Stop sending money to Africa!

Imagine that you could just sit down, close your eyes and lean back in the shadow of a palm tree outside your house and enjoy the 30°C (86°F), knowing that around noon you can go to the local development aid center and pick up a free lunch. The food may be simple and the variety low, but at least it is free and you did not have to do anything for it because it is all provided by developed western countries.

A Problematic Situation
African countries today suffer from many issues, the single largest problem being: development aid. You must remember that even though many of the charity organisations, even the ones helping out in Haiti right now, say they are doing something good, people are employed within these organisations and make money on other people's disasters. How awful this may be, that is no big deal, think of doctors, they make money on your well being, or rather, your not-so-well being.
These organisations are in many ways actively working against improving life quality for not just Africa, but anywhere they go. Think of it like this: If the Africans could overcome their current situation and things started to go for the better, charity/help organisations would have to find new areas where people were suffering. Money has never done anything good.

But... They still Suffer in Africa! What can we do?
The answer could be a quick: "Stop giving them money, stop sending them food.". But to better understand the situation and find out how we can help, we need to look at Africa in a large perspective. Africa suffer from several, let's go through them quickly...

Fertility Rates
A lot of people die and do not live very long, which leads to a lot of kids being born (look at the map). Kids are in their first years unable to provide any kind of support, rather, they require it. A lot of people needs a lot of food and without anyone to support them, you can easily guess where famines come from. A doctor and a missionary would do wonders in Africa, any sort of religious belief is believed to lower mortality rates.

Lack of Education
Illiteracy in Africa is huge problem, many African countries lack schools, teachers and other important educational facilities. Education leads to specialised and more effective production which ultimately will lead to the extinction of monoexport, which has been a recognized issue since 1940 (or before)! Look at your own country today, probably a developed western world country, I bet it exports within a wide array of different product categories. Africa basically only exports in one or two product groups, usually raw materials (feedstock). Drying out the country of the raw material they themselves could be processing to employ even more people and start building the foundation for an actual economy.

Civil Wars
During the de-colonization of Africa starting around 1947 after WWII, the African nations were pretty much put together by a few western politicians drawing some lines on a map, disregarding internal affairs all over Africa (just look at the country borders today). Compare to any other place in the world (except Australia), and note that you will find the borders of the countries to sorta sway around like a drunk bum on the loose. This is natural since clans, kings, churches, nations and others have been fighting to establish these borders for centuries. This is not the case in Africa and this is the main reason for the civil wars in Africa, people want their countries back as they used to be (not hard to understand right?).

Myths - Motivating the Africans
It has been suggested, ever since the white man came to Africa, that negroes (the general term for an African and/or black person at that time) are lazy and monkey-like by nature. I do not believe this is true, but as I started out by explaining, if you could sit under the palm and relax all day long because some random white guy was feeding you for free, would you start working?

What to do then?
If you want to help, the best possible solution is to go there and do something for the Africans that you do good. If you are a carpenter, go help them build some houses. If you are a teacher, go teach! Do not join an organisation that will place you somewhere to do a job for them, remember, as I mentioned earlier, if you actually make a difference down there, and improve the life in an African village, this organisation will have to find a new village in trouble. A carpenter was sent to an African village but instead of helping them build houses, he was told to teach in the local school, something that he obviously was not so good at.

If you want something done properly, do it yourself! Alternately, If you want to help Africa, buy things that are "Made in Africa", for example this 1888 Mills Luxury Cotton Made in Africa Towelfrom Amazon.com that has received very good feedback.