Africa is a cursed continent. With a population of 1,032,532,974 , it’s the second most populated continent. With a land area of 30,221,532 square kilometres, this evens up to a population density of 30.5 people per square kilometre.
Meanwhile, Asia, with 44,579,000 square kilometres has a population of 3,879,000,000 leading to a density of 87 people per square kilometre.
Then there’s India, which has a land area of 3,287,263 square kilometres. With just 10 percent of Africa’s land mass, India goes ahead to outnumber Africans with a population of 1,210,193,422.
For each square kilometre in India, there are 10 times more people than the same in Africa, precisely 370.1 Indians per square kilometre
Looking at conflict, The Times of India claims 14,000 people in India died in Police and Judicial custody, a figure equal to the number who have died in violence related to the India-Pakistan Jahmu and Kashmir conflict and Maoist related violence.
After scratching its head, Google found another conflict in India, the Sino-Indian war of 1962 where India lost about 1,300 with another 1,600 missing. You can read more about that conflict on Wikipedia
Meanwhile, in Africa, Google had lots of numbers.
Virgil Hawkins states that 88 percent of global conflict deaths between 1990 and 2007 occurred in Africa. Asia follows with 8 percent, Europe with 2 percent and the Middle East and America (no, not the United States of America, you ignorant reader, North and South America!) each had 1 percent. The numbers may have changed since one son of George Bush went looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Osama bin Laden in the Middle East. The Mexicans have also upped the ante as they upped their US-related drug business to a matter of life and death, mostly death.
While you are busy reading about the world, the Kenya Red Cross reports 116 people have been killed, including 7 policemen, 12,000 displaced and over 30,000 affected in inter-communal clashes in Tana River. The number killed in the last four weeks is about 10 percent of the number of Kenyans killed in two months of “post election violence” in Kenya in 2007 and 2008.
Some people I was discussing the Tana River clashes with told me that the people there love killing each other. Western media tells me that the war is between two tribes – the hint here, stronger than that of arabica coffee, the non-instant kind, is that the tribes are killing each other because the adversaries belong to a different tribe.
More reliable reports on the ground indicate that the conflict was started by a few head of pesky cattle, that feasted on crops belonging to another community. The crop-community decided to teach the cattle a lesson, by slashing a few to death. The cattle rearing community did not take the lesson in kind, no one messes with their cattle. Mess with their cattle, and be prepared to pay with your life, and a few lives they took, from the crop rearing tribe. To date, this has been followed by an exchange of lives from both tribes, 116 by Wednesday.
If there wasn’t pasture to rear animals, and arable land to grow crops, 116 Kenyans would still be alive today.
Far, far away from the bloody Tana Delta, a civil rights lawyer is reminding us of a land deal between the Government of Kenya and one of Qatar. The land in question is in the Tana Delta, where a tribe is a matter of life and death.
The same lawyer reminds us of one Daniel T. Moi, who reigned president over Kenya for 24 years. It is said that during his rule, it was common for tribal clashes to occur in some areas. The displaced were resettled, and the land was allegedly reallocated to other people who needed it more.
A Twitter account reports over 200,000 irregular title deeds were issued irregularly in Kenya between 1963 and 2002.
Kakuma camp, established around 1991, has exceeded its planned population of 100,000. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) says over 40 percent are from the recently formed South Sudan. There is a sizeable number of returning refugees from South Sudan and Rwanda, who on going back to their former countries find that their land has been occupied, mostly by military figures.
According to one Wikipedia, The Great War of Africa, also known as the Second Congo War, is the second deadliest conflict in the World after World War II. The Great War of Africa lasted between August 1998 and July 2003, leaving 5.4 million dead, mostly due to starvation and disease. The 5.4 million would not have died had it been the efforts of 8 African countries and 25 armed groups.
Congo produces 40 percent of the World’s Cobalt, an important industrial mineral. Conflict in Congo influences global cobalt prices. Congo has 70 percent of the world’s coltan reserves and 30 percent of global diamond reserves. You might have no idea what coltan is, but without it, you wouldn’t be reading this article on your PC, or phone, or watching that DVD. Tantalum capacitors found in all these devices are made from coltan. 50 per cent of Africa’s forest reserves are in Congo, and the river Congo running through the country has enough hydropower capacity to provide electricity for all of Africa’s 1,032,532,974 people.
Africa is cursed. In Africa we have resources, which we don’t want to share. We kill each other sharing our roads, which are bad due to money that a politician didn’t want to share. We also slash and shoot each other to death to defend our rights to keep more heads of cattle than an area of land can support. We will then kill each other for the control of Africa’s vast mineral wealth. They will first kill you for your race, then kill you for your nationality, then kill you for your tribe, then kill you for your clan and then kill you for your sub clan. In the end, they will still find a reason to kill you.
No one in Africa was ever killed because there was no water, pasture or even cobalt on the ground they stood on.