That is exactly one of my main problems. The biggest disadvantage in Africa is that rich countries subsidise their agriculture production. Agriculture is one of the few areas where Africa can be competitive.
But what happens now is that African countries compete against subsidised goods in European and American markets. And what makes a bad situation worse is that because of the subsidies Western countries overproduce and dump produce below cost on African countries (destroying their farmers).
I remember a year where our neighbour (who had a dairy farm) started giving away milk for free (mainly because of dumping of European milk products which led to a collapse in price).
> That is exactly one of my main problems. The biggest disadvantage in Africa is that rich countries subsidise their agriculture production. Agriculture is one of the few areas where Africa can be competitive.
Absolutely We spend a lot of money on aid, and then spend orders of magnitude more to chancel that aid by killing the market for third world products. But fixing that problem will require us to make thousands of farmers unemployed, and that's political suicide. Especially in Europe, where agriculture subsidies are strongly supported by the political mainstream.
Most people will still want to buy cheap food. I buy organic from local quality farmers when possible, but it's just not always practical and economical. So if we massively import cheap food, we will lose a lot (most?) of the agricultural jobs in Europe and that's not politically tenable.
The other argument I've heard against abolishing food subsidies is a strategic one. We'd become dependent on food from countries that are often not politically stable. An oil crisis on the food level could be devastating.
I say, if that's the argument, then be honest about it and nationalize agriculture instead of pretending it's private businesses.
For some more optimistic aspects of the developing world (and especially Africa), see the newest special report of the Economist (http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displayStory.cfm?sto... (be sure to click "next article" at the bottom, if you want to read all of it).
The article is interesting about mobile phones. For interest sake, MTN is a South African company. Mobile phones make things such as informal jobs a lot easier (e.g. if someone wants to organise labour for a project).
The problem still however is price. In China it costs 0.15 Yuan to send a text message – in SA it can be the equivalent the equivalent of 1 Yuan. Voice calls are even more expensive (R3+ a minute – about 0.4 US$). I believe that the price elsewhere in Africa is even more expensive (since some of the base stations run on Diesel generators).
I also don’t think that telecoms growth should be seen as economic growth (it is not always coupled). Telecoms is however still a giant problem. In SA we have huge problems with extremely expensive Internet. This is extremely unfavourable. We have a lot of people that can speak English without an accent at the same time zone as Europe – yet it is too expensive to put up call centres.
But what happens now is that African countries compete against subsidised goods in European and American markets. And what makes a bad situation worse is that because of the subsidies Western countries overproduce and dump produce below cost on African countries (destroying their farmers).
I remember a year where our neighbour (who had a dairy farm) started giving away milk for free (mainly because of dumping of European milk products which led to a collapse in price).