If Africa is to end her (artificial) impoverishment, then she had better rely on herself, not the

G8 or other Western countries. The argument that Africa only contributes 3% of the world

trade is nonsense. The fact is that the coffee, cocoa, coltran, gold, diamonds — you name it

— is grabbed cheap and whisked off to the West to be “processed,” then comes into the

world market, at higher valuations, as Western products. Belgium or Britain have no diamond

mines but they are world leaders in the diamond trade. Those British soldiers storming into

warring Sierra Leone to stop the diversion of the so-called blood diamonds to finance the war

did not do so out of philanthropic sentiment — there was an “interest” to be protected, and

that interest was by no means Sierra Leone’s. Africa is the only continent in the world whose

natural wealth still brings not improved welfare but peril to its citizens.