Timothy Birdnow

Africa is the next land of opportunity. It has rising population, rising prosperity, and a vast wealth of minerals that modern technology requires. China has been sniffing around Africa for decades now. But it is America that is in the driver's seat in the Dark Continent if we have the wisdom and foresight to take advantage of a golden opportunity.

Or so argues this essay at The Daily Caller.

I've long agreed; we are going to see Africa rise in the next fifty years. While dirt poor and politically unstable the continent has been quietly positioning (not purposely, mind you) for a major growth spurt. The material is there. the manpower is there. Prosperity will help stabilize the governments in Africa, which will go a long, long way to helping these places develop.

China has been lending money to Africa - lots of money - and the terms of repayment are usurious. That is just one place we should be stepping in; we can offer a "bill consolidation loan" to some of these struggling countries (the author mentions Kenya in particular) that are better deals to them - and cut the Chicoms out. We can give most favored nation status to African countries that export products to the U.S. There are lots of things we can do to increase our influence there.

There are a few things that we must keep in mind. After the Meiji Restoration (when the Emperor returned as the governing power in Japan over the Tokugawa shogunate) Japan found itself backward and, frankly, starving. The first thing they did to modernize their country was to modernize it's agricultural practices. Not build industries, not build up it's army, but find a way to feed it's people first. Africa is in that shape now; they are struggling to feed their own people. We have to work wih friendly African nations to build up their agricultural base, and not just their cash crop base (which is what the West largely did - building coffee plantations and the like) to assure the people are well fed. It worked beautifully in Japan; within years they were building up their industries and ended up fighting a war with Russia and winning - the first time in modernity that a modern European nation lost to an Asian regional power. It all started with agricultural reform.

We have to remember that transportation is the key to accessing those markets, and that means we have to invest in infrastructure.

We have to find ways to stabilize the governments there. That is easier said than done but we know who the trouble-makers are.

Frankly, what is needed most in Africa are Christian missionaries. Africa is pagan and increasingly Islamic. That has to stop, the conversions (ofren forced) of people to Islam. We've got to win that fight. Christianity is one of the most civilizing things ever seen on this Earth. Islamization is always more attractive to warring pagans because it excuses or downright supports some things - multiple wives and free sex, a warrior culture that believes in taking rather than making, slavery, etc. But it is Christianity that produces a society that creates and builds and is stable not based on force. Even if our official position is "separation of church and state" it is in our interests for Africans to become Christians and not Muslims - or stay animists, killing their neighbors because they think they "bewitched" them.

We reject religion and spirituality these days because we have a national religion - a Western World religion, which is secularism. Mussolini won; the State is now the Church and "democracy" is our god. But a poor god it is. So we ignore the spiritual impulses of people and work within a materialist framework. It fails because human beings know deep down there is more than just the material. This is why our policies in places like Africa fail; we are fishing with the wrong bait.

So even if we ourselves don't believe it, there is great strategic value in promoting Christianity overseas, particularly in Africa.

At some distant point in the future Africa will be a great center of power and wealth. We can either recognize that fact now and work to shape it in a good fashion or keep pretending it won't be so and let the Chinese do the shaping. Do we really want a world shaped by the tyrants in Beijing?

Hide Comments | Add Comment