Africa in distress

The Toronto Star has a fine article on Africa, this time detailing the deep problems in DRCongo, Somalia and Sudan's Darfur. The writer gives a good brief overview of each conflict, as well as mentioning other major problems like Zimbabwe. Simple but erroneous assumptions about Africa's crises are that European colonisation and exploitation or African greed and savagery are responsible, but neither is true, by itself. The main reasons are a mix of Western colonial exploitation and political manipulation, which still lingers, local corruption, inefficient economic policies and the weakness of existing local civil and social structures, based in large part on the artificial constructs of most of these nations.