Talk:Africa/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Africa. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

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Archive 5

This is an archived discussion. Please do not add to or modify this page. See Talk:Africa for the live discussion.

Region type

Recently I had a question brought up in school asking "What region type is Africa?", with answers such as "Functional Region". I still don't know the answer. If somebody could seek out the information and update, I'd be much obliged. (And future people..)

It's not a continent?—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 05:02, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

a comedy of errors. unfortunately, not funny.

"Dark Continent

"A minority of conservative European observers, such as Dr. William Pierce, assert this fact to be the result of lower intelligence, describing Africa as "The Dark Continent" in reference to its perennial poverty and warfare."

I don't think these claims should be given credence on this page. Are the claims of hitler given billing on the page for Israel or the claims of bin laden on the page for the US? I don't think the claims of racists belong on the front page for Africa. It also doesn't make sence, since Pierce is an American Nazi, not a European conservative. Can we get rid of this paragraph? Otherwise, it needs to be changed to "A minority of American nazis, such as...". :-[

The demographics section needs a lot of work. It is utterly simplistic, misleading and contradictory.

Lack of Specifics

The lack of statistics and examples in the History and Politics sections is discomforting.

Which European countries were dominant in the slave trade?
How many coups and/or military dictatorships were there, in the time period we're talking about?
Which were the most recent famines?
Are dangerous diseases other than AIDS really "rampant"?
"Some signs the continent has hope for the future"? Hope of what?

-- mpt, 17 May 2003

Glad you've volunteered to find out thje relevant information and add it to the site, User:mpt. It's user's like you, who add info rather than just whining, who make Wikipedia what it is -- Cabalamat 02:09, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Independence or Neo-Colonialism?

As for independence it just seems a move to neo-colonialism with members opf the local elite drawn in to manage the local state. As these states often restate 'national' boundaries drawn upon maps by European rather than anything rooted in African culture it seems like there needs to worked upon. Harry Potter

I think you might have been right a generation or so ago, but I get the impression these days most Africans increasingly feel alliegence to the states they are part of, e.g. Zimbabweans feel they are Zimbabweans rather than Shona or Ndebele. Urbanisation can only increase this process. -- Cabalamat 02:09, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Map

Hmm. The map of Africa seems hopelesly out of date. Doesn't anyone really have a more up to date copyfree map? Even the boundaries between countries, nevermind their names are wrong. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick

I can't see any obviously-wrong boundaries. Can you elucidate? -- Cabalamat 02:09, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Either he/she's talking about the colonial map (which is clearly titled so) or the CIA map, which to my knowledge is completely up-to-date. I think this person is mistaken on this issue. Polocrunch

What about the picture?

How old is that satellite picture? It looks old, because in recent ones I've seen, the coast along southern Ghana (etc) is much less green, because the rainforest is mostly deforested in southern Ghana -- or so its been explained to me. Dishalein 06:42, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

As to political boundaries, the only current map I see is 300px-Africa_map_cia.png, which is illegible (at least for my eyes) -- you have far better eyes than mine, if you can make out country names on that little map. (I tried zooming it, but it just turned to a fuzzy mess.) Dishalein 06:46, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Demographics"

I can't understand why this information is found under "demographics"! Afrika is Article of the Week on the Swedish Wikipedia, and this section doesn't fit nicely into any regular article layout! Shouldn't this section be moved to another place and some information on demographics take its place? (My shortage in the English language keeps me from doing it myself!) / Mats

I attempted to rewrite this section with some useful information. I took out some of the stuff on whether race exists since that is already covered in the "Race" article and doesn't really have much to do with the demographics of Africa. -AndyCapp 04:09, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The demographic section of Africa is severly lacking and comical in nature.

Quoting. "Very small numbers of Caucasians exist throughout Africa, with the exception of South Africa, which is approximately 10% Caucasian."

Why is the number of cacasians in Africa an important fact about Africa as a whole. You do not compare the amount of other ethnic groups in Africa, only caucasians, is this because caucasians have spread their culture throughout the world?

Again. "The African people are predominantly Negro and exhibit several physical characteristics that distinguish them from peoples of other continents. Dark skin is the most noticeable, and scientists believe it originated as a way to adapt to high levels of ultraviolet radiation. Tall height and muscular builds are other common characteristics, with the exception of some pygmy tribes."

What about native Australians, who also have dark skin. As you state in your article, that human life originated from Africa, why would the current native dark skinned populations adapt due to high exposure to ultra violet radiation? A better hypothesis would be that populations as they migrated from Africa adapted to lack of ultra violet radiation -- this is supported by a couple scientific conjectures that claim lighter skin peoples adapted to compensate for lack of vitamen D from sunlight. If scientist claim its a way to adapt to increased exposure to ultra violet radiation, why is it that arabs or other semetic races are not dark as many peoples originating from Africa.

Tall and muscular builds is probably untrue. Maybe many Africans are muscular due to their harder living conditions and an increased reliance on manual labor. Are African's really taller than caucasians, or more muscular or have the potential to be more muscular than any other race?

The Tutsi people were considered giants by the Europeans in centuries gone past, I've read, but, I don't think the Falani (Fulani? I don't know how to spell it) are tall, and surely peoples such as the Mbuti are famous -- at least to fans of PBS etc -- for exactly the converse :) Dishalein 06:51, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Again quoting your original article. "Throughout much of their recent history, Africans have faced much racism from non-Africans, first at the hands of European colonizers, then in the United States, where they were enslaved, and then in South Africa, where they coexist with a substantial population of Caucasians. Often this racism results because Africa has made comparatively few technological and cultural achievements.¹ For example, there was no written African language until the invention of N'ko in the early 20th century. A minority of conservative European observers, such as Dr. William Pierce, assert this fact to be the result of lower intelligence, describing Africa as "The Dark Continent" in reference to its perennial poverty and warfare. These are are highly controversial subjects; throughout history their misapplication has led to many tragedies, such as the enslavement of Africans in the United States. See Slavery, Racism, and Apartheid for more information."

You mention enslavement by the United States, which imported many African slaves. However you don't mention slaves imported to Brazil, which make up the majority of the native African descended population in the Americas.

Why is racism even mentioned in an article about Africa, albeit, many people have prejudices both and the past and present about people of African descent; although I don't think this is relevent. Why are cultural acheivements and technological ones even relevent. Many African's would beg to differ on your assumption that they have made few cultural acheivements, seeing that the world's talled human constructions for many centuries was the Great Pyrimid of Giza, until being surpassed by the Eiffel Tower in the 19th century. Written languages have existed in Africa for thousands of years, with the Egyption hyierglyths, I am not sure if this constitutes as a written language?

(re: written language) Surely, the Rosetta stone is one of the most famous works of written language in history? Dishalein 06:55, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Calling Africa the "Dark Continent" has little relevence to Africa as a whole or even the works of minority Europeans. Europe and other continents just hundred or less years ago were in a period of constant warfare, I am sure that there has not been a time where there was peace throughout the entire European continent for very long. The feudal system of Europe had insured a class of impoverished surfs to do the bidding of the masters for the longest time.

This article is laughable and is a scourge to the entire wikipedia collection. It has very little substance or anything to do with Africa. I would like feedback and corrections. For any questions email me at dismal@wowway.com

Racist?

This article is so infuriatingly racist that it should be rewritten from scratch. As others have noted, it consists mostly of stereotypes and contains blatant factual errors like there was no written African language before the 20th century (see ancientscripts) or that the "Demographics" section doesn't mention the large number of Arabs at all.

--Loikb 21:04, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It's misleading to state that Africans have faced racism without explaining why people harbored racist beliefs against them.AndyCapp 00:01, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

"Utter garbage"?...Race Demographics

The rewrite of the article yesterday was hardly perfect, but the version that stands now is utter garbage.

(Over 85% of the African people belong to the Black race and exhibit several physical characteristics that distinguish them from peoples of other continents.)

What of the Melanesians, the Negritos of SE Asia, and some Australian Aborigines?

(Dark skin is the most noticeable, and scientists believe that Homo sapiens lost this coloration when it emigrated to the outlying continents in response to lower levels of ultraviolet radiation.)

Every serious article on this subject states that the need for Vitamin D absorption form sunlight caused people's skin to lighten. Anyway, none of the other continent or country articles delve into this topic. This should simply be hyperlinked to race.

(Tall height and muscular builds are other common characteristics, with the exception of some pygmy tribes.) Most East African and Southern African Negroids are similar in height to Caucasoids. Cattle herding peoples such as the Masai and Tutsi do tend to be taller.

(White Africans have descended mainly from the Middle East in prehistoric periods and today form about 95% of the North African population like Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.)

Many north Africans, such as Berbers, are indigenous to North Africa. Also the populations of these countries are frankly too mixed to be categorized as "white" - or "black".

(Despite several shared characteristics, Africans also exhibit linguistic and cultural diversity, with different languages and religions occurring throughout the continent.)

True...

(Very small numbers of Caucasians exist throughout Africa, with the exception of South Africa, which is approximately 10% Caucasian.)

Do the North Africans count as Caucasian?

I think it can be noted that there is a semantic difference in everyday usage between Caucasian and "white". North Africans are mostly Caucasoid but only a minority would readily identify themselves as "white" in Western countries.

(Much of the African continent continues to suffer from severe poverty, famine, disease, and war. In recent times AIDS has become a particularly widespread and damaging problem, with over 30% of some African populations infected.)

North Africa, to my knowledge, has not experienced a famine in recent history. It also has not been affected by AIDS to the degree other parts of the continent have. Some African nations (Gabon, Libya) are, in relative terms, not poor nations and have standards of living that are comparable to middle income nations. There is no denying that the majority of vast Africans are poor.

(North Africa not having famine in recent history) Surely this depends on how you define "recent". Isn't famine in Egypt, due to poor Nile flooding season, nearly invariably mentioned in historical discussions of Egypt? Dishalein 07:00, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

(NB: I don't disagree with your general point of course -- in fact, the whole issue in the Blue Nile/Koga/Nile Basin discussions is that the Egypt end of the Nile does SO much better at irrigation than the areas in Ethiopia.) Dishalein 07:03, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

(The species Homo sapiens sapiens is now believed to have originated in Africa and migrated into the outlying continents about 80,000 years ago. After this African diaspora, humans developed into what are considered the different human races, although it is also contended that not enough isolated evolution in different geographical areas was possible for the species to become polytypic. However, during the years following the migration, some cultural changes, changes of group identities, and some genetic changes, such as skin color, clearly happened.)

I can't argue with this, but this is part of the article on "Race" and is distracting here.

(Throughout much of their recent history, Africans have faced much racism from non-Africans, first at the hands of European colonizers, then in the United States, where they were enslaved, and then in South Africa, where they coexist with a substantial population of Caucasians. See Slavery, Racism, and Apartheid for more information.)

The United States was only one of many nations where black African slavery occurred. (Black) Africans are not unique in facing racism, and it should be mentioned that many intra-African conflicts (Hutu-Tutsi, Arab-Berber) exist as well. To be sure, some of these conflicts were exacerbated by European colonial powers.

Also, it must be noted that other peoples, such as Indians and other Asians live in Africa today, and there have been conflicts between Hindus and black Africans in Uganda and Kenya for instance.

Delete Demographics section

Asia does not have a demographics section, neither does Europe or North America. I find it's inclusision in Africa and especially the way in which it is portrayed suspicious. Such claims as Tall height and muscular builds are other common characteristics is absurd. Does anyone remember the short and plump DRC President Laurent Kabila? No one would ever be able to include that "Swedes are tall, blond, and blue eyed". This section is more trouble than it is worth. We should delete the Demographics section and move NPOV and salvageble useful information to other parts of the article.

This article was vandalised by a person with an extreme Afrocentric view, advocating genocide of so calledwhite shit. This article needs to be amended and it needs to be amended now or such vandalism will only become more common. Such archaic stereotypes about one of the most diverse and important places in human history will only damage wikipedia's image; especially in such a major and visable artricle as Africa.

-JCarriker 06:46, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)

I don't support deleting it because you think there is something wrong with it. I think the section could be improved, and that's what should be done instead. If Asia and Europe don't have demographics sections, then why not add one? I don't see why there shouldn't be one.

If you don't believe that Africans on average are taller and more muscular than people of other ethnic groups, then here is one of many, many studies that have been done on the subject.

I am aware that there are "short and plump" Africans. The claim that a group of entities on average exhibits characteristic X does not mean that all members of that group exhibit that characteristic. By the way, I think it is actually true that Swedish people, on average, exhibit blond hair and blue eyes at comparatively higher rates. Am I a racist for saying so? AndyCapp 07:12, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The demographics section should be rewritten, not deleted. It gives too much focus on physical anthropology and ignores the vast ethnic and linguistic diversity in Africa while giving no coverage of population distribution and migration. Look to Encarta and Columbia as examples of what to include. --Jia ng 10:37, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

This post was written before Jiang's post, but because Wikipedia was experiencing server problems the page could not be loaded and therefore it does not address Jiang's points.

No it doesn't make you racist, and please note I didn't use the word racist anywhere in my post. The only time I have used the word racist in relation to this article was when I deleted the genocidal and racist comments posted by 139.55.7.185 when he/she vandalized the article. Hosni Mubarak and Frederik Willem de Klerk are Africans but they are not the "race" in that study. That is problem one with such a designation, not every native inhabitant of Africa is Congoloid. The point I am going to emphasize is this: that many black people, especially African-Americans, are going to find those claims highly offensive. They will point to the old sterotype that black people are physically superior and intelelctually inferior to white people. Such stereotypes were used as a justifaction for slavery and later segregation. In that vein of thought, I find such comments dehumanizing, as they were used to enforce an insitution that denied people basic human dignity and rights, and indeed in many cases treated human beings as if they were mere beasts of burden.

I cannot speak for those people natively from Africa, but as for African-Americans any notion of a common height is flat out wrong. I have many African-American friends and associates and there is absoloutely no correlation between height and race in that particular sample. None. Nutrition, especially during childhood and adolesence is a major factor in determining height and muscle mass; it is wrong to present such characterisics as purely racial in determination.

A less emotionally charged reason for not maintaining the demographics section is this simple fact: accurate demographics and current demographics on Africa do not exist. Many countries in Africa haven't even taken a census in decades. This is not only true of Africa but also most other contentients; Australia, which of course is occupied entirely by a developed country, and the few hundred temporary inhabitants of Antartica being the likely exceptions. I suspect this is why there are no demographics sections in Europe ect..

-JCarriker 12:24, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)

I move that the Demographics section by chaged to People of Africa or African Peoples with demographics as a sub-category. I also move that the fact that racial characteristics, or even the existence of race, is controversial and should be mentioned as such immediatley following that statement. Also, that it be rephrased to say that some <insert expert title here>s think that common racial charecteristic are.....

-JCarriker 12:24, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)

Encarta makes a disclaimer in its demographics section that the numbers are unreliable. We could do the same. Each african country does have a demographics section, and the numbers and text we use come from the CIA and US State Dept. If we have to deal with bad numbers, we can avoid them. Just state general demographic trends and discuss the ethnic and linguistic diversity there.--Jia ng 03:10, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Agreed, but what do you think of the above motion? Are you in agreement?

-JCarriker 06:45, Jun 16, 2004 (UTC)

I prefer a section titled "demographics" since we seem to be doing that for all the countries [edit: and it would follow for us to do it for the continents too]. I agree in adding disclaimers (about being controversial, etc.), but we should really reduce the discussion of race or take it somewhere else and focus on population and ethnic data. They're black people all over the globe. Why concetrate it here and igonore the White Africans? Otherwise, let's go ahead...--Jia ng 07:49, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Are you proposing Tall height and muscular builds are other common characteristics that be removed from the Africa article or just demographics? I certainly have no objections to either. Also you might want to clarify your first sentence, just to make sure no one thinks your calling Africa a country. ;)

-JCarriker 09:00, Jun 16, 2004 (UTC)

I prefer that it be removed to an article on the race. We have Caucasian race and Black#Human. Of course, stereotypes must be highly qualified, something I don't feel qualified to do :) --Jia ng 10:57, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Good. Why don't we establish a sub-page, or use an existing one such as a sandbox, to work on the rewrite and then import the finished product into the article? This might be a less disruptive transition for the page, and possibbly for our efforts, given the current number of vandals targeting high trafficed pages. :) -JCarriker 22:49, Jun 16, 2004 (UTC)

Not the main sandbox...it has too many other users experimenting. Maybe User:JCarriker/sandbox will do if you want to initiate a draft to be posted here. Otherwise, I dont have problem with editing on this article directly. --Jia ng 08:08, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I'd actually prefer it if you would take the lead, I'm biased because I believe that all of humanity is one race. You can initiate a draft at User:JCarriker/research.

-JCarriker 09:40, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)

Area figures

I deleted this sentence: "Unlike the figures in the country articles, the figures in this table are based on areas including inland water bodies (lakes, reservoirs, rivers) and may therefore be lower here." It caught my attention because if the first part of the sentence were true, then the figures in this table would be higher by the amount of the inland water areas, not "lower here". When I looked further, I found that almost all the figures in this table matched the figures in the country articles, except Mauritius, Ghana, Tanzania, Djibouti, and Niger. Some were higher, some were lower, and only Niger differed by the water area. So I deleted the entire sentence.

While I'm at it, the Djibouti discrepancy of 23,000 versus 22,000 strikes me as a typo. The CIA World Factbook says 23,000. So I will change the Djibouti article to match. Art LaPella 00:19, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)

Egypt has asian territory too

In the list of countries there is no note on Egypt that it has also asian terriory. This should be corrected. (IMHO the border between Asia and Africa is the Suez channel, or am I wrong?)

Suggest 14 possible wiki links for Africa.

An automated Wikipedia link suggester has some possible wiki link suggestions for the Africa article:

Can link 14th century: ... effectively nation-state-less until quite recently. In the 14th century [[European]] explorers arrived in Africa. By bargaining wit... (link to section)
Can link political corruption: ...d through armed conflicts. Failed government policies and political corruption have also resulted in many widespread [[famine]]s, and sign... (link to section)
Can link zero growth: ...entional economic measurements after decades of negative or zero growth. It remains to be seen if such developments will be able to... (link to section)
Can link death toll: ...lf-a-dozen neighbouring African countries got involved. The death toll, estimated by some to be 3.5 million over five years, was v... (link to section)
Can link indigenous peoples: ...ly 80% of Africans live south of the [[Sahara]] Desert. The indigenous peoples of sub-Saharan Africa are generally referred to as either [... (link to section)
Can link skin color: ...ply [[black#human|blacks]], due to the generally dark brown skin color of these peoples. However, there is a wide variety of phys... (link to section)
Can link ancient times: ...ubians]] who developed civilizations in North Africa during ancient times. The Semitic Phoenicians, and the European Greeks and Roman... (link to section)
Can link out of Africa: ... resulted in the mass exodus of European-descended settlers out of Africa, especially in Algeria, Kenya, and Rhodesia (now [[Zimbabwe... (link to section)
Can link mixed-race: ...hite rule in [[1994]]. South Africa also has a community of mixed-race people ([[Coloured]] people).... (link to section)
Can link British colonies: ...ns, particularly people from the [[Indian subcontinent]] to British colonies. Large Indo-African communities are found in South Africa,... (link to section)
Can link Southwest Asia: ...oups of Africa, Christianity and Islam, have their roots in Southwest Asia. Approximately 40% of all Africans are Christians and anoth... (link to section)
Can link Christian Era: ...d Egypt) adopted Christianity in the early centuries of the Christian Era - before most of Europe. However, Christianity was introduc... (link to section)
Can link colonial period: ...hern Africa by European missionaries or settlers during the colonial period. ... (link to section)
Can link official languages: ...|English]] and [[French language|French]], for example, are official languages in several countries.... (link to section)

Notes: The article text has not been changed in any way; Some of these suggestions may be wrong, some may be right.
Feedback: I like it, I hate it, Please don't link to — LinkBot 11:27, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Oil?

This is listed on the page List of oil-producing states, but it does not include any discussion of oil production. It would be good to add this. JesseW 03:32, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Africa-related content

It might just be me, but Wikipedia is sorely lacking in Africa-related content. And where it exists, a lot of it is not wikified, and so on. I am going to start paying attention to this—and request others do too.

Can we great a Wikipedia:WikiProject? Or other such tool?—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 05:04, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Or a regional notice board?—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 05:23, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Created Wikipedia:Africa-related regional notice board.—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 05:21, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

External Links

The collection of external links is poor ...

Two links to articles by a postgraduate student, Franklyne Ogbunwezeh ( http://www.globalpolitician.com/articles.asp?ID=186 and http://www.globalpolitician.com/articles.asp?ID=195 ) -- neither of them appropriate to thhis Africa article.
http://www.francewatcher.org/ -- should be in an article about French postcolonial politics.
http://www.zabalaza.net/texts/african_anarchism/contents.htm -- might be appropriate in an article about African Anarchism.
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/africa/accounts/chekov.html -- might be appropriate in an article about travel and tourism in Africa.
http://www.takesomeaction.co.uk/safari.html and http://wikitravel.org/en/article/Africa -- would also be more appropriate in an article about travel and tourism in Africa.

--Mount Pleasant 08:03, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Spelling/Grammar cleanup.

"in cold war conflicts, as a US backed South Africa pushed against newly independent Angola and Mozambique, both aligning themselves with ther soviet union, a rare move for a region seen as neutral by the first and second worlds."

This was posted before -- I've removed it since due to it's very poor spelling/grammar. It might be valid for a repost if someone cleans it up. -rmsharpe

CSB Collaboration

This is a "of concern" list to give some hints on what might help. Feel free to add, comment or alter this list. - Banyan Tree 18:14, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

(moved to todo list on top of page) — mark ✎ 18:49, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Interwiki

I checked several interwiki-versions of this article. Almost all are worse than we (even the French one — unbelievable). de:Afrika contains some usable text on history and some pictures. — mark ✎ 21:27, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Religion

Just after "The Ethiopian Orthodox Church dates from the fourth century CE and was thus one of the first Christian churches. ", would it be appropriate to mention the role of Alexandria as one of the main bastions of Christianity in the 2nd - 4th centuries CE? Some might argue it had a preeminent role, at least in the sense that the primary bible canons of our time might be argued to have been created primarily by Alexandrian bishops? Dishalein 07:17, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sure. It can't hurt. - Banyan Tree 14:12, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ploetz and recent additions

Recently, the following bit was added to the article by 4.244.201.192 (talk · contribs).

Karl Ploetz, theorized (circa 1870) that the evolution of agricultural pursuit was introduced among the Pygmies by the "Bantú people, who arrived to Central Africa from the Indian Ocean (30,000 years ago.)"

I'm going to pull it out pending citation and evidence of notability. Even if it turns out to be true that Ploetz theorized this, I don't think it is particularly notable. At least the part about the Bantu coming from the Indian Ocean has never been a well-known hypothesis (it's the first time I hear about this; instead, see Bantu expansion for better known ideas about where the Bantu came from). Besides, the 30,000 years is a number that needs something to back it up, especially when talking about the whereabouts of ethno-linguistic groups. — mark ✎ 13:45, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

confused by "Migration from Africa continues to this day."

Latest comment: 19 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I'm translating this article into korean, and I came upon this line at the bottom of the history section:

Migration from Africa continues to this day.

what's that? Is this the remains of some debate that took place about the slave trade? Or is this a reference to the contemporary brain drain phenomenon, or a reference back to how patterns of slavery (from Africa to the U.S.) resemble modern immigration from Africa to the developed nations, driven by the violence of structural adjustment? I need to contextualize that line. Pleae give me some guidance. Thanks. --Yonghokim 02:25, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've removed it, as I had the same problem. — mark ✎ 07:36, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Badly placed commentary

I had to deleat this from the polotics section.

"As well, under pressure from international financial institutions like the IMF, many African governments have been able to turn their economies around, so that they have started to show positive growth according to conventional economic measurements after decades of negative or zero growth. It remains to be seen if such developments will be able to survive long term, however."

Firstly this would belong in the economics section. Secondly it is a very controvercial issue and requires proof to back up any outlandish statement. At the very least it should be removed because it conflicts with other statements made in the economics section that claims Botswana to be doing better than the Neo Liberalist IMF moddle.

Personaly I find putting that comment in this forumn offensive as I would defy anyone to tell me that the IMF and the World Bank have helped to do anything but widen the gap between rich and poor in Africa.

[posted by BurningAabyss (talk · contribs), 03:10, 4 May 2004 UTC]