Talk:Africa/Archive 3

message: "great instability, however, was mainly the result of marginalization of other ethnic groups and graft under these leaders"
What? This statement smacks of ridiculous and historically inaccurate assertions. African leaders CAUSED instability of many African states due to the marginalization of OTHER ethnic groups? This makes absolutely no sense, and appears to blame Africans for the state they are in. Someone clearly wrote that the scrable for Africa by European states resulted in instability, and this statement is clearly a contradiction and should be either edited or removed.
The "graft" part may have more credibility but still seems to need more historical fact, even under this section. - NickSmith2007
:The passage quoted is talking about postcolonial Africa. It seems to be talking about leaders from one ethnic group marginalizing people from other ethnic groups. Did this not happen? Certainly, the article should not blame anyone for instability in Africa, which would be an opinion, but merely report facts. We can, of course, report opinions from notable researchers on the subject, if we can do it in an informative way. - Nat Krause 07:30, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  What? 

message: Africa was the poorest region on earth in the pre-independence period and had the lowest levels of investment. The article seems to imply that the lack of wealth is due to the actions of incompetent/corrupt governments even though the economic argument is against that point of view. For example, without the energy generation capacity to enable their exploitation, natural resources do not   help a nation's wealth very much. Additionally the import substitution strategies that the wealthy economies used to help their development are not available to African governments. The poverty helps fuel corruption as people feel there is not enough to go around and of course that then worsens things further. Rather than the cause of Africa's poverty, the corruption and mismanagment is an effect. I have not made a change yet as I would like some opinions/discussion first as this is my first contribution. Sez who 03:26, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a very hard to argument to maintain. Some African economies post independence had very good runs of growth (e.g. Cote D'Ivoire which grew annually at 6-8% 1960 to 1985). But when these economies went wrong it was almost always down to issues of government not poverty. Also the comment on natural resources is hard to maintain. Nigeria has an income of many billions from oil but it does not trickle down well. --BozMo|talk 09:20, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cause and effect in African economies 

message: But in the Russian version of this page there is a freakin' gigantic map.  I don't know if it is really necessary to use up all that space.  It does look good though :)
:Thanx for informing us. I fixed it (no more than 300px).-- Svest 17:02, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Off Topic on what you guys were talking about... 

message: There was recently a change to Commonwealth English, which was promptly changed back to American spellings. It would seem to me that the former should be preferred here. Most African countries that have English as an official language have British colonization/-sation in their past, and use British spellings. Liberia may be the only African nation to prefer American spellings, though I don't know if that's true one way or the other. Before we change back to BrE, though, I wanted to see if anyone has any objections, and if so, why. --BrianSmithson 15:30, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I didn't exactly call for a poll; I just asked for any objectors to speak up. In other words: They started it. :P --BrianSmithson 12:58, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Hey there: soliciting feedback and reaching or IDing consensus is at the heart of Wp.  All the power to you! :) E Pluribus Anthony 16:56, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Commonwealth vs. American spelling 

message: See Wikipedia:Bounty_board#An_African_country. I've thought for a while now that I should chip in a bit to the upkeep of the Wikipedia servers, and the new "Bounty Board" system seems a good way to do this while also creating a small incentive for editors to work on Africa country articles. I've pledged £15 (~US $25) to be donated to the Wikimedia Foundation for the next Featured Article on an African country. Currently we only have South Africa, so I'm hoping someone will take me up on this. Also, if anyone else wants to commit a little to increase this bounty, please feel free! — Matt Crypto 16:22, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That sounds great, when do we push for another african country and which one?--Jcw69 17:27, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bounty for Africa country article 

message: Specifically AIDS and corruption, both of which NGO's and news agencies report on all the time as having the potential to wipe out masses of people? The fact is you can't talk about Africa these days without bringing in these topics or them being relevant somehow, so I find it strange that this wiki article completely avoids them. People wanting to get a real sense of what the social situation in Africa should be apprised of this if this wiki article is to be at all relevant to Africa in any way that really matters. --Atrahasis 05:52, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why is there no mention of Africa's persisting problems? 

message: It seems that both the Africa and Europe articles lay claim to second most populous continent.  Which is it? Smmurphy 22:55, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Population 

message: I've nominated Africus for COTW. I did this because I felt that the Roman god who is directly responsible for the name of one of our present-time continents deserves more than two lines for his article. If you would like to support, please go to its COTW page and write your name down on the support list. -- SoothingR(pour) 15:51, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Africus for COTW

message: I did not add further links to my comments in October because I am used to thinking of certain issues in my professional capacity rather than in a more generalist way. 1) I stated that African economies were as an average the poorest on earth before independence See: The State of Africa by Martin Meredith either the introduction or the index provides a brief guide to gdp sources. 2) There seems a mistaken perception that natural resources bring wealth unless grossly mismanaged as in "Despite a vast array of natural resources, Xland remains mired in poverty..". Even though it seems counterintuitive, it doesn't work that way. See: Outgrowing Resource Dependence by Will Martin (2002) then simply put "resource dependence"  and "Dutch disease" into your search engine and enjoy (ignore the organisations and their environments articles). 3)Nigeria's oil revenue figures are available and yes the political system is   phenomenally corrupt. Saying that, the amounts involved couldn't run our local municipal services let alone the whole country.  See: ias.berkeley.edu/africa/Events/OilHR/Nigeria%20Factsheet.pdf. 4) This is too long already so I'll wait for a response. Sez who 20:07, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  African Economies 

message: I proposed the article for semi-protection feel free to support or oppose the request there. ---moyogo 18:50, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  semi-protection 

message: Until recently the article stated that "Egypt was considered part of Asia by the ancients, and first assigned to Africa by Ptolemy". This was recently replaced by an anonymous contributor who created the alternative assertion that "Ancient Africa extended into what is now known as Asia". Both these statements are, I think, misleading. "Africa" originally referred to an area to the west of Egypt and "Asia" originally referred to Anatolia and eastwards. Egypt and the Levant were not in either "continent", nor were the continents clearly defined in the modern sense. Both statements have elements of truth. It's true that Egypt was not originally part of "Africa" and it's true that no dividing line existed between what we now call "Asia" and "Africa". But it would be as true to say "Ancient Asia extended into what is now known as Africa" as to say the opposite. Implying that "Africa" was the concept that "extended" has POV implications. This is all about whether Egypt is considered "African" or not - a modern obsession to do with ideas about differentiating Arabic/Islamic and African/Black identity. It really has little to do with the realities of ancient models of geography. Paul B 15:51, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've just checked up on this and have qualified my alterations. It seems that the original sentence was more accurate, but needed expansion. The point is that Greek terminology uses "Asia" as roughly synonymous with the Persian empire. There is no land-break between Anatolia, Palestine and Egypt, and from the Greek point of view there was a broadly continuous flow of countries to their east and south, encompassed by the term Asia. Of course this also means that Ethiopia would have been vaguely "Asian" too in this mind-set, but I doubt that there was any clear definition of the terminology. Paul B 16:32, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Africa / Asia 

message: Today I created the article Congo (region) mainly because I felt that it was missing from Template:Regions of the world. Only afterwards did I discover that Congo already exists, but that this article seems to restrict itself to dealing solely with the two Congos, and not the wider, vaguer subregion. What is the preferred option now: should Congo me merged with Congo (region) and redirect to Congo (disambiguation) instead? Please have your say here. Thanks.
And a related issue: I would argue that the UN designation Middle Africa - which currently redirects to Central Africa - is the least ambiguous name for the region, as listed at Template:Africa, just like Southern Africa is used to effectively disambiguate from South Africa. Please respond here. Thanks! // Big Adamsky  • BA's talk page 10:59, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Nomenclature: ''Congo Region'' and ''Middle Africa''

message: I'm going to go ahead and delete this section under history of Africa.  Currently all it states is that China is investing more money these days into certain African countries in order to gain natural resources and then lists the countries that China is investing in.  This is TOTALLY inappropriate for a section on modern history and is completely random.  Why was China even mentioned?  If theres to be a section on which African countries being invested in by China then there has to be a section for which countries are being invested in by every other country which would be ridiculous.  --The Way 18:50, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Modern Africa 

message: I have removed the content in this section, which read:
:In the mid nineteenth century European and particularly British explorers became interested in exploring the heart of the continent and opening the area for trade, mining and other commercial exploitation. In addition, there was a desire to convert the inhabitants to Christianity. The central area of Africa was still largely unknown to Europeans at this time.  David Livingstone explored the continent between 1852 and his death in 1873, amongst other claims to fame, he was the first European to see the Victoria Falls. A prime goal for explorers was to locate the source of the River Nile. Expeditions by Burton and Speke (1857-1858) and Speke and Grant (1863) located Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria. The latter was eventually proven as the source of the Nile. With subsequent expeditions by Baker and Stanley, Africa was well explored by the end of the century and this was to lead the way for the colonisation which followed.
That doesn't seem particularly relevant, so I have replaced it with a stub more closely focused on pre-colonial political structures. Humansdorpie 15:32, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not relevant under the politics header, but it is certainly relevant to Africa, fairly well written, and not terribly objectionable as far as I can tell.  I think it should be reinserted under a more appropriate header, like "Precolonial exploration", this could be created as a subheader of History, which needs a subheader... ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 15:42, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done: I thought someone might find a home for it if I dumped it here - Humansdorpie 16:11, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As an African, I have a problem with the general notions of explorers, exploration and discovery. I take offense to being considered almost like a lost animal species, that was discovered by the mighty Europeans. And even the notion of lost animal species in Africa, is problematic. Because the simple fact of claiming that an animal species was discovered, implies that the animal had no prior encounter with humans. Similarly, the fact that History sources has a tendency to claim discovery of Africa, gives me the impression that those sources claim that we Africans were not humans, until we were "discovered" by Europeans; because were we humans, the implication would be that they were not the first humans there, therefore it was an encounter, not a heroic discovery, right? Just a thought. Themalau 19:20, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pre-colonial politics 

message: Africa was recently nominated to be promoted to good article status, but has unfortunately failed. Reasons for failing GA:
# Add "References" - these are required to pass
# Use Inline Citation to link sources of information
# Cut down on "External Links" - too many to be useful
# List "URL Accessed date" on all website links, to show users whether websites are still active
# Remove unnecessary templates at the bottom, the three bottom boxes could be synthesized into 2 or even 1 box
This article is close to completion but the bottom section is so poor that it brings down the whole article Highway 07:11, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Failed GA 

message: I just removed the  tag on the top of the article.  On 25 April,   added the  tag was put on and four days later replaced with the failedGA, apparently after single-person review.  Does anyone feel that this has added value to this talk or the article?  It is readily apparent to me that this article is not feature-quality, and the to-do list at the top of this page that has been around for months actually gives actionable information.  I admit to having thought that Wikipedia:Good articles was a neat idea originally, but after seeing this proposed policy in action for a bit I just find it distracting.  Thoughts (besides that I should be worrying about something besides this)? - BanyanTree 04:16, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The tags indicating GA nomination and failure aren't important to me. I nominated the article, but bowed out after I saw the dispute tag on the article page. Of the two to-do lists at the top of this page, the list under "Failed GA" is shorter and seems manageable, but I didn't want to bother if issues were under dispute. The GA system in general seems like a good idea to me. Maurreen 02:22, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for your response.  I had actually completely missed the #Failed GA section that was added under the TOC.  I am still baffled by why general points in a new section would be considered  better than updating and adding to the pre-existing to-do list, which points at specific areas of concern, but I appreciate that the GA folk's intentions are good.  - BanyanTree 03:20, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand your puzzlement. I initially missed the #Failed GA section myself. I saw the main list and thought that was too much for just GA. Maurreen 03:28, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  GA tags 

message: I think the main image people have about Africa (including me before taliking to a friend from Congo) is a quite wrong. I used to see Africa as a country with barely any technological development, like electricity, internet... Maybe this is the main missunderstanding and that should be fixed first of all. Any comment on that ? (answer at cyril.holweck at free.fr) CyrilHolweck 19:58, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Main idea of other continent's people about Africa