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Comment by merelydev | Hacker News Reader

> The main culprit of poverty in Africa (and other countries) is the widespread corruption. The main culprit of poverty in Africa (and other countries) is the widespread corruption.

I disagree with this. The core culprit is that most people in Africa depend on the government, most are employed by it. So effectively the government is just taxing itself with no new money coming in. The solution is a revolution in SMEs, the entrepreneurial spirit and a large private sector. Basically more decentralization.

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>The core culprit is that most people in Africa depend on the government, most are employed by it.

Just curious. What nations are you talking about when you say that "most people in Africa depend on the government"?

Only asking because this has not been my experience at all!

In fact I would say that most people in every nation I visited was dependent on themselves, their family and whatever support they could get from their larger clan. Poverty was rampant. Most of the middle class had clawed their way to that height through creating some kind of business. The degree to which these economies were dependent on remittances was alarming in my uneducated view. I would say far less than .5% of the people I interacted with had a government paycheck or even a government benefit coming in.

That said, I've never been to the wealthier nations like South Africa or Morocco or what have you. Maybe it's different in those places?

I realize now that I phrased it wrong, I should have said the largest employers are the government, with very little private companies. At least in my country (Namibia) this is true. Unemployment is high because the youth is waiting for the government to create jobs.

Ah.

Namibia is relatively wealthy.

I've never been to Namibia. (Never been to any SADC nations actually). But I can assure you, other nations don't work like Namibia. In a lot of other African nations, government can be the largest employer and still provide jobs for less than a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the people. The rest of the people will be completely on their own. These people scratch and struggle for whatever they can get. It's not at all like Namibia from what you're saying.

Most are employed by the government because there's no substantial business activity in those countries. Every successful business gets robbed by both the government and gangsters.

Only menial businesses like supermarkets exist in those countries (people have to eat no matter how corrupt a country is).

As soon as an entrepreneur becomes successful and makes healthy profits they'll get raided by leeches. Usually they'll have to pay government officials for "protection" and politicians demand that their family members become part of the Board or management enabling them to pilfer the company's wealth even further.

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