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Boko Haram, an extremist Islamic jihadist group, has been terrorizing the people of Nigeria for several years. On January 3rd they committed their largest atrocity when the moved into the town of Baga in the northeastern part of the country and opened fire with machine guns and grenade launchers. They had no specific targets and it appears that their objective was simply to kill as many people as possible, unfortunately they were successful. So many were killed that an accurate body count has been impossible to ascertain since Boko Haram is still operating in the area. Current casualty estimates vary from several hundred to over 2000.
While the western world mourned those killed last week during the terrorist attack in Paris it continued to ignore the mass violence taking place in western Africa. It reminded me of a problem I encounter constantly while teaching Human Geography, if something happens in Africa nobody cares. The most interest western media has shown in the current Nigeria crisis took place in May when social media was trending with: “#BringBackOurGirls” in response to Boko Haram kidnapping 273 girls from a school. It’s 9 months later and the girls have not been returned nor has any information about their status been received. One would think that such horrendous crimes would receive continuous attention and that media and the public would place pressure on our leaders to help bring the crisis to an end, but it’s Africa. There are no votes to be gained for politicians, dollars to be made for big business, or ratings to be increased for media so they ignore it, the public ignores it, and Boko Haram continues to kill indiscriminately.
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Earlier this month the Pew Research Center released an article by Christopher Inkpen with 7 critical facts about world migration and an interactive map that shows the source countries for migrants around the world. The site is a valuable resource worth checking out: http://pewrsr.ch/1qXZRr5.
My biggest takeaway was something I’ve been teaching my students for years: In the poorest countries of Sub-Saharan few if any people are making it out. Their reality is that they live in extreme poverty and are only surrounded by other countries with similar conditions. They have almost no options for reaching the rich world. I even make my students memorize the following phrase about the limited amount of migration from Africa to the developed countries, “if they could, they would, but they can’t, so they don’t.”
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Living in the United States it has been a given for many years that so many of our goods are being manufactured in China. As a classroom activity my students often look at the “Made in…” labels of our clothing and the manufacturing stamps on goods, without question China is in the lead for most times mentioned. The reality is that China has been in its “Golden Era” of industrial growth long enough that they have started to see some of the long term benefits come to pass. Their GDP per capita has grown as well as the average standard of life.
As economic conditions improve in China so do the expectations of their workers. They are beginning to demand higher wages and better working conditions. Chinese manufacturers are realizing that their employees are starting to request the same things that American workers demanded generations ago. Just as American manufacturing started to do in the 1970s the Chinese manufacturers are looking to send jobs to other parts of the world with cheaper labor.
I recently read an article in Bloomberg News about a Chinese shoe company that has set up a factory in Ethiopia. The company did not attempt to hide that they specifically set up an operation there because of the remarkably low wages the Ethiopian workers would accept. The average monthly salary in the shoe factory was approximately $40 a month. In contrast, the average factory worker in China gained over ten times that amount.
While the lure of cheap labor may cause some Chinese companies to relocate their operations it will not be smooth roads to achieving success. Smooth roads are actually part of the problem, or more specifically the lack of smooth roads. The Chinese manufacturers that have already moved to Ethiopia have had numerous issues with transportation and their profits have been seriously damaged as a result. There is mounting pressure on the Ethiopian government to commit money to infrastructure to draw in foreign investment, as is often the case in the African countries they must now choose between immediate relief for humanitarian struggles or temporarily ignore these issues in an attempt to build a long term solution through economic growth.
Helping Students Succeed on the AP® Human Geography Exam since 2008.
