy whose dad is the second cousin to the CEO of the organisation.

This problem also plagues federal government political appointments with over 80% of the critical appointments going to people of a specific tribe, religion, or nepotic ties, with the justification that they’re hiring the best people for the job. If appointments are based on choosing the best people for the job, then it should be spread across the nation, not searched within one group.

When religious, tribalistic, and nepotic sentiments come into play, growth is halted because it is first sentimental, and as such, confined to a specific group. Secondly, it makes the other parts of the nation angry, and in the process drives them to sabotage whatever little to no efforts the people appointed from sentimental decision-making processes are trying to achieve.

What’s even worse is when a leader appoints people from a different tribe, religion, or nepotic ties outside what he or she belongs to, his or her clan begins to chastise the leader for not greatly favouring his or her own people instead. In the end, causing the act of ignoring sentimental values and also the act of enforcing sentimentalism to both be a sin to the people living in the country.

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3). Geographical Challenges:

Geographical challenges and restrictions are another key growth metric for nations around the world. Most land-locked countries, for instance, are some of the poorest in the world, with their African counterparts experiencing even worse situations with about 15 countries in Africa being land-locked nations.

The problem with being a land-locked country is that transportation of goods is extremely difficult, causing demands from international buyers to such countries to be really low and the cost of transportation to be extremely high.

Asides land-locked problems in terms of the geographic outlook, most parts of Africa suffer from negative climate changes which lead to poor crop growth and also have a large infestation of pests and diseases which renders farm animals useless and unable to work in the farm.

With these geographical problems hitting hard at several countries on the African continent, growth and development become increasingly difficult when combined with other negative factors.

 

4). The Natural Resources Trap:

An abundance of natural resources which has long been presumed to be the eventual ultimate saviour of the African continent in terms of revenue generation has ended up becoming one of its largest curses.

Most African countries have abundant natural resources, but the revenue generated from their export gets mismanaged for personal gains by most government officials.

Another problem is that the number of people required to work in the mines and prepare the goods for export are far lesser than the number of people that could be working in the factories manufacturing one thing or the other.

When entrepreneurs run mines and export the raw materials, they legally make so much money with so little labour face, recurring monthly for one to 5 years, depending on the client they’re supplying to. But if they could be made to process the raw materials mined into further forms before export, they could provide jobs for thousands of people, while raking in far higher returns than just exporting the original raw materials.

Understanding this and enforcing it is something African governments have failed to look into. Organisations who mine and export metallic ores, for instance, could be given special loans and incentives to drive them to build smelting facilities, to process the ores further into highly demanded alloys like FerroNiobium which have far higher values on the international market.

But instead of the governments to ensure things like this are in place, they go on to battle with their political opponents for the periods of their tenures, only to finish up worse than they initially met the country’s state of affairs.

Well managed capitalism will invariably develop African nations, and local organisations need to learn now that beyond just earning millions of dollars from the global trade business by exporting the continent’s natural resources to international buyers who go on to refine them and re-export to European buyers at far higher costs, the local organisations could build these facilities locally, refine the resources, ship the refined products (e.g alloys) to international buyers at lesser prices, make far higher profits than they initially would have made, and in the process, provide jobs for millions of people who would work actively in the production process.

Until the natural resource trap mentality has been removed from the African mind, poverty and an unequal distribution of wealth will continue to taunt the continent.

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5). Greedy And Self-Centered Leaders:

African nations are largely poor because the people who have the power to make the key decisions that can create wealth, choose instead to make the decisions that enrich themselves and create widespread poverty. Every political appointment gotten in Africa is always celebrated by the person’s family and friends because they all see it as an avenue for them all to become extremely wealthy.

This mentality isn’t just with the politicians but is with the grassroots because they all want an opportunity to get into a political office and finally get to enrich themselves or have a friend or member of their family get into the position for the same greedy ambition.

Since the grassroots’ minds are already corrupt, the head which is the leaders is rotten, and so, the continent remains doomed.

Ultimately, before you can change the African continent, you need to empower the people living on the continent, and the first step to do that is to promote total inclusiveness in the entire leadership selection process.

The people should be able to first determine who wins the primaries free and fair before having to choose who wins the final elections. But since party chieftains determine who wins the primaries, the continent will continue on a merry go round till the wheel is finally broken.

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About The Article

This is an opinion and analysis posted by Stan Edom, a Nigerian citizen and Editor In Chief of Startuptipsdaily.com.

The Opinion and Analysis section is committed to nation building efforts through empowering expert writers to air their views on the best ways to solve national issues and move nations forward.

Opinions and Analysis will be published every Friday.

If you’ll like to submit opinions and analysis like this to startuptipsdaily.com, please read the guidelines listed here.

 

What are your thoughts on this article on why African nations are poor? Let me know by leaving a comment below.

 

Stan Edom
Stan Edom
I'm an entrepreneur with expertise in supply chain management, international trade, small business development, e-commerce, internet startups, renewable energy, and agriculture. I'm also a network engineer, I.T security expert, and computer programmer. In my spare time when I'm not working out at the gym, I try to solve problems people face in their everyday lives with whatever means necessary.

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25 Comments

  1. Hi Mr stan,
    On point Boss! Truly nepotism and the other things are really killing Africa. Hope leaders have seen this post.
    Thank you very much Sir

    • Thank you for reading and leaving a comment, Clayford.

      Do share the article with your friends till the people that have the final say in our nations get to read it.

      Have a great time.

  2. Well said…point 2 and 5 in my opinion is a big deal in this part of the world. Our leaders are so greedy they don’t mind selling this country to another country. They are legally one of the highest paid civil servants in the world, yet they still enrich themselves with public funds. Majority of our past leaders have failed us and the current ones are not left out.

    • Thank you for reading and leaving a comment, Dr Sketch.

      Do share the article with your friends till the people that have the final say in our nations get to read it.

      Have a great time.

    • Thank you for reading and leaving a comment, Yohanna.

      Do share the article with your friends till the people that have the final say in our nations get to read it.

      Have a great time.

    • Thank you for reading and leaving a comment, Tony.

      Do share the article with your friends till the people that have the final say in our nations get to read it.

      Have a great time.

  3. The goal for african leaders isnt to serve the people but to serve their pockets. the poor tax collection scheme in Africa, taking Nigeria for example can obviously be attributed to the too much reliance in the oil sector that has handicapped the mental performance of our leaders, sometimes i try to see and believe that theres hope for the future but that vision is just too blurry… Talk about Religion, this is one of the biggest reason for underdevelopment and lack of prosperity in this part of the world, people have turned God to a magician, even the bible makes it clear that you reap what you sow…. prayer is what u do after sowing a seed, i mean after taking strategic actions, an absence of those actions means you’ll reap prayer. And what about tribalism which is the biggest source of poverty and underdevelopment in Africa, Africa thrives on tribalism, its more about your tribe than your qualification. Jobs, contracts and appointments of any sort whether political or whatever are issued based on tribal favouritism, tribalism has brought Africa almost to her knees. The most painful of all the sub-topics itemized in this article is the natural resources, take Nigeria for an example; blessed with lots of natural resources but the too much dependence on Oil is killing the nation gradually but our leaders have chosen to take the blind side. The so much wealth that could be generated from processing of mined raw materials here in Nigeria into finished products before export is unimaginable. In all i think greed is fastly bringing Africa to ruin, so much that the future is almost uncertain but thank God for educative articles like this, i wish young people can continually engage with platforms like this that do not just inform you but also reveal problems and teach you how to tackle them. Good Job Edom Stanley, i see we have a lot in common as it touches nation building and national development, I’ll watch out for more of this.

    • Thank you so much for this powerful contribution, Elisha.

      I truly do appreciate it and hope that many people get to read your comment.

      Do share the article with your friends till the people that have the final say in our nations get to read the article and your comment.

      Have a wonderful time and thank you for being a blog reader.

  4. Thanks so much for this piece ,i think we all need to sit back ,reason together where we missed it and then retrace back to the right path.i at sometimes feel feel disturb being an African.

    • Thank you for the comment, Emmanuel.

      Reflection won’t cut it for Africa. We need to act right, then reflect upon every right step taken.

      Hopefully, we would someday have good leaders to direct the path of the nations in the right way.

      Thank you for the comment and do share the article with your friends.

    • Thank you for reading and leaving a comment, Teslim.

      Do share the article with your friends and colleagues.

      Have a wonderful New Year’s Eve.

  5. Hmmm,is my prayer that this TROUGHS gets to our leaders.And I also pray that our current leaders and the up coming ones change for the betterment of our continent.Bad ATTITUDINAL problem is our challenge as a continent.Bro,God bless you and your generations to come.

    • Thank you for the kind words, Adamu.

      I truly appreciate them.

      I wish you entirely the same.

      Do have a great time.

  6. It is for certain that a people deserve the leaders they get. This is because the leaders came from among the people. The leaders know exactly whom their persons are – docile, active, passive, just name it. Leaders react based on how their people act towards them. having said this, let me particularly state that the general citizenry in Africa are passive towards governance. They do not participate in how their respective countries are run beyond beer parlour criticism and rumours.

    Using Nigeria’s case presently for example, not many citizens are aware that the Inspector General of Police has an office charged with the task of receiving public complaints against corrupt officer through a dedicated and active phone lines and the social media like wise the Commissioner of Police of every State. More than 95% are not aware that the ICPC has toll free (i.e. you call and they pay) telephone line where corrupt practices among Government MDAs can be reported for immediate investigation; a lot are ignorant of the fact that they can walk into any public office and demand information and get same failure of which the public officers concerned stand the risk of being fined N500,000.00 among others.

    I said all these to say that Africa, Nigeria in particular in spite of sitting on top of huge wealth will remain poor and at the mercy of a few individuals who keep recycling themselves in leadership until its citizens rise up to hold public officers accountable using the now available official instruments such as mentioned above. We do not need violent revolutions, what we need are revolutions backed by knowledge of our rights, privileges and duties as citizens.

    We are afraid of patiently taking the right courses of action and thereby getting justice. Our people seem to enjoy remaining victims of circumstances rather than challenge the norms using civilized approach available only to afterward engage in blame games – witchcraft, government, relatives who refused to help, competitive neighbours etc. Our people have phobia for information hence reading articles is an uphill task and thus remain ignorant of the slightest strength inherent in/available to them.

    One specific example is a situation where the CBN made available funds for Anchor Borrowers’ Programme for Rice Cultivation and youths were asked to apply. The said funds were not released at the agreed time frame (five working days upon approval) frame for the crops released until seven months later by which time the crop had been degraded leading to poor yield. The last tranche was not even released when the beneficiaries were asked to make refunds of the loans.

    Realizing the loopholes in the processes, one of such Groups took the Bank up and demanded for justice as a way of making departure from the old norm. Most of our public officers capitalize on the ignorance of our folks to keep resources meant for the people for their personal comfort to the detriment of the people.

    Time to say no to poverty!

    • Thank you for the highly detailed contribution, Timothy.

      Ultimately, a lot has to be done to change the continent, especially Nigeria. But it will only be done if the people in power choose to place the greater good above their own selfish interests.

      Do have a great time.

      • No they will not unless they’re forced by mass action. That’s because they’ve enjoyed the status quo to the extent that it has become an incurable virus. Happily, there are ways out provided for by the laws.

  7. The points raised in this article says it all. The upcoming generation need to be aware that hardwork pays and that there is no manna anywhere, the only antidote to poverty is hardwork. Our leaders in Africa are selfish, wicked, incompetent, uncivilized,crude etc while the youths are instruments of manipulation to do evil in their hands. This is good one from Stan.

  8. I wonder most of those leaders die without eating 25% of what they had stolen from very poorer community.They leave their money to the developed country’s Banks when our Banks are acquiring payable loans from our own money.My friends, all of them are Christians or Muslims.When will they learn the lesson?

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