The Devastating Impact of Neo-Liberalism in Third World

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So recently I was reading about the Second Congo War in which the countries the DRC, Angola and Zimbabwe fought against Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. This war started out as an attempt by Rwanda to punish the perpetrators of the genocide but quickly sprawled into a conflict for resources.

Rwanda occupied the Eastern Congo supported by militias. And in the early 2000s their during the digital boom Coltan a resource that was used to make cell-phones, Playstations etc could mostly only be found in the Eastern Congo. As a result the demand for it dramatically increased, and militias fought one another over access to the mines, wiping out entire communities as a result. Rwanda carried on waging its deadly war as the boom was so massive to its GDP and and as a result millions of people died. All so we could have a nice a cell-phone. This I see as a failure of unregulated capitalism and I want to know how do we prevent such a thing from happening in the future.

The Congo war is often labelled as the worst conflict since WW2 and is estimated to have killed over 4 million. How do we prevent our desire for these items from causing massive death.

Apparently Rwanda intakes most of the Congo's coltan and sells it even today.

There's a lot to this story and it looks like Rawanda had a lot of grievances, particularly with Seko's sheltering of the Hutu's after the Rawandan genocide. From the sound of things the eastern Congo is still essentially Game of Thrones with guns:

http://www.enoughproject.org/conflict_a ... ots-crisis

Some of the biggest problems I'm aware of that neoliberalism has directly caused in Africa is the dumping of goods at a price that the local markets can't compete at. I remember watching a Youtube video where an economics official from Ghana toured facilities and explained that cheap grain was undercutting their ability to mass-produce, ie. they were stuck behind a hurdle where they could accumulate grain but couldn't sell it and couldn't finance the industrial equipment they needed to clear that hurdle. They seemed to have a thriving pineapple market, the bananas however had size metrics and the like in Europe, as well as insecticide requirements that they couldn't keep up with. Seems like in a lot of ways having to play by European standards has built a glass ceiling for a lot of economies in the western lobe and I'm not sure exactly what they can do to get out from under it.

What has this got to do with "Neo-Liberalism?"

The main problem, really, is ethnic conflict---perhaps exacerbated by a colonial past.

Where I see "liberalism" as a problem is when "food aid" is emphasized in other parts of Africa over "self-sufficiency." Of course, there are times when "food aid" is the only solution. But, even in these situations, there should be more emphasis on self-sufficiency. There are excellent charities known as "heifer" charities which offer practical assistance.

People in Africa are quite prideful, and resent the fact that they are treated condescendingly. It's better to provide them with practical skills, rather than continue to treat them as victims.

This is an indictment of free trade during wartime.

Perhaps this "free trade" somehow "legitimized" the genocide in Rwanda--who knows?

I understand that free trade is associated with Neo-Liberalism--but one might not be exactly the other.

I would purport that many Neo-Liberals didn't espouse free trade with the Rwandan regime which perpetuated the genocide.

It's an indictment of those who traded with that Rwandan regime.

Of course, I feel that the "community of nations" should have intervened in Rwanda before the genocide happened.

I guess companies shouldn't have traded with any of the combatants--if they wanted to remain ethical. They didn't "take sides" in the conflict. They didn't care who "won." All the cared about was making money.

It wasn't "Neo-Liberalism" which caused this. It was unbridled capitalism, the Almighty Buck. Which threw ethics out the window, so to speak.

How do we prevent this? International oversight over multinational companies. The problem with banning business to combatants is that you also "ban" things which are beneficial to the civilians of the "combatant" countries, most of whom probably really don't desire war in the first place.

I don't believe banning this sort of trade would really, in any great way, help end this war. It might serve, however, to render the Eastern Congo bereft of mobile phones for a while--though even that is questionable.

The causes of this war are way beyond economic considerations. It's primarily an ethnic conflict. They've been pissed at each other for centuries--even before the colonial powers had a foothold on the region.