Dr. David Lai, AWC, "China," March 17. NEW

Dr. Bryant Shaw is associate Professor of History and Director of the General Studies Program at Troy State University in Troy, AL, where he teaches courses in African history, American history, and Western Civilizations.

He received his Ph.D. in African History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. Shaw’s Africa related experience has include service as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Republic of Botswana, Academic Dean of he Africa Center for Strategic Studies, which is a US Government initiative to help African military forces adjust to democratic principles of political rule, and as a consultant on African military issues for the Defense Department and US Embassies in Africa.  He made numerous trips to Africa during his 29 years as an Air Force Officer.

Dr. Shaw has also taught African history and political issues at the Air Force, Academy, the National University in Washington, DC, and the Air War College.

What you say is not always what someone else hears.  This especially applies to Africa where the culture as a whole is so much different.

 Africa is 75 to 80% agriculture
 The dialects of the many African languages are very diverse

Oil in Nigeria

 High-tech enterprise
 Capital and technologically intensive
 Farmers are foreign to these things
Oil companies hire a few Nigerians to run low maintenance jobs but the problem, is that most of these jobs are high maintenance
Somewhat like imperialism but the Nigerian government receives lost of money
Government does not represent the people
 Money goes to 
  Graft
  Ripping people off
  Corruption

Oil companies want stability, but don’t mind if the only method to stability is paying off the government

Civil wars in the Ivory Coast or anywhere in Africa
Agreements are formed so that the resources are protected because whoever wins will have to use them
The exception being the warlords controlling diamonds in Sierra Leon

African policies vary incredibly from country to country; complications arise.

Africa is the world’s second largest continent and therefore Sierra Leone is drastically different from Nigeria just as Sicilians are to Swedes event though we tend to generalize Africa as a whole
 Nigeria is the largest country in Africa in terms of population; however, the population is so polyglot that power is inappropriately distributed due to Europe’s poor withdrawal and distribution such as Muslim/ Christian splits from north to south
 The coast was largely into slave trade until 1804 when Britain forbade it
Nigeria then sold vegetable oils for many years afterwards to the point that a sizable merchant class developed
 Nigerians were selling large amounts because the oil is an excellent lubricant
Britain did not have enough faith in Nigerians to handle the oil on there own so the British took over
Nigeria’s sheer existence makes little sense
People still want to maintain borders and laws due to hassle; plus it look bad to support the fall of a government
Resources may be lost if changes are made
Self-determination is threatening; agreements are preferred to arms

U. N. Endorses both:
 Self-determination
 Territorial Integrity
 Conflicts arise but compromise is capable

Nationalism is an ideology that does not always agree with economy
 Canada/ Quebec issue
If Canada which is stable, wealthy, and scarcely populated, is having difficulty with these problems, Nigeria must be rough off 
Nigeria is soon to be the top five of the AIDS epidemic countries with Ethiopia, China and India
Biafran Civil War- Coastal region attempting to break off but were starved out
The West’s dirty little secret, Our Democracy came through war, However we expect countries to accomplish in a few years what took us 400 years
Nigeria lied about population and conflicted with U.N. census because they want to appear large but still have a large per capita income.

 U.S. throws money at Africa but problems worsen
A direct approach must be taken but national sovereignty gets in the way, the dependence that has already been formed in these countries gets in the way, and the West disregards many issues including mass genocide due to lack of understanding.