I spent my spare time over the last 7 years researching this issue. This resulted in the book under the above title published in Digital format only on Amazon. com



At the 2005 and 2014 United Nations review conferences on the progression of the pursuit of the UN Millennium Development Goals. It was reported that the ratio of people living under abject poverty conditions in Sub Saharan Africa, have increased from about 25% to almost 50% of the SSA population. While the various Asian regions, are rapidly reducing their impoverished populations. With Asian abject poverty ratios dropping from about 25% to about 5%. Compare the following two reports. 2014 MD goals Sub Saharan Africa Report and Asia All Report.



Why?



Many authors have taken up the challenge to try to explain why most of decolonized Africa and her Leaders appear incapable of leading their countries and people to live in peace and generate economic well-being for their commoners. Some of them even propose actions to overcome African Poverty. Many of these, like for example Prof Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University and the UN, try to apply Macro Economic models from the Western World to Africa. Normally done in the typical English speaking American or British Culturally Imperialist manner, moderated by a bit of charity.



None of these proposals and actions have worked in practice so far. These failures occurred despite mountains of cash being funneled into Sub Saharan Africa via Aid and Grant programs, the number of people living in abject poverty in Africa continues to increase! These projects did not work because they failed to respect African Culture by taking it into practical consideration.



I wrote this book after more than seven years of research, looking for the real practical reasons for Africa's increasing poverty and how it can be overcome. I ask readers to please not consider it an Academic Treatise or a book by a Professional Author. I am simply a practical retired ex-Marketing man who tried to explore the issue in basic practical terms so that it could be accessible to all. My Introduction explains my basic thinking, background, and why I took on this project.



My biggest fear is that superficial readers and reviewers will not read it with an open mind and simply stereotype it as Cultural Imperialism by a Racist White Afrikaans speaker. This was certainly not my intention with this book. However, this book asks readers to temporarily place their currently held opinions on the back burner, while intellectually exploring some alternative thought patterns before accepting or rejecting them for considered factual reasons. In short, readers are asked to follow the example of the people who made the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment cultural revolutions possible.



This book proposes the Bi-Ecology idea of Human lifeculture development over the last 60 thousand years. I needed a word to describe the cultural aspects of man's daily lifestyle, in practice. So I created the word lifeculture as a descriptor for Aristotle's idea, you are what you repeatedly do. The basic premise of the Bi-Ecology idea is that while the environment where Africans developed their lifecultures had relatively easier survivable, reasonably constant, warm to hot temperatures with plenty of sunshine.



The Northern Hemisphere areas that gave rise to the societies that generated the modern Economically Developed world, had large temperature variations with mild to warm summers followed by bitterly cold icy winters and limited sunshine intensity for major portions of the year. This is where the founders of today's dominant economies lived, lost their dark skin pigmentation and developed their modern wealthy lifecultures. The low temperature extremes of the Northern Hemisphere's cold dark wintry ecology, killed people with inadequate skill, work intensity and applied knowledge portfolios. Only the ones who learned fast enough and worked hard enough survived to propagate the positives of their lifecultures.

This book analyses the cultural ingredients that developed into the modern £$€ lifecultured societies. It proposes that a number of mind revolutions such as; Christianity, Judaism, The Bible in Latin, The Renaissance, The Reformation, The Enlightenment, The Agricultural Revolution, The Industrial Revolution and presently the Knowledge Revolution are keys to the lifecultural development of these societies.

These keys drove the people of the £$€ lifecultured societies to intellectually explore, extract and accept the good from newly proposed think patterns, compared to their traditional thinking, and adopt them into their lifecultures. In this manner displacing the excessively constricting belief and loyalty systems carried over from antiquity through the Dark Ages to the start of the Renaissance.

Systems that originally placed God and Kings or Traditional Leaders on almost impregnable pedestals that had to be feared and respected beyond logical reason.

These mind revolutions opened the intellectual doors that enabled commoners to grow to prosperity on personal merit, By allowing free market trade of specialized skills between people, to render all participants more productive. Producing wealth and the modern more comfortable lifestyle in the process.

Due to the easier survival environment, African cultures in turn seem not to have developed similar mind revolutions, and from this the resulting empowerment of their commoners. The Ancestral Spirits, Kings and Leaders are still seen to be feared and respected above any logical understanding, reproach or questioning.

The sharing element of Ubuntu seems not to have motivated many of the African commoners of intellectual merit, to fully use their capacities to their own benefit. Conversely Ubuntu also appears to have motivated many "lazy bum" tribe members to demand their share of any benefits found or generated, simply because they feel entitled. African leaders still seem to live on impregnable pedestals.

The book "Why are Africans so Poor?" analyses the negative roles of some of the facets of Ubuntu under the influence of Ithongu and traditional leadership in African poverty. It then proposes a variety of mechanisms to overcome the fundamental hold back factors, without destroying the key positive elements of the true Ubuntu culture. In short, it recognizes that past President Thabo Mbeki was right to pursue an African Renaissance.

To get a quick overview of the Introduction and the first two and a half Chapters. Go to the book on Amazon.com "Look inside". Amazon estimates that published normally, this book will come to about 300 pages including more than 500 hyperlink-ed references and about 50 pages of Addenda. So it is not a long winded read.

This book will only be made available in digital format as I want my readers to have instant access to the hyperlink-ed data I based my analysis on.





Pieter D. Rossouw

Author