THE OBAMA VISIT to africa is really a big deal, something your grandchildren may read about in history books, or on history kindles, or maybe even on the history portion of the microchip embedded in their temples. whatever works.
Obama's brief visit to south africa was really dramatic; while nelson mandela lies on his death bed in south africa, an african american president gives a speech at the location where mandela was imprisoned for decades. nelson mandela will be on your grandchildren's history chip, as one of the most important leaders of the late twentieth century.
Obama made some good comments about home grown african prosperity being preferrable to foreign aid, and you could almost hear yourself going "duh, why didn't we think of that decads ago, and do it right in the first place?"
if an american company builds an infrastructure for, say, electrical power in some african community, runs it, makes a profit, and those profits go to amrican owners, then, well, african community might well be better off to have electrical power, but I'm sure we can all imagine an even greater benefit to african community which owns, operates, and keeps profits for electrical infrastructure in african community.
it may be, that over the past several decades, the foreign aid from the western world to africa has consisted mainly in the form of investment and grants, and the foreign investment has been structured towards foreign profits and the grants have been unstructured, and that little good has thereby been done.
what africa needs is foreign investment in africa made for the primary purpose of helping africa. That's what's been lacking for the last few decades.
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