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by dtx1 1671 days ago
While I disagree with your conclusion due to the measurable increases in human development through our aid, i am somewhat sympathetic to your argument on a philosophical level. That being said, most of the HN Crowd would still cry over the opression from our trade with africa in that scenario because its always the evil capitalist west thats at fault and any disagreement on that point and you are considered a goat fucker (see comments above)
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> While I disagree with your conclusion due to the measurable increases in human development through our aid

From 1960 to 2020, real GDP per capita in subsaharan Africa has grown by 0.6% per annum.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDSSF

Whereas real global GDP per capita has increased by 1.7%, or three times the rate of growth as subsaharan Africa.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDWLD

So yes, there has been some measurable human development. But Africa continues to fall farther behind the rest of the world -- e.g. the difference in global development between the rest of the world and Africa in 1960 was much lower than the difference today. We see divergence, not convergence.

I can't see that as a success story.

Well GDP is not the only measure of human development, for example child mortality has more than halved since the 1990s https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.DYN.MORT?locations=Z...

I'd call that a sucess story.

That's a very low bar in exchange for Africa continuing to fall farther behind the rest of the world - e.g. during the same period child mortality in the EU fell be a factor of three and in the entire world it declined by a factor of 2.5

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.DYN.MORT?locations=Z...