I would sujest an amazing book bby Daniel Cohen (An awsome economist) : Wealth of the World povrety of nations.
I had basically the same question on my exams last week in geopolitics. I won\'t give you the whole things but basically :
-> First globalisation which destroyed its industry because of International divison of labor (Ricardo\'s theory basically). So most africa moved on to closing up and trying self centered developpement, by developping their industry to replace importation, worked in Latin America, didn\'t in Africa for various reasons.
-> The notion of state dosn\'t existe in Africa as it exists in other countries. It\'s an artificial notion brought in by colonisation. The result is weak central powers, corruption, wars.
-> Obviously corruption is strong in Africa, mostly because of the two arguments given before. Closing up means you don\'t have a global market to rationalize your choices, as it did in singapour for example. And the fact that most African really don\'t care about their governement means it\'s easier for them to use power as a money cow.
-> Weak governement means no infrastructure, thus weak health services and education. Both important for economical growth.
-> Africa has no comparative advantage, all that Africa produces can be found elsewhere.
-> Price for \'raw material\' (don\'t know the terme in english), which Africa as plenty of, was very low for most of the XXth century and is only starting to peak up with China\'s growing demand.
-> There\'s a big probleme with urbanisation. Government remain in power so long as the cities agree to support them. So with the help of marketing boards they keep price on food low to keep the cities pretty happy. But that means farmers get paid less, and eventually they leave for the city to find more money. But cities don\'t have job and aren\'t designed to accomodate so many people. So people just end up in huge ghettos, becoming a burden on the city. It\'s a vicious cycle. Not to mention that our industrial revolution started with the countryside. But in Africa with the money beeing sucked out of the country side no industrial developpement is possible.
-> Africa is crushed by the wieght of it\'s debt.
Put all that together, and it\'s easy to understand Africa\'s underdeveloppement.
The story that I saw was the one about a hospital ship that was built near my town to be sent to Africa. It got me wondering, the fact that we\'re building hospitals to send to other countries, and the reasons why.
