Africa Rising… a new Africa… the opportunities of Africa. These are the phrases thrown around by Western media to describe the situation on the ground in sub-Saharan Africa. Africa is being pushed as a land of opportunity and growth. The continent is no longer the basket-case of the world. If this is the case, why are so many of the refugees in Europe from sub-Saharan nations? Once more, reality, does not conform to the narrative.
In mid-2015, the United Nations Refugee Agency was reporting that of the migrants arriving by sea, 12% were from Eritrea, 5% from Somalia and 5% from Nigeria. UN statistics from 2014 shows that out of the top ten source nations, six are African nations. Anecdotal stories and news clip evidence shows a far darker complexion for immigrants than the average Syrian. The migrant crisis is not a war-weary population seeking safety, but economic opportunists. It is Camp of the Saints come to life.
The worry should be that Africa’s governments have surfed a commodity supercycle with little development of technical, manufacturing, and research industries. The cracks are starting to show, and in far more dangerous locations than Middle Eastern nations with limited populations. Nigeria is a powder keg, which for years has seen horrendous fighting and friction between its Muslim North and Christian South.
Nigeria is an oil rich nation, though, and a booming, possibly rising power for the 21st century. This is the pitch, anyway. On the ground is another story of a nation that already went through a civil war and openly discusses if another is coming. Boko Haram is a symptom of their problems. Boko Haram could not be effectively fought until Nigeria quietly hired old, white South African mercenaries. Despite all protestations and eloquent editorials from their suited up natives in Western outlets, Nigeria faces major problems that will only get worse.
Famous investor Jim Chanos called Nigeria a borderline failed state at the Sohn Conference. Chanos put his dollars to work and is short Nigerian firms. Chanos was explicit in his talk that Africa’s growth was due to the commodity bull and Chinese investment. There is nothing domestic or organic to their economic growth. Nigeria’s problem is one shared across Africa, as they have enjoyed the commodity boom and being a continent-sized natural resource hub for China’s growth. The bull is over, China’s growth is down, and even if slightly down, the Chinese only need to build the world’s biggest copper mine once. None of these nations are prepared for the bust, but Nigeria may be the worst.
Even the mighty New York Times has caught on that all is not well, but they will dance around causes.
For months, many Nigerians have endured painfully long lines for gasoline and power failures that last for days — with no fuel for backup generators. Scant power means water cuts for homes that rely on electricity to pump it. Everyday items are missing from stores, and those that remain cost more than usual.
In this country of rampant inequality, the poor have long been desperate, and the rich are still able to buy their way out of problems. But the situation in Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, is having an outsize impact on the expanding middle class, which has become accustomed to air-conditioning, owning a car and going out for Domino’s pizza. Now, even a bottle of Perrier is too expensive for many.
President Muhammadu Buhari is urging patience, noting that when he took office last year he inherited a corruption-plagued mess.
Delicately handled is how Nigeria might produce plenty of oil but not develop the human capital (or does not simply have the human capital) to have a functioning domestic refinery sector. Without such high skilled manufacturing and technical sectors, Nigeria is simply another Third World country subject to the booms and busts of commodity cycles.
This is not too different from Venezuela. The factors that make Nigeria worse are the Christian-Muslim split and history of civil war and conflict, pure population numbers, and government corruption and incompetence. Venezuela did have a corrupt regime, but what compares to post-colonialism sub-Sahara Africa? Nigeria cannot even protect its cash cow oil sector. Pirates cost them $15 billion per month. Bandits that post to Twitter attack oil facilities. Lost oil revenues crush currency reserves, which Chanos says are rapidly dwindling.
Once reserves are gone, how will the Nigerian Central Bank keep the charade going? While not hyperinflation, inflation well over 10% and lost fuel or food subsidies will cause unrest. How does that unrest express itself? Unlike Venezuela, Nigeria has 173 million citizens. If Caracas, Venezuela is the scene of daily struggle, violence and murder, what would develop with the 21 million in the Lagos metropolitan area? How fast does the migrant crisis change from a narrative of war refugees from Western intervention and jihadis to the reality of an outlet valve for African incompetence and poor governance? How does the West react?
There is a solution. The biggest puzzle of the 21st century may not be managing America’s decline, slowing Africa’s fertility rates, or China’s rise, but simply the decision to let countries stand or fall on their own. If they seek help, then the return of colonial governance that worked should be a debated solution.
Jamaica has seen a rise in the murder rate from 3.9 per 100,000 to 58. A majority of Jamaicans support a return to colony status. Many have learned that they are miserable because they are politically free. If murder, chaos and rape are enough to seek refuge in Western nations, the proper solution is to fix the problems at the source. Order, uncomfortable means and strict measures will be the only way to solve the problem of Third World incompetence and save global civilization in the process.
“Many have learned that they are miserable because they are politically free” socialmatter is schizophrenic. Occasionally hosting reactionary ideas, but then falling back on a liberal core. Lockean consent of the governed is liberal.
Are you objecting to that statement?
The consent of the governed is neither here nor there. It’s the deontology that’s liberal.
If consent of the govered matters, then we hit the issue of manufacturing opinion. They can unlearn, and they damn well will with anouther pressure.
This whole issue of consent is central to liberal thought, and has been from the start.
It doesn’t matter, but claiming that noticing it is tantamount to liberalism is arguably even stupider than thinking it does matter. Are you even aware how much time you spend browbeating people who agree with you completely?
You say they agree. I disagree. With this article, there is an air of Locke about it. There is always a reference to “Nigeria” as an entity, and a assumption that people have a right, and the capability to change their government if it does not meet their needs. You even have a reference to the legitimacy of the majority with the quote I highlighted. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/
If all you object to is the rhetoric and phrasing, then just leave it at that. Stop imputing braindead liberalism to us based on our insufficiently denunciatory language.
Nigeria as an entity exists insofar as there are 179 million people who live in the area known as Nigeria and not anywhere else. I categorically reject your claim that there is an assumption that the Nigerian people have a right to change their government. That is not stated or implied anywhere in the piece, or any other piece we put out, and is absurd considering the implied recommendation by the author is a reintroduction of colonialism.
Whether the “Nigerian people” agree with such a reintroduction or not is besides the point, but for our less reactionary readers we will make a point of pointing out that, contrary to official belief, not 100.00% of people are on board with native democracy 100.00% of the time, despite all the forces working to the contrary.
This whole issue of consent is central to liberal thought, and has been from the start.
I don’t disagree. But the reason “consent is central to liberal thought” is because of the notion that it is more moral for gov’t to be based on consent than not. Not only is this not true, it is not even wrong.
I figured the statement meant that some people just aren’t smart enough to handle freedom.
?If murder, chaos and rape are enough to seek refuge in Western nations, the proper solution is to fix the problems at the source.”
Or build a big wall. I like that solution.
My own foreign policy would follow what I call the COFO Strategy: “Colony Or Fuck Off”. If a foreign country wants us to fix their problems, then fine, but we need full authority and power to do it, which means that we take charge completely – the requesting nation reverts to colony status, and its residents get zero say in how we run things. Otherwise, best of luck to you, but don’t ask us for help. You want to be independent? Then figure out your own problems. That’s what “independence” means.
If there’s anything immoral or unreasonable about that plan, I fail to see it.
Perhaps a private consortium could be invited by the locals to take charge on a formalist-type basis, sort of a management firm writ large that would take a cut of growth in GDP realized under its watch plus costs as its fee (or something).
One wonders whether or not anybody could succeed in this endeavour, though. I’m ordinarily skeptical of HBD in the extreme- but in the case of Africa, there’s an intuitively very strong case to be made that there’s just not enough suitable raw material to work with there from an organic point of view. Additionally, their societies are just FUBAR, a trainwreck of anomie and social pathology- and that scourge of civilization, the Mohammedan faith, could be counted on to undermine rehabilitative efforts every step of the way. And even where society is relatively wholesome and non-dilapidated, and the effects of pathogenic religion mitigated, good luck with e.g. trying to inculcate a regular work ethic in people who have never had a 9-to-5 and indeed don’t even understand the concept, whose technical illiteracy is absolute, etc. Finally, if Africans in the mass were truly corrigible, the Whites of south Africa, Rhodesia, and so on would have corrected them already and moreover done so a long time ago.
@DissentingSociologist
I think you will find this article interesting on the nature of African thinking, if you haven’t read it already:
https://whitelocust.wordpress.com/morality-and-abstract-thinking-how-africans-may-differ-from-westerners/
“Colony Or Fuck Off”
This is the deal, more or less, the EU is offering up some of its members. The elites within each nation have accepted the deal while the voting public is conflicted about it. They want the subsides and freebies but don’t want to give up “sovereignty”. Greek citizens, for example, want to stay within the EU but want their free stuff, as well. It’s the worst of both worlds really; democracy combined with a centralized, unaccountable bureaucracy – no really sovereignty at any level.
In my plan, “colony” is intentionally designed to be unappealing, because what I really want them to do is fuck off. As for the EU, it’s a terrible idea, and I want it to make the conditions of membership in it as unappealing as possible, because I want member states to leave it and non-member states to never join.
I like it. What’s your plan for putting it into action?
You westerners are the same entities that are too afraid to have a strong-willed nationalist in control of African nations with the fear that such a person may jeopardise your economic interests may be through taking them over. You organise to dethrone the person and use your power to enourage the enthronement of an incompetent stooge who will be at the beck and call of your interests. Yes or no? Leave a reply
You seem to have found the wrong westerners.
Personally I hope deeply that Nigerians will cast off the despicable yoke of Islam, rediscover the lost spirit of their people and rise in the worship of the ancient Yoruba gods. I may be a Westerner but I know something of what your people were, and what they can be if they were to reconnect with their ancestral culture.
The unspoken common knowledge of governance is that, if you have wildly disparate peoples and/or geography, you have to pay off the less functional for the sake of social order. See China’s unprofitable (but completely necessary) investments inland from its eastern shelf, or America’s crypto-imperial “money fo dem programs”. Whether due to clannish insularity or general incompetence, Nigeria has completely ignored its geoeconomic and demographic divisions; save where force was necessary.
It was obvious to me at the height of its petro-boom that – even ignoring the general historical trend of African countries, and not knowing how heavily Nigerian debt was tied to an inflated oil price – Nigeria was a basket-case waiting to happen. All of the rich are concentrated in a tiny coastal region, and are overwhelmingly of whatever stock lives there. The vast majority of the country have not benefited from economic growth.
With the slow-motion collapse of Nigeria and South Africa, and the clusterfuck that is the Arab world, the take-away for Europeans is that there is – and, for the foreseeable future, will be – no axis of stability at all on the entire African continent. The fastest-growing, stupidest, most unintegrable population in the world just so happens to be our neighbour; and now that North Africa has gone to hell, we’re the only stable region left to them that can be reached without a plane ticket.
The invasion has only just begun. Literally, anything short of war crimes is going to mean the permanent end of Western European civilisation. Islamic Brazil is too kind: try Islamic Venezuela.
I was wondering if this writer ever visited Nigeria to make a personal and unbiased assessment of his claims. Saying that the growth the Nigerian economy experienced in the past few years is from the Chinese influence only is simply ridiculous. This is another classic example of biased, poorly researched and profoundly deficient write up.
This is a good point because for the past few years the economy has been unraveling. As oil has tanked Nigeria has also LOST its share of the US oil import market and had major corruption issues. Non-stop sectarian violence is I help. Let us know what % of Nigerians have access to clean water and decent living. The photos from Lagos’ massive shantytown areas tell the truth.
To the one who wrote this article, an average Nigerian will say: Your Papa brocos
I may be oyinbo but I ain’t no mugu
@Timi, I dey your back… You have my full support, I doubt this writer could identity the location of Nigeria even if he used Google map.
Americans have a reputation for being bad at geography. And it is rather unfair. Because of the Americans who can’t find Nigeria on a map, almost all of them are black or brown.
This article must be a joke. This article shows why the u.s. is on the decline and will remain so. The solution to the u.s. problem is to enslave nations who have not even asked for your help?Quite honestly, Africa is not checking for the u.s., they are not even a factor and that is what the problem is. In fact you need Africans, the stone that the builder rejected is now the head stone. You need us cause we are the doctors, lawyers, engineers, nurses, accountants, do you need the list to go on? While the u.s. was sleeping, others have been grinding and will continue to do so. So, the u.s. needs to wake up and start grinding too for its own sake. Cause no one is waiting and no one cares.
You need us cause we are the doctors, lawyers, engineers, nurses, accountants, do you need the list to go on?
Don’t be ridiculous. That’s what we have Pakis for.
In all seriousness, it sounds like you have an impressive amount of agency. I think we can all agree that you should put it to good use in Nigeria, rather than grifting off this dying empire.
Ahead of you on that one.
The severity of your confusion is so grave that I doubt there’s a cure. The rise of Africans in each of the careers you just listed has been and will continue to be steady. More so, the decline of Caucasians is of a meteor headed for earth. The author of the article made some good points. But to say we need you…no guy it’s the other way around. It is USA that needs the rest of the world. Africans simply just need to stop fighting one another under the influence and lies whispered into our ears by the west. If that ever happens, you’ll see how quickly a table can really turn.
LOL. Good luck with that. Truly we wish you well. And while you’re at it, can you make it all happen without the aid of Western universities too?
“the decline of Caucasians is of a meteor headed for earth.”
Oh noo you mean you are the world judge? Haha. That’s if Nigerians gives you that UN suited chance to think you re any thing?
There are actually more Nigerians of those calibers than any American gives them credit. And by the way. When was the last time any one saw Ad that reads Zionists imf world bankers wanted in Africa? Never or who vaccines. And ebola wanted? That’s all America is known in Africa. It only export diseases. Boko haram and fiat currency high interest Zionists imf loans.
Africa like Asia would be such a great place without these pests
What a disagreeable surprise! This site was co opted by a battalion of SJW Africans studying in the West.
“The solution to the u.s. problem is to enslave nations who have not even asked for your help?”
Really? And this is the “smart” set!
I’m sorry is colonialism just another word for alavery? The fact that in this day and age, this is someone’s thought, shows how backwards in thinking this author is. Yes, there is corruption in Africa but point me a place on the map where there is no curruption. Instead of getting mad that there are other players in the game. Step up your game and rise to the occasion.
Better to point to places on the map with adequate water, sewer, and electric power systems, really.
Who’s mad?
America is a brain drain on Nigeria. All the Nigerians I know personally have PhDs from Western Univs. They’re salt-of-the earth kinds of folks. Unfortunately, they are not doing Nigeria a damn bit of good, unless making Nigeria dependent on transfer payments counts as a good.
Let me state, for the benefit of the willfully obtuse, that nothing would please the editorial staff of Social Matter more than to hear that Nigerians are solving Nigeria’s problems without recourse to Western interference or aid.
I welcome our Nigerian commenters and I hope they stay to learn and debate with us after they stop shaking!
“I’m sorry is colonialism just another word for alavery?”
Hard to take seriously a person, presumably above high school education, writing like this. That’s not counting the lack of arguments and the name calling.
Love your site. FYI, that’s a stock photo of the Bundaran Hotel Indonesia Monumen in Jakarta.
PS: Wish I had found this article months earlier. I got excoriated and kicked off a forum for pointing out that Africa was a basket case and suggested a few obvious unmentionable reasons for this. I was howled down with refutations that things were on the up there. Because The Economist. Or something like that.