oxford101: All Comments

This is ridiculous, over 40% of people living in sub saharan Africa DO live in absolute poverty, corruption IS endemic in all but the most stable regimes, and a significant amount of the problems in sub saharan Africa CAN be traced back to colonialism.
Obviously generalizations about Africa are damaging, and the image we have in the West of Africa as an impoverished hell hole does nothing but impede development, but that isn't to say we should ignore all the problems the country faces for the sake of being liberal and enlightened.
Clearly many countries in sub saharan Africa have a lot of very similar problems which need to be addressed;
poverty, corruption, conflict and misuse of natural resources to name but a few. We shouldn't ignore the development gap for the sake of political correctness, we should be studying the specific problems faced by specific countries and working with Africans to help them to solve them. There is a lot we don't know in the West, but we do know how to create stable and long lasting institutions and how to use market capitalism to our advantage. We should be adapting that experience to Africa's unique circumstances if we want to help the continent to stabilize, which we should because an unstable Africa is a danger to the rest of the world.