Virtually all of Africa's civil wars were started by politically marginalized or excluded groups.

Back in the 1960s Africa not only fed itself, it also exported food. Not anymore.

To be sure, dictators are crafty, evil geniuses with awesome firepower at their disposal. They are also brutally efficient at intimidation, terrorism, and mass slaughter. However, a force is able to dominate because the counterforce is either nonexistent or weak.

Dictators cause the world’s worst problems: all the collapsed states, and all the devastated economies. All the vapid cases of corruption, grand theft, and naked plunder of the treasury are caused by dictators, leaving in their wake trails of wanton destruction, horrendous carnage and human debris.

What Africa needs to do is to grow, to grow out of debt.

In the West, the basic economic and social unit is the individual; in Africa, it is the extended family or the collective.

If NATO goes in and solves the crisis in Darfur, when the next one comes along Africa's leaders will just sit back.