Africa Update

Volume 3 1993

SLAVERY TODAY

It is a little known fact that even today, 150 years after David Livingston’s campaign shattered the Islamic slave trade in Central Africa, slavery continues to exist in North Africa and parts of Asia. Slavery is still openly practised in Mauritania. And in Sudan the going price for a seven year old boy is between $30 and $60. Even in Namibia and Angola it is not too uncommon to find Ovambo villages with Bushman slaves.
In Asia the most common form of slavery is bonded labour. There are 15 million indentured labourers in India, 20 million in Pakistan. Child slavery is practised in Sri Lanka, Thailand and Haiti.
(World Pulse EMIS and International Labour Organisation Report)

DEVASTATION IN LIBERIA

The Association of Evangelicals in Liberia have reported that 500 000 people were killed in the vicious civil war in Liberia and over 300 000 displaced people are now internal refugees.

THE COST OF SOCIALISM

Despite $2 Trillion of gifts and aid from Western governments, the IMF, FAO and the World Bank, and a debt burden of $300 Billion owed to Western creditors, a top African economist estimates that Africa will still demand $950 Billion more Western aid. Layashi Yaker, executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) told a group of economists in Addis Ababa that Africa must start mobilising it’s own abundant resources by efficiency and productivity. After thirty years of socialist mismanagement and corruption Africa is the poorest continent in the world. Rather than alleviating suffering in Africa, the vast and generous quantities of Western aid have been accompanied by plummeting living standards. Only the establishment of a free market economy will improve living standards in Africa.

"He who works his land will have abundant food, but the one who chases fantasies will have his fill of poverty." - Proverbs 28:19

top