Africa has the potential to be even wealthier than America in terms of natural resources.
The people on the other hand .... need quite a bit of civilizing.
I don't want to argue that point with you. But I, personally, would reword that to say "Africa HAD the potential to be even wealthier than America..."
What opportunity they had has been squandered. They didn't take well to colonization- largely the fault of Marxist instigation (IMHO). But at any rate, they didn't jump on the Industrial Age or the Information Age train. They didn't realize it wasn't a subway train that comes back to their stop same time next year. We, the West, have taken a one way train at the speed of thought out of our old dominion. We are the masters of the Earth now and any of those that look wistfully down the tracks, well, they missed out- the train ain't coming back.
It will be another 3 or 4 decades before the African people themselves will be able to derive true wealth from their own resources (ie- not simply selling them to someone, but using them to create wealth). By then, where will we be? We'll have intelligent computers by then. The African will be trying to compete on the level of Ben Franklin (if that) in the year 2040 and the average American will have more power than any Pharaoh ever did. Our success is feeding on itself now. Our growth starts to reach exponential levels. The African, the Madrassah schooled Arab- these people are only going to be left exponentially behind. What will happen is, before they can exploit their own resources for their own betterment, the West will come in like Gods and take away every reason they had at improvement or we will invent a technology that renders every resource they have moot. Then what will they do?
The downfall for the lefties is in this fact. Nothing they can do at this point will better the African's situation. They are only helping him in his misery. In their tacit support of Mugabe, Mandela, Mbeki- they are simply retarding an already retarded culture more. I lived in Africa. I don't want to sound racist here. I really enjoyed Africa and I dream of going back. But even I, here in Great Britain, look wistfully at the nation of my birth and see how much further along the USA is than my adopted country. I will have to come home one day or live in an increasingly nostalgic and insignificant world.