Talk:Poverty in Africa

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This article gives the impression that someone wrote it without checking any facts at all. This is an exceptionally complex subject, and what I read here does not address the complexity at all. To put, effectively "it's all about population" in the intro is verging on theinsulting.

These topics should at least be mentioned: War; First world pressure to grow cash crops; debt, and debt relief; first world trading practices; climate change; colonial legacy; AIDS.

Some questions that we need to ask:

• If overpopulation is the problem, why isn't AIDS making things better (don't really answer that, it's rhetorical)
• In how much of Africa is land owned primarily by a small number of wealthy;
• If land is owned by the wealthy does this really cause poverty? (Hello! South Africa! Zimbabwe before and after land reform!)

Lets get some facts and figures in this article. Even the good bits are generalisations. DJ Clayworth 03:15, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sorry guys. I've calmed down a bit now. I'm not going to remove what I wrote, but I do understand that we can't write a detailed survey of a very complex subject all at once. DJ Clayworth 03:19, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I've been working on and off on this for about a week, and your right that all of those topics require further exposition. I did mention some in the main article on Africa. The bit on overpopulation at the top was put in before I got to this. I'm not a big fan of the theory that overpopulation brings poverty.

AIDS is a double edged sword, and it's effect on poverty may be negligible. It really hasn't affected Africa's population - it's still growing faster than any other region despite the high infection rate. That's primarily because the bulk of Africa's population is very young and not in its peak AIDS exposure years. That reminds me - we should add something about life expectancy - ironically low life expectancy usually leads to overpopulation. --SteveHFish 18:05, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure that's true - I think what leads to overpoulation is increasing life expectancy. i.e. if this generation of parents have ten children (say) because they expect eight to die, and only six actually die. DJ Clayworth 16:07, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

An unidentified user erased the whole thing, so I cut & paste from the previous revision. I hope everyone agrees that was the right thing to do! I wish I had had more time to work on this recently - it definitely needs more help and I would welcome any changes. --SteveHFish 03:20, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I understand your point about the population, but AIDS is having a big effect on poverty. The main casualties are the working and parenting age groups, which means a huge increase in orphans (orphans are almost invariably poor, even by African standards). DJ Clayworth 16:07, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Economy of Africa

It seems to me that at minimum, this article needs close coordination with Economy of Africa (and maybe Economic history of Africa). Maybe it would even be better to redirect the page to Economy of Africa for the time being, and focus on developing that article (the page could be reinstated later if the content is there to justify it). Rd232 11:55, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This article was started as a request found at the systemic bias board. The justification was that there is an article for Poverty in the United States, but none for Poverty in Africa. As such, I don't think it would be appropriate to merge it with Economy of Africa, where the subject can't be dealt with as fully. There should be a reference there however. As I've said before, this is a subject that needs a lot of work and, although I've been trying, I haven't had much chance to work on it. However, as a broad outline, we should approach the work as follows: - Scope (how bad is the problem) - Causes (why is poverty so bad in Africa now, and why is it so widespread over the continent) - Solutions (proposed ways to reduce the incidence of poverty) --SteveHFish 1 July 2005 16:49 (UTC)

[edit] Overpopulation

I replaced the following: "For example, Lagos, Nigeria was a town of 40,000 in the early 1960s. Now, it is home to over 13 million people." Lagos is the name of both a city and a state in Nigeria. The population estimates of 13 million are for the whole state. I replaced the text with a cited statement about urban vs. national population growth in Nigeria. --Pastafarian Nights 02:25, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Apparently, I was wrong.. the estimates of 13 million are indeed for the city. Crud. The original statement reads much better, but is unsourced. I'm going to leave it as is for the time being, until I find a single source that cites the whole range of current estimates for the city's population (10-15 million).--Pastafarian Nights 03:02, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Deleted "This was a factor in the Ethiopian famines during the 1980s." (referring to urban overpopulation). While looking for sources to support the statement, I found one that contradicts it.[1]

[edit] Cleanup tag

Comparing the artcle with what it was when it was tagged shows tht it HAS cleanued up, and as it's undergoing the work of active editors, i'll remove the tag. Great work everyone! -- ∞Wirelain 16:15, 15 June 2006 (UTC)