A panoramic fact based view of the situation in africa

[TSA]

Urbanization

With the perception that Africa's biggest problem is people are dying off (AIDS, Famine, War) people need to realize that the issue is there's too many mother fuckers. Even the fact that I have to tell Americans that there are cities in Africa is the most off the wall thing to me. The perception that most africans live in villages is also completely retarded and detached from reality to the point where I wonder if we live in the same planet.

with as big as new york city is, people need to realize the Cairo Egypt Lagos Nigeria and Kinshasa Congo are almost double the size of it in population. Most africans are urban dwellers, the whole living with zebras in the village thing is way off.


the fact that most people live in urban areas is actually one of the real problems of africa, as well as the entire developing world.

This is Oshodi Lagos 6 years ago, and if you were to ask someone about Lagos this was the image that came to mind. The place is like a 24/7 rave.
governments struggled to find out what to do with these people and how to organize the city to cope with the ridiculous growth (6,000+ new people weekly).



providing FORMAL employement, slowing the rate of slum growth, enforcing laws were all hercelian tasks. but this is Oshodi today



and this is the case with most of Africa. People are working hard as fuck to build new nations, most of them not older that 50 years to the standard of nations in europe, which have been around for 2000+ years on average.


the governor of Lagos built satelite towns, implemented stricter laws, implimented more public transport, built a light rail, built a monorail and is currently building this











eko Atlantic, which is an elevated land development to counter erosion and the raising ocean levels due to global warming infront of lagos, which is low land, so that Lagos doesn't sink and to take the heat of the mainland as far as population and land demand. this is no fantasy or bullshit
[IMG]http://api.ning.com/files/lHZphyruYBmCOsV2ogWXtr-MmEMIS0a9fdc2NlDxDDbMkWJLS8hp0CPGqzAV7fK*mFcbK6kq2 xH5712eXb8BRFeIV1FwDEkS/greatwallofLagos.jpg[/IMG]


They're wrapping up the dredging process (this pic is old) and they're currently putting roads in place


this is the second planned city build in the country and severall countries, with Angola leading the pack, and building their asses off right now. nigeria is the worlds #1 growing market for cement.


But the issues or overcrowding remain and these are the real issues people face. In most places even in nigeria the struggle continues and lagos is just one city out of 36+ that need serious help. This is what africans have to deal with and worry about, not no faggot ass Aids.

[TSA]

Slums


Many african urban dwellers live in slums.


these slums spring up because there are cities where 6000 people are flooding into every week without a dime to their name. Their goal is to become rich or at least be able to live comfortably and have access to the oppurtunities in the cities. People thus leave their villages and when they can't find a reasonable place to live they collect trash and make a hut to stay in. Their belief if they'll only be there for a little bit until they strike it big then they can move out. Because of a lack of formal employment in comparison to the population and it's constant influx, they end up stuck there, and having the make their own informal employement.

I'll again use Lagos because it's what I know. there's really no unemployed ppl in Lagos. Everyone has a way of making money but it's usually informal. There are people that dive to the ocean floor without dive equiptment, fill buckets with quality sand, swim back up with the buckets, and sell the sand. Everyone is a hustler and most people have off the wall means of making money.


but informal employement keeps them stuck in the slums and because so many informal businesses come from them, it turns into a shadow economy and before you know it the slums are a main attraction and keep multiplying.


this is a real actual problem in Africa.


people build illegal homes on top of roads, infront of actual houses, and in the case of Makoko, literally on top of water. These slums create their own eco system and way of life that make them hard to get rid of.

in Makoko, because land is expensive and scarce in Lagos, people have literally made a city on water out of scrap iron and trash.


Now, the reason i gave the back story on slums is because thats the problem. These people aren't at 'home'. this isn't their home, it's more comparable to a tent by a river during the gold rush.

these people come from the village, and the average village in nigeria and most of africa is 100% more comfortable and easy to live in than an urban slum.


the issue is africans don't want to be comfortable. comfort is a VERY low priority for african people and it's pretty universal continent wide. If allowed most africans will literally work 24/7 and not take a break. They don't care. They just want to be rich.

now what is a 'village'. Again because of colonial racist terminology, a village is ANY thing that's not a city. a town.

this is what the average village looks like


just a small town. it's poor, there's little to no employement outside of civil service for a hand ful of people petty farming and petty craftsmanship, but this is a village. all that grass hut shit needs to chill.

they're also 100x better as far as standard of living than slums, but because of culture africans dont give a flying fuck about comfort or standard of living, they want to be rich so they can go back to the village and build a baller ass house and they know they wont get rich staying in the village and being comfortable.






Robert Mugabe is called evil because he demolished the slums in Harare.
the BBC was quick to say he was the 'hitler of africa' and he was tearing apart people's homes. He pioneered a very important movement in africa by doing this because we've all come to terms that if someone builds and illegal structure it needs to be removed. That same BBC, tell me the last time England allowed anyone to build a fucking house of scrap metal in the middle of the street, in a water fountain, or on the roof of someone elses house. Here in the US i get fined for not mowing my grass, let alone building a random house on top of a railroad track.



the slum i posted in lagos, Makoko, has now been demolished. most of the residents were happy because it's a sign the the government is now working. they're not going to go back to the village though until they're rich so the saga continues.

[TSA]

and if you need to see, this is Harare now



so we can kill the BS on Mugabe being 'bad'. He's just not going to let the UK and US run his country and give whites special privledges and they declared holy war on him to set an example to other african countries.

he's a dictator, but if he steps down a US/UK puppet will be put in place, so he really doesn't have that choice. No army that knows anything about anything has ever changed leadership during a siege and Zimbabwe is under seige.





Even ghaddafi's track record in development would shit on any US president any day though i personally didn't like him

[spiggity_ace]

isnt there a conflict in the dem republic of congo thats killed like 2 million people in 10 years or something because of the fleeing tutsis or was it hutus into the area?

africa really interests me, i wanna visit ethiopia one day

[diggy]

the issue is africans don't want to be comfortable. comfort is a VERY low priority for african people and it's pretty universal continent wide. If allowed most africans will literally work 24/7 and not take a break. They don't care. They just want to be rich.

smh

[TSA]

isnt there a conflict in the dem republic of congo thats killed like 2 million people in 10 years or something because of the fleeing tutsis or was it hutus into the area?

africa really interests me, i wanna visit ethiopia one day

yeah. Congo has always been very problematic.

They had the most brutal colonial regimes in the history of the world.
After independence their founding father, Patrice Lumumba refused to remain silent about belgian atrocities in the congo. He was one of the few educated men in the country and did a lot to free the country from the beligians.

we'll, the cia and the belgians first conspired to break the country apart and make him look an like incompetent and brutal leader if he retaliates against the western funded independence rebels. He didn't, so they assassinated him and put Mobutu in power.

Mobutu was a thief that was willing to do anything to be powerful. This is a common situation in Africa. Being for african interests makes you by nature adverse to western interests so they'll try to paint you as evil and if that doesn't work, kill you and put someone else in power. Since that person they put in power has no moral backbone and is a piece of shit as can be seen by selling out their country, the country usually goes down hill from there and they loot it dry.




Mobutu was a brutal dictator but he was able to stop the rebels (in all reality the west told them to chill and they did). So when Mobutu was over thrown for being a corrupt thieving scumbag. It created a power vaccuum that was made worst because western and even african countries swarmed in to loot it's resources (congo is technically the richest country in the world in minerals, but instability won't let it happen)


this caused a giant messy war fought by proxies in the east over minerals and leadership of the country. Once Kabila won it went from the three sided war to a two sided but waged on until very recently. It's died down but rebel groups still control the east and it's largely a bloody cease fire.



Rwanda is currently accused of funding rebels groups to loot Congo of diamonds and many western companies have private proxy armies in the country still raising hell. The country was really never given a chance to exist. It's been under constant attack since day one, so in the process 2 million+ ppl have died.

[TSA]

ps i want to visit Ethiopia too, most of the things in that country can't be found anywhere else in the world.

[SL33]

I'm happy to see real Africans commenting on africa-related topics.

[pro.Graveface]

Great Thread!

[Edgar Erebus]

Repped.

Props to TSA for making this thread. For some reason it's pretty hard to find some real info from Africa (even basic info as this) in the flood of Euro mass media who never really got over losing colonies.

You could start a blog with this.

[Fatal Guillotine]

good thread indeed.

[cj wisty]

hey tsa what happened to the fertility of african soil.

i heard in ancient times africa used to have incredibly fertile soil and other countries wanted to go to africa for this reason. but nowadays every1 says the soil is bad