User:Vivaporius/Sandbox/Africa/I

This is a list of all the known issues hampering the growth and development of sub-Saharan Africa as a continent. Whereas regions of the globe that were once on the same level to a degree, such as the Indian Subcontinent, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia managed to develop into some of the most prosperous nations in the world, sub-Saharan Africa with all its potential and vast resources failed to catch up with the rest of humanity. Socially, economically, politically, and culturally, Africa has historically been stuck at the bottom of the barrel of human civilization.

Routinely subjugated and enslaved by foreigners, black Africans as a whole have been written off as "background characters" when placed side-by-side with Europeans, Indians, Middle Easterners, or Asians, and the concept of Africa thriving as a continent has been (until very recently; 2010s) considered improbably at best or impossible at worse. This article seeks to outline the causes for the failure that is sub-Saharan Africa, and provide some insight as to the potential it has if certain factors were highlighted and implemented. It will also lay out the real plausibility of developments for those less inclined to accept the concept of a well-off Africa.

Demographics
The current consensus on the topic is that prior to widespread contact with Europe in the late-1400s, the population of Africa stood at 47 million. Of these, about 35-40 million resided south of the Sahara, two-thirds of which were located in the imperial states of West Africa. The slave trade in Africa removed some 22 million Africans from the continent between 1100 to 1850; beginning with the Arab enslavement of Africans in East Africa, and ending with the British combating the slave trade across the continent. The Atlantic slave trade resettled nearly twelve million Africans to the Americas between 1450 and 1850, while the Islamic slave trade resettled some ten million Africans across the Middle East. This equates to some 27,500 African slaves on average taken from the continent each year since 1100, or about 2.75 million African slaves every hundred years. The table below compares the population of Sub-Saharan Africa with the slave trade, another with the approximate number of slaves removed added to the population, and then a third with natural growth rates at the time for those centuries assuming the returned slave population produced offspring. Note: The latter assumes that Africa incorporates newer agricultural developments overtime during regular trade with Europe and the Middle East. This would ultimately led to the increased population growth by the 19th century, though at a substantially lower rate than in East Asia, North America, and Europe. No major developments such as modernizing/industrializing African states or expansion of infrastructure by European colonial powers, which would play a role in boosting the population beyond the above statistics, have been utilized.

Agriculture
The agricultural lands of Africa account for a fourth of the arable land in the world, however, it is not worked to its full potential. The various green revolutions of the world never took root in Africa, resulting in the drastically stunted crop yields on the continent. Only five percent of the agricultural land in Africa is irrigated, and modern farming techniques and widespread farming methods such as in the American Great Plains, Ukraine, and the western Russian Plains. There are only wo and half million tractors in use in sub-Saharan Africa, and only three million tons of fertilizer are purchased by African farmers (compared to 24 million tons in Southern Asia and 42 million in Eastern Asia). Fertilizer itself likewise costs nearly 82% more in Africa than it does in other nations, such as Thailand; a ton of fertilizer going for $282 in Thailand would cost nearly $514 in sub-Saharan Africa. The production costs for fertilizer for both regions are relatively similar, but the extra cost for Africans comes from the added transport costs, taxes and levies, financing, and the total margins and overheads. Poor roads, weak and corrupt governments, and failing infrastructure are the main causes for the added financial burden. If developed effectively, 80% of the world's food requirements could be meet by the agricultural output of Africa alone.

Natural resources
Sub-Saharan Africa is the most mineral rich region on the planet, boasting some 132 billion bbls of proven oil reserves and 441 trillion cubic ft. of natural gas as of 2010. The region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo hosts nearly $24 trillion of untapped mineral resources, while the majority of the world's gold and diamonds are extracted from southern and western Africa. The fossil fuel reserves on the continent continue to be discovered, as new reserves are found in East Africa and South Africa, where the potential for development is possible. However, foreign multinational companies such as those from China (with the biggest stake on the continent), typically mine the resources using their own citizens rather than local Africans, and the wealth produced by the mines are transferred to the mining nation rather than the nation hosting the mines and the resources. As mentioned with the Chinese, though they have financed the construction of dozens of mines throughout the continent, the miners are almost entirely made up of ethnic Chinese citizens, with more than a million living on the continent carrying out mineral extraction work.

The continent is unique in that, unlike rest of the planet, if the resources were managed effectively, Africa could provide for all of its mineral needs independently of the global market. It possesses a supply of rare earth minerals needed to sustain modern technologies such as smartphones, and has enough capacity to run power plants with the vast supply of coal and natural gas on the continent. The historically failings of autarkies have been that no one nation had all of the resources in enough quantity to maintain a functional economy necessary to close off trade with other nations. Sub-Saharan Africa is different in that it possesses these resources in enough supply to sustain hundreds of millions of people almost indefinitely if the circumstances allowed for it. As it stands, Africa has the most natural resources of any of the continents on the planet, surpassing both China and Russia in terms of its mineral reserves. However, it lacks the infrastructure necessary to exploit the resources in its immediate possession.

Education
Most countries in sub-Saharan Africa boast atrocious education systems, bootstrapped by antiquated traditions and religious extremists (such as Boko Haram, whose name literally translates "Western education is immoral"). This weakens the ability for the newer generations of black Africans to help develop their societies effectively as was the case in India, Southeast Asia, and Japan. Ironically, black African ethnic groups located outside of the continent, such as Nigerian Americans, attain high levels of educational attainment. Nigerian Americans hold most bachelor, master, and doctorate degrees than any other ethnic group in the United States, and are the best performing minority in the country (40% hold bachelor's degrees, 17% hold master's degrees, and 4% hold doctorates). They likewise have the highest degree of educational attainment in the country, above even Asian Americans who dominate the nation's centers of higher learning. Most black elites in the universities of the United States hail from the Nigerian population. If the same level of educational attainment was true in the continent they hailed from, then Africa would boast the most developed societies on the planet.