Forty-three of the fifty-three African nations suffer from chronic hunger and low income levels; famine and drought periodically plague large areas; mineral resources are exploited by foreign industries that take advantage of lax regulations and corrupt officials to avoid investing their profits locally, thus perpetuating weak economies and incompetent governments; people are driven to violence, ethnic conflict, and Civil War; three million children die each year from hunger and hunger-related diseases; the average life expectancy for the continent is forty-six, approximately that of the United States in 1900; and 45 percent of the population is under the age of fifteen but will never realize their productive potentials because of hunger, cholera, yellow fever, malaria, TB, polio, HIV/AIDS, and war. Nearly thirty million Africans suffer from HIV, and millions of children have been orphaned by AIDS.
Africa brings all the issues together. It is, in a way, the last frontier of unabashed exploitation and it receives that dubious honor because we have allowed ourselves to be drugged into a stupor of self-deception. We succumb to television ads hawking cheap diamonds and gold. We brag about declining prices for laptops and cell phones. We waste gasoline and complain when the prices rise. We sweep the faces of diamond and gold miners and children poisoned by oil spills under the rug of materialistic greed.
Africa cups her hands and shouts to us. It is indeed time to change.
-John Perkins, The Secret History of American Empire
