Make poverty YOUR responsibility ???!?!???

[wendigo100]

I give less and less to charity these days.

This is because the chancellor extracts more money and makes my donations for me.

[NamesFacesPlaces]

"Won't the Africans just compete with us ???? take our jobs .... our opportunities ... our dominance away ?"

The greatest leaps forward in the wealth of nations have been when trade barriers have been taken down. Everybody has benefitted.

All food that Africa produces has a 200% tariff imposed on it when it comes into the EU to protect the EU farmers and the Common Agricultural Policy.

As a result we are paying more for food than we should.

They don't actually give the extra money to the African farmers, the EU keeps it themselves.

That means when we buy any African produce, two-thirds of the basic money is going to the EU.

That's ridiculous.

There's no tariff on raw materials from Africa but there is on manufactore goods. In other words we can buy the raw materials for microchips from them but they would be priced out of selling microchips to us.

So, what happens is that we get the raw materials from them and sell them back the added value manufactured item.

If we allowed the Afrricans to trade freely with us that would solve all their problems.

After all that is capitalism. Trade barriers are anti-capitalist.

Poverty would go if we had free trade.

However, it is fixed interests like the French farmers and the manufacturers who want the barriers kept in place.

Poverty comes as a result of our policies.

We much prefer to take their tariff money - and then generously give them aid.

[dodgy]

I bought 1kg of Fairtrade sugar from Tesco's yesterday, 30p more expensive, but in my small way the sugar farmers of Malawi are better off.

[NamesFacesPlaces]

Yes, but a lot of the money was going to the EU.

Malawi farmers can produce sugar far more cheaply than EU farmers - so it should be much cheaper.

This is a scandal and is the reason for African poverty.

[wobbegong]

I bought 1kg of Fairtrade sugar from Tesco's yesterday, 30p more expensive,

Guilt tax? As NFP says, it should be cheaper.

[dodgy]

How does the EU get involved in sugar from Malawi? They may add on a tariff, but they do that with lots of things.

Bought directly from the farmers at fair prices according to the packaging. Obviously its New Labour spin (not) but I believe it and can drink my tea + 1 sugar with a clear conscience

[ChicoLondon]

NameFacesPlaces

Well put - the multinationals have a lot to answer for. Reading African history one thing becomes clear - the Africans were very welcoming to all and were open about their natural resources and the willingness to engage with the Europeans. This trust in their fellow humans was misplaced; they were exploited, manipulated and killed in return for exceptional riches. So essentially I agree that Make Poverty History is about justice. Justice for the economically oppressed Africans, justice against the corrupt leader aided and abetted by large multi-nationals in exchange for lucrative contracts, justice against the developed countries who arm these corrupt leaders... Justice pure and simple.

[BobTheCrate]

So Names Faces Places,

Am I correct that under the African banner, you now advocate free trade ? For example that we should now allow as many migrant workers to come to the UK as our employers want ? So that they can compete against our own workforce on the basis of skills and wage. This in the now all of a sudden worthy name of eradicating trading barriers.

And let's not try to prevent or condemn companies that wish to move abroad either inorder to employ vastly cheaper labour. To do so would be anti-capitalist as well of course. Maybe if we ditched our public services, both national and local we'd then be able to compete fairly without the need for tariffs.

Free trade with Africa will in my unqualified opinion adversely hit EU commerce. Some industries harder than others, agriculture for example. The effects on the west is a topic all of its own. But you make the monumentally sweeping statement that such free trade will eradicate African poverty. It won't, it won't make an iotas worth of difference to the poor in Africa. It will certainly elevate the industrial and ruling elite in Africa. They would undoubtedly make the kinds of profits that would make Abramovich look like a toilet attendent.

But your belief that this would filter down to the poorest in Africa to any noticable degree is a triumph of hope over experience and largely baseless. African farmers for example under their newly realised markets, would see their land rents increased ten or twenty fold. Trading licenses would go up in multiples of 100. Export licenses and taxes would mushroom. The ruling elite would squeeze near on all the benefits out of them.

Africa as a continent is self sufficient in food, energy and most raw materials. Africa doesn't even need trade with the west for its member countries to lift their poorest out of poverty. The African market is big enough to support them all; or at least big enough to eradicate the worst of its own poverty.

But the reason it doesn't is the very same reason that free trade, debt relief and aid also doesn't, hasn't and won't work. Because it isn't in the interests of the industrial and ruling elite within Africa.

Don't take my word for it. Listen to the Africans in Africa. They will tell you much the same. It is the leaders, the industrial and ruling elite that oppress them the most.

[ChicoLondon]

It is the leaders, the industrial and ruling elite that oppress them the most.

... aided and abetted by multinationals, swiss banks, some developed countries. Africa problems are not all of Africa's making.

Read this speech from Dr. Martin Luther King back in 1957.

Speech on Africa

[BobTheCrate]

"Africa problems are not all of Africa's making"
- What's that got to do with it ? Britain's problems are not all of Britain's making. Your problems are not all of your making. The solution invariably does not lay in the hands of those 'accused' of creating the problems.

If you want to concentrate your efforts on blaming the West, whether it be multi-nationals, Swiss knomes, Christian pilgrims fresh from burning Pagans alive at the stake, or Arabs that ran much of the slave trade (a fact Luther King omitts to acknowledge) you're not going to even start dealing with the dreadful poverty suffered not by Africa but by oppressed African peoples.

How is arguing about what 'he', 'she' or 'they' did (or didn't do) many decades ago going to address the greed and dominating nature of the African ruling elite. They who have not the slightest qualms about letting half their peoples starve to death whilst they live in the lap of highest luxury found anywhere in the world. Comforting themselves as they see you blame westerners from a hundred years ago for what is going on now.