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Africa is a vast continent in our world, and it is also a continent which our ancestors came from. There is a long history along with Africa, and people here made a lot of miracles like pyramids. Back to today, however, Africa has some complex social issues, and the major one is poverty. I can conclude there are basic three reasons which caused the poverty in Africa.
As we all know, Africa is now the poorest continent in the world. It has 1.1 billion populations, and according to figures released by the World Bank in 2015, 43% of the African population lives below the minimum poverty line of $1.25 a day.
The first reason is a historical reason. The triangular trade, also known as the ‘slave trade’, is a trade form between Africa, Europe and America during 16th century to 19th century. The triangular trade caused profound influences in African, society in many ways, and some of the influences remains today. After European discovered the American continent, they made colonies in the new world to grow crops, tobacco or mine the gold. However, a lot of native Americans were killed directly or indirectly by Europeans, so they had a high demand of labor forces to maintain their plantation estate. The first countries to start the triangular trade were Portugal and Spain, followed by Britain and France. They started from Europe and sailed to the West African coast carrying alcohol, firearms and metal wares. Then, they made trade with the leader of African tribe to get labor force. In America, they sold black people to the owner of planation estate, and carried gold, sugar, and tobacco back to European. The triangular trade is very profitable for the Europeans, it brought enormous wealth to Europe, which was an important step in the primitive accumulation of capital. However, the trade is also bloody, it brings a heavy disaster to the people of Africa. It caused a huge loss of strong labor in Africa as many as 100 million, which is an immeasurable destruction of African society and economy, and this is a big reason why most African countries still stay poor today. Besides the triangular trade, when Europeans first came to this land and tried to colonized it, it caused rebellion. For example, some native people attack a group of Europeans and they almost killed everybody, including the babies. Such a rebellion would cause fight back by Europeans. With powerful guns, Europeans would easily win the war and kill those people who would not agree to accept them. When they take the control of Africa, they blocked the native people from educations, and this influence remains today, nearly 80% people were uneducated.
The second reason is the vast spread of diseases in Africa. Diseases are becoming a serious issue that concerned most people in Africa. Back to the time when Europeans came to Africa, African people suffered great deaths due to smallpox. Smallpox is a representative disease among all of them. Smallpox is a very dangerous disease and it always causes a very high death rate. As for Europeans, they have already contacted with smallpox for centuries, and most of them have some resistance to it. However, for African people, smallpox is a kind of new disease. Most of people have never contacted it, so the majority was less resistant to smallpox, and millions of people died. Due to the big loss of population, Europeans was easy to conquer African land and reign African people. Today although medical developed a lot, Africa still faces the problem of disease. According to a report from WHO, communicable diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS and other conditions still predominate in sub-Saharan Africa (Musau, 2016). The natural geographical environment in which Africa is located determines the prevalence of infectious diseases in the region. Africa’s climate is particularly suitable for the reproduction of micro-organisms, parasites and harmful vector insects. It is also the living place for non-human primates and other mammals which is the host of many viruses. Zambia suffers from malaria in a serious condition. Malaria is trophic disease passed by parasites because parasites like mosquito are fond of hot, moisture weather, which the weather of Zambia is very similar. A statistic shows that nearly 45% children of Zambia is affected by malaria, and malaria effected one percent net growth over the last 50 years, lots of children died because of malaria. Compared to other tropical area, the poor medical condition is also an important reason. Because medical equipment and sanitary conditions are bad, clean drinking water recourse are insufficient, and the average level of education is low which leads to poor basic medical and self-prevention awareness, once the outbreak occurs, it is difficult to get timely and effective control.
The third reason caused poverty mainly lies in humans, including disputes among parties, tribes and religions, regional and border issues, as well as the competition for natural resources and wars. According to statistics, over the past 10 years, three quarters of African countries have been involved in wars, which more than 8 million people’s lives were taken, and over 16 million people became refugees, lots of children became orphans. The wars that have lasted for many tears have made it difficult for many African countries to maintain the stability needed for normal economic construction. The infrastructure has also been hit hard, price of normal goods has fluctuated drastically, and investors have been discouraged, which further exacerbated poverty in Africa. Besides, the process of industrial construction in Africa goes very slowly, most African people are still working on farming. This kind of economic developing form can only attribute a very low production to national economy.
In short, wars, unreasonable economic structure, low level of education, technology, and wild spread of diseases, as well as many other factors, all leads to poverty in Africa. And long-term poverty also increase terrorism, which in turn worsen the economic situation. Therefore, when we concern about world peace and development, we need to pay more attention to the development of Africa.
Work Cited
- Musau, Zipporah. “Lifestyle Diseases Pose New Burden for Africa | Africa Renewal”. United Nations, United Nations, 2016, https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/december-2016-march-2017/lifestyle-diseases-pose-new-burden-africa
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