The problems with Africa cannot be adressed until you get past Aids. The decision to do nothing, or rather not enough, was made ten years ago. In epidemiology it is called vector trajectory, and it is a highly mathematical model of the probable outcomes of an untreated epidemic. The decision to undertreat cannot be undone, as the resources needed become logarithmic.
So no, I am not advocating doing nothing. From a humanitarian standpoint that is unacceptable. But to imagine that there is some heroic world wide solution is unreasonable. In medicine it would be called palliative support. The best and only hope is to flood laboratories with cash and pray that someone finds a cure or a vaccine.
When you have infection rates over 30%, the probability is that the entire micro-society will collapes as deaths accelerate. We are not yet prepared for that to happen. Deaths from famine and secondary illness will double the death toll. Those are preventable.
Until we get past the worst epidemic seen one continent, political solutions to other African problems will have to wait. Read a book called "Influenza", about the great influenza epidemic of 1918. That is a fast motion preview of Aids in Africa.
The consequences of AIDS is mind boggling. Imagine if, for instance, there weren't enough young men and women to teach the children in schools.
Let's say that one of every 1000 men and women becomes a teacher in Africa (fictional number)
Let's say that there are 25,000,000 men and women in Africa who are in the right position to become teacher. (fictional number). That gives 25,000 teachers.
A 20% reduction due to aids would mean 20,000 teachers would-be teachers. You can imagine the problems resulting from a teaching deficit.
Similar problems exists in other socio-economic sectors.
Africa already cannot produce enough to support its population. AIDS strips it of even more of this ability.
Radical steps are needed. Either more outside intervention is given (which the outside world in unwilling to do) or else ......
...else, consider that Africa is overpopulated, with overpopulation being defined as unable to produce enough to support the population. Equilibrium between population and supportability can be achieve only through increasing productivity - or through decreasing population. Dramatically.
Only problem is, that population decrease may lead to massive social instability and the breakkdown of nations.
Africa has tough, tough challenges to face. And i think Africa will fail those challenges and mass deaths will result.
In my fictional, never to occur radical idea, I think I more had in mind the Mandate system you identify under the umbrella of the UN. G8 would be OK too. Heck, almost anything would be better than what exists.
The basic concept is to realize there is a mess, scrap everything that exists (as I said with some exceptions) and start over. Realize you have a 50 to 100 year project ahead of you to develop Africa to a point where institutions and infrastructure are sufficiently rooted to return to self-government. I have absolutely no hope that the people of Africa are capable of solving their problems on their own no matter how much aid, money and/or outside support they are given by the world community.
EDIT: Saw Your last post and concur with your pessimism.
Hmm .. with Bangladesh having over 1300 million people but the whole country eroding away really fast, perhaps Africa could be repopulated with Bangladeshis once the mass dying is over?
There is only one other solution which approaches social engineering. Approximately 50 percent of the total AIDS transmissions are through sex workers. If the UN really wanted to intervene, they could send troops to forcibly arrest prositutes and shut down brothels. Locking up the sex workers, many of whom are victims of virtual slavery would intantaneously reduce infection rates. Of course getting these sex workers to use condoms consistantly is a better solution, but ignorance, violence on the part of the customers and pimps, stubbornness and denial prevent most of the sex workers from using condoms today. A good study was done on this:
Another example of the difference in epidemic patterns based on population sexual network structures is offered by a mathematical modelling exercise by Nagelkerke and colleagues.21 Using a compartmental model, they compared the population level impact of various prevention strategies on HIV prevalence in two populations: Botswana and India. In comparing the two populations, the crucial assumptions were: (1) the proportion of men who will have a sexual contact with a female sex worker is fourfold higher in Botswana, and (2) the number of “low risk” persons of the opposite sex infected by an HIV infected individual is twice as high in Botswana (this parameter is closely related to the frequency of multiple, longer duration partnerships). Thus the model implicitly assumed that the size of population with high contact rates and multiple longer duration partnerships is substantially greater in Botswana than in India. It also assumed that the prevention interventions were in effect from when the epidemic had reached a prevalence among adults of approximately 2.5% in India and 28% in Botswana. The mathematical models showed that for the Indian scenario a single prevention strategy—begun when the population prevalence was 2.5%—which reduced the proportion of sexual contacts between female sex workers and their clients who were unprotected by condom use from 67% to 25% would be sufficient to arrest the HIV epidemic and eventually drive it towards extinction. However, in a setting such as that assumed for Botswana, such a targeted intervention would only stabilise the epidemic at the current prevalence, whereas an intervention that reduced HIV transmission more generally in the population (by decreasing the overall burden of treatable STIs) would reduce the prevalence of HIV substantially. Unresolved from these analyses is the question of whether initiating the different prevention strategies at different stages of the epidemic would have altered their relative impact
Essentially what that is saying is that even if condoms are rigourously introduced to the most vigorous infectors, when AIDs occurance is 38% in the adult population, targeted methods of control do not help, only massive intervention in the general population helps.
So, in some areas we could introduce “Blue helmets make you cover your helmet”.
Crackdowns like this will have little effect. Pakistan has (half heartedly) tried crackdowns on prositution to end it and it simply forces prostitutes even further underground where they are under even worse conditions, but still plying their trade.
Where there is demand, there is always going to be supply.
^^ agreed, but I think you could put a dent in the activity, perhaps reducing it 50% or more with a determined action. Complete irradication of the sex industry is unrealistic.
Of course the UN troops have a propensity towards this industry anyway....
UTD, i think US soldiers are doing their level best to solve the drug problem…
U.S. Soldiers Arrested for Colombian Cocaine Plot
Reuters
Apr. 1, 2005 - Five American soldiers have been arrested for trying to smuggle hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cocaine into the United States on a U.S. military aircraft, the U.S. military said…
… The arrests recalled a previous scandal to hit U.S. operations in Colombia.
The wife of a U.S. Army officer who headed anti-drug operations in Colombia was sentenced to five years in prison in 2000 for trying to mail $700,000 worth of heroin to New York. Her husband admitted he knew she was laundering drug proceeds and was sentenced to five months, angering Colombian legal officials who complained this was too lenient.
You simply have no imagination. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Viet Nam, Korea, the American West, Afghanistan, Berlin, Dresden and the list can go on and on.
Now that I’ve covered the subject matter of your next 8 or so posts, why don’t you offer something relevant to Africa which is the subject of this thread. If you’ve got nothing to contribute, go take a nappy.
^ Mr/Mrs/Miss forgetful, i was addressing your question on the powdered baby milk factory... it was in Iraq... stop asking questions if you don't want them answered and stop boasting gleefully about having killed so many babies