Burkina Faso says no to Bill Gates’ plan of creating modified species of mosquitoes

[u/lurker_bee]

https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/lifestyle/burkina-faso-says-no-to-bill-gates-plan-of-creating-modified-species-of-mosquitoes/xyk7xm8

[u/TXDobber]

The lecture is usually something like stop allowing gay people to be the victims of pogroms, stop engaging in rampant corruption that leaves your country stagnant, stop pocketing the money you make from resource extraction and start reinvesting into your domestic economy.

But what do you expect from tinpot African leaders who have been in power for decades, who wish to have their holiday to Europe, their Ferraris, send their kids to university in England, and to still be allowed to rule as lords over their citizens who remain little more than peasants.

[u/MuyalHix → u/TXDobber]

The lecture is usually something like stop allowing gay people to be the victims of pogroms...

All of that goes out the window when the west actually does something in Africa.

Almost all history of Africa has been the west imposing a dictator that was economically aligned with them, no matter how homophobic and authoritarian they are.

Or even worse, they completely fuck up the region without any clear vision of what to do next (like in Libya).

[u/TXDobber → u/MuyalHix]

Ah yes, it was the west who forced those gay people to get killed, it was the west who forced those Islamists to form sharia courts in northern Nigeria. It was the west who forced them to engage in no democracy, to kill or jail their political opponents, to blatantly make corrupt deals to enrich themselves, all things forced upon them by the west. it was the west who now forces thousands upon thousands of subsaharan African men to flee their countries to go work in the west.

At some point, African leaders are gonna have to take charge and actually lead instead of seeing political office as a power grab, and a business opportunity.

Just because Africa is disadvantaged geographically does not mean you should spend forever cursing the west for their problems as if they had no problems (disease, war, ethnic hatred, immense poverty) long before the west showed up.

[u/SirPseudonymous → u/TXDobber]

Ah yes, it was the west who forced those gay people to get killed

Quite literally yes, American Evangelicals have intervened heavily to spread homophobia and support homophobic legislation, and even before that it was European colonial authorities that established homophobic legislation in the first place.

[u/MuyalHix → u/TXDobber]

>It was the west who forced them to engage in no democracy, to kill or jail their political opponents, to blatantly make corrupt deals to enrich themselves

Uh, yes, this did actually happen

>At some point, African leaders are gonna have to take charge and actually lead

If they do that, the west complains about their economic interests getting threatened, and acts all surprised when they prefer to trade with Russia or China.

The west doesn't really care about authoritarianism or human rights in Africa. It is all economy.

[u/TXDobber → u/MuyalHix]

Remind me who needs those African resources? Pop over to OEC and look at those trade flows. Who needs Congolese cobalt? Who needs Guinean bauxite? Who needs South African titanium? Who needs Gabonese mahogany?

These are all China needs, China’s entire economy depends on easy flows of raw resources from Africa that they then manufacture into goods for the world that they sell.

And it’s the UAE who is plundering African gold by the tonnes, buying from black market artisanal miners in Mali, in Chad, in Ghana, leveraging their ties with the RSF in Sudan where they trade guns, ammunition, and drones for access to gold.

Be mad at the French for still having fiscal leverage over some western African economies, the west is not responsible for the the blatant corruption and incompetence and authoritarian behavior of tinpot African leaders who have been in power for decades and have no accountability whatsoever. They’ve done that all by themselves.

Your commenting here shows a profound lack of understanding of what is happening in these countries today, you are busy waging the debate wars of 1965 as if these places are still colonies and protectorates instead of 2025 where they’ve been independent nations for over half a century.