Our genius at work again: You improve the conditions of third world country by doing the same thing we've been doing for almost 50 years now?
Most African countries had much higher economic growth from the 40's to the 80's than now. The average economic growth for Subsaharan Africa was around 1% around this time, which wasn't a lot (South Korea reached for some decades a growth of 10% or more on average) , but this is considered healthy growth. It's quite ironic that colonialization was still quite fresh then and racism much worse around the world, yet their growth was much bigger then. The claim that waycism and colonialization is the problem is debunked by this fact alone. With the Washington Consensus, a lot of foreign aid was sent to African countries, which actually made many leaders even more corrupt. Furthermore the IMF started to restrict how high tariffs can be (let's just ignore that the British Empire and the USA used tariffs themselves to build up industry and not be overburdend with foreign products), this caused many industries in Africa to collapse since the Western products were often more advanced and cheaper. Less industry, of course, meant that African countries became even more dependent on foreign aid and forein products. Some African countries' were put back several decades of economig growth just because of the mentality that "we have to help the darkies!". The same thing happened also in other parts of the world, for example in former Soviet countries and South America (Mexico was one of the fastest growing economy in the world until the 80s). Greece was a very healthy country with one of the lowest amount of debt. Then they joined the EU and we all know what happened within 20 years.
What was different then? No Washington Consensus, almost no foreign aid, countries were able to put tariffs how they wanted and in general countries like the USA didn't interfere when a warlord got in power or any other social problem occured. This was also the time when many African leaders tried to develop their industry, and this is the secret. What made most countries rich was building industry, not selling natural resources like shellfish. Countries like Switzerland and Singapore aren't rich because of Nazi gold in banks or becaus tehy are tax havens, but by having the highest amount of small and medium companies proportional to their country size in the entire world. The markets of both countries are quite free, but they aren't the free market paradises neoliberals think they are. Singapore has a big public sector and also has socialized housing, Switzerland had a very strong pro-capitalist left and right that helped economic growth, while not wrecking the working class (things changed now, the left talks here about gender neutral bathrooms as well now) . Both countries are much more "nazbol" than neoliberal tax havens.
How did South Korea get so rich? Well, the military dictatorship pushed a lot of money in certain companies (like Samsung, which was solding things like shellfish at that time and not high-tech products), put high tariffs on things they wanted to produce themselves (for examples steel). With the revenue the companies were able to improve their technology until they were ready to compete in the free market. Most state owned companies were sooner or later privatized. South Korea was basically the nightmare for any neoliberal economist and they can be glad that the Western influence was still small at that time. Today neoliberals would argue that South Korea needs to stop making tariffs so high and "do what they do best", which meant selling shellfish. Leftists, of course, would talk about the brutal colonialization of South Korea and how this is the reason why South Korea is poor.
It was similiar for Japan. Toyota started as a state enterprise and they actually tried very early to export their cars. The problem was that they were terrible and nobody wanted to buy them. Economists at that time told Japan that they should stop and do what they can do best (which meant again selling natural resources). Japan, however, did something different: They stopped trying to export their cars and instad increased the tariffs on foreign cars, which forced a lot of Japanese people to buy shitty Japanese cars. With the revenue the Japanese car industry was able to advance its technology and improve the cars. Some decades later Japanese car companies were on par with Western car companies and entered this time the free market successfully.
Even the USA and the Britih Empire used a lot of tariffs to get their industry going. Hamilton was a big supporter of tariffs and wanted to incrase the number of American business, especially in the textil industry at that time. Hamilton was such a patriot that he even refused to wear clothes that weren't produced in the USA.
I'm not claiming that Africa would be a rich continent now if things would have been done differently. But even Racists who think that Africans are just dumb nigs should be able to realize that even in Africa there are many bright minds that could lead the countries. For most basic jobs you don't need to be a genius to begin with. Furthermore most countries got rich by using state power, which causes other unique problems as well, as we see now in the West (where companies and the state are almost indistinguishable now) .
