try reading achebe - one of his books (it's in the african trilogy collection) describes quite well, if i remember correctly, how the colonial system created this problem in the first place.<p>or just read this article again and consider how close it is to living under foreign rule - colonialism replaced whatever working, local solutions existed with a system that meant that the logical thing to do was screw over others.  colonialism and dictators are very similar.<p>you can argue that things only collapsed terribly when the colonists left, but that ignores the fact that it would have been so much better if they had never been there...