The Oil Drum

I have never been to Senegal, but it is a popular tourist destination - especially to the French and to gays.

Anyone who has been to West Africa for a while will appreciate that the ex-French colonies are much pleasanter than the ex-British colonies. The people are much more friendly and civilized. The French like to claim that it was due to their benevolent (ahem) policies and the British like to say that the French grabbed the places with nicer tribes. Perhaps the slave trade (by the British) brought out the worst in the peoples who they traded with - let us not forget that it was the coastal tribes that enslaved the populations of the interior before selling them on.

The pictures show a place that is a good deal better off and safer than is most of Lagos (the commercial capital of Nigeria) - probably because Senegal has no oil. Indeed, I am sure it is much pleasanter than slums in a lot of other places such as Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro. They do not have the gun and drugs culture that is so prevalent in the Americas.

The article misses out on the two main problems in the Senegal - population-growth and desertification (which is linked to oil consumption).

The population of Senegal has increased by a factor of 3 over the past 40 years. If the US's population had increased at a similar rate, it would now be around 600 million. In fact, the US's population, if immigration is removed, has barely changed over this period.

How wealthy would the average American be today if the US's population were 600 million? So much investment would have needed to go into schools, hospitals and infrastructure that there would have been little left over to go towards technology, research and higher education.

On this website, and elsewhere, I have repeatedly seen the assumption that when people are hungry, they rebel and revolt. Not true. If you read carefully books by the famous French historian Fernand Braudel, you will see that the French revolution had somewhat more complex causes. To take an American example, the revolt against the British was not caused because the British in America (the colonisers) could not afford to pay the tax on tea from India. Quite the opposite.

Hunger causes weakness and apathy. Just try going on a serious diet for a while and you will see for yourself. Indeed, dictators like Stalin and Kim Jong-II use hunger to control entire populations - something that you cannot do as easily by force. Hence the reluctance of North Korea to make deals that include food in exchange for disarmament.

Personally, I think that places like Senegal are going to go through a severe form of "population destruction" rather than "demand destruction" - through hunger. Their populations drift to the cities because the urban population control the politics and are able to grab resources from the rural hinterland - for example, by having a grossly inflated currency, taxing food exports and subsidising imports. This will eventually come to an end and people will have to go back to the land. They will have to relearn all the tricks needed to keep the desert at bay.

Sadly, I think that their population will eventually stabilize at around one third of its current number.

I was born on the other side of Africa and love the place and its peoples so this makes me really sad.