Talk:Poverty in Africa

Untitled
This article gives the impression that someone wrote it without checking any facts at all. This is an exceptionally complex subject, and what I read here does not address the complexity at all. To put, effectively "it's all about population" in the intro is verging on theinsulting.

These topics should at least be mentioned: War; First world pressure to grow cash crops; debt, and debt relief; first world trading practices; climate change; colonial legacy; AIDS.

Some questions that we need to ask:
 * If overpopulation is the problem, why isn't AIDS making things better (don't really answer that, it's rhetorical)
 * In how much of Africa is land owned primarily by a small number of wealthy;
 * If land is owned by the wealthy does this really cause poverty? (Hello! South Africa! Zimbabwe before and after land reform!)

Lets get some facts and figures in this article. Even the good bits are generalisations. DJ Clayworth 03:15, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sorry guys. I've calmed down a bit now. I'm not going to remove what I wrote, but I do understand that we can't write a detailed survey of a very complex subject all at once. DJ Clayworth 03:19, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I've been working on and off on this for about a week, and your right that all of those topics require further exposition. I did mention some in the main article on Africa. The bit on overpopulation at the top was put in before I got to this. I'm not a big fan of the theory that overpopulation brings poverty.

AIDS is a double edged sword, and it's effect on poverty may be negligible. It really hasn't affected Africa's population - it's still growing faster than any other region despite the high infection rate. That's primarily because the bulk of Africa's population is very young and not in its peak AIDS exposure years. That reminds me - we should add something about life expectancy - ironically low life expectancy usually leads to overpopulation. --SteveHFish 18:05, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure that's true - I think what leads to overpoulation is increasing life expectancy. i.e. if this generation of parents have ten children (say) because they expect eight to die, and only six actually die. DJ Clayworth 16:07, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

An unidentified user erased the whole thing, so I cut & paste from the previous revision. I hope everyone agrees that was the right thing to do! I wish I had had more time to work on this recently - it definitely needs more help and I would welcome any changes. --SteveHFish 03:20, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I understand your point about the population, but AIDS is having a big effect on poverty. The main casualties are the working and parenting age groups, which means a huge increase in orphans (orphans are almost invariably poor, even by African standards). DJ Clayworth 16:07, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't feel I have the expertise to make relevant modifications of this article. I however recently read a highly interesting paper on the subject which editors of this page may find useful; unfortunately I could not find a free-access link to it:

Why Has Africa Grown Slowly? Paul Collier, Jan Willem Gunning The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Summer, 1999), pp. 3-22

Although this article takes up most of the points mentioned in the paper, Collier and Gunning give a highly structured recent-history perspective of Africa's economic problems from which this article would benefit greatly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Samspy (talk • contribs) 21:57, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Economy of Africa
It seems to me that at minimum, this article needs close coordination with Economy of Africa (and maybe Economic history of Africa). Maybe it would even be better to redirect the page to Economy of Africa for the time being, and focus on developing that article (the page could be reinstated later if the content is there to justify it). Rd232 11:55, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This article was started as a request found at the systemic bias board. The justification was that there is an article for Poverty in the United States, but none for Poverty in Africa. As such, I don't think it would be appropriate to merge it with Economy of Africa, where the subject can't be dealt with as fully. There should be a reference there however. As I've said before, this is a subject that needs a lot of work and, although I've been trying, I haven't had much chance to work on it. However, as a broad outline, we should approach the work as follows: - Scope (how bad is the problem) - Causes (why is poverty so bad in Africa now, and why is it so widespread over the continent) - Solutions (proposed ways to reduce the incidence of poverty) --SteveHFish 1 July 2005 16:49 (UTC)

Overpopulation
I replaced the following: "For example, Lagos, Nigeria was a town of 40,000 in the early 1960s. Now, it is home to over 13 million people." Lagos is the name of both a city and a state in Nigeria. The population estimates of 13 million are for the whole state. I replaced the text with a cited statement about urban vs. national population growth in Nigeria. --Pastafarian Nights 02:25, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Apparently, I was wrong.. the estimates of 13 million are indeed for the city. Crud. The original statement reads much better, but is unsourced. I'm going to leave it as is for the time being, until I find a single source that cites the whole range of current estimates for the city's population (10-15 million).--Pastafarian Nights 03:02, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Deleted "This was a factor in the Ethiopian famines during the 1980s." (referring to urban overpopulation). While looking for sources to support the statement, I found one that contradicts it.

Cleanup tag
Comparing the artcle with what it was when it was tagged shows tht it HAS cleanued up, and as it's undergoing the work of active editors, i'll remove the tag. Great work everyone! -- &infin;Wirelain 16:15, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

A lot of POV and plain inaccurate information
For example: In addition to cash crops, American settlers also introduced new staple food crops such as maize. lol.. what "American settlers" introduced maize to Africa and when?

and

"Widespread adoption of fenced land monoculture depleted the soil." But then 2 lines down it says most Africans are subsistence farmers. SO where is all these "Widespread adoption of fenced land monoculture"?

And so it goes throughout the article. Widespread assertions, disembodied facts, little credible backup. KimboPrice (talk) 15:29, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

--- Uh, where is the reference to this? This is a little bit ridiculous: "In addition, most African nations have borrowed substantial sums of money"......"or was directly misappropriated by corrupt governments like making nuclear weapons, porn movies, condoms made from paper mache and pirated CDs."

Condoms from paper? Porn movies? My feeling is that item needs to be deleted unless specifically verifiable. But since I don't really participate in writing/editing.. I don't know how to go about it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.100.144.70 (talk) 19:27, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

---

This article needs a lot more neutral input, it doesnt take in to account the structural causes (global economy) of poverty including SAP programs by the world back, other multilater organisations, trade treaties like AGOA and Anything but Guns (England), and foreign aid that contributes to this. This is a very traditional explanation of the problem but it needs to include the entire picture, it is other wise biased and puts blame on only on the continent as if it exists in a vacuum and as if there are no external forces.--MsTingaK (talk) 02:42, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

IQ and poverty
Refering to this diff: Where the mention of the correlation of IQ and African states is taken out completely on the basis of it being "controversial". Is it truly controversial? If you look at the reception and the numerous commentaries thereafter (see IQ and Global Inequality) it seems that no writer has contested the general trend, while many have questioned small specifics of the study. The idea that race and IQ correlate, AFAIK, is completely uncontroversial. In 1994, many (52) experts in the area published a public statement in the New York Times on the issue (seeMainstream Science on Intelligence). This can hardly be seen as controversial, or some how radical. In it they say first that IQ is mostly heritable: "Heritability estimates range from 0.4 to 0.8 ... indicating genetics plays a bigger role than environment in creating IQ differences". And thereafter that: "The bell curve for whites is centered roughly around IQ 100; the bell curve for American blacks roughly around 85; and those for different subgroups of Hispanics roughly midway between those for whites and blacks." So saying that African nations may suffer of poverty because of low IQ is not controversial. It's partially because of brain drain, partly because of poor educational structures, and partially because of race. I don't know if this editing out is justified, perhaps the paragraphs needs to be amended some how though. 88.114.154.216 (talk) 07:38, 11 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia has an entire article about this subject, Race and intelligence. The methodology of both IQ and the Wealth of Nations and IQ and Global Inequality has been heavily criticised, and neither of these books should be used on their own to support a broad statement like the one you added to the article. Graham 87 15:02, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

REFERENCES 10+11
theses are not able to be retrieved anymore — Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.215.130.65 (talk) 04:29, 11 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for pointing this out. I've fixed them using the Wayback Machine. Graham 87 09:03, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV
I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:
 * This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:
 * There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
 * It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
 * In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 01:18, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Climate change? LOL
Rainfall has increased over the past decades, if anything that helps Africa and does not hurt the continent. Unless Africans are breeding that much with a fertility rate of 4.8 children per women you can completly forget any chances of economic improvements.

62.226.87.190 (talk) 05:00, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Lack of citations and contradictions with other articles
I understand this page is a work in progress (it still contains many paragraphs of what read like opinions or at best original research, with no figures or citations), but there's one particular section that stuck out to me, it's the paragraph beginning:

"Another example of misspent money is the Aswan High Dam."

Not only does this seem to be an opinion with no evidence, but I followed the link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aswan_Dam and that article paints a very different picture of the effects of the damn. It indicates large scale economic benefits and doesn't even mention the salinity of the Mediterranean. I think one or both of these articles should be updated to bring them inline with the each other, by making them both reflect the facts. Offtopic: how does the damn decrease the flow of fresh water to the sea? I'd have thought it just spreads it out rather than lowering the total flow? Is it that more is now diverted to irrigation and is therefore lost to evaporation and capture by crops? If that's the case, it would be more accurate to say that increased use of nile water for irrigation has decreased flow to the sea, rather than the damn itself. Mazz0 (talk) 11:38, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Can you clarify?
''South Africa under apartheid is an excellent example of how an adverse situation can further degrade. The largely black population earlier wished to learn English (black South Africans saw it as a way to unite themselves as they speak several different native languages).''
 * Can't make head or tail of this. Valetude (talk) 15:51, 21 August 2020 (UTC)