I'm sorry to see that you write about Africa as do and did all those foreigners who find it useful, hard to see why, to misunderstand and to be frustrated by their misunderstanding

I'll remind you that the discussion, the Med, was pertinent to current concerns and to the S post regarding the war in Ukraine, then the ME, and the strategic importance of the Mediterranean

All of which can be discussed in terms of rational distributions of policies and powers in a conflict marked by similar social/economic structures towards control of pertinent territories and resources in the struggle for competition all sides seek to define within the same general structures/systems

To allow this to disintegrate into a Africa a mess comment is indicative of some kind of misplaced obsession

It reminds me of Obama's trip to Kenya when he took it upon himself to criticise Kenyan atttitudes to gays, only to be obliged to retract the next day, I guess he too thought he knew what he was talking about

Strangers often find, it's part of Africa's charm, that they can say want to say, instead of knowing what to talk about

This is of course generally true everywhere, but especially so here

Your example of the pros and cons from India would be hotly contested by many, including Indians - and it is hard to see what this has to do with Africa -

There's the rub - 'convincing anyone to do anything productive' - ! Heaven's above, what assumptions and prejudices the word productive contains - it's what every colonialist every NGO and every missionary has complained about since the dawn of time

I dare say when the first Africans ventured out of their continent all those years ago they said the same about you lot