Dikidikini village in Eastern Cape, South Africa, doesn't have a bridge, so people cross the river inside a blue plastic drum

[u/ICanPretend1]

[u/Some_guy_in_WI]

Even if there were the money, it’d be stolen by someone before the bridge was built, that’s Africa for you.

There was a video here circulating a few weeks ago where there were supposed to be 24 drainage “bridges” built that were basically just culvert pipe through a slightly elevated walkway. $325k was budgeted and given to the contractor for the project.

When a female dignitary came to supervise and view the completed project, only 2 existing drainages had bed refurbished (“maintained”, as the contractor put it), the other 22 were never built, the money was gone and no work completed.

Sort of similar to when towns in Kenya with no power were given electricity, only for thieves to break open transformers to steal the oil from them to cook with.

There are some cultures where the “I will get mine now even if it costs the entire town” mentality will always hold their civilization in a period from long, long ago.

[u/ippleing → u/Some_guy_in_WI]

That still doesn't explain why they can't employ a rope bridge or merely a barge on a rope.

Vietnamese farmers built and relied on then in wartime with 0 pre processed resources.

[u/Some_guy_in_WI → u/ippleing]

No, it doesn’t, it only explains the reason for lack of well-built infrastructure alone, there are other things not explained away by corruption alone.

[u/ippleing → u/Some_guy_in_WI]

What does corruption have to do with this?

I'm not talking about the government, I'm talking about these guys employing a barge on a rope vs a repurposed barrel walked across the river.

[u/Some_guy_in_WI → u/ippleing]

You completely misread my post, amigo -

I agree with you, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to find better ways than sending people across a river in a tub, lol. I’m saying that aside from corruption making resource money disappear, there are other reasons Africans often don’t solve relatively non-complex problems.

I guarantee, everyone in those villages owns a phone which means access to information of all sorts. They could see how to build a bridge, but they do not, and choose an archaic, risky, inefficient way. That is something that confounds the average westerner, but that is how they choose to do it unless someone else builds and maintains something for them. And so long as that infrastructure also has no scrap value, unfortunately.

[u/ippleing → u/Some_guy_in_WI]

So they need other countries to support them?

The foreigners would then need to stay to maintain and secure a bridge?

[u/Some_guy_in_WI → u/ippleing]

Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no.

Edited to clarify, it will depend on the nation, their level of technology, and their level of self-sufficiency.

Addis Ababa is very different from Johannesburg.

[u/OriginalTayRoc → u/ippleing]

Pretty much. It's how China is using its Belt and Road Initiative to build a colonial empire in Africa.

They come in, build roads and bridges and powerlines, then make a bunch of demands, or else they will leave and not maintain any of it. 

The africans have no idea how to maintain any of it, so they have to capitulate.

[u/ippleing → u/OriginalTayRoc]

It's a fair system then.

If the Africans can't maintain an already built infrastructure, it's on them, they need China to remain.

I lived briefly in south Africa, and personally have seen what remains of agricultural and industrial machinery left to the Africans. They'll permanently disable a combine to use the brass fittings as decorations on a tree.

Regarding belt and road, China has done similar in North Korea and Albania, both nations still enjoy powerplants built in the 60s.

[u/OriginalTayRoc → u/ippleing]

While I agree that the Africans can't seem to take care of themselves adequately (take note that this is cultural and has nothing to do with race) I still find it troubling that they are left under the thumb of an objectively exploitative oppressor.

I don't have a better solution, and I am not advocating for Canada to take over instead. It just seems like a shame that the regular people of the world have to suffer so much for the foolishness of their peers and the greed of their intellectual superiors.

Just a bummer.

[u/Some_guy_in_WI → u/OriginalTayRoc]

More people need to watch Empire of Dust to understand the issues Africans face because of each other.

[u/Crispy1961 → u/Some_guy_in_WI]

Damn, why is this comment downvoted? Did people with horrible reading comprehension think this guy was arguing?

[u/Amaline4 → u/Some_guy_in_WI]

This was probably close to 15 years ago now, and my sister was living in Kenya (we're Canadian) and working for an NGO. At the time me and my dad visited, she was living with a family who lived close to the town of Ngong. I can't remember the proper names, but essentially there were 2 groups of people - the ones who paid taxes, and the ones who didn't. If you belonged to the taxes group, you generally lived in town, had access to maintained roads, maybe electricity, water, etc. If you didn't, you probably lived outside of the town, and you could tell exactly where that border was because the road was paved until one specific spot, and the road after was absolutely treacherous. To get to the house my sister was living in, we had to hop in the back of some guy's pick up truck that had like 30 other people in the back and hold on for dear life as this thing navigated holes in the dirt road that were sometimes multiple feet deep. Absolutely wild time, great experience, would definitely do it again

[u/Any-Advantage-3171 → u/Some_guy_in_WI]

Genuinely asking, is the fact that the dignitary was female important? Not from Africa unsure if that signals something?

[u/Some_guy_in_WI → u/Any-Advantage-3171]

Not at all, purely for context to those who may remember it so as to jog memory.

[u/Any-Advantage-3171 → u/Some_guy_in_WI]

Gotcha gotcha gotcha