A Black American Someborri….
….. told me that 90% of Africa’s population live in abject poverty on less than $1 a day, and further proceeded to condescend to me and assert that Black Americans were far more respected than and better than Africans.
o_O
Okay.
Let’s see…. There are 1 billion people in Africa. If 90% of Africans have less than $1 a day, then that means that only 100 million Africans have more than $1 a day. (Maybe those ones have $2).
If 100 million Africans have more than $1 a day, and there are 53 countries in Africa, that means that only one point something million people in each country have more than $1 a day, (and judging by her sneers I’m sure she put the cap of the wealth at maybe $5 a day for the rest) BUT at least 63 million Nigerians have a mobile phone (which tend to cost at the very cheapest maybe $10), excluding all the Nigerians that have two or more mobile phones (but including the beggars that have mobile phones on multiple lines and the bus conductors that buy $4 recharge cards for their girlfriends) multiplied by the number of Nigerians and other Africans that have regular jobs and live in regular houses paying regular rent to regular landlords plus their regular children who they send to regular schools via their regular cars which they bought with their regular salaries…… (at least 4 million for Nigeria and at least 2 million for the rest)…………..
Screw the math, any way you turn it, if you’ve lived in Nigeria….. Methinks this chick is fucking crazy.
People that don’t know anything about Africa need to just stop.
As in seriously, just hit pause and stop making foolish pronouncements about the quality of life in Africa from your American armchair.
This is part of the reason why Africans versus African Americans isn’t ending any time soon.
Olodo Rabata
i read your blog from time to time, did you at least give her hell on behalf of the poverty stricken africans?
Well well well, i’m finally first on somebody’s blog.
Sugar no mind d mumu girl, ewu Gambia isi adighi mma. Granted, the poverty level in Africa is fucking high (Nigeria actually compares better than other countries like Sudan and Namibia), but her analysis and conclusion are oh so damn unfounded.
Oops a daisy! Guess i’m not 1st after all. Mshweeew!
@Suga – about that “condescending” part… chai, i go laff die! Nne, she was proly just expressing her views (even though that doesn’t exempt her from the ewu Gambia status); maybe she didn’t mean to be condescending… have you thought of that? 🙂
LWKMD @ ‘olodo rabata’
I feel you though boo…They really do just need to step away from whatever cheap drug they’re on {even if the drug is ignorance} and think before they make idiotic pronouncements.
That said, I’m glad I’ll be away from all this craziness for a couple of months…right now I just don’t have the energy..
She is suffering from unacknowledged ignorance. Only God will help her.
@Sugarbelly. Sorry to say that using mobilephone owners as a measure in your calculation holds no water because that does not explain why people can live below a dollar. A mobilphone owner living below a dollar a day is possible because not evertime he/she will have to spend a dollar to buy recharg, for instance.
I agree the are many poor people in Africa living below a dollar per day but that doesn’t prove the point that percentage is close to 90%. The West are very sentimental when if comes to this disparity in living standard in Africa. It is amazing to know that a dollar can’t buy a good bread in Nigeria.PERIOD!
I agree with you. Although the math on how many people live on $1 dollar is wrong, the fact remains that there are people who do. Don’t count conductors as the lowest level on the chain cos they make more money than some 9-5ers. It’s the people in the villages you want to look at. Not those in ogun or kwara o, cos I tell you, even those one know what’s up! But it’s disheartening though that people still carry these notions about us
Kay9, But nigeria is still bottom 25 in Africa. Truth is
I don’t like these Akata vs. Africa arguments. Even Obama is as a result of a Harvard trained Kenyan Immigrant not an Akata gangster.
The most educated minority group(NON-WHITE) in America is African IMMIGRANTS.
Even Essencemagazine said if not for those ambitious Ghanaians, Ethiopians, Somalians, Nigerians and Kenyans, the educational attainment of American blacks would be dead low.
I wish all those people came back to Africa, that Akata chic would be begging to enter the boat that brought her to the new world (no pun intended).
I agree that Americans seem to generalizebut poverty at its worse exists in Africa and even the Nigeria with oil and all that ish is disaster.
When next you come to Abuja, get rid of your car, don’t use a cab, enter the bus.
Next, forget about private clinics, go to gwagwalada or even Asokoro hospital and see the masses and tada!!! See a tiny form of poverty.
Attend a village wedding. Like the ones where people from the city come around and see how people scramble for PUREWATER!
I never believed that dollar-a-day ish but now I do and even in the city of Abuja it exists and that is disturbing.
@everyone: oh, the math part wasn’t supposed to make sense. It was just to point out the irony of the beggars and conductors that have cellphones and buy recharge cards for their girlfriends, so don’t take that part as a serious calculation.
That being said, I agree that there IS poverty in Africa, and I agree that there IS poverty in Nigeria but I think that a lot of the time, people outside Africa like to focus on the poverty alone. Nobody wants to acknowledge that Nigeria has a huge and expanding middle class.
A lot of people just want to swamp all Africans in this blanket of poverty and dismiss the fact that there are actually millions of Africans that live normal decent moderately comfortable lives.
I’m not saying that it isn’t good to make note of the poor and do what you can to help them but it is also annoying when people try to make out that everyone is dirt poor because you know, it’s AFRICA!
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ok b4 i get my blog here is what i tried to post on ur main blog a million times but to no avail. its on what u posted on black american someborri and also ur rantings on solomondsylle blog:
i understand why african americans hate africans like u and me. all those with a sense of history also do. from their perspective we sold them into slavery. and they suffered from ship to shore and beyond. but me think they should direct their anger to white christians who invented slavery. it was the first act of terrorism on this earth. soon after they abolished it they came-up with yet another form of terrorism: colonialism. both these are crimes against humanity the like of which we shall never see on earth. the terrorism we see today is a child’s play compared with these. but there were and are still more being perpetrated by these same callous people.
this makes me to wonder what the world would have been like without christianity, without jesus etc. ever wondered about the sugabelle?
August 8, 2009 5:51 AM
SUGARBABE .. THats me the original anony on solomomdylle blog. dont confuse me with others o. i got my own blog this morning.
I often find my self arguing with Americans about the state of things in Africa/Nigeria…I always like to paint a pretty picture of the country cos i dont want any one looking down at us…..I only do that to UPHOLD our image so as not to back up the reports they see in the media…truthfully most Africans/Nigerians live in abject poverty…then we get upset when some foreigner points out that fact..we get offended when the media shows mud houses,kids with flies following them and not so nice areas..
yes we have an expanding middle class but what percentage of the population falls under this group?I agree they do need to chill out of the poverty news report..but it is what it is
i totally agree with Ladi and Pink-Satin. the reality is actually astonishing. there is debilitating poverty in Nigeria of a percentage only equalled by war-torn African countries like Sudan and somalia. and it is getting worse.
forget Abuja,Lag or most state capitals,enter the hinterlands and see what people are going through..where daily bread is not as a matter of course and staple food like garri are becoming increasingly out of reach, some even scavenge for food…
stil, it remains a fact that more and more people are struggling for a better life, in the worst possible environment and making it
@HisTreasure: While I agree that there is a high rate of poverty in Nigeria, and while I agree that the poor make up the largest percentage of society, I do not agree that the poverty levels are so high that most Nigerians are poor. (See I am differentiation between the majority and most – there is a difference. Majority could be something like 51 – 65%, but most is more like 80% and above)
Also, there is actually some documentation of poverty levels in Nigeria (thank God for once there’s documentation) and apparently in the east (discounting the Niger Delta)the poverty levels are something like 29%, in the west it’s like 30 – 45% (This must be because of Lagos) but in the north the poverty levels are in the 70s.
I think the difference is that many of those from the south are more inclined to go out there and start a trade for themselves or some kind of business for themselves and for many entrepreneurship leads to success however modest. (Who didn’t laugh at the stereotype of Emeka and Sons Electronics while growing up in 90s Nigeria?) Sure we might have been laughing but Emeka and his sons were busy making money.
I agree that the government owes the people of Nigeria far more than it has ever done for them, and I agree that there are a lot of poor people suffering through no fault of their own, but at the same time, there are many people who are poor because they have learned dependency.
How can you go to a village that survives on farming and upon finding everyone sitting at home, they tell you that the reason they didn’t go to farm is because they are waiting for the government to come and give them seedlings.
Sure, the government promised them seedlings and by all means it should do that, but at the same time, before the official government of Nigeria was formed, didn’t your ancestors farm?
Also, you would think that these farming communities would start doing their own research into which seeds work better and how to cross strains of crops to be disease resistant and so on. It is not an outrageous idea. That is how all modern science evolved anyway – individuals with interest in certain areas started researching them – and no, they don’t need advanced equipment to do the research, most of the great scientist invented and built their own equipment as they needed it.
I’m not saying that it is not unfortunate that there are such high poverty levels in Nigeria, and I am not saying the government should not do anything about it, but how many would come out of poverty if some of the poor would take their destinies into their own hands instead of waiting for government handouts that never come?
I agree there are some poor people who can do absolutely nothing about their situation and so must be helped, but there are also some that could lift themselves out of their situation if only they would sit down and think.
Also, let me make it clear that a beggar that can afford to buy N500 recharge card for his girlfriend (not even for himself) most certainly DOES NOT live on less than $1 a day.
He may be poor most certainly, but people need to stop running around like idiots spouting this $1 a day nonsense.
claiming that most people in Nigeria live on less than $1 a day is absolute rubbish.
Sure there are poor people in Nigeria but the figures are totally out of whack.