Bomani, you’re still a dumbass. Look at your damn intro page for this site, you’re wearing a borrowed coat/fur (whatever the hell it is) and acting like an idiot right off the bat. What makes you a trained economist? You have an economics degree? Well that makes two of us. Woohoo! I’m a trained economist too. Dumbass.

Secondly, one not need visit Africa many times to understand the crushing effects that corruption is having on its people. It breaks my heart, and angers me people are suffering. And just as an aside, if I had a quarter for every time I heard an African make generalizations about black folks here, I’d have enough money to feed the continent. Just sayin’.

i’m from ghana and we can’t wait for him to visit.

sidebar: i love it when african americans talk about africa as if they are experts on the subject simply because they visited once. maybe i should claim to be an authority on mexico because i went to cabo last year…hmmm.

There was a village in India that legalized bribery to some success in the recent past. The best way to deal with it is still to wake people up to the long-term disadvantages to the short con. It’s hard to argue with 15 seconds of work getting you Fiddy’s chain though.

That said — I’m a trained economist. Tiffany’s actually Dr. Tiffany, with a Ph.D in economics. We know what we’re talking about.

But even if we didn’t, your point doesn’t hold water. Doesn’t matter what that $2,722 will get you in Angola. All that matters is that Fiddy was wearing decades worth of income on his neck, which is quite the incentive for someone to bum rush a stage and snatch your chain.

Bravo.

In fact, the only place where I encountered even more hustle was India. And you know why? Because folks were po’–and there were millions of them. Not, I can’t figure out where the rent is coming from poor, but I ain’t go no place to live, nowhere to go, and don’t know where my next meal is coming from po’. I was not foolish enough to walk around masquerading my relative wealth in any of these places. It’s not a value judgment to say that being poor makes you more desperate–and that goes for whether you’re in any of Africa’s various countries or in North Philly.

That said, I was most interested in Mrco’s comments about Africa being the richest continent on Earth. Well, if a small (and often corrupt) minority leave an tiny piece of the pie for the rest of the population, where does that leave Africa? Your blame of Western powers is certainly not ill-placed, but Africa’s native sons (because it’s mostly men that have been running things) ain’t doing a bad job of rent-seeking and finding other creative ways to leave their countries in dire straits. Whether it’s Mugabe who absolutely refuses to step down and die in peace, or Thabo Mbeki who refuses to demand accountability in his neighbors, governance is a problem. It’s certainly not unique to the continent of Africa, but it is a problem.

Just for fun, I decided to look up some corruption indices at Transparency International. In keeping with the theme of Africa being the richest continent on Earth, it seems that it boasts some leaders in corruption too! In 2007-Africa led the world in terms of people who had had to pay a bribe to get something done in the last 12 months (45 percent, more or less). Of the top 10 countries where people reported paying a bribe (also in the last 12 months), 3 of them were African countries (Senegal, Nigeria and Cameroon). The worst of all-the poor and middle income are the ones hardest hit by petty bribery. So basically, bribery is a regressive tax on the poor. Just a thought.