Hundreds of billions of dollars poured into Africa bought a lot of goodies, all courtesy of Western civilization.

Kenny himself says nothing about native production, because there basically isn't any. It's all consumption. No mention of Africa generating anything of value, let alone developing it. Last I checked, even low-tech industry was loathe to set up shop there.

He says:

"There's much more to life than money..."

So he's admitting as much.

Mike I presume your comments are based on a very recent trip through the African continent? I find it ironic that as America is imploding economically (courtesy of Western civilisation) you would bother to criticize a continent where the majority of people have been working very hard against great odds to better their lives.

Yesterday AC360 carried a piece on Mexico’s drug war – should we write of the whole of North America based on that report? There is bad stuff going on in Africa, but equally so there is brilliant and inspiring stuff going on. Don't always knock us!

Amanda, people all over the world, including right here in the US, are working hard to improve their lives. It's only human to do that.

Africa is a dependency of the First World, and will always remain so. What little productivity it does have is in those regions recently governed by Europeans, such as your country, and it's pretty much limited to raw materials and commodities like oil and metals.

Kenny had plenty of space in which to bring up facts that might contradict my viewpoint, and he never did.

I often travel to Africa (last time was in June), my parents being Senegalese, my daughter who is 12 always asks me why what she sees on TV is not what the reality that she sees in Africa. My answer is that reporters are here to show us what wrong so that we can try and fix it. In Africa there are "normal" people, who are not poor and who do not belong to the corrupted political elite, people who are teachers, pharmacists, doctors ...
By the way there is no such thing as " spontaneous generation", and I would really like to see a thorough article on how those people came into power, how they stay into power and their relationships with the big corporations and their huge interests in Africa.