This is fantastic news that defies my understanding of political incentives. I'm astounded that Kenya would do this. The number of Africans who would prefer to live in Kenya is enormous. (Rwanda less so.)
So far the only story I've been able to come up with is that the border is already so porous that anyone given a hard time about their visa probably arrived via one of the more expensive routes, like air fare, and are not who Kenya would like to keep out
> According to the African Union's website, the African Passport and free movement of people are intended to "remove restrictions on Africans ability to travel, work, and live within their own continent."
> The African Union also established the African Continental Free Trade Area, a free trade area spanning the whole continent with an estimated value of $3.4 trillion. Its goals are to promote economic growth and provide a single, united market for the 1.3 billion people living on the continent.
AU definitely has goals that bring it closer to the EU. Time will tell how well they do. In many ways it's a similar problem: 1/ big and small countries, 2/ lots of land on a full continent, 3/ major differences (languages, which side of the road people drive on, GDP, government stability, etc...), 4/ value from working together.
The EU has all of those problems as well (UK, IE, MT are right-hand drive) and its been a success in my opinion. I'm not sure if the AU is ready to go as deep as common currency. A unified trading block makes trading with larger nations a lot more even.
- The Schengen agreement, i.e. no border controls between countries
- The fundamental right to free movement for citizens of the EU.
There are countries where Schengen applies (you can go without visa or with the same visa as the rest of the EU, there is no border control for people normally), but there is no right to live there automatically (Switzerland).
There are countries without Schengen so there are border checks, and the visa system for foreigners is separate, but EU citizens still have the right to live there (Ireland).
Did I say that Switzerland is in the EU? It is in the Schengen agreement (which managed by the EU and part of EU law, but also extends to other countries).
I’m from Nigeria, and I can ascertain that our borders are a joke. At this point, they can just declare visa-free travel across Africa for anyone…it’s not like they’re many desirable destinations on this continent that need to be gated.
I'm concerned this is going to further facilitate the exploitation of unskilled labor in these countries by the business class. I saw something online a few years ago about foreign workers in Kenya being treated much worse than their Kenyan peers (they were working in construction). Do you think this is a valid concern?
They don’t need foreign workers. Locals are already exploited enough because labor laws are lax or non-existent. I can tell many stories of white-collar workers being treated like trash, talk less of unskilled labor.
This will just continue the status quo until we find a solution to the exploitation.
It can also work in the opposite direction: legal immigrants can bargain for better wages and report abuses to the authorities, while illegal immigrants are under the constant thread of being reported and kicked out of the country.
The real purpose of the visa is money from fees. The people who arrive in the airports are the ones dealing with the visa process and they're all paying $50/visa or so - it's a big money maker.
Saying this shows you aren’t following any type of news in Africa at all. Living ranges from decent, bad, worse, to all levels of terrible. Kenya is a place with a lot of decent and bad, surrounded by countries with decent and bad as well, alongside various levels of terrible.
I love this move from Kenya but it does have real risk, and I’d hate to see another South Africa scenario, xenophobia wise
> I’d hate to see another South Africa scenario, xenophobia wise
For the uniformed, South Africa has a growing nativist political vigilante movement which violently targets foreign people and businesses called Operation Dudula [1] (Zulu for "push out/forcefully expel"). They attribute South Africa's social and economic problems to other migrant Africans, rather than the mismanagement and corruption of the ANC.
The problem is that there aren’t any real leaders that are loved in their country. Ironically, the closest to be liked (atleast externally among Africans) are the Rwandan and Ghanaian presidents. But the citizens living in said countries have varying levels of dislike for said leaders.
It will be an easy task for said leaders/citizens to put blame on migrants for the movements. South Africa has been mentioned, but a lot of people in Ghana’s opinion on recent tourism friendly attitudes range from dislike to blaming it on inflation/devaluation there.
Immigration is always an easy scapegoat, it’s almost cheating.
We have had visa free travel within East Africa for a long while now, and nothing massively horrible has happened, despite the other countries in East Africa having it, to various degrees, worse compared to Kenya. Plus Kenya already spent decades hosting millions of refugees fleeing wars from South Sudan and Somalia, again to no massively horrible effect.
Why are you saying that ;) there are right now several cyclists from Morocco traveling a long the coast, true Nigeria had problems in the east with extortionists going rampant, but overall our continent is beautiful and full of lovely people.
> But overall our continent is beautiful and full of lovely people.
Mehn spare me, I have heard this over and over again, and yes it’s true.
But being “beautiful and lovely” doesn’t build a nation. Hidden behind this facade of beauty is a horrible culture that celebrates corruption, tribalism and lack of cooperation, backbiting, and shortsightedness, which is why our continent remains poor.
Africa will remain a basket case until we reform our culture into one that celebrates honest work and mutual cooperation over corruption and cheating to earn a living, which is doable :)
>Hidden behind this facade of beauty is a horrible culture that celebrates corruption, tribalism and lack of cooperation, backbiting, and shortsightedness
These are all acute problems in Western nations. The fundamental impediment which Africa faces are it's rich natural resources and the nations which exploit them.
Any "anti-corruption" cultural efforts will be snuffed out long before it becomes a threat to this lucrative expropriation
There is no cultural solution to the boot of political and economic struggle.
I’m not buying this but sure, we Africans never take responsibility. We’ll first blame the other tribe, then the country next to us, then long-gone colonial powers, and finally the devil when we run out of excuses.
As if it’s not our leaders selling out the country to foreign interests for pocket change. Maybe they could pick up a book from Lee Kuan Yew and learn how he rejected a bribe from the CIA.
And these leaders are all fairly and democratically elected?
Without the influence of the money of former colonial states (or their puppets in the form of expropriative enterprises)?
Consider the trillions of dollars made by other countries from Africa's people and resources. Why _wouldnt_ they spend a fraction of that killing any chance that a cultural movement picks up.
This isn't fantasy, Nestle, Chiquita, etc have a long history of funding anti-revolutionary agencies for exactly this reason.
One man rejecting one bribe will do nothing, a single cup cannot drain an ocean.
I wonder why those rich Middle Eastern petro states aren’t being controlled and kept poor by the Western powers if that’s the case.
We can all go back to the past and find excuses of how someone did bad and blame them for the present even if they’re long gone…we Africans are very good at that.
What we’re not good at is ever taking responsibility for f**ing once instead of blaming invisible conspiracists hiding in thin air.
You’re getting these responses because Americans have been trained Pavlovian style to never ever claim that some cultures are better than others. This is despite most, including those who think they don’t, implicitly believing this
Radical Islam for one is rabidly anti-intellectual. The only conservative Muslim countries that are anything to write home about are oil-rich and have extremely small populations.
As a result, it's easy for the government to subsidize their citizens heavily and build lots of shiny skyscrapers to attract western tourists without developing human capital significantly.
Call me Islamophobic but I say this as a Nigerian, living in a country with the largest Muslim population in Africa (second-largest in the world after Indonesia) where people still get lynched and burned for "blasphemy."
Radical religious groups are always rabidly anti-intellectual. The better question to ask is why there are so many more radical Muslims than radical Christians. That's where I think a wider view is important.
The main difference is that you can fully implement a 'Christian' values state and it isn't going against the grain to base it on mercy, equality, and not 'othering' those who don't agree. In other words a fully Christian society can fully implement the teachings found in the New Testament and not be considered 'radical' in any sense by a non-Christian living in that society. While it may be 'missionary' oriented it also wouldn't require exporting its philosophy. It also is comfortable separating civil and religious law - 'render unto Ceasar.'
Islam, fully implementing the Koran, is basically the opposite.
It requires fidelity at the threat of death and the forced conversion of outsiders. It requires civil and religious law to be the same.
Iran for instance instantiates the tenets of Islam in fact.
The Christian theocracies are basically historical dead letters at this point- and were mostly overlays on existing government structures:
The Roman Empire for instance continued to be Rome after the Emperors became Christian- it never really, despite the Pope's best efforts, become more than a light overlay on existing government structures, with King's utilizing theories of 'Divine Right of Kings' as a useful way to perpetuate their existing hierarchies. Even countries like Armenia that claimed explicitly to be Christian states aren't actually ruled by the priesthood- they have established national religions in many historical instances, not a truly religiously run state like Iran where the mullah's are the ultimate authority.
Rome/Papal States, Peter the great, Geneva/Calvin, some slice of the Byzantine empire, along with pre-United States Utah (and in a smaller scale the city of Nauvoo,) where you have had the clerical and government structures completely united in a Christian state that I can think of off hand. England in a much looser sense qualifies. And in these cases you generally again have, relative to Islam, a non-radical, especially as it relates to outsiders, experience.
Muslims are 'radical' because they stick to Qur'an, their book. Christians should also be sharing most of the same principles, if they are honest about following both Testaments. But hey, apparently they are mere "tales" nowadays if you ask a self-proclaimed Christian and you can see churches with pride flags. Christianity is dead because there is no one left who lives as per their book. It's arguably not very possible too, given that it is self-conflicting in many instances. Muslim view on this is that Jews tried to kill Jesus, weren't able to, and then corrupted the original Bible in an attempt to divide Christians.
> It requires fidelity at the threat of death and the forced conversion of outsiders.
Islam does not require forced conversion of outsiders. It can be said to require dominating Earth as a goal, but Christians and Jews lived peacefully under Islamic rule for millenia.
Fidelity at the threat of death is only if the person committing adultery is married and at least 4 people witnessed the incident. This requirement is rarely satisfied, while being enough too deter people to stay away from this act.
> Iran for instance instantiates the tenets of Islam in fact.
Iran is Shiite. They are a deviant sect. Doesn't mean all their practices represent Islam. There will be multiple deviant sects in any religion with billions of population. Vast majority of Muslims are Sunnis who are following the original teachings.
Important to note is all Islamic punishments regarding sins apply to Muslims, not people of other religions. They are (and historically were) free to do whatever they want, barring things like insulting people and betraying the state, which are also punishable under current secular law.
Christianity got killed first in the hands of St. Paul who basically changed Bible to his liking - and then by the Roman emperor whom I forgot his name who selected 4 out of the 400 Bibles available at the time in that famous meeting.
And it's annoying like hell when I (a Nigerian) try to explain to an European/African how I can't move an inch without paying a bribe and they tell you to focus on the bright side or abstract notions like the diversity of the continent, blah blah blah.
Most African countries got independence in the 1940 - 1970s. Israel was established in 1948, while Singapore became independent in 1967. While most African states busied themselves with denouncing colonialism, playing around with the Soviets, or murdering any ethnic minority that didn't agree with the party line, Singapore went from being a slum to an economic powerhouse; Israel is essentially indispensable to the west as the economic/military intelligence key to the Middle East now.
So, i's hard to celebrate any advancement when we could be much further. Western optimists might feel otherwise, but perspective is everything, I guess?
Singapore is a special case, Korea is more a fair comparison, the country was by most metrics in a worse shape than most (african & non) colonies at the indipendence/civil war. Korea developed well considering its starting position
Singapore had a much stronger base than any other Asian country other than Hong Kong in the mid-20th century.
Singapore was one of the richest Asian countries on a GDP per Capita basis in 1960. It was comparable to other middle income countries in that era like Southern Europe and South America [0].
LKY talking about Singapore as if it was a third world hell hole is just disingenuous PR to make the PAP look much more impressive. Even Taiwan and South Korea were much poorer than Singapore back then, but they've both caught up to Singapore by 2023. In fact, if you compare Singapore with other cities in first world Asia, then it's largely been outpaced by Seoul and Tokyo.
> Most African countries got independence in the 1940 - 1970s. Israel was established in 1948, while Singapore became independent in 1967. While most African states busied themselves with denouncing colonialism, playing around with the Soviets, or murdering any ethnic minority that didn't agree with the party line, Singapore went from being a slum to an economic powerhouse; Israel is essentially indispensable to the west as the economic/military intelligence key to the Middle East now.
To give two more examples, in 1960 South Korea's GDP/Capita was similar to Sudan and significantly lower than Taiwan's which was similar to Northern African countries (Tunisia, Morocco). Algeria was much richer than either, I assume thanks to oil.
Is this a form of moral relativism where everyone and everything must have equal intrinsic value?
What if we argue a 1971 Ford Pinto is actually just a good a car as a 2003 Honda Civic. Sure, it's old, the fuel tanks rupture in an accident, and it had the largest recall in automotive history, but at least it was affordable, allowing societal mobility?
As an argentinean citizen I believe that corruption and crime are what impede prosperity. How can prosperity arise when power is in the hands of corrupts?
But when the ones in power are corrupt, they are the same people who would have to implement the welfare. And of course they steal a big percentage of the welfare money. And also inflation. Look at inflation numbers in Argentina. Look what "giving money to the public" can do. Don't be blind to the consequences of economically unsound intentions of welfare.
Do you think the West earned its prosperity through hard work? Fossil fuels and colonization built their civilizations, not them. Humans are no more genius than they were a millenia ago. They just accessed a new free energy source, which is soon to deplete, taking the civilization it built with it, into a horrible famine.
It's an unrealistic reduction to talk about "The West" as if it was an homogeneous entity. The whole world used fossil fuels, and you should read the history of the big nations of the East too.
What's your point? Are you defending Argentina's corrupt politicians?
It’s a feedback system. The only problem is that governments tend to ignore the welfare/education/prosperity part and focus entirely on austerity laws.
Well that doesn't seem true on the world stage. I mean China has seen rapid GDP growth but still remains extremely corrupt. But I think you are missing the parent's point, it's not the corruption they are complaining about, it's cultural values that they think are determental to economic success. And having been to Africa (Zambia) and origionally being from a poor country in Asia myself, I think there's a lot of truth to what he's saying.
I think you probably put your finger on the rational driving force here.
If you can't/don't control the borders anyway... It might be more rational to just go with that and enable official channels and/or rules to work.
Insisting on the impossible, or the not-going-to-happen... It's a mistake politics makes regularly. Policies are only as effective as you can make them.
Anyway, if Kenya is in then this is a serious thing.
Not really. The border with Somalia is closed because of the threat of Al Shabaab terrorist group in that country, and citizens of Tanzania and Uganda can already travel visa free by virtue of being member countries of the East African Community. The only existing problem with illegal immigration in Kenya, is from Ethiopia, and most of those are transiting to South Africa.
Recently on the news - Austria has entered into an agreement to move asylum seekers to an African country (a la UK to Rwanda). Now, it must be Kenya, if it's also "opening the borders".
This is all in place to prevent mass-migration to Europe. Allow migrants to "try" other local countries first.
Changing countries is hard. And most people either do it for good job(which is good for Kenya) or refuge(which generally doesn't happen for middle income country due to all the social risks). e.g. Romania's GDP is ten time worse than Luxemborg and they have a free movement but not everyone is moving there.
Rwanda, you know it for sure, is a bit of a "police state".
you have the feeling there are people listening around, especially if you talk about politics (and, never talk about the president): it may be just feelings, but you feel it clearly
Maybe the issue here is that the border is so porous in the first place. Instead of trying to combat the inevitable, taxing it with visas will be much more profitable for the government.
I've got a theory that sub Saharan Africa will develop a lot faster than many people think. I think of lot of why it did not in the past is it was mostly cut off from information. Until about 2000 there was not much in the way of books, newspapers etc that most Africans could afford and long distance communications were terrible. Also it was hard to get around unlike the areas where much culture developed around the med where it had been easy to get around by sea. Now they all have smart phones and internet and are on much more of a level playing field with the rest of the world.
It will develop, but it will take 3-4 generations.
Just looking at East Africa, even Kenya's current HDI is at 0.575, and the rest of East Africa is much lower. Rwanda is at 0.534 (this is potentially suspect as Rwanda has been fudging numbers [0]), Tanzania is at 0.549, and Uganda is at 0.525.
It is a similar story in West Africa as well.
While there are some bright spots in human capital in Kenya, it's much less diffused than similar undeveloped to developed stories like Bangladesh or Vietnam, let alone China, India, Thailand, etc. Going from less developed to developing requires some kind of a nudge and capital, and in South Korea, Bangladesh and Vietnam's cases it came from Japan, India and China respectively.
There isn't a similar case in sub-Saharan Africa yet. If South Africa can get it's economy back in track, there might be a shot for the rest of the continent, as they are in the right position to diffuse capital, human capital, and businesses.
True, but it's at a lower base. HDI is a mixture of per Capita income, life expectancy, and literacy.
Life Expectancy and Literacy rate has been growing at a significant amount in plenty of sub-Saharan Africa over the past few years, but that's from a low base. The extremely low hanging fruit will be largely caught within a decade, which will then slow down as that requires significant reforms and expansion in healthcare and education quality and availability.
Per Capita Income will still always be a significant issue though, as my earlier point still stands. You need a strong economy to further grow out, and that is largely a factor of good education as well as you need to climb up the value chain.
Climbing the value chain is hard without outside stimulus. Most countries that have seen a rapid transformation were able to do so because another country decided to mentor and invest a massive amount in the country's economic base.
There just isn't a reason to do any manufacturing or high value services in most sub-Saharan African economies. There are plenty of cheap and well integrated Asian countries right now like like Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, parts of India that can still be competitive in low manufacturing for the next 1-2 decades.
It will anyhow take 1-2 decades for some sub-Saharan countries to anyhow invest in human capital. Kenya and Tanzania have been doing some very hard work on this regard.
With Rwanda, less so if we're being honest. Flashy projects like CMU Kigali and Thailand level cleanliness aside, Rwanda hasn't been able to bring a high value industry into the country yet. It's GDP per Capita is barely $1,000, median income is around $750-780, and around 60% of public and infra investment is coming directly from foreign aid.
The business culture there is simply much less mature compared to that in Nairobi or Dar es Salaam, and what happens when Kagame dies?
The same thing happened with Ethiopia. Addis Ababa became very flashy and clean, yet the country ended up collapsing into civil war and almost a decade of development was washed away.
> other region which has grown fast is the China area
The biggest winner from an HDI growth basis was actually Türkiye. They largely caught up with Eastern Europe over the last 15-20 years, and were able to keep consistently high growth (around 5-6% GDP growth rate in average since 2009) despite hitting China in 2023 level metrics almost 15 years ago
China's growth has been amazing but it will largely slow down
Sometimes free market economics lets countries grow without a government plan. "Rwanda hasn't been able to bring a high value industry into the country yet" implies a lack industrial planning but googling a bit finds:
>KIGALI, July 11, 2023—Rwanda’s economy grew by 9.2% in the first quarter of 2023, following 8.2% growth in 2022.
implying they are doing ok. I wish we had that sort of growth in Brexit Britain where I reside! Here we get:
>UK economy grew by 0.2% overall between April and June, after a surprisingly positive performance...
A significant portion of that growth is coming from Donor Aid. In 2019, foreign donor aid represented 14.8% of GDP [0]
FDI within Rwanda has actually been decreasing because of a larger pullback of donors out of Rwanda [0][1]
Most high value projects that are being built in Rwanda are being targeted at the energy sector [2]. Specifically in oil refining. The other half of major exports from Rwanda is gold, that is primarily extracted from DRC and exported from Rwanda.
Compared to its peers in East Africa, the Rwandan economy is much less complex than it should be. In all honesty, it's smokes and mirrors exacerbated by a strong PR relationship between the Rwandan govt, donors, and NGOs. You don't hear half as much about Kenya, Tanzania, or Uganda as you do about Rwanda, yet almost everything within Rwanda is basically being managed by donors, and a couple Chinese and Indian conglomerates making a quick buck [3]
> Sometimes free market economics lets countries grow without a government plan
Free Market economics still requires a formal vision or strategy to develop a country. South Korea had a formalized strategy in the 80s and 90s, China in the 90s and 2000s, India in the 2000s and 2010s, etc.
If you go purely free market, then there is no actual incentive.
Take a look at neighboring Kenya. Tanzania, and Uganda. They have actual formal industrial and Human capital development projects with the intended aim of building out that muscle locally. The kinds of programs Rwanda creates like this (eg. CMU Kigali) simply don't have an RoI. The exact same thing happened in Ethiopia.
> implying they are doing ok
High GDP growth is expected at Rwanda's stage of development. But Rwanda's rate of growth is not as impressive compared to Cambodia, Kenya, and Vietnam when they were at a similar stage to Rwanda, but with a much lower dependency on foreign aid. Hell, when Kenya was at the exact same stage as Rwanda today in the mid-2000s, they were actively building out an industrial program (eg. Cements), a services economy (eg. mPesa, microfinancing), and investing in govt run universites.
Around 1.3% of GDP growth in Rwanda can be attributed to foreign aid alone. With foreign aid, it ends up getting disbursed and managed by NGOs and Donors directly, not the government. As such, this causes a significant deficiency in institutional knowledge. This has been seen with falsified poverty alleviation and GDP growth data from Rwanda. This is a very big trap that can cause Rwanda to fail to expand beyond their existing capacity. Rwanda's extreme dependence on aid at it's current stage is developing into a form of Dutch disease.
It's already started happening with more capital leaving Rwanda than entering it [4]. When Kenya [5] and Tanzania [6] were in a similar position in the 2000s and 2010s respectively they saw net flows of capital into their countries. This is dangerous as this implies that any economic activity within Rwanda is reaped abroad.
Well, I've never been to Rwanda or know much about it but good luck to them. I quite liked the concept of being the Singapore of Africa having spent some time in actual Singapore and also Hong Kong which had a similar model to Singapore. Both those worked well although they both had strong rule of law and low corruption which often doesn't apply in Africa.
I'm sticking with my hypothesis that info tech will let Africa develop faster than most expect though. AI probably even more so.
I agree that ICT will help development massively, but that's Kenya, Uganda, and to a certain extent Tanzania.
ICT makes up around 15% of Kenya's exports and 10% of Uganda's, and they've both been working hard on actually building a both a strong tech industry and a strong financial industry.
Tanzania doesn't have as same a size of tech industry as Kenya or Uganda, but has been investing a massive amount on building that muscle. They also have a fairly decent industrial economy for their relative position as a LDC.
Rwanda just doesn't have a similar base or bureaucrat class as Tanzania or Kenya or Uganda. Also, Rwanda doesn't actually have a tech industry. The handful of tech companies that are even there are Indian and Chinese run MSPs there to help Indian and Chinese conglomerates that temporarily setup shop there.
> I quite liked the concept of being the Singapore of Africa
The only reason you hear about "tech", "Singapore", and "Rwanda" in the same sentence is because they use Racepoint Global, BTP Advisers, and Portland Communicstions as their PR agency [0][1][2]. Racepoint the same company used by YC startups and a couple large public tech firms for PR and image rehabilitation and BTP Advisers has provided concierge image rehabilitation services for troubled countries like Azerbaijan, Montenegro, Qatar, and a couple conglomerates affiliated to Hezbollah. It's used as a case example of PR in MBA programs to this day. Portland Communications is a lobbying firm founded by Tony Blair's special advisors and has been used by Qatar, Israel, Russia, Singapore, Gazprom, Cisco, and Rio Tinto as well as their primary lobbyist in the EU and UK.
My guess of info tech letting Africa grow is more that they can use it and go on Wikipedia or Youtube for how to fix stuff. I'm not really expecting them to produce much tech themselves. Africa's economic strong area seems more in resources which may be sort of old tech but which has made Australia say quite wealthy.
I'll believe that when I see a single startup come out of Africa and compete on the the world economy. 0, I see exactly 0. What about innovations or websites. Again 0.
Look at Forbes list of African innovations - it's bull, a pedal powered toilet, an electric pedicab made from recycled materials (like what?!)
This isn't a country we're talking about, this is a continent. Something is wrong.
This guy's explanation hits on what I saw there. In Africa business and politics go together. The money isn't going to support innovators or entrepreneurs or business. It's going to politicians and that's it. That's where taxes are going, that's where foreign aid is going, that's where it's all going.
> Europe is imposing the same "restrictions" on Americans that America has on Europeans: register online.
It will be for more than just US citizens though. Also, the US’s restrictions have been in place for a long time. Why did EU decide to roll it out at this time? What are the benefits? If they wanted to show they are big boys they wouldn’t need to wait all this time.
It's a steady source of income. Keeping up the ESTA website doesn't cost $20 per user, and it lowers tracking costs for border agencies across all states.
As of why now: iirc, it was introduced in the context of trade bickering under Trump.
Immigration only works for people who can and want to integrate, when people cannot and don't want to integrate the situation quickly becomes infernal for everyone involved
The problem with these numbers in France is that you can be born in France but you’re not automatically a citizen depending on who you were born to. Those would have to undertake a process later in life to acquire French citizenship (not sure if just bureaucratic or monetary costs involved too).
Many may not bother acquiring French citizenship if they’re already EU citizens, married to one, or if acquiring another citizenship creates a problem in their other country.
Would have been more useful if they dug into birthplace and immigration status.
France created a lot of this problem itself by thinking it was their right to just show up in foreign territories and telling everyone to learn French.
> France created a lot of this problem itself by thinking it was their right to just show up in foreign territories and telling everyone to learn French.
No country in the world is free from that though... I don't go out and blame the Islamic Empire so leave Europe alone, ex colonies have been free for the greater part of a century and are still as bad as they were 200 years ago, if not worse for a lot of them, perpetuating archaic political systems as rotten as ever, some of them even sinking in even worse.
Either way it doesn't make it legal for 6th generation descendants of these countries to rape and steal, especially not after being welcomed as refugees.
The vast majority of people integrate well enough we don't have to excuse the ones who don't. People from certain ex colonies have virtually no integration issues and are the cause of no criminality.
People who want to integrate suffer from these issues even more than others so we're doing them no service by rationalising these actions
> No country in the world is free from that though.
Lots of countries are free of it. Mongols did not destroy culture and religion where they went , the Mughals did not, The Americans did not , conquest for wealth does not always mean whole scale destruction of culture.
That pretty much is characteristic to the religious nations originating from the Levant. I.e Roman empire successors and the Islamic Caliphates .
> I don't go out and blame the Islamic Empire so leave Europe alone
Why not ? They are two sides of the same coin . Abhramic religions with chruch controlled /influenced states with the same conversion philosophies in close proximity.
> colonies have been free for the greater part of a century.
Free? Colonial powers destoried our national cultural wealth , drained natural resources, continue to brain drain best talent from the former colonies, you think a mere half century with scant support and no repatriation is enough to reverse the atrocities the likes lepold commited with blessing of the "western" world ?
> make it legal for 6th generation
Of course not , there is no justification for any violence .no amount of history justifies any violence
Now.
However karma is a bitch, you will not find much sympathy in the global south, what Europe has today is nothing compared to what happened in the last 6 centuries, the effects of which will take a millennia to erase , the best English king can do is "almost" appolgize . Europe has a long way to go
Falling apart has very different meaning in global south to say Sudanese, Venezuelans or Ethiopians or Burmese .
“Falling apart” in Europe is a first world problem that is unlikely to have much empathy in the global south .
the basic argument here is we would like to take the best doctors, engineers and scientists and brightest from former colonies but keep all the low life out, why shouldn’t Europe take the good with the bad same of the rest of us?
Most countries grant citizenship by blood, not soil.
You are right however: framing that crime as being due to foreigners is simplifying France's own culpability in the matter. Anyone blaming foreigners is usually literally shifting blame.
There is an angle here that doesn’t get talked about because it is often misconstrued as “racist”.
In every old world society, your ethnicity is a big part of identity. This is how nations come to be exist in most cases. There are few places where this is not true and two successful examples are the USA and Canada. Any time one points out that the cornerstone of US and Canadian society is inclusion, it is shouted down.
Meanwhile, the reverse point is ignored in discussions about the old world. France has a problem with integrating muslims because they are not seen as “French”, despite what many well-meaning french people may claim. Identity in countries like France, Sweden etc is build around ethnicity and you cannot change your ethnicity.
I say all this because THIS is at the heart of crime statistics. Obviously, it is a complex issue that spans poverty, exclusions etc but at the heart is that old world society is constructed around ethnicity.
Funny that you talk of "muslims" and "French" after talking about "nations", it already gives a key parameter to understand the situation...
There are plenty of muslim immigrants that are fully integrated, they even lament the failure of the French state to control immigrations and solve the migrant crime issues, they're the first ones to denounce islamism.
> Identity in countries like France, Sweden etc is build around ethnicity and you cannot change your ethnicity.
You don't know much about France then... we had many immigration waves, from Poland to Portugal, Italy, Maghreb, Vietnam, &c. only a small minority of one of these, a very specific one, creates issues. And it's the same all over Europe... despite each EU country being widely different...
I think at least as important is having a common visa for non-Africans coming into Africa. The two together would create a Schengen-style zone across Africa, which would be huge.
It's also okay if that didn't cover all of Africa. Africa is huge, and in practice, no one is going from Morocco to Kenya on a casual outing. If there were three Europe-sized blocks, that might be even better (but no more than a dozen).
So long as doing business in Africa requires 54 visas and understanding 54 different regulatory regimes, the continent is kind of going to remain stuck. Only very major multinational corporations are able to navigate that mess, and from a tourism perspective, it's also no fun.
In the social media era, borders will eventually collapse. We always suspected / heard how much better (objectively or subjectively) life can be in other places, now we can literally see it live.
The location of birth is a completely unfair lottery we all participate in. We should at least have the opportunity to try and change our fate.
I'm all for a borderless future, but I see it as unlikely. What I think will happen will be extreme concentration of wealth in a few places, and those will put up sky-high walls (literal and figurative) to block out everyone else.
And yeah, life is a lottery, from where we are born, to where we can go and which biological body we got.
Not just assets. Even preferences are a lottery -- whether you like to work, whether you're attracted to the kind of person your country's politics approves of, all of it.
> What I think will happen will be extreme concentration of wealth in a few places, and those will put up sky-high walls (literal and figurative) to block out everyone else.
That accurately describes the USA today (and has for many decades), and especially some of the wealthier parts like the SF Bay area.
USA has a long way to go yet. Think attack dogs, minefields and being shot in the back from watchtower for trying to illegally cross the border Berlin wall-style.
(A) social media doesn’t grant any new insight into the living conditions in attractive countries. That’s been apparent through media and communication for decades.
(B) migration is hugely asymmetrical. Many people want to come to the high status countries, few want to come to the low status countries. Borders tend to be enforced more strictly when there is higher demand for entry. So in a world with clear differences in quality of life between different countries, borders aren’t going anywhere.
To me, it grants new insight into how the poor live in attractive countries. All the ugly stuff that is hidden away in the propaganda brochures is now plain for everybody to see.
Are you suggesting that prior to social media, immigrants to high status countries had a misleadingly positive impression of life in those countries? That would seem to imply that we should be seeing a reduction in demand for immigration to high status countries. But in fact, demand is higher than ever.
i still remember the shock on my face the first time i roamed neighborhoods in berlin, paris, los angeles that were indistinguishable from the rot i thought i had escaped. and this was since 2018. western media, until social media and individual ‘journalism’ presented the best and only the best side of europe and america.
Agree strongly with B, and that we're seeing it now. AfD is about to clean up in Germany. Italy, Sweden, Denmark are planning expulsions of migrants who don't work.
All of that will further drive Europe into irrelevance economically compared to a relatively pro-(high skilled) immigration USA. Always glad to see geopolitical competitors shoot them selves in the foot!
Societies are a multigenerational building project, far beyond taxes-welfare ratio or the "culture preservation", the idea that nations are simple interchangeable places where somebody makes money and consume goods/services is a "luxury belief" built upon centuries of human development. For example, I rember from a study on china social mobility that it takes there on average 4/5 generations of "progress" to move from subsistence farming to "urban middle class"
Reducing borders in culturally and economically similar places seem to work ok such as in the EU, and I could see it within areas like Sub Saharan Africa or SE Asia. There would be a lot of difficulties removing barriers between say Europe and Africa though.
It's astonishing there's no bare bones citizen by investment scheme in sub Saharan Africa. Given the corruption and access to Rwanda and Kenya it seems like an obvious easy money printer.
You could do a lot worse than Rwanda if you were fleeing Russia or the West Bank or something. Usually CBI are investment only in name, they're seen as a total loss.
Rwanda has an HDI of 0.545 and this is suspect as well because they have been found to be fudging poverty and GDP metrics
Even Gaza under occupation had a HDI of 0.699 (roughly comparable to Vietnam). The West Bank regions are roughly comparable to neighboring Jordan around 0.710-0.730.
Even most Pakistanis, Afghans, and Syrians have better options in their home country from an economic standpoint.
Russia itself has almost reached a threshold around "Developed" with an HDI around 0.824.
I never meant to imply Rwanda is better than the aforementioned on a general level. When you are legitimately fleeing rather than economically migrating though that typically means your individual HDI of sorts was already near zero. It doesn't make much sense to use population HDI of origin for such persons.
I've been helping a couple Afghan translators stuck in Afghanistan to get their families into the US. They are all staying put in Kabul or Ghazni until the US processes their visa, and are looking at Pakistan, Saudi, and India as backups in case they need to book it and leave.
They sure as hell aren't going to uproot their lives to end up in another country at a similar developmental level but with no safety net in the form of family if network nor enough relevant jobs nor the relevant language skills
On top of that, there are waaaay better options in general. If you're in WB and want to flee, it's relatively easy to go to Jordan. As a Gazan it is obviously difficult right now with the war, but even before that Gazans who would emigrate abroad (as refugees or immigrants) had a path in Jordan (27% of Jordan is Palestinian), Saudi (1% of Saudi is Palestinian), Qatar (5% of Qatar is Palestinian), and Egypt, which isn't as great as Europe but is definitely better and easier to survive in than Rwanda
It's the same reason Australia opened camps for asylees in Papua New Guinea and Narau - by building a hell on earth they are showing you shouldn't even try apply for asylum.
There are 55k Palestinians diaspora in Yemen and that has an even worse HDI than Rwanda. The number of fallacies you've presented I'm starting to lose track. You've used anecdote of an afghan family, general population HDI of origin to measure subpopulations fleeing, you said "not really" to a statement that you could do worse but then did the opposite and instead argued that there were other better possible choices (I never denied this).
It's baffling that you're so dismissive some could use the option, particularly when circumstances and wealth and connections often dictate where you can flee. Low HDI Comoros (now discontinued ) and Vanuatu have CBI programs that have sold tens of thousands of passports to stateless and others in bad situations in the third world ( most of whom have no chance at US visa), despite in theory with the right means other options being better.
The market case is well established, frankly I suspect it's only a matter of time until these incentives open up such doors again in these regions.
> It's baffling that you're so dismissive some could use the option
Because it's direct fork of Australia's "Pacific Solution". Look at the data from that - asylum applications DROPPED as asylees from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, etc simply decided to return to their home country (even it was dangerous like Afghanistan during the surge or Sri Lanka towards the end of the civil war) instead of waiting indefinitely for processing.
Also, I don't think you've ever travelled to actual developing countries or have a background with them. Going from one undeveloped country to another makes absolutely no sense. Stuff is still fucked in developing country B as it is in developing country A. Developing countries simply do not have the resources to adequately manage a population of refugees.
Put yourself in the shoes of a refugee from Aleppo - do you want to go from Aleppo to some random country in Africa with a GDP per Capita of $800 that is probably falsified [0], isn't fully English speaking yet, and is still overwhelmingly agricultural (aka you will be working in a field for less than $2 a day) [1], minimum wage is $2 a MONTH [1], or would you rather just go across the border to Türkiye where median incomes are $400/month, there is a semi-functioning healthcare system, and there are half decent universities so your kids will absolutely have a shot of emigrating to the first world.
> Vanuatu have CBI programs that have sold tens of thousands of passports to stateless and others in bad situations in the third world
You are talking out of your ass.
Vanuatu's CBI program gives you visa free access to Ireland and used to have visa free access to the UK until a couple months ago when they shut down that loophole.
It also requires you to spend $130,000 and have a bank account with at least $250,000. A stateless individual, migrant worker, or refugee does not have half a million dollars to spend on a random citizenship! If they did they would already have an easy time emigrating to a first world country above board.
It's a program used to get a backdoor into Ireland and formerly the UK.
Also, based on your comment history, you look like someone who's education about the world came from Reddit and Youtube. Learn to read real sources (books, NYT, Financial Times, The Economist, Nikkei, NBER papers, etc).
>Also, I don't think you've ever travelled to actual developing countries or have a background with them. Going from one undeveloped country to another makes absolutely no sense. Stuff is still fucked in developing country B as it is in developing country A. Developing countries simply do not have the resources to adequately manage a population of refugees.
>Put yourself in the shoes of a refugee from Aleppo - do you want to go from Aleppo to some random country in Africa with a GDP per Capita of $800 that is probably falsified [0], isn't fully English speaking yet, and is still overwhelmingly agricultural (aka you will be working in a field for less than $2 a day) [1], or would you rather just go across the border to Türkiye where median incomes are $400/month, there is a semi-functioning healthcare system, and there are half decent universities so your kids will absolutely have a shot of emigrating to the first world.
Awesome you brought those points up. I lived in Syria. Rojava to be exact. I also fought in their militia the YPG. It's awesome you dismissively bring up Turkey, where the Kurds I fought alongside would have been imprisoned or killed -- but yeah just go to Turkey!
>A stateless individual, migrant worker, or refugee does not have half a million dollars to spend on a random citizenship! If they did they would already have an easy time emigrating to a first world country above board.
Not sure if you're serious but this is a real problem for stateless people and Vanuatu, Dominica etc have developed due diligence methods specifically for their stateless CBI clients. Stateless or refugee does not mean they have to be poor. In many cases gaining nationality even a low HDI one is a huge step up in access to global markets and KYC/AML.
>Because it's direct fork of Australia's "Pacific Solution". Look at the data from that - asylum applications DROPPED as asylees from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, etc simply decided to return to their home country (even it was dangerous like Afghanistan during the surge or Sri Lanka towards the end of the civil war) instead of waiting indefinitely for processing.
Bait and switch (from the viewpoint of asylee) is a bit different here. It's one thing to enter another country as a citizen, quite different than aiming for AUS and ending up in PNG without citizenship and maybe not even work authorization. That's much worse psychologically to many than roughly knowing what you're getting and having citizen footing.
>"Legal gray area"
Lol the US fought alongside YPG. DHS, CBP, and probably others have known for the better part of a decade I was in the YPG. They know who i am, where I've been, where I live and they've interrogated many times at port of entry. Nice scare tactics but I'm gonna guess after a decade of no US YPG getting prosecuted for a non-crime this is a dead issue.
> Not sure if you're serious but this is a real problem for stateless people and Vanuatu
You still need to pay $130,000-170,000 to the Vantanu government and have a minimum of $250,000 in the bank. Most people living in the OECD do not have that much money in the bank, let alone people in the developing world.
> I lived in Syria. Rojava to be exact. I also fought in their militia the YPG
Honestly, I highly doubt it. You are an account with less than 100 karma created 17 days ago. I do not think you are of MENA origin and you definetly do not sound it.
In another post you said you were homeless. I legitimately think you are a strawman account.
Based on information from your account you seem to live in Poland, but might be an American citizen.
> where the Kurds I fought alongside would have been imprisoned or killed
Yes, because if you actually were with the YPG you were in an organization that still supports the PKK and Ocalan to this day (an organization that is a proscribed terrorist group in the United States and EU).
Also if you are a US or western citizen who did this with one of their foreign legions, you need to talk to a lawyer right now. You are in a legal grey area.
Can you name a single American prosecuted for fighting for the YPG? Yes my passport was flagged and I was harassed for years but I think you're uninformed on this issue. I have openly been living an admitted to DHS ex-YPG for nearly a decade. It's not illegal and although Turkey may consider the YPG as PKK the DoJ does not.
I sleep without a care in the world on this issue, if they jailed me I would simply smile knowing I fought for something I believed in.
I'd live in Rwanda or Kenya over ~2/3rds of other countries. Certainly over anywhere in the Middle East, North Africa, the nation of South Africa, Central America, etc.
Everyone I know that's gone absolutely loves it, and every Kenyan I've worked with has been a lovely person.
There's a shitty "meme" that Africa is just a huge, hot version of Detroit or St. Louis or other Black American city. It's absolutely not, those classes of areas have remarkably different issues.
You sound like someone who has never been in northern africa or central america. Plenty of areas there that are clean, urbanist, and wealthy, way more than in Kenya or Rwanda.
Making corruption official is problematic. First off, making the practice official makes pricing a lot more transparent. If a country just outright says "no-questions-asked visas for $1000, citizenship for $10,000" then that also means the immigration control officer can't demand $2000 bribes to someone who can't meet the official immigration rules.
Furthermore, one of the advantages of widespread corruption is that everyone has to do it, which means everyone can be prosecuted for it. You could, say, require political candidates to pay million-dollar bribes, and then if those candidates actually get popular enough to threaten your power, prosecute them for bribing themselves onto the ballot. If everyone's a criminal, it doesn't mean the crime isn't a crime. It means you can strip people of their rights at any time without question.
If corruption were made official, this goes away. Someone who bought a golden visa or passport can't be prosecuted if the procedure for buying it was on the books and above-board - even if it's priced like some kind of "Sybil-resistant" anarchocapitalist cryptocurrency hellscape of humans-as-piles-of-money.
great move! hopefully my beloved ghana will follow suit. anybody who has tracked flights for fun or profit realizes the poverty of international travel on the continent. fast on the heels of these changes should be transnational land transports (trains, buses, etc) to complete air travel, and an intentional promotion of the continent.
i’m filled with sadness anytime i see a 20-something year-old african wasting away their strength and intellect in the care of a senile european. or the disproportionate number of africans cleaning the streets of paris. it’s got to stop.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 179 ms ] threadSo far the only story I've been able to come up with is that the border is already so porous that anyone given a hard time about their visa probably arrived via one of the more expensive routes, like air fare, and are not who Kenya would like to keep out
Visa-free travel doesn't mean you can (legally) live/work there, though.
> According to the African Union's website, the African Passport and free movement of people are intended to "remove restrictions on Africans ability to travel, work, and live within their own continent."
> The African Union also established the African Continental Free Trade Area, a free trade area spanning the whole continent with an estimated value of $3.4 trillion. Its goals are to promote economic growth and provide a single, united market for the 1.3 billion people living on the continent.
Sounds like EU.
- The Schengen agreement, i.e. no border controls between countries
- The fundamental right to free movement for citizens of the EU.
There are countries where Schengen applies (you can go without visa or with the same visa as the rest of the EU, there is no border control for people normally), but there is no right to live there automatically (Switzerland).
There are countries without Schengen so there are border checks, and the visa system for foreigners is separate, but EU citizens still have the right to live there (Ireland).
Who will probably now be sent off to Kenyan camps, one could speculate.
This will just continue the status quo until we find a solution to the exploitation.
I love this move from Kenya but it does have real risk, and I’d hate to see another South Africa scenario, xenophobia wise
For the uniformed, South Africa has a growing nativist political vigilante movement which violently targets foreign people and businesses called Operation Dudula [1] (Zulu for "push out/forcefully expel"). They attribute South Africa's social and economic problems to other migrant Africans, rather than the mismanagement and corruption of the ANC.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-66808346
It will be an easy task for said leaders/citizens to put blame on migrants for the movements. South Africa has been mentioned, but a lot of people in Ghana’s opinion on recent tourism friendly attitudes range from dislike to blaming it on inflation/devaluation there.
Immigration is always an easy scapegoat, it’s almost cheating.
https://youtu.be/pSHgn8BGyI8?t=471
Mehn spare me, I have heard this over and over again, and yes it’s true.
But being “beautiful and lovely” doesn’t build a nation. Hidden behind this facade of beauty is a horrible culture that celebrates corruption, tribalism and lack of cooperation, backbiting, and shortsightedness, which is why our continent remains poor.
Africa will remain a basket case until we reform our culture into one that celebrates honest work and mutual cooperation over corruption and cheating to earn a living, which is doable :)
But, no matter how much lipstick a pig wears…
These are all acute problems in Western nations. The fundamental impediment which Africa faces are it's rich natural resources and the nations which exploit them.
Any "anti-corruption" cultural efforts will be snuffed out long before it becomes a threat to this lucrative expropriation
There is no cultural solution to the boot of political and economic struggle.
As if it’s not our leaders selling out the country to foreign interests for pocket change. Maybe they could pick up a book from Lee Kuan Yew and learn how he rejected a bribe from the CIA.
Without the influence of the money of former colonial states (or their puppets in the form of expropriative enterprises)?
Consider the trillions of dollars made by other countries from Africa's people and resources. Why _wouldnt_ they spend a fraction of that killing any chance that a cultural movement picks up.
This isn't fantasy, Nestle, Chiquita, etc have a long history of funding anti-revolutionary agencies for exactly this reason.
One man rejecting one bribe will do nothing, a single cup cannot drain an ocean.
We can all go back to the past and find excuses of how someone did bad and blame them for the present even if they’re long gone…we Africans are very good at that.
What we’re not good at is ever taking responsibility for f**ing once instead of blaming invisible conspiracists hiding in thin air.
Which one is the worst?
As a result, it's easy for the government to subsidize their citizens heavily and build lots of shiny skyscrapers to attract western tourists without developing human capital significantly.
Call me Islamophobic but I say this as a Nigerian, living in a country with the largest Muslim population in Africa (second-largest in the world after Indonesia) where people still get lynched and burned for "blasphemy."
Islam, fully implementing the Koran, is basically the opposite.
It requires fidelity at the threat of death and the forced conversion of outsiders. It requires civil and religious law to be the same.
Iran for instance instantiates the tenets of Islam in fact.
The Christian theocracies are basically historical dead letters at this point- and were mostly overlays on existing government structures:
The Roman Empire for instance continued to be Rome after the Emperors became Christian- it never really, despite the Pope's best efforts, become more than a light overlay on existing government structures, with King's utilizing theories of 'Divine Right of Kings' as a useful way to perpetuate their existing hierarchies. Even countries like Armenia that claimed explicitly to be Christian states aren't actually ruled by the priesthood- they have established national religions in many historical instances, not a truly religiously run state like Iran where the mullah's are the ultimate authority.
Rome/Papal States, Peter the great, Geneva/Calvin, some slice of the Byzantine empire, along with pre-United States Utah (and in a smaller scale the city of Nauvoo,) where you have had the clerical and government structures completely united in a Christian state that I can think of off hand. England in a much looser sense qualifies. And in these cases you generally again have, relative to Islam, a non-radical, especially as it relates to outsiders, experience.
> It requires fidelity at the threat of death and the forced conversion of outsiders.
Islam does not require forced conversion of outsiders. It can be said to require dominating Earth as a goal, but Christians and Jews lived peacefully under Islamic rule for millenia.
Fidelity at the threat of death is only if the person committing adultery is married and at least 4 people witnessed the incident. This requirement is rarely satisfied, while being enough too deter people to stay away from this act.
> Iran for instance instantiates the tenets of Islam in fact.
Iran is Shiite. They are a deviant sect. Doesn't mean all their practices represent Islam. There will be multiple deviant sects in any religion with billions of population. Vast majority of Muslims are Sunnis who are following the original teachings.
Important to note is all Islamic punishments regarding sins apply to Muslims, not people of other religions. They are (and historically were) free to do whatever they want, barring things like insulting people and betraying the state, which are also punishable under current secular law.
Christianity got killed first in the hands of St. Paul who basically changed Bible to his liking - and then by the Roman emperor whom I forgot his name who selected 4 out of the 400 Bibles available at the time in that famous meeting.
Most African countries got independence in the 1940 - 1970s. Israel was established in 1948, while Singapore became independent in 1967. While most African states busied themselves with denouncing colonialism, playing around with the Soviets, or murdering any ethnic minority that didn't agree with the party line, Singapore went from being a slum to an economic powerhouse; Israel is essentially indispensable to the west as the economic/military intelligence key to the Middle East now.
So, i's hard to celebrate any advancement when we could be much further. Western optimists might feel otherwise, but perspective is everything, I guess?
Singapore was one of the richest Asian countries on a GDP per Capita basis in 1960. It was comparable to other middle income countries in that era like Southern Europe and South America [0].
LKY talking about Singapore as if it was a third world hell hole is just disingenuous PR to make the PAP look much more impressive. Even Taiwan and South Korea were much poorer than Singapore back then, but they've both caught up to Singapore by 2023. In fact, if you compare Singapore with other cities in first world Asia, then it's largely been outpaced by Seoul and Tokyo.
[0] https://cepr.net/documents/publications/econ_growth_2005_11_...
To give two more examples, in 1960 South Korea's GDP/Capita was similar to Sudan and significantly lower than Taiwan's which was similar to Northern African countries (Tunisia, Morocco). Algeria was much richer than either, I assume thanks to oil.
What if we argue a 1971 Ford Pinto is actually just a good a car as a 2003 Honda Civic. Sure, it's old, the fuel tanks rupture in an accident, and it had the largest recall in automotive history, but at least it was affordable, allowing societal mobility?
What is this phenomenon called?
I also wonder why none of those Petro states are bastions of democracy and cultural excellence
Saudi in 1990 had developmental indicators comparable to Bangladesh (a country that is still counted as a less developed country by the WB and IMF).
In 2023, it now has developmental indicators comparable to Poland or Czechia.
In 1990, the UAE had developmental indicators comparable to South Africa today.
In 2023, the UAE has developmental indicators comparable to the US, Israel, and Japan.
It takes time to build democracy as a developing country
What's your point? Are you defending Argentina's corrupt politicians?
If you can't/don't control the borders anyway... It might be more rational to just go with that and enable official channels and/or rules to work.
Insisting on the impossible, or the not-going-to-happen... It's a mistake politics makes regularly. Policies are only as effective as you can make them.
Anyway, if Kenya is in then this is a serious thing.
This is all in place to prevent mass-migration to Europe. Allow migrants to "try" other local countries first.
Extremely clean and safe, massive tech sector and lots of entrepreneurs. I’d rather live there than Kenya
you have the feeling there are people listening around, especially if you talk about politics (and, never talk about the president): it may be just feelings, but you feel it clearly
What Rwanda is doing is great, and a lot depend on that president.
What is revolutionary for me is having a country in Africa where:
* police (and the state) has very low corruption at least interfacing ordinary people
* basic services works (schools, roads, assistance for people with needs: food and health especially)
* clean (and Rwanda is really clean!!)
* and of course without the white ruling elite
so that any African visiting it will just ask him/herself:
* "omg, so it is possible in Africa?" and then
* "so, why the f. in my country everything is so shitty?"
Add to this president's quote: "Africans are the future of global tourism" and you have a great trigger.
Just looking at East Africa, even Kenya's current HDI is at 0.575, and the rest of East Africa is much lower. Rwanda is at 0.534 (this is potentially suspect as Rwanda has been fudging numbers [0]), Tanzania is at 0.549, and Uganda is at 0.525.
It is a similar story in West Africa as well.
While there are some bright spots in human capital in Kenya, it's much less diffused than similar undeveloped to developed stories like Bangladesh or Vietnam, let alone China, India, Thailand, etc. Going from less developed to developing requires some kind of a nudge and capital, and in South Korea, Bangladesh and Vietnam's cases it came from Japan, India and China respectively.
There isn't a similar case in sub-Saharan Africa yet. If South Africa can get it's economy back in track, there might be a shot for the rest of the continent, as they are in the right position to diffuse capital, human capital, and businesses.
[0] - https://www.ft.com/content/683047ac-b857-11e9-96bd-8e884d3ea...
(Average annual HDI growth from 2010 to 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...)
The other region which has grown fast is the China area but that may slow a bit as China de-accelerates.
Life Expectancy and Literacy rate has been growing at a significant amount in plenty of sub-Saharan Africa over the past few years, but that's from a low base. The extremely low hanging fruit will be largely caught within a decade, which will then slow down as that requires significant reforms and expansion in healthcare and education quality and availability.
Per Capita Income will still always be a significant issue though, as my earlier point still stands. You need a strong economy to further grow out, and that is largely a factor of good education as well as you need to climb up the value chain.
Climbing the value chain is hard without outside stimulus. Most countries that have seen a rapid transformation were able to do so because another country decided to mentor and invest a massive amount in the country's economic base.
There just isn't a reason to do any manufacturing or high value services in most sub-Saharan African economies. There are plenty of cheap and well integrated Asian countries right now like like Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, parts of India that can still be competitive in low manufacturing for the next 1-2 decades.
It will anyhow take 1-2 decades for some sub-Saharan countries to anyhow invest in human capital. Kenya and Tanzania have been doing some very hard work on this regard.
With Rwanda, less so if we're being honest. Flashy projects like CMU Kigali and Thailand level cleanliness aside, Rwanda hasn't been able to bring a high value industry into the country yet. It's GDP per Capita is barely $1,000, median income is around $750-780, and around 60% of public and infra investment is coming directly from foreign aid.
The business culture there is simply much less mature compared to that in Nairobi or Dar es Salaam, and what happens when Kagame dies?
The same thing happened with Ethiopia. Addis Ababa became very flashy and clean, yet the country ended up collapsing into civil war and almost a decade of development was washed away.
> other region which has grown fast is the China area
The biggest winner from an HDI growth basis was actually Türkiye. They largely caught up with Eastern Europe over the last 15-20 years, and were able to keep consistently high growth (around 5-6% GDP growth rate in average since 2009) despite hitting China in 2023 level metrics almost 15 years ago
China's growth has been amazing but it will largely slow down
>KIGALI, July 11, 2023—Rwanda’s economy grew by 9.2% in the first quarter of 2023, following 8.2% growth in 2022.
implying they are doing ok. I wish we had that sort of growth in Brexit Britain where I reside! Here we get:
>UK economy grew by 0.2% overall between April and June, after a surprisingly positive performance...
which is not quite the same.
FDI within Rwanda has actually been decreasing because of a larger pullback of donors out of Rwanda [0][1]
Most high value projects that are being built in Rwanda are being targeted at the energy sector [2]. Specifically in oil refining. The other half of major exports from Rwanda is gold, that is primarily extracted from DRC and exported from Rwanda.
Compared to its peers in East Africa, the Rwandan economy is much less complex than it should be. In all honesty, it's smokes and mirrors exacerbated by a strong PR relationship between the Rwandan govt, donors, and NGOs. You don't hear half as much about Kenya, Tanzania, or Uganda as you do about Rwanda, yet almost everything within Rwanda is basically being managed by donors, and a couple Chinese and Indian conglomerates making a quick buck [3]
> Sometimes free market economics lets countries grow without a government plan
Free Market economics still requires a formal vision or strategy to develop a country. South Korea had a formalized strategy in the 80s and 90s, China in the 90s and 2000s, India in the 2000s and 2010s, etc.
If you go purely free market, then there is no actual incentive.
Take a look at neighboring Kenya. Tanzania, and Uganda. They have actual formal industrial and Human capital development projects with the intended aim of building out that muscle locally. The kinds of programs Rwanda creates like this (eg. CMU Kigali) simply don't have an RoI. The exact same thing happened in Ethiopia.
> implying they are doing ok
High GDP growth is expected at Rwanda's stage of development. But Rwanda's rate of growth is not as impressive compared to Cambodia, Kenya, and Vietnam when they were at a similar stage to Rwanda, but with a much lower dependency on foreign aid. Hell, when Kenya was at the exact same stage as Rwanda today in the mid-2000s, they were actively building out an industrial program (eg. Cements), a services economy (eg. mPesa, microfinancing), and investing in govt run universites.
Around 1.3% of GDP growth in Rwanda can be attributed to foreign aid alone. With foreign aid, it ends up getting disbursed and managed by NGOs and Donors directly, not the government. As such, this causes a significant deficiency in institutional knowledge. This has been seen with falsified poverty alleviation and GDP growth data from Rwanda. This is a very big trap that can cause Rwanda to fail to expand beyond their existing capacity. Rwanda's extreme dependence on aid at it's current stage is developing into a form of Dutch disease.
It's already started happening with more capital leaving Rwanda than entering it [4]. When Kenya [5] and Tanzania [6] were in a similar position in the 2000s and 2010s respectively they saw net flows of capital into their countries. This is dangerous as this implies that any economic activity within Rwanda is reaped abroad.
[0] - https://issafrica.org/iss-today/could-fdi-be-rwandas-lifelin...
[1] - https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RWA/rwanda/foreign-dir...
[2] - https://www.gov.rw/highlights/economy-and-business
[3] - https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/China-and-India-stage-invest...
[4] - https://trad...
I'm sticking with my hypothesis that info tech will let Africa develop faster than most expect though. AI probably even more so.
I agree that ICT will help development massively, but that's Kenya, Uganda, and to a certain extent Tanzania.
ICT makes up around 15% of Kenya's exports and 10% of Uganda's, and they've both been working hard on actually building a both a strong tech industry and a strong financial industry.
Tanzania doesn't have as same a size of tech industry as Kenya or Uganda, but has been investing a massive amount on building that muscle. They also have a fairly decent industrial economy for their relative position as a LDC.
Rwanda just doesn't have a similar base or bureaucrat class as Tanzania or Kenya or Uganda. Also, Rwanda doesn't actually have a tech industry. The handful of tech companies that are even there are Indian and Chinese run MSPs there to help Indian and Chinese conglomerates that temporarily setup shop there.
> I quite liked the concept of being the Singapore of Africa
The only reason you hear about "tech", "Singapore", and "Rwanda" in the same sentence is because they use Racepoint Global, BTP Advisers, and Portland Communicstions as their PR agency [0][1][2]. Racepoint the same company used by YC startups and a couple large public tech firms for PR and image rehabilitation and BTP Advisers has provided concierge image rehabilitation services for troubled countries like Azerbaijan, Montenegro, Qatar, and a couple conglomerates affiliated to Hezbollah. It's used as a case example of PR in MBA programs to this day. Portland Communications is a lobbying firm founded by Tony Blair's special advisors and has been used by Qatar, Israel, Russia, Singapore, Gazprom, Cisco, and Rio Tinto as well as their primary lobbyist in the EU and UK.
[0] - https://store.hbr.org/product/a-public-relations-campaign-fo...
[1] - https://btpadvisers.com/case-studies/rwanda
[2] - https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/client?cid=5735
Look at Forbes list of African innovations - it's bull, a pedal powered toilet, an electric pedicab made from recycled materials (like what?!)
This isn't a country we're talking about, this is a continent. Something is wrong.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mfonobongnsehe/2014/02/13/seven...
This guy's explanation hits on what I saw there. In Africa business and politics go together. The money isn't going to support innovators or entrepreneurs or business. It's going to politicians and that's it. That's where taxes are going, that's where foreign aid is going, that's where it's all going.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpbyDIpIStc
Meanwhile, the EU is going in the opposite direction [1]
[0]https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil215/Huemer3.pdf
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37984102
Internally the travel remains the same: visa-free, border-free
It will be for more than just US citizens though. Also, the US’s restrictions have been in place for a long time. Why did EU decide to roll it out at this time? What are the benefits? If they wanted to show they are big boys they wouldn’t need to wait all this time.
As of why now: iirc, it was introduced in the context of trade bickering under Trump.
... The claim that an action is a prima facie rights violation, then, is not a very strong claim ...
> the EU is going in the opposite direction
Well look at crime statistics wherever immigration was made easier. For example in Paris metro 90%+ of thefts and 60%+ of sexual aggressions were committed by foreigners: https://www.valeursactuelles.com/societe/en-ile-de-france-93...
Immigration only works for people who can and want to integrate, when people cannot and don't want to integrate the situation quickly becomes infernal for everyone involved
Many may not bother acquiring French citizenship if they’re already EU citizens, married to one, or if acquiring another citizenship creates a problem in their other country.
Would have been more useful if they dug into birthplace and immigration status.
France created a lot of this problem itself by thinking it was their right to just show up in foreign territories and telling everyone to learn French.
No country in the world is free from that though... I don't go out and blame the Islamic Empire so leave Europe alone, ex colonies have been free for the greater part of a century and are still as bad as they were 200 years ago, if not worse for a lot of them, perpetuating archaic political systems as rotten as ever, some of them even sinking in even worse.
Either way it doesn't make it legal for 6th generation descendants of these countries to rape and steal, especially not after being welcomed as refugees.
The vast majority of people integrate well enough we don't have to excuse the ones who don't. People from certain ex colonies have virtually no integration issues and are the cause of no criminality.
People who want to integrate suffer from these issues even more than others so we're doing them no service by rationalising these actions
https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/5763585?sommaire=576363...
Lots of countries are free of it. Mongols did not destroy culture and religion where they went , the Mughals did not, The Americans did not , conquest for wealth does not always mean whole scale destruction of culture.
That pretty much is characteristic to the religious nations originating from the Levant. I.e Roman empire successors and the Islamic Caliphates .
> I don't go out and blame the Islamic Empire so leave Europe alone
Why not ? They are two sides of the same coin . Abhramic religions with chruch controlled /influenced states with the same conversion philosophies in close proximity.
> colonies have been free for the greater part of a century.
Free? Colonial powers destoried our national cultural wealth , drained natural resources, continue to brain drain best talent from the former colonies, you think a mere half century with scant support and no repatriation is enough to reverse the atrocities the likes lepold commited with blessing of the "western" world ?
> make it legal for 6th generation
Of course not , there is no justification for any violence .no amount of history justifies any violence Now.
However karma is a bitch, you will not find much sympathy in the global south, what Europe has today is nothing compared to what happened in the last 6 centuries, the effects of which will take a millennia to erase , the best English king can do is "almost" appolgize . Europe has a long way to go
It'll fall apart because of these issues, I don't think the way will be that long
“Falling apart” in Europe is a first world problem that is unlikely to have much empathy in the global south .
the basic argument here is we would like to take the best doctors, engineers and scientists and brightest from former colonies but keep all the low life out, why shouldn’t Europe take the good with the bad same of the rest of us?
You are right however: framing that crime as being due to foreigners is simplifying France's own culpability in the matter. Anyone blaming foreigners is usually literally shifting blame.
In every old world society, your ethnicity is a big part of identity. This is how nations come to be exist in most cases. There are few places where this is not true and two successful examples are the USA and Canada. Any time one points out that the cornerstone of US and Canadian society is inclusion, it is shouted down.
Meanwhile, the reverse point is ignored in discussions about the old world. France has a problem with integrating muslims because they are not seen as “French”, despite what many well-meaning french people may claim. Identity in countries like France, Sweden etc is build around ethnicity and you cannot change your ethnicity.
I say all this because THIS is at the heart of crime statistics. Obviously, it is a complex issue that spans poverty, exclusions etc but at the heart is that old world society is constructed around ethnicity.
It works the other way too, here you have the king of Morocco saying Moroccans will _never_ integrate in French society: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0e8r0bVXL8
Funny that you talk of "muslims" and "French" after talking about "nations", it already gives a key parameter to understand the situation...
There are plenty of muslim immigrants that are fully integrated, they even lament the failure of the French state to control immigrations and solve the migrant crime issues, they're the first ones to denounce islamism.
> Identity in countries like France, Sweden etc is build around ethnicity and you cannot change your ethnicity.
You don't know much about France then... we had many immigration waves, from Poland to Portugal, Italy, Maghreb, Vietnam, &c. only a small minority of one of these, a very specific one, creates issues. And it's the same all over Europe... despite each EU country being widely different...
I think at least as important is having a common visa for non-Africans coming into Africa. The two together would create a Schengen-style zone across Africa, which would be huge.
It's also okay if that didn't cover all of Africa. Africa is huge, and in practice, no one is going from Morocco to Kenya on a casual outing. If there were three Europe-sized blocks, that might be even better (but no more than a dozen).
So long as doing business in Africa requires 54 visas and understanding 54 different regulatory regimes, the continent is kind of going to remain stuck. Only very major multinational corporations are able to navigate that mess, and from a tourism perspective, it's also no fun.
The location of birth is a completely unfair lottery we all participate in. We should at least have the opportunity to try and change our fate.
And yeah, life is a lottery, from where we are born, to where we can go and which biological body we got.
That accurately describes the USA today (and has for many decades), and especially some of the wealthier parts like the SF Bay area.
(A) social media doesn’t grant any new insight into the living conditions in attractive countries. That’s been apparent through media and communication for decades.
(B) migration is hugely asymmetrical. Many people want to come to the high status countries, few want to come to the low status countries. Borders tend to be enforced more strictly when there is higher demand for entry. So in a world with clear differences in quality of life between different countries, borders aren’t going anywhere.
Rwanda has an HDI of 0.545 and this is suspect as well because they have been found to be fudging poverty and GDP metrics
Even Gaza under occupation had a HDI of 0.699 (roughly comparable to Vietnam). The West Bank regions are roughly comparable to neighboring Jordan around 0.710-0.730.
Even most Pakistanis, Afghans, and Syrians have better options in their home country from an economic standpoint.
Russia itself has almost reached a threshold around "Developed" with an HDI around 0.824.
They sure as hell aren't going to uproot their lives to end up in another country at a similar developmental level but with no safety net in the form of family if network nor enough relevant jobs nor the relevant language skills
On top of that, there are waaaay better options in general. If you're in WB and want to flee, it's relatively easy to go to Jordan. As a Gazan it is obviously difficult right now with the war, but even before that Gazans who would emigrate abroad (as refugees or immigrants) had a path in Jordan (27% of Jordan is Palestinian), Saudi (1% of Saudi is Palestinian), Qatar (5% of Qatar is Palestinian), and Egypt, which isn't as great as Europe but is definitely better and easier to survive in than Rwanda
It's the same reason Australia opened camps for asylees in Papua New Guinea and Narau - by building a hell on earth they are showing you shouldn't even try apply for asylum.
It's baffling that you're so dismissive some could use the option, particularly when circumstances and wealth and connections often dictate where you can flee. Low HDI Comoros (now discontinued ) and Vanuatu have CBI programs that have sold tens of thousands of passports to stateless and others in bad situations in the third world ( most of whom have no chance at US visa), despite in theory with the right means other options being better.
The market case is well established, frankly I suspect it's only a matter of time until these incentives open up such doors again in these regions.
Because it's direct fork of Australia's "Pacific Solution". Look at the data from that - asylum applications DROPPED as asylees from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, etc simply decided to return to their home country (even it was dangerous like Afghanistan during the surge or Sri Lanka towards the end of the civil war) instead of waiting indefinitely for processing.
Also, I don't think you've ever travelled to actual developing countries or have a background with them. Going from one undeveloped country to another makes absolutely no sense. Stuff is still fucked in developing country B as it is in developing country A. Developing countries simply do not have the resources to adequately manage a population of refugees.
Put yourself in the shoes of a refugee from Aleppo - do you want to go from Aleppo to some random country in Africa with a GDP per Capita of $800 that is probably falsified [0], isn't fully English speaking yet, and is still overwhelmingly agricultural (aka you will be working in a field for less than $2 a day) [1], minimum wage is $2 a MONTH [1], or would you rather just go across the border to Türkiye where median incomes are $400/month, there is a semi-functioning healthcare system, and there are half decent universities so your kids will absolutely have a shot of emigrating to the first world.
> Vanuatu have CBI programs that have sold tens of thousands of passports to stateless and others in bad situations in the third world
You are talking out of your ass.
Vanuatu's CBI program gives you visa free access to Ireland and used to have visa free access to the UK until a couple months ago when they shut down that loophole.
It also requires you to spend $130,000 and have a bank account with at least $250,000. A stateless individual, migrant worker, or refugee does not have half a million dollars to spend on a random citizenship! If they did they would already have an easy time emigrating to a first world country above board.
It's a program used to get a backdoor into Ireland and formerly the UK.
Also, based on your comment history, you look like someone who's education about the world came from Reddit and Youtube. Learn to read real sources (books, NYT, Financial Times, The Economist, Nikkei, NBER papers, etc).
[0] - https://www.ft.com/content/683047ac-b857-11e9-96bd-8e884d3ea...
[1] - https://align-tool.com/source-map/rwanda
>Put yourself in the shoes of a refugee from Aleppo - do you want to go from Aleppo to some random country in Africa with a GDP per Capita of $800 that is probably falsified [0], isn't fully English speaking yet, and is still overwhelmingly agricultural (aka you will be working in a field for less than $2 a day) [1], or would you rather just go across the border to Türkiye where median incomes are $400/month, there is a semi-functioning healthcare system, and there are half decent universities so your kids will absolutely have a shot of emigrating to the first world.
Awesome you brought those points up. I lived in Syria. Rojava to be exact. I also fought in their militia the YPG. It's awesome you dismissively bring up Turkey, where the Kurds I fought alongside would have been imprisoned or killed -- but yeah just go to Turkey!
>A stateless individual, migrant worker, or refugee does not have half a million dollars to spend on a random citizenship! If they did they would already have an easy time emigrating to a first world country above board.
Not sure if you're serious but this is a real problem for stateless people and Vanuatu, Dominica etc have developed due diligence methods specifically for their stateless CBI clients. Stateless or refugee does not mean they have to be poor. In many cases gaining nationality even a low HDI one is a huge step up in access to global markets and KYC/AML.
>Because it's direct fork of Australia's "Pacific Solution". Look at the data from that - asylum applications DROPPED as asylees from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, etc simply decided to return to their home country (even it was dangerous like Afghanistan during the surge or Sri Lanka towards the end of the civil war) instead of waiting indefinitely for processing.
Bait and switch (from the viewpoint of asylee) is a bit different here. It's one thing to enter another country as a citizen, quite different than aiming for AUS and ending up in PNG without citizenship and maybe not even work authorization. That's much worse psychologically to many than roughly knowing what you're getting and having citizen footing.
>"Legal gray area"
Lol the US fought alongside YPG. DHS, CBP, and probably others have known for the better part of a decade I was in the YPG. They know who i am, where I've been, where I live and they've interrogated many times at port of entry. Nice scare tactics but I'm gonna guess after a decade of no US YPG getting prosecuted for a non-crime this is a dead issue.
You still need to pay $130,000-170,000 to the Vantanu government and have a minimum of $250,000 in the bank. Most people living in the OECD do not have that much money in the bank, let alone people in the developing world.
> I lived in Syria. Rojava to be exact. I also fought in their militia the YPG
Honestly, I highly doubt it. You are an account with less than 100 karma created 17 days ago. I do not think you are of MENA origin and you definetly do not sound it.
In another post you said you were homeless. I legitimately think you are a strawman account.
Based on information from your account you seem to live in Poland, but might be an American citizen.
> where the Kurds I fought alongside would have been imprisoned or killed
Yes, because if you actually were with the YPG you were in an organization that still supports the PKK and Ocalan to this day (an organization that is a proscribed terrorist group in the United States and EU).
Also if you are a US or western citizen who did this with one of their foreign legions, you need to talk to a lawyer right now. You are in a legal grey area.
I sleep without a care in the world on this issue, if they jailed me I would simply smile knowing I fought for something I believed in.
Everyone I know that's gone absolutely loves it, and every Kenyan I've worked with has been a lovely person.
There's a shitty "meme" that Africa is just a huge, hot version of Detroit or St. Louis or other Black American city. It's absolutely not, those classes of areas have remarkably different issues.
Furthermore, one of the advantages of widespread corruption is that everyone has to do it, which means everyone can be prosecuted for it. You could, say, require political candidates to pay million-dollar bribes, and then if those candidates actually get popular enough to threaten your power, prosecute them for bribing themselves onto the ballot. If everyone's a criminal, it doesn't mean the crime isn't a crime. It means you can strip people of their rights at any time without question.
If corruption were made official, this goes away. Someone who bought a golden visa or passport can't be prosecuted if the procedure for buying it was on the books and above-board - even if it's priced like some kind of "Sybil-resistant" anarchocapitalist cryptocurrency hellscape of humans-as-piles-of-money.
Is Kenya similar? I know it's also on the up-and-up
Though I do wonder about the rate at which crimes are reported in more rural areas.
i’m filled with sadness anytime i see a 20-something year-old african wasting away their strength and intellect in the care of a senile european. or the disproportionate number of africans cleaning the streets of paris. it’s got to stop.