My Affirmative essay on aiding Africa - Page 2 - Political Forum

dahermit · #11 (**permalink**) 12-05-2007, 07:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pythagoras

This is a paper I wrote being the Affirmative case in a debate. I will eventually be presenting this so I would like to get your opinions on it.

Africa, the cradle of life, home to the Nile, Sahara, Mount Kilimanjaro, and a place more nature than technology than any other place in the world. However this natural haven of life is plagued by problems abound. As you may know there are serious medical-related problems in Africa and that the USA is doing things to help out. However there is much more than meets eye.

Corruption- the official Transparency International definition states and I quote “Corruption is operationally defined as the misuse of entrusted power for private gain.” Transparency International is an organization that monitors the competitiveness and corruption of most countries of the world. According to their websites CPI Index Sudan, Chad, Zimbabwe, The Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya are among the most corrupt countries in the world as of January 2007. A BBC article published in February of 2006 stated that Kenya’s former president Mwai Kibaki had a corruption crisis that was so serious that both the US and Germany suspended all of their aid to Kenya that was the equivalent of several million dollars. I believe it is obvious that we cannot effectively provide aide to Africa with corruption of this magnitude, because we may send money and things but little to none of it actually gets to the people of Africa, just their government.

Another problem that people cannot comprehend would interfere with aide is the fact that is that a lot of Sub-Saharan Africa is worn torn. Many of you may know of the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. According to Organization of African Unity on UN.org its been calculated that between half a million, that’s 500,000 and a million people were massacred. Do you honestly think that any aide to that country would have gotten through in that time period? Here is the scenario. You’re a truck driver delivering medical supplies to an African country. You suddenly reach a checkpoint that wasn’t there before and men armed with guns are standing around. You stop, a man comes up to you and says. Get out, were taking your truck, find your own back. What do you think they are going to do with those supplies? They will sell them, to buy more weapons to kill more people. But war isn’t just restricted to Rwanda. According to globalresearch.com conflicts along the borders of Darfur are anything but rare. It has spread to Niger, Djibouti, Somalia, the Congo, and even through Uganda and Sudan. Massive troop build ups are seen all over the borders like they are preparing for some kind of all out assault on one another. These issues are what is blocking the tactic we are using today to solve the main problem in Africa.

The medical crisis is what is mainly seen as the problem in Africa and it is indeed a major problem.
Rewrite as:

The current medical crisis is the major problem in Africa.
Africa’s inability to treat their people is the very source of the medical crisis. The Medical Relief Alliance of MRA.com recognizes that a significant number of African residents do not seek physician services or see healthcare providers for a number of reasons; 1) The lack of physician services in the area; 2) A cultural preference to use traditional methods before seeing a medical doctor; 3) The lack of transportation and related costs; 4) Poverty and the associated lingering effects among communities in the region; and lastly the lack of knowledge on the existing healthcare resources and services in the area. According to the source website of our own World Geography text book as of Algeria’s 2006 population of 32,854,000 they only have 113 doctors. Chad’s 06 population of 10,146,00 only had 4 doctors. Yes that’s right 4.0 only 4 doctors. The Democratic Republics 06 population 58,741,000 only had 11 doctors, and the numbers only get worse from there. So, how do we solve such a complicated problem without getting too involved?

The answer is simple. We can’t, we have to get involved and we have to take actual action instead of just giving money to them! However we have to have a plan that is both beneficial to us and beneficial to them since our nations economy could very likely be at risk. We cannot just solve one problem without the others interfering. We must form a plan that will solve the corruption problems, the war problems, and the health problems all at the same time. I have such a plan that will allow the major powers of the world to assist Africa but at the same time not draining the economy of each.

If all the major powers of the world were to again recolonize Africa it would indeed solve all of these problems. It would solve the corruption problems by effectively removing existing unstable African governments and replacing them with constitutions according to each major power. In other words the USA would form a constitution for the part of Africa that we aide, Europe would form theirs for their part of Africa, Russia would form their constitution for their part of Africa and so on and so on. This would also effectively remove the war fare situations from Africa by re-drawing the Borders according to which country is aiding which part which will be drawn according to cultural and tribal differences along with the peaceful disarmament of all African nations which will be aided. Also, this would solve the crisis of the inability to treat illness and disease simply because each power could directly provide it to them without interference. Last but not least this would allow the major powers to aide the parts of Africa without economic drain through the ownership of each respective parts natural resources which Africa indeed has an abundance of. But to this you may say colonial times were horrible for the African people back then and they want to have their independence. Well that was then, and this is now. I can assure that the ways major powers will be implementing the plan will be much different from back in the colonial days. Also, all of the separate African countries will still be allowed to recognize themselves as countries and have their own traditions.

The major powers will not own these countries; officially the major powers will simply aide the unstable governments and have a strong presence in each respective region. There is no other way to directly aide these countries, and we will be helping them on a massive scale. This will essentially be the largest global humanitarian aide project in history, and it will for lack of a better phrase make the world a better place.

There are many unnecessary words. Also, there are instances of informal language (conversational )instead of the proper formal language of a scholarly paper. It is too wordy, commas missing, is not concise (example of a rewrite in green font). Also, note that it is not proper to use contractions in formal writing.
I will demonstrate in red infromal language that for the most part can be eliminated.

I have demonstrated a few of the more glaring errors in your document. I have not corrected the entire offering...I suggest you submit it to your High School English teacher for a more comprehensive evaluation and correction. For your sake, this had better be a High School level document rather than a College submission.

It also begs the question: why are we, on a political forum, helping you with your home work.

Bankers_War · #12 (**permalink**) 12-20-2007, 12:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pythagoras

This is a paper I wrote being the Affirmative case in a debate. I will eventually be presenting this so I would like to get your opinions on it.

Africa, the cradle of life, home to the Nile, Sahara, Mount Kilimanjaro, and a place more nature than technology than any other place in the world. However this natural haven of life is plagued by problems abound. As you may know there are serious medical-related problems in Africa and that the USA is doing things to help out. However there is much more than meets eye.

I'm going to assume you already handed this in - I am not always the best writer of essays myself but usually I am very good at it if I care to be. But you should just stay away from this drivel about Africa's characteristics and stereotypes it's just utterly pointless to your argument. Lead in to your research question or your hypothesis directly and then actually write what "more than meets the eye" there is - rather than just saying that by stating what more there is than meets the eye you allow yourself a structure to your paper on what to address and when. I typically give three sentences to the more narrow issues that are a part of my research question this gives me three blocks of a paper to address the issue in. I won't bother to tell you to break your paper into two parts a Literature Review and an Empirical Review but those are necessary as you get older

Quote:

Corruption- the official Transparency International definition states and I quote “Corruption is operationally defined as the misuse of entrusted power for private gain.” Transparency International is an organization that monitors the competitiveness and corruption of most countries of the world. According to their websites CPI Index Sudan, Chad, Zimbabwe, The Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya are among the most corrupt countries in the world as of January 2007. A BBC article published in February of 2006 stated that Kenya’s former president Mwai Kibaki had a corruption crisis that was so serious that both the US and Germany suspended all of their aid to Kenya that was the equivalent of several million dollars. I believe it is obvious that we cannot effectively provide aide to Africa with corruption of this magnitude, because we may send money and things but little to none of it actually gets to the people of Africa, just their government.

You shouldn't have to define corruption - if your reader (your teacher/professor) does not understand the meaning of this word you should already have an A in the class.

You should talk about why corruption matters - it squanders money particularly aid money sent to Africa by Europe or the USA. It often disrupts the economic programs a government may try to create - it creates failure in programs, and delegitimizes a regime encouraging coups and instability. You are also wrong about "none of it getting to the people" because it doesn't matter where it goes, aid money is meant to achieve some result - it doesn't matter if it goes to the people or to the government as long as it achieves that result. It often fails because of corruption or because of ineptitude or a number of reasons.

Quote:

Another problem that people cannot comprehend would interfere with aide is the fact that a lot of Sub-Saharan Africa is worn torn. Many of you may know of the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. According to Organization of African Unity on UN.org its been calculated that between half a million, that’s 500,000 and a million people were massacred. Do you honestly think that any aide to that country would have gotten through in that time period? Here is the scenario. You’re a truck driver delivering medical supplies to an African country. You suddenly reach a checkpoint that wasn’t there before and men armed with guns are standing around. You stop, a man comes up to you and says. Get out, were taking your truck, find your own back. What do you think they are going to do with those supplies? They will sell them, to buy more weapons to kill more people. But war isn’t just restricted to Rwanda. According to globalresearch.com conflicts along the borders of Darfur are anything but rare. It has spread to Niger, Djibouti, Somalia, the Congo, and even through Uganda and Sudan. Massive troop build ups are seen all over the borders like they are preparing for some kind of all out assault on one another. These issues are what is blocking the tactic we are using today to solve the main problem in Africa.

War is definitely a disruptor of aid and you could expand the Rwandan issue to the fact that the Tutsi take-over of Rwanda led to the DRC civil war's expansion into what is phrased the African First World War, which killed more than 3 million people. Rwanda's massacre was perpetrated by the Hutus who wanted the UN and any Europeans out or dead, and so that alone is very difficult to get aid to that country.

You don't explain how war actually blocks the tactics the US uses which you don't really define what the tactics are but I assume you mean "AID" programs. You would solve this by stating that war prevents the successful implementation of a policy and thus AID cannot serve its purpose, let's say money is given to build a road but if a war is on and there is no man power, and no security, the money will likely go to the military and not to build the road.

So the AID is wasted.

Quote:

The medical crisis is what is mainly seen as the problem in Africa and it is indeed a major problem. Africa’s inability to treat their people is the very source of the medical crisis. The Medical Relief Alliance of MRA.com recognizes that a significant number of African residents do not seek physician services or see healthcare providers for a number of reasons; 1) The lack of physician services in the area; 2) A cultural preference to use traditional methods before seeing a medical doctor; 3) The lack of transportation and related costs; 4) Poverty and the associated lingering effects among communities in the region; and lastly the lack of knowledge on the existing healthcare resources and services in the area. According to the source website of our own World Geography text book as of Algeria’s 2006 population of 32,854,000 they only have 113 doctors. Chad’s 06 population of 10,146,00 only had 4 doctors. Yes that’s right 4.0 only 4 doctors. The Democratic Republics 06 population 58,741,000 only had 11 doctors, and the numbers only get worse from there. So, how do we solve such a complicated problem without getting too involved?

Other than how you wrote this I found it to be acceptably written...it does identify some problems and those identifications explain very generally why they are problems. You shouldn't use phrases like "yes that's right...just...something's a problem and indeed it is..."

Quote:

The answer is simple. We can’t, we have to get involved and we have to take actual action instead of just giving money to them! However we have to have a plan that is both beneficial to us and beneficial to them since our nations economy could very likely be at risk. We cannot just solve one problem without the others interfering. We must form a plan that will solve the corruption problems, the war problems, and the health problems all at the same time. I have such a plan that will allow the major powers of the world to assist Africa but at the same time not draining the economy of each.

Woah you just jumped way too far ahead of yourself. You can't go from saying "how do you solve it by giving aid? you cant..." what is the benefits gained from giving money? What countries has foreign AID benefited? I can name a few...Senegal and Nigeria.

After addressing that you can negotiate the concept that no AID will work but only active intervention.

Now you are wasting sentences on stating we need a plan to solve the problems yatta yatta yatta. What you should state is simply that the problems that interfere with AID must be solved by direct intervention. A policy of direct intervention has risks of its own and then you start naming off those risks such as - interference causes a change in balance of power in the region (which is a more scientific way of stating what you are saying by saying that other countries will get involved etc.)

Quote:

If all the major powers of the world were to again colonize Africa it would indeed solve all of these problems. It would solve the corruption problems by effectively removing existing unstable African governments and replacing them with constitutions according to each major power. In other words the USA would form a constitution for the part of Africa that we aide, Europe would form theirs for their part of Africa, Russia would form their constitution for their part of Africa and so on and so on. This would also effectively remove the warfare situations from Africa by re-drawing the Borders according to which country is aiding which part which will be drawn according to cultural and tribal differences along with the peaceful disarmament of all African nations which will be aided. Also this would solve the crisis of the inability to treat illness and disease simply because each power could directly provide it to them without interference. Last but not least this would allow the major powers to aide the parts of Africa without economic drain through the ownership of each respective parts natural resources which Africa indeed has an abundance of. To this you may say but colonial times were horrible for the African people back then and they want to have their independence. Well that was then, and this is now. I can assure that the ways major powers will be implementing the plan will be much different from back in the colonial days. Also all of the separate African countries will still be allowed to recognize themselves as countries and have their own traditions.

K so after establishing how interference would be problematic you could move on to this conclusion of how the direct intervention in the form of re-colonization would lead to a set of problems that can be potentially overcome. None of your suggestion actually explains how it would not be a major drain on the colonizer's resources nor does it explain how such a drastic intervention would not lead to war, not just wars of resistance but wars of opportunity and confrontation among colonizing powers on the continent as they will suddenly be forced to partake in the petty strifes between ethnic groups.

You don't explain how you would assure anyone that the colonization would not be exploitation similar to the "Scramble for Africa".

Quote:

The major powers will not own these countries; officially the major powers will simply aide the unstable governments and have a strong presence in each respective region. There is no other way to directly aide these countries, and we will be helping them on a massive scale. This will essentially be the largest global humanitarian aide project in history, and it will for lack of a better phrase make the world a better place.

Your conclusion is weak because it seems to just create a picture that is already the situation, where former colonizers still manage monetary and economic policies of their colonies, they aid their governments in financing, and they even provide internal security.

Remember that the most victims of the Rwandan Genocide that were white - were Belgian peace keepers in their former colony of Rwanda keeping the peace and keeping the moderate government stable and in control of the region.

The Rwandan response was to kill all the whites. Doesn't sound too much of a successful plan.