Black History Month 2018: The Poorest Country On Earth

DIS NIGGA DOESN’T WRAP

Niger holds the world title as the biggest shithole on earth.

It is a place where two-thirds of the population lives in poverty and survives on less than $2 a day. 42% of children suffer from malnutrition. 19% of the population is literate. 80% of the population survives off subsistence agriculture. Half of the national budget comes from foreign aid. Slavery was formally abolished in 2003 but still exists as a custom throughout the country.

PRONOUNCED NYE-JUR, NOT NIGGER

Actually, Niger often changes places with its neighbors in the Sahel as the biggest shithole on earth. It is currently ranked #187 out of 188 nations in the UN’s Human Development Index. It just so happens that most of the world’s biggest shitholes – Niger, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Mauritania – are located within the Sahel which is the transition zone between the Sahara Desert to the north and the Sudan Savannah to the south. The Sahel has a semi-arid climate. It is one of the hottest places on earth.

THE WORLD’S POOREST NATIONS ARE IN THE SAHEL

The lineup changes from year to year depending on coups and wars, but not the pattern. The poorest, most dysfunctional nations on earth are Black Africans who live in the Sahel.

nB4 you blame Europeans and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade:

SOURCES OF TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE

The ancestors of African-Americans came from five regions in Africa – 13% from Senegambia (Senegal and Gambia), 16% from Gold Coast (Ghana), 23% from the Bight of Biafa (Nigeria and Cameroon), 11% from the Windward Coast (Liberia and Ivory Coast) and 25% from West Central Africa (Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Namibia). The other Africans who were brought to the New World came from the same regions plus Mozambique and the Bight of Benin (Benin, Togo, Nigeria). New World slaves didn’t come from Chad, Niger, Mali, Central African Republic, etc.

The truth is that the Sahel was the most isolated and poorly understood region of Africa to Europeans until the 20th century. It was separated from Europe by Muslims in North Africa and the Sahara Desert. It was separated from the Europeans who explored the tropical coast of West Africa by the disease environment. This is why it was the last part of Africa to be effectively colonized by Europeans.

The first White man in history to set foot in what is now Niger was the Scottish explorer Mungo Park who passed through what is now Niger in 1805:

Mungo Park died exploring the Niger River after he was attacked by African spearchunkers. The interior of Africa wasn’t explored by Europeans until the 19th century.

nb4 you blame the legacy of colonialism:

FRENCH WEST AFRICA

France established control over what is now Niger between 1898 and 1922. For most of this period, Niger was a distant territory ruled through African intermediaries from Senegal. It was organized into its own colony in 1922 and was granted independence in 1960. During this period, France was consumed by the First World War and Second World War and didn’t exercise a tight grip over its most remote colonial possessions. The major legacy of this period was the suppression of the most explicit forms of slavery. The slave trade in Niger went north and east to the Arab world.

So how do we explain this? What is the real reason Niger is so poor? Why are so many people starving there? Sure, you could say it is because of the arid climate of the Sahel, but that doesn’t really explain it either. Norway and Australia are #1 and #2 in the UN Human Development Index. 2.3% of Norway and 3.9% of Australia is arable land compared to 9.1% of Niger. Jordan is a desert country with 3.1% arable land and it is #86 in the UN Human Development Index.

I’m not buying the explanation that Niger is the poorest country in the world because 80% of it is located in the Sahara Desert. This is even more true of Egypt. Why didn’t a flourishing civilization arise along the Niger River in West Africa like it did along the Nile in North Africa? Unlike the Congo River in Central Africa, the Niger River isn’t made impassable to the sea by cataracts.

No, the true reason that Niger is so backward and underdeveloped is because the average woman there has an incredible 7.4 children. It has the fastest growing population on earth because it has the lowest rate of contraception use on earth. In 1960, there 3.3 million people in Niger. In 2018, there are 20.67 million. By 2040, there will be 55 million people in Niger. This combination of economic stagnation, subsistence farming methods in a semi-arid environment and runaway population growth has made Niger the poorest country on earth.

In 1965, Niger had an economy comparable in its development to South Korea The South Korean population has doubled. Niger’s population has grown seven fold. It has bizarre mating festivals where women can be stolen and leave with another man:

4 US soldiers were killed in an ambush in Niger in October.

What the hell are US soldiers doing in Niger? It has become one of the primary conduits of immigration from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe via Libya. It has also become a nexus of terrorist groups – the place where al-Qaeda, ISIS and Boko Haram rub shoulders – because of its poverty and overpopulation. Niger’s problems are rooted in the failure of its men to wrap it and its women to use birth control and Europeans subsidizing their bad behavior out of humanitarianism.