Africa’s Poverty and Famines: Developmental Projects of China on Africa

Abstract

Poverty exists without any face; it is a multifaceted and complex phenomenon. Poverty and famines existed before human civilization and culture. Human culture existed 0.07 million years ago, and civilization began 6000 years ago. In a modern civilized society, ‘first famine in human history occurred in 1708 B.C. From 1708 BC to 1878 AD, 350 famines occurred in various spheres of the world. The Encyclopedia Britannica listed 31 main famines from prehistoric to the 1960s. The sub-continent has also faced eleven severe famines from 1769-70 to 1943, and about 40.9 million people have died due to these famines. Similarly, more than 2 billion people live below the poverty line. Besides, China left 800 million people due to ‘Open Door Policy’. Now she is changing the world's shape through BRI. Africa is a complex and perplexing region of the world. Because, Africa is facing all the root problems of the world, i.e., poverty, massive unemployment and income inequality, mono-culture political economy, border disputes, intra-state wars, and ethnic and lingual clashes. In the land of Africa, the first famine was recorded 2273 years ago in Ethiopia’. About 2,582 languages[i] and 1,382 dialects are found on the African continent. From 1945 to 1999, humanity faced 25 interstate wars, most of which occurred in Africa. Therefore, 127 civil wars happened among 73 states in the same era, and 16.2 million people died. The Export and Import Bank of China will spend 1US$ trillion on the African continent in 2025.

[i]       Language which is speaking in Africa, Arabic (170 million) English (130 million), Swahili (100), French (115), Berber (50), Hausa (50), Portuguese (20) and Spanish (10) (Spolsky, 2018)