Sep 9, 2006 10:25:00 AM cite

Lillian Holt: Well it depends on what you mean by developed. I guess you mean economically developed. You know is Darwin's theory right? I'm not too sure. This idea of the hierarchical survival and development in terms of humanity and I have some qualms and questions about that. And you know, if Darwin's theory is right, as I said I'm not too sure about it. In some ways I'd think that the so-called under developed countries and states and societies are probably very well developed in other ways in community and dare I say spirituality? I mean economically they may not be developed but spiritually and community-wise they are. I heard a woman from Nigeria talk the other day and she said, you know, people just see the surface. They're not part of the community but people do take care of one another in a way that we don't do in the West. Of course in Africa too there was a lot of exploitation of the resources by the Colonial invaders. So, yeah this is a very profound and serious question. I think that we need to be careful of the words that we use when we talk about who's developed and who's not developed or who's underdeveloped. In some ways I think that people who use nuclear weapons or have access to nuclear weapons are very, very underdeveloped and that includes the West.

by Lillian Holt

Sep 9, 2006 10:25:00 AM cite

Livingstone Maluleke: Well, this statement by Darwin is that life began in Africa may be true, may be wrong. But, in my theory – in my understanding of this statement, Darwin has got a lot of interest in Africa and therefore, I agree with him. What he actually means here is that a lot of resources, knowledge, experience, wealth has started from Africa. People in Africa has got one history, one strong point that they are very rich in history, they’ve got valuable wealth, they have got a lot of resources and all these resources were taken away when colonized by the Western countries. Colonized and then came back after for implementation and then it was modernized. In other words, these ideas were taken from Africa to the Western countries and they were then [incorporated] and brought back to Africa in style. Therefore, the African power was pirated to the Western countries. That is what it means. And indeed, one – it goes without saying that most of the African activities were pirated to Western countries and this compromised the position of the African world and as such, really life have begun in Africa and came back to Africa for Africa.

by Livingstone Maluleke

Sep 9, 2006 10:25:00 AM cite

Mae-Wan Ho: We have to distinguish Darwin’s theory from the theory of evolution. Darwin’s theory is an explanation of the theory of evolution. If the evolution theory is correct that life, that human life has originated in Africa. Now, then we have to ask well, what does developed mean? In the present day, developed means being like the developed nations, like Europe and the United States, which have a very distorted value system based on money and wealth and material wealth, but in terms of real values, Africa is not underdeveloped at all. It is highly developed with respect to human values, love, friendship, value for community and in fact, according to the happiness and contentment index, Africa scores much better than the average individual in Europe and the United States, who have much more material wealth and consume forty times as much energy as the average African.

by Mae-Wan Ho

Sep 9, 2006 10:25:00 AM cite

Mahsa Shekarloo: Well, I suppose we first have to ask ourselves, what is the definition of development here? What do you mean by development? Development as it is defined today? Based on economics, based on technology, based on infrastructure? Or are we talking about a different kind of development? -- In many ways, I suppose that African states, African peoples, African cultures are more developed than Western ones. It’s quite possible. I think we need to question these terms like development, and maybe reprioritize certain values, maybe values that highlight family, just redistribution of resources, bringing the marginalized into the center, having them speak out. I think maybe then our definitions of what constitutes development may change.

by Mahsa Shekarloo

Sep 9, 2006 10:25:00 AM cite

Mark Benecke: That's a very innocent question, because even if life began in Africa, this has nothing to do with the economical state of today. Maybe the question means that African people had more time to develop economical structures, but that's not the case, it's also an evolutionary process. Economy is an evolutionary process and it's not the oldest forces that win an evolution, it's the forces that are best adapted. Now in Africa there were so many disturbances by rich countries by internal conflicts by political inforcements that were made up on many African countries, it's just that they didn't have time to involve properly. Evolution means, economically, and also culturally it means, that you have room to play, that those, who are better adapted to economy, environment, will produce better results, reproduce more, earn more or what not. So if you send countries to war and if you inflict a lot of disturbances on them and that's true for every system not only for countries then they cannot involve properly. So the younger structures for example the United States, a very young country, a very young country, a very young culture, they just had some ideas that now economically make a lot of sense on the short term level. But maybe on the longtime level African countries will involve with much better ideas because they learnt their lesson ot they will learn their lesson that the current system doesn't work as well as it seems to work, because it's using up a lot of resources.

by Mark Benecke

Sep 9, 2006 10:25:00 AM cite

Martin Almada: There was no development in Africa, because of the First World countries´ exploitation. The colonization didn´t allow any development. At present, recolonization takes place in Africa once again,an exploitation bringing dependence and no development. Africa is a marvelous country, which I got to know personally when I was working in the UNESCO. The question of Africa is a shame to mankind. We talk about a continent full of natural resources,a continent which was home to extraordinary cultures and civilizations, like Egyptian, Muslims and others. Africa was inicially chosen as a place to be exploited by the Europeans, the economic powers of the XVI century. During almost three hundred years they have robbed this continent of its biggest treasure, its man and women, in order to turn them into slaves. This was the beginning of the African tragedy, a systematic loss of millions of people, loss of culture and languages during centuries. Such was the situation when in the XIX. and XX. centuries the colonies were shared among global powers. The international help couldn´t change the situation, nor could it fight against new forms of colonial exploitation. The results are obvious now. Poverty in Africa is not a result of great magic, but of decisions, actions and crimes committed by human beings at a certain point in time. Africa is a still outstanding bill, the same like the South American natives.

by Martin Almada

Sep 9, 2006 10:25:00 AM cite

Masami Saionji: I think of this, but a question of this person is surely so if I put value in material civilization. Africa is behind with development in comparison with the other West countries. But what I put value on to the word development; if we put the value on the material civilization, surely the material becomes really rich, and civilization becomes richer. And prosper by greed without evil and production, by the competition of economy, it develop richer and richer, thus a heart becomes poor. They feel loneliness and not satisfied, their minds are invaded, and forget what we live for, what is one's existence. However, though may certainly the material civilization is behind, but when we watch African countries, the richness of a heart is still there; living with the nature, eating the giving things from the earth with appreciation, and surviving with helping each other and united with grand father, grand mother, parents and children. In addition, their education does not only grow their knowledge, but derives their home place from the ancestor to their grand children and teaches things such as the richness of the splendid heart, love, thanks, modesty and resonance of nature; therefore though the civilization is certainly behind, their hearts are continues yet having the thing which is splendid from other developed nations, and think that save it. Therefore the heart of people of a developed nation, such as loneliness, mental disease...

by Masami Saionji

Sep 9, 2006 10:25:00 AM cite

Masuma Bibi Russel: It’s a theory Mr. Darwins wrote ‘life begins in Africa’, it’s wonderful. But, I think the people there -- because Africa is so rich in art, culture everything, music everything. I think that people there have to start thinking about it. They have to use their resources, they have to know their heritage, their culture and they have to – people have to work for their development. I think it’s very important. It’s very easy to write a theory and it says, of course Africa is wonderful. I mean, life begin in Africa. But, I think it’s the people who will the make the Africa what is everyone dream of Africa. And they have to – they have to show the world with their dignity, with their heritage, with their culture that they are so rich in everything. And of course, to compete with the Western states, it’s nothing to be scared off or nothing. They have so much wealth in there, I mean they could be -- they can compete with anything. I think it’s the people who will make this work very hard and who will make the country very, very strong. And I believe strongly because I am -- I am really, really, really admire and really a great supporter of Africa and they have so much, so much. So, wake up Africans and show the world that you are not behind anything.

by Masuma Bibi Russel

Sep 9, 2006 10:25:00 AM cite

Mayank Mehta: I think the current state of painful poverty and unhappiness in Africa has nothing to do with Darwin’s theory of when life began. As we know, the time scale of human civilizations is far shorter than the time scale of which human evolution began. So let’s leave that issue for the moment, if you will, and not really going into whether life did or did not begin in Africa. Let us take it for granted all the purpose of this question that life did begin in Africa. But of course, human beings move around quite a bit; civilization spread elsewhere they ran to the different parts of the world, they flourished, came into independence, made them discoveries, rule the other people, and came to power. So the real issue is not really the conflict between human life or is it homosapiens originating in Africa. But issues, why is Africa in the current stage of mess? Very hard question, of course, simple answer one can give is the rest of the worlds, which has exploited Africa for the longest time, use the resources, colonize them, and enslaved them, sucked their economic wealth, material wealth, and left them with broken down systems of development. Lacks of any system to rule themselves, or govern themselves; broken down traditions which did allow them to govern. And then, there are more difficult answers, why they’re in this current state? The more difficult is, in my opinion, and I know very little about it, so probably I’m wrong about this. Is that the current, the way the world is functioning now is in terms of large state, not smaller state, not small tribes but large states. And the largest of the states in the world are invariably the most powerful. So the only way that Africa, perhaps, not only, that even more preposterous to say, the way that Africa may come forward is to have ways in which they first have the prosperity in the tools to govern themselves well and then the enough tools to have that they will move forward using their own independent start.

by Mayank Mehta

Sep 9, 2006 10:25:00 AM cite

Michael E. Tigar: Elliot Chikoma, what a question. Could you reflect with me on the fact that Namibia, even ahead of South Africa, and has the most advanced Constitution and Bill of Rights in the entire world? That your neighboring country of South Africa gave us the insights of Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo and all of the people who swept into power in the wake of Mandela's release from prison. And then who put into place a constitutional court and a set of rights that could actually be vindicated in a tribunal. No, I think that we have to ask ourselves what develop means. Africa gave us Patrice Lumumba, who was of course brutally struck down. Africa gave us Jomo Kenyatta. Africa gave us Kwame Nkrumah. So in terms of development in some rational sense of the world, Africa has not been lacking. The insights of Africa have been in the advance. But of course perhaps you mean economic development. Well I think there are two sets of answers to that, maybe only one. The word is colonialism in the old form and imperialism in the modern form. The domination and distortion of African economies and political realities documented by Basil Davidson in his book “The Black Man's Burden”, which I encourage you to read, paint a sorry picture and lay the blame for much of what's contained in the question you ask, at the foot of the European adventurers who colonized your continent. And in terms of today, the continued dependence on monoculture and now the burgeoning discoveries of petroleum in Africa and the issues that are now presented, raise the risk that the vicious cycle of imperial control of African destiny will continue. But at the same time give you, in particular in your own country, an enormous opportunity to change the dynamic of power in the interest of all people in sub-Saharan Africa. Good luck.

by Michael E. Tigar

Sep 9, 2006 10:25:00 AM cite

Michael P. Totten: It’s not Darwin’s theory that life began out of Africa, with all due respect to the question. Life was created worldwide. The human species, I suppose, could be said has emerged out of Africa. But there is also nothing in Darwinian theory that says, how -- what the future holds, whether the humans populate and geographically disperse. Certainly, there has been analyses, a recent book “Collapse” and "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond, the biologist, has laid out some arguments for why technology arose in some parts of the world more rapidly than others. This is still open discussion, and quite bit of argument within the cultural anthropology academic discipline. It really, I suppose, goes to again the way that many of these questions, how the humans interact with each other so as to provide for equitable opportunities. Humans, historically, seem to have been competitive to the point of genocidal activity of one human group against another, and this continues into, today. And it is one of the biggest questions that we face as society is how do we, again being the supposed Homo sapiens, take advantage of our insight, our ability to be consciously reflective, to prevent conflicts and certainly genocidal activities from emerging. We need to use our knowledge for preventing the early warning system, and ultimately it means bringing sufficient economic conditions and opportunities, so that most of these conflicts would never arise in the first place.

by Michael P. Totten

Sep 9, 2006 10:25:00 AM cite

Mohammed Arkoun: The history of Africa is not written yet in the perspective of an anthropogical analyses of the circomstances in which the habitants of the african continent lived during centuries in a situations which reduced them to slavery and the slave commerce and which left a mark which is even today hard to overcome. I'ts a period in human history which brings up questions even today which are not brougt up in the right way and which can't therefore be answered in the right way. Furthermore the question of slavery and the question of colonisation which aggravated the african situation in the 19th and even in the 20th century has completely weakend the conditions of the construction of modern states on this continent and conditions of the developpement of modern cultures which permitted to the Africans to live in the same rythm as the other socities which delopped in the right way. But I have to add that Africa in comparaison to other continents had much more to suffer because of the phenomenon of slavery. Concerning the under-developpement, we know that in [Alcie]and even in North africa, the so called white africa, for example, there are so spectacular political failures that we have to notice an impossibility to obtain the level of the modern world and to adopt modern conceptions of law, of political practice and criticism of society.

by Mohammed Arkoun

Sep 9, 2006 10:25:00 AM cite

Mohau Pheko: There are lots of external factor and there are lots of internal factors that certainly have created poverty in Africa. My starting point begins from the point of view that Africa has been the cradle of mankind, and I stand very clearly and say that Africa is also going to be the deathbed of capitalism. Our history in terms of colonialism has created a situation in history where domination has been brought on to the African country, a continent in fact that has produced the first university, has produced technology when one looks at the pyramids and one looks at [inaudible] and one looks at the marvelous scripts for example that have been found in Mali that shows the intellectual knowledge that has been there when one looks at a civilization that was created in Africa. One cannot help but believe that Africa has had -- has built phenomenal civilizations. And there is no doubt in my mind that this is not about Darwin's theory. This is really essentially about power relations in the world, the way that they are structured and the need for us to deconstruct these power relations and reshape them in such a way that the dominant do not overpower and subjugate those who are weaker than they are. So, I think that it's quite fundamental that we begin to create a world that creates balance and we question the constructs of equality, we question the construct of power. For example, to begin to understand why certain countries are weaker and other are stronger, and what is it that maintains this power balance in the world today. I think this is absolutely fundamental.

by Mohau Pheko

Sep 9, 2006 10:25:00 AM cite

Monira Rahman: Well, who says that the African states are less developed? What is called civilization? [] civilization begins in Africa and still to date, the civilization to promoting the technology and what does it mean? Does it mean which countries are technologically in advantaged position are civilized? Is this true that the Western states who are actually - is [] a loss of violence against humanity and this colonial - and so I don't think it is the question of civilization according to this technological development. It's the question of which civilization is promoting the humanity, the social development, giving equal rights to the people, peace and solidarity. And I think in Africa we have seen in many other countries this [] civilization is promoting solidarity and these human beings and in that way it's much more civilized and promoting equal rights.

by Monira Rahman

Sep 9, 2006 10:25:00 AM cite

Nadja Halilbegovich: Well, throughout their history, the people of Africa have had so many struggles and such horrific time to face and that’s why they are at such terrible disadvantage. They’ve had constant struggle for their basic human rights. They were enslaved. They have had horrible time with hunger, AIDS pandemic, other diseases; all of them preventable, all of them treatable, but they are still at horrific disadvantage. I think very much due to the fact that we are not helping enough. In the developed nations we have the power to help them more. We have the power to cancel their debt so that they are not using their resources to pay these debts, but rather to use them to build up their country and prevent and treat AIDS and hunger. Also another way that we can help them is make sure that their governments really are working for the people. Lot of governments are corrupt and we need to make sure that transparency of governments in what they do is in place in all these countries. So that they can really -- the governments can really work for the people and for the benefit of the people. As far as AIDS pandemic, we can do so much, we can make sure that the medicine is available, we can make sure that pharmaceutical companies make the medicine not only available, but for the prices to go down, so that the poor people in Africa can actually afford this medicine. I’ve just recently read that in researches done there, people of Africa are using the medicine correctly and following doctor’s orders much more than and much better than people in the developed nations. So they are proving that they really want to, you know, help themselves and receive our help and use it wisely so that they can build up their lives, they can support their families and they can rise above their poverty. So Africa is an incredibly inspiring continent in all the countries it is just wonderful and people really could rise above all their struggles, but they have started at an incredible disadvantage.

by Nadja Halilbegovich

Sep 9, 2006 10:25:00 AM cite

Neela Marikkar: Well, I am not sure that I would say that it is Darwin’s theory is correct. But if one assumes that it is, then I think the reason could be that for centuries Africa has been exploited by many, many countries. It’s a continent full of minerals, resources, energy sources. And I think that the rest of the world, I mean, I would say the Western powers in particular, have exploited the African continents. I think successive governments in the West, or even during the colonial times have made it, have used the countries in Africa, they have used the resources. I mean, during the time that they colonized them they propped up weak and corrupt governments because this suited their purpose, the instability that was – that is constantly there. There are many countries in conflict, and it has been in the interest of some of these countries to keep these conflicts going for the economic advantages to those Western countries, because of the resources that are there. I think that till there are good governments who can address the issues in the continent of Africa, I mean, there are increasingly things are changing, things are getting better, people are becoming more aware, I think that is going to be -- it is an issue. So, I think that -- I think the countries that have been controlling a lot of these economies for their own vested interest, I think, they have to be the ones that will guide the new Africa. I think that is one of the biggest issues -- is for these countries to allow Africa to develop on its own, to help those countries come up with the right type of rulers, and right type of governments, who will finally enable the continent of Africa to move forward into the new millennium.

by Neela Marikkar

Sep 9, 2006 10:25:00 AM cite

Oliviero Toscani: What do you mean less developed? Less developed by economically again the – the economy. Well, in that case I could say I am Italian. Italy is less developed than United States, and generally Europe is less developed than United States in that case. So what is less developed – that develop what, and how, what? We have been stealing from Africa all what we could steal. We stole from Africa. We are still stealing from Africa. We leave them in AIDS. It is not worth to be less developed I mean what do we mean for development. I would like to make it clear, I don’t believe that the – this judgment – a country should be judged, a place should be judged based just on economics. If we – if the world would be based on dancing or music, Africa is the mother of all music. So we are less developed than Africa, if music would be taken instead of economy. So probably we really have to subvert the [inaudible] systems.

by Oliviero Toscani

Sep 9, 2006 10:25:00 AM cite

Oscar Olivera: I would say on the contrary, why the United States haven’t developed?, because I believe that the concept of development is not about stimulating or emulating, about copying or getting to a western society, a western development, like for instance the United States or definitely the western world of the rich countries, who are essentially based on exploitation of people, on the plundering of our common goods, on military aggrassion against people who want to fight for their independence, for their autonomy; a development, based on consumption, which is absolutly dreadful for the very existence of humanity, a development based on individualism, on arrogance, authoritarianism, on [contempt], a development, based on racism; and i believe we definitly don’t want to have this kind of development. It should be a totally harmonic development of respect, of understanding ofinequalities, of cultural, differences, ethnic, racial differences, and I believe, that what they have done, what the western development has done, is simply to crush and to oppress peoples; and i think the african people is definitly making progress towards true liberation and the recovery of its society, essentially based on a full development of recompense, recovering the values of our ancestors.

by Oscar Olivera