Africa needs no aid because it's got AIDS?
I was inclined to title this post, "Pope enters or goes into Africa," but one has to think first deeply because some labels can associate certain contrary and unintended meanings - especially in the light of the Pope's controversial statement about Africa not needing condoms but abstinence to stem the tide of AIDS and the following related news items:
Vatican Prelate Defends Abortion for 9-Year-Old
It’s so difficult to find enough time for composing posts for regular virtual publishing when you are very busy in real life.
I think that may be the usual dilemma facing every online blogger – apart from the costs associated with establishing a 24/7 online presence, especially for residents in the developing world.
I just got paid for a small contract as a Technical Officer for an indigenous company which hopes to market imported hydrotalcite additives to the local PVC industry - hydrotalcites are the eco-friendly stabilizers that effectively replace the rather toxic-but-cheaper alternative co-plastizers based on lead and tin.
Enough rhetoric already; it’s time to get back to good old sweet blogging….
The following is an apt description of Africa currently:
[....Africa produces priests at a higher rate than anywhere in the world but finds itself in competition with Islam in Cameroon, Nigeria and elsewhere, while evangelical churches are winning over young people much as they are doing in Latin America, once a bastion of Catholicism. Some priests and nuns working with victims of the AIDS pandemic ravaging the continent are questioning the church's opposition to condoms. Celibacy required of Roman Catholic priests is a challenge on a continent where many cultures consider men boys until they have fathered children.....]
I just heard that the Pope has asked for more aid for Africa as he prepared to visit Africa. No, Great Padre, Africa does not need any aid because it is blessed with abundant natural resources.
See the related headlines and my own views below:
Pope to Africa to urge world not to forget neediest
What Africa needs is more opportunities to define its own development, independently of foreign interference and the heavy yoke of distortions left by a past of colonialism and the so-called African leaders, most of who, ironically and unfortunately, got externally educated or were trained and influenced in other lands outside their own native countries.
What opportunities? The elusive technology transfers, for example. Why keep Africa – and most of the Third World nations, come to think of it – tied down to the apron strings of the Western Allies as merely a source of cheap raw materials from the countryside?
Why is it that it is difficult for state-of-the-art manufacturing to come into existence because of non-existent funding for high-technology work, as found in the OECD countries?
Go figure that one out!
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