Africa, like everywhere else in world, has its fair share of honest, intelligent; hardworking people who want to see their families have a better standard of living. Unfortunately, most of these people are living below poverty line. The reasons that Africa, with all of its natural resources, is an economic basket case are complex. They start with 16th Century Africans' failure to adopt an effective immigration policy. The result was European immigrants divided up continent without regard to historic tribal boundaries. The modern result has been tribal wars waged with modern weapons from Sudan to Rwanda.

After WWII, West's development schemes have been a long litany in stupid projects. A few of my favorite examples include: 1. The British Groundnut Project: After WWII, British found themselves with lots of heavy equipment that needed a use. The British shipped it to Africa and cleared thousands of hectares of tropical jungle. The idea was to grow peanuts and export them back to Britain. Nobody considered fact that soils in a jungle are lateritic and, once jungle was cleared, exposed areas quickly evolved into concrete parking lots. Not one peanut ever reached England. 2. The Americans Built Highways to Nowhere: After WWII, Americans built four lane roads in countries with less than one hundred cars. The local Government owned most of cars. Years later, I sat at a roadside food stand and counted three cars passing in five hours it took only bus to travel that road to pick me up. 3. If you think stupidity is limited to English speakers, consider that Norwegian Government granted US$25 million to build a fish-freezing plant in rural Africa. After plant was built, someone noticed that local people don't catch or eat fish. They herd goats. 4. The Soviets built a milk bottling plant in North Africa. The local people don't drink bottled milk and there is no way to ship milk elsewhere. The plant has yet to ship its first bottle of milk. 5. In East Africa, Yugoslavian Government built a factory to can mangos. The factory has a capacity that exceeds entire world's trade in canned mangos. 6. The Italians built a banana processing plant, but quantity of bananas needed for plant to breakeven exceed entire country's banana production. 7. The Americans designed and Soviet's build Aswan Dam. Before it was built, studies showed that by 2006, amount of new irrigation agriculture developed above dam would be offset by salinization of Nile River Delta below dam. Meanwhile, Egyptian population would grow and result would be a constant threat of national starvation. The studies were right.