Long Time No Speak

Two interesting, and very different, comments posted after this Economist article discussing the underuse of morphine in Africa:

cvitnu wrote:

again after I've met several africans who really think that all the troubles are because of the "white people" hence "white people" owe us now, I'm completely sure that the best way to deal with Africa is to ignore it. Let them live, die, whatever. It's not of my concern anymore. Because whatever you will give them, corruption and tribal conflicts will eat that, they would say "it's not enough" and would still blame you of everything. That's enough. I quit.

and (after several other worthwhile comments) Jeffrey Maganya replied:

Did you mean ignore Africa or ignore Africans (I probably would suggest you get better more informed friends… so ignore your friends. Some people in the world blame the west for contemporary African problems, many don’t. I am also sure that some of your friends may have told you there is a language called africanese. Take that with a pinch of salt too). But let’s assume you actually meant ignore Africa. You may want to ignore the following:
• The Bushveld rock complex in southern Africa Complex, which contains major deposits of strategic metals such as platinum, chromium, and vanadium which are key to high tech industrial processes;
• That almost all of the world's chromium reserves are found in Africa;
• Africa contains about 40% of the world's diamond reserves, these occur in Southern Africa; including the conflict prone DRC;
• South Africa alone contains half the world's gold reserves.
• Half of the world's cobalt is in DRC
• About one quarter of the world's aluminum ore is found in a West Africa
• And there are many undiscovered natural riches. New ones each day; Oil in western Uganda, Gold in western Kenya etc.

I will ask again. Do we ignore Africa? Do we ignore Africans? or maybe just a middle ground. We ignore you and your “African Friends”

I would add to his comment. Africa doesn't only have natural resources, though the West would have loved that — no need for colonialism; they could have just waltzed in and taken everything without worrying about the "savages" getting in the way. But thank God the continent IS full of them, keeping wealthy countries coming back for more — more investment, more business, more trade, and unfortunately, more exploitation. It's not only the West, or wealthy countries, involved in the exploiting of much of Africa's conflict minerals, mostly in the DRC. African countries, namely my beloved Rwanda and Uganda, are culpable too. Rwanda's biggest export in one recent study, cited in an article I found somewhere on Twitter, was a mineral used in electronics — a mineral plentiful in Congo.

But I digress. Africa's minerals aren't its only asset; its emerging markets are grabbing attention, as well as some of its countries' strengthening democracies. Ignoring it, Mr. cvitnu, is not only detrimental to those Africans we so often "help" and "give to" (topic for another time) but to you, too. Isolationism has never done us any good.