What should be done in Africa

[All Seeing Eye]

The vast maority of Africans do not get food packages dropped on them. The vast majority of Africans are famers working already established farms.

If people want to live on farms then nobody is saying they can't, but places where people live in villages with very little farm land and who are struggling to survive will be the ones getting these towns first. How many times do we have to go over the same stuff?

 

[Miss Chicken]

You said

These new towns will be surrounded by fields of crops and everybody who lives in these towns will have to work together to tend to them. Go back to my original post and see point number

i.e that people in your towns would work farmland around these towns. Where are you going to find all this suitable farmland? Most land suitable for agriculture is already being farmed.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

You said

These new towns will be surrounded by fields of crops and everybody who lives in these towns will have to work together to tend to them. Go back to my original post and see point number

i.e that people in your towns would work farmland around these towns. Where are you going to find all this suitable farmland? Most land suitable for agriculture is already being farmed.

Why are you finding it so difficult to grasp what the idea is? these towns are primarily going to be located in the worst areas, areas where crops can be grown but where they currently aren't and where people are starving.

You said what if people want live on their own farms. If they already have their own farms somewhere then good for them, let them stay there if they want, but those people and villages where they don't are the ones who will benefit from the towns.

Once the worst areas are seen to which will probably take some time other areas could benefit from the towns but not necessarily the farmlands. If the farmland already exists then that doesn't mean local people can't benefit from a better town and standard of living. The idea for the farms on the outskirts is for the areas where there is no farmland. Rwanda clearly has plenty, they won't be the first to gain these towns but when they do the farmland part of it is not required. These towns in areas such as Rwanda will be built bit by bit on existing town and village areas.
this kind of project will take years to accomplish, but then nothing is a quickfix.

EDIT: Who the heck would want to live like this? better to demolish the place and build a new town over it. These prefab houses would suffice for the towns homes too, or even these ones here or something similar. They don't have to be super duper houses like I said before. These could come in handy as hospitals/medical centres. They're cheap affordable and cheerful but better quality and nicer to live in than what you get in shanty towns. I'm not saying use these actual particular ones, but this is basically the idea of what will be used, perhaps a little bit stronger for longer life.

 

[Miss Chicken]

Why are you finding it so difficult to grasp what the idea is? these towns are primarily going to be located in the worst areas, areas where crops can be grown but where they currently aren't and where people are starving.

Can you tell me exactly where one of the places you would build one of these towns are. Maybe you could give me an example of where you could build a 50 house town. Can you give me a list of the places in Africa where crops can be grown but aren't?

The first photo you showed this time is a shanty town in Nairobi, Kenya. You haven't mentioned shanty towns as part of your plan. There are very different problems facing people in the shanty towns in big cities than in the countryside.

Easrlier in this thread Canadave mentioned that shanty towns are a much more major problems than dwellings in the rural areas. He said

Generally speaking, small villages aren't the problem in Africa. It's possible for people to live in them more-or-less traditionally (growing their own food and such) and their standard of living can be brought up by building wells, bringing in doctors, etc.

The problem in Africa is the cities. Places like Nairobi, Cape Town, Addis Ababa, Kinshasa-Brazzaville and more all have sprawling slums and shantytowns. Conditions for the urban poor in Africa are much, much worse than the rural poor. Something needs to be done to fix the cities before anything else.

You never answered him.

Are you know saying that part of your plan is to move huge populations out of shanty towns in large cities as welll as relocating people living in villages?

I have never mentioned shanty towns so why show me a picture of one. I have been solely talking about what to do for the rural poor in Africa.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Are you know saying that part of your plan is to move huge populations out of shanty towns in large cities as welll as relocating people living in villages?

No i'm not.
Take a look at this quote:

They're cheap affordable and cheerful but better quality and nicer to live in than what you get in shanty towns.

As you can see i've not said that at all, the fact you came to that wrong conclusion means you're just completely getting your wires crossed, I said the houses will be prefab but a million times better than what you get in shanty towns, nowhere do I say I wanna uproot thousands of people from shanty towns. Misinterpretations usually happen when you rip simple ideas apart and try to make them more difficult. The Kenya picture was just an example of the kind of shit conditions people can live in and who don't have to, it's not necessarily a huge shanty town and i'm not saying I want to relocate people from shanty towns. I don't think I can be any clearer of who will be benefitting from these new towns, i've told you till i'm blue in the finger typeing it.
I think i'm going to leave this conversation be now, i'm no longer going to discuss this with someone who doesn't have a clue what i'm talking about. I don't know where you got the idea I want to relocate huge populations out of shanty towns when i've said time and time again, repeating myself over and over and over what the plan is.
I would have better luck discussing string theory with my nephew right now who is still a month away from being born. Good day.

 

[Mallory]

This sounds like one of those five year plans the Soviet Union and China were so fond of once upon a time. Forced collectivism has never worked.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

This sounds like one of those five year plans the Soviet Union and China were so fond of once upon a time. Forced collectivism has never worked.

There won't be any forced collectivism. The towns are to be built in place of crappy villages where people have no food, no water and poor sheltering. These people have no 'crops' to begin with, when they get their town and it's surrounded by freshly planted crops they might aswell work together to farm them, it's either that or nobody tends to the crops and they continue starving.

 

[Miss Chicken]

Give us an example of one specific region that you would start to build these towns in.

 

[Scout101]

pretty clear at this point that it was about broad, generic ideas, and not defending them against things like reality...

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

What should be done in Africa

I can only respond with (probably mangled) movie quotes.

"Let them die!"

"Hey, man, either kill 'em or cure 'em."

"Fuck 'em, they'll be a good example to others."

"Wipe them out, all of them."

"Free the French and shoot the Germans."

"I'm from Buenos Aires and I say 'kill 'em all'!"

"A lot." (That was from a Family Guy episode"

 

[Thespeckledkiwi]

Colonialism kind of wrecked Africa and it's going to be like this, unfortunately for a long time. We can't simply teach peace. Ask Ireland. Ask the Middle East. Ask the Balkans.

We need time. Education is always a good place to start.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Give us an example of one specific region that you would start to build these towns in.

Do I look like i'm a geography teacher? how the hell should I know which regions they would be built, that's up to the charity workers and locals to figure out not for me to figure out here and now on a Star Trek message board.
There are places in Africa where they're starving and with no farms to speak of, I know they're there in Africa but how the heck should I know where they specifically are? I know i'm very smart, intelligent and clever but i'm not omniscient.

Goodness gracious me.

 

[Miss Chicken]

So you have failed to research the viability of your plan at all. You have just made an assumption that there are suitable places somewhere in Africa but you have no idea where.

I at least have been able to name countries where such towns could not be built because of the unavailability of suitable land and I am not a geography teacher either.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

So you have failed to research the viability of your plan at all. You have just made an assumption that there are suitable places somewhere in Africa but you have no idea where.

I have done more than enough research, just because I can't name you specific regions and the names of those regions doesn't mean they don't exist dear. Who are you? the queen of Africa?
If you believe such regions don't exist then that proves you're more ignorant of Africa than just about everybody in the world.

I at least have been able to name countries where such towns could not be built because of the unavailability of suitable land and I am not a geography teacher either.

No, you're making assumptions. Have you even been to Rwanda? how do yo know for sure there isn't viable land to build? for starters I told you we can build on top of alreay existing settlements so that blows THAT arguement out of the water doesn't it.

 

[Miss Chicken]

How does building on already existing settlements create more land for farming?

No, I haven't been to Rwanda but neither have you. I do however know some of the reasons behind the genocide in Rwanda.

May I suggest you read Jared Diamond's "Collapse" in which he devotes a chapter to events in Rwanda. He especially looks at the Kanama district which is one of the most fertile regions in Rwanda and an area in which very few Tutsis live.

Despite not having a significant Tutsi population. In this region there was still massacred and about 5% of the population died. This compares to about 11% of the population for other areas of Rwanda. In this region the vast majority of deaths were related to there not being enough land to support the population.

If you believe such regions don't exist then that proves you're more ignorant of Africa than just about everybody in the world.p

Then educated me, tell me where these areas are. You obviously think you have some knowledge that I don't have - it should be easy for you to find an answer for me.

 

[cultcross]

Colonialism kind of wrecked Africa and it's going to be like this, unfortunately for a long time. We can't simply teach peace. Ask Ireland. Ask the Middle East. Ask the Balkans.

We need time. Education is always a good place to start.

Strange example - Ireland is one of the most successful ongoing diplomatic peace processes of modern times...

 

[Star Wolf]

Colonialism kind of wrecked Africa and it's going to be like this, unfortunately for a long time. We can't simply teach peace. Ask Ireland. Ask the Middle East. Ask the Balkans.

We need time. Education is always a good place to start.

Strange example - Ireland is one of the most successful ongoing diplomatic peace processes of modern times...

Well we are an instant communication society. From America I saw Irish terrorism and counter strikes as a generational process. It took from the time I became aware of the outside world as a child in the early 70s until the time I would have retired if I was a career soldier in the 90s.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

How does building on already existing settlements create more land for farming?

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!!!

Please please please re-read the thread. You've totally confused yourself. Where I said you build over the top of existing settlements you do that in areas where new farmland isn't required like Rwanda, it wasn't that many posts ago I said that and already you've forgotten and lost track of what's going on.
You're still asking questions and fetching up material that you've already said before and i've already answered. We're going around in circles here.
This discussion isn't going anywhere because it's gone as far as it possibly can. Every further post you make is repeating things discussed several pages ago.

 

[sidious618]

This is clearly not a well thought out plan.

 

[Captain Brylcream]

I'm just horrified to think that the idea to help Africa would, in fact be to build a hundred Milton Keynes'

The horror....... the horror.