Like in many other things, Africa has the least billionaires than other regions of the world such as Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the United States. However, Africa's billionairs still control budgets that are far more than those of some African countries such as DRC (2 billion), Cameroon (5 billion), Gabon (4 billion), Liberia (369 million), Burundi (500 million), Uganda (3 billion), (all amounts in dollars). The countries with the highest budgets in Africa range from South Africa (with just over 100 billion) to Somalia with no budget. If all the budgets of African countries were put together, it would be less than a fifth of the US budget, yet Africa has three times the population of the US.
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The statistic that the budgets of all of Africa are still less than 1/5 of the US budget is astounding. It would still be ridiculous even if there were the same size populations in America and Africa but Africa has three times the people. This is yet another example of the disparity between the US and countries that are struggling to stand on their own two feet. Outside aid is included in the overall African budget but even with the billions of dollars given to Africa in aid, the continent is nowhere close to being on similar economic standing as the US. Perhaps this is the problem. Perhaps the western world should not be the standard of the day and the focus should be on creating a system, both economic and political, that works in Africa regardless of how it compares to the western ways of doing things.
This simply exemplifies the western control in todays modern, globalized world. Africa has the potential and the population to become wealthier and more successful, they just need to take the right steps in order to equalize themselves in relation to other countries in the world economy.
This just goes to show, that Africa is way behind the developed world in so many things including budget. It amazes me that such a large continent with all of those countries budgets combined have a budget so much smaller than the United States. The United States has such a small amount of the worlds population yet uses 25% of the world's resources. I wonder how long this can continue.
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