Infrastructure Breakdown? I'll Show You An Entire Continent w/ Infrastructure Breakdown
Power failures are sweeping across post-colonial Africa, from South Africa to Zambia to Zimbabwe and beyond. The entire power grid of the Central African Republic has gone down from lack of maintenance.
Sub-Saharan Africa is suited to a more decentralised approach to power. With small, decentralised power plants, infrastructure breakdowns only affect limited areas--not the entire country. Maintenance of a high technology infrastructure is beyond large portions of the third world--including most of Subsaharan Africa. The same problem crops up in tribal areas of Asia and South America, but is not quite as bad. Unfortunately, urbanisation is sweeping across most parts of the world, bringing the need for central power generation stations and power grids. It may be an insoluble problem.
Maintenance technicians and supervisors for the repair and upkeep of sophisticated power systems, need to be both intelligent and experienced. In much of the third world, such jobs are often given out as political rewards to cronies of powerful government officials. Maintenance is regarded in the third world with much the same disdain that many college educated persons in the west regard skilled manual labour. Maintenance funds are either not allocated, or are skimmed away by government bureaucrats. In the third world, maintenance just doesn't get done. And systems inevitably fail.
It would be bad enough just dealing with corruption, poor planning, lack of maintenance, and general neglect. But the third world often has to deal with rampant violence created by "youth bulge demographics." This is the fatal blow to infrastructure and national integrity.
Why is so much of the third world going backwards, so long after de-colonisation? Something similar happened in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, during the Dark Ages. But Europe was actually re-organising and re-tooling for a more complex world. A lot of things that happened during the European "Dark Ages" were not so dark at all. Africa seems to be doing the opposite.
Foreign aid projects, NGO projects, UN projects, etc. seem to do as much good in Africa as they do in Gaza and the West Bank. The resources simply get swallowed up and disappear.
It is said that a high technology infrastructure is impossible to maintain when the average IQ of a population is below 85 (in the absence of a significant market dominant minority). The average IQ of SubSaharan Africa consistently measures close to 70, or 75 at most. IQ is not enough, of course. In China, where corruption is rampant, infrastructure collapse can happen too. In Detroit, where city government corruption is a way of life, maintaining the infrastructure is a daily battle.
But if you have both low IQ and corruption--with no market dominant minority--forget about it. It is not going to happen. Build as much as you want, it will surely crumble without maintenance.
Perhaps improved nutrition and education will shift the IQ curve upward by as much as 10 points. After 2 or 3 more generations. Should the intervention be done? Of course! Grandchildren and great-granchildren of today's Africans may benefit.
But understand that technologies should be matched to the population being served. Anything else on the part of aid providers is criminal.
Over half a century of poor maintenance and neglect, the power grid of the Central African Republic has collapsed. The capital has gone dark. Two nearby hydroelectric power stations, which provide most of the nation's electricity, have failed from years of neglect. The government is calling on foreign aid donors to fly in generators for hospitals and other essential services. Generators that have been brought in previously have not been maintained, and wear out quickly. This is not an exceptional event, for colonial era infrastructure, from roads to power plants, are collapsing from decades of post-independence neglect. This causes more unrest, as factions battle for a dwindling supply of resources.This is an unfortunate but commonplace situation for much of Africa. Through corruption, poor planning, and non-existent maintenance, power grids across Africa are overloading and failing.
Sub-Saharan Africa is suited to a more decentralised approach to power. With small, decentralised power plants, infrastructure breakdowns only affect limited areas--not the entire country. Maintenance of a high technology infrastructure is beyond large portions of the third world--including most of Subsaharan Africa. The same problem crops up in tribal areas of Asia and South America, but is not quite as bad. Unfortunately, urbanisation is sweeping across most parts of the world, bringing the need for central power generation stations and power grids. It may be an insoluble problem.
Maintenance technicians and supervisors for the repair and upkeep of sophisticated power systems, need to be both intelligent and experienced. In much of the third world, such jobs are often given out as political rewards to cronies of powerful government officials. Maintenance is regarded in the third world with much the same disdain that many college educated persons in the west regard skilled manual labour. Maintenance funds are either not allocated, or are skimmed away by government bureaucrats. In the third world, maintenance just doesn't get done. And systems inevitably fail.
It would be bad enough just dealing with corruption, poor planning, lack of maintenance, and general neglect. But the third world often has to deal with rampant violence created by "youth bulge demographics." This is the fatal blow to infrastructure and national integrity.
Why is so much of the third world going backwards, so long after de-colonisation? Something similar happened in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, during the Dark Ages. But Europe was actually re-organising and re-tooling for a more complex world. A lot of things that happened during the European "Dark Ages" were not so dark at all. Africa seems to be doing the opposite.
Foreign aid projects, NGO projects, UN projects, etc. seem to do as much good in Africa as they do in Gaza and the West Bank. The resources simply get swallowed up and disappear.
It is said that a high technology infrastructure is impossible to maintain when the average IQ of a population is below 85 (in the absence of a significant market dominant minority). The average IQ of SubSaharan Africa consistently measures close to 70, or 75 at most. IQ is not enough, of course. In China, where corruption is rampant, infrastructure collapse can happen too. In Detroit, where city government corruption is a way of life, maintaining the infrastructure is a daily battle.
But if you have both low IQ and corruption--with no market dominant minority--forget about it. It is not going to happen. Build as much as you want, it will surely crumble without maintenance.
Perhaps improved nutrition and education will shift the IQ curve upward by as much as 10 points. After 2 or 3 more generations. Should the intervention be done? Of course! Grandchildren and great-granchildren of today's Africans may benefit.
But understand that technologies should be matched to the population being served. Anything else on the part of aid providers is criminal.
Labels: Africa, coming anarchy, dark ages
posted by al fin at 6:01 pm
3 Comments:
Interesting that the authors of the IQ thesis concluded that the competent had a moral duty to aid the less competent, but not necessarily that aid should match the level of competence.
The one area Africa will not achieve competence is government, so should the West assist the Africans to return to tribalism which matches their level of competence to govern effectively?
The West is not the only important outside player in Africa. China, oil states, the Islamic religion, India, . . .
Competent African government is an oxymoron. But with the assistance of market dominant minorities who trade competence for resources and wealth, the continent can hobble through.
China is not averse to dealing with bloody tyrants or to supplying its friends with all the weapons they want in exchange for hard assets.
No one expects China to act in a moral manner, or to concern itself with peripheral outcomes not its own.
While the big hydro projects get the press, both China and India have been investigating and developing "micro hydro" projects for rural markets (not really a great term - micro conjures up the image of personal scale water wheel like generators whereas these would be village scale damns). They don't demand the same degree of maintenance staff education - more mechanics, fewer engineers - and since they function on more local levels they might be more accountable than the larger state bureaucracy.
You are right that neither China nor India is interested in a campaign of altruism in Africa (well, there is some altruism involved on the part of some - especially at the research level) but in addition to resources, and political support, they also hope to expand markets and that requires infrastructure development.
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