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Africa’s Emergence
In this Reason interview, Leon Louw, co-founder of the Free Market Foundation — a South African think tank — speaks on Africa, capitalism, and the elimination of poverty. A former communist, Louw is smart and funny and has been fighting poverty in Africa for decades.
Though Africa has made great strides in reducing poverty and the spread of AIDS, we tend to only hear about lion hunts, wars, and famines on the continent. Most of the improvements have come from allowing free markets to flourish through grassroots efforts and without foreign aid. Africa remains one of the most resource-rich and largest continents on earth, and yet least understood and exploited (in the good sense).
People like Leon Luow are making a difference by speaking out about what works, where, and how.
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Nice reference to Gapminder.com. Great app.
Check out his rebuttal of Picketty’s claim on income inequality here.
Yes, I am a fan girl of Leon Louw.
And gapminder is waay cool.
This shows that good things are happening in the world. And they are happening exactly where socialism is not. Thanks for sharing.
Ms Herman: My compliments to you for posting this piece. “Africa’s Emergence” is one of the biggest, under-reported news stories in the world. We’re so accustomed to hearing about Africa’s troubles, such as poverty and disease, that we’ve failed to notice how rapidly the continent is rising and creating an enormous middle class. And, as the wonderfully articulate Leon Luow points out, they’re doing this by adopting precisely those Free Market policies and we seem to be abandoning. (Memo to Bernie Sanders: You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about; just go to Africa and ask that continent’s leaders how they bringing so many of their people out of poverty.)
Last I checked, seven of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies are in sub-Saharan Africa; none of these is led by a graduate of Harvard Law School…
Thanks for sharing!
Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto wrote an opinion piece recently titled “The Poor Against Piketty” that covers some similar themes.
Thanks for posting. We won’t ignore Africa much longer because its population will more than double by 2050 to 2 billion people. Europe will only have 700 million by then, and the US fewer than 500 million.
Just got around to watching that talk by Leon Louw. Great line towards the beginning about the withering away of the state in Marxism and libertarianism – one involves lots of killing in the process.
So is Asia’s rise out of absolute poverty. In a manner that shouldn’t surprise anyone paying attention, the Asian countries that have adopted free market capitalism. College kids (and even more so Professors) would rather blather on about Marx to satisfy their intellectual vanity.
It’s disturbing to me that the greatest advances in human history are unpopular to talk about because the economic system that helps the poorest and most desperate people doesn’t make intellectuals warm and fuzzy.
As King Solomon said in a different context, “all is vanity.”
China won the mineral prize of Africa.
Yes, there is growth in population but the vision of Distict 9 continues.