Who is this we?  If people in Africa want to exploit their natural resources to develop and improve their lives, they should be free to do so.  Everybody else has.<p>It&#x27;s a little hypocritical for Westerners who have already reaped the benefits and costs of development to pull the ladder up after themselves for the rest of the world.  I&#x27;m not of the persuasion that colonialism was the <i>worst thing ever since the start of time</i>, but it is especially hypocritical and racist to say &quot;Oh, sorry, we built some shoddy infrastructure, wrecked a lot of your traditional society, and used you to extract resources, now you should go back to living in grass huts and dying of treatable diseases to save the rhinos.&quot;<p>If Africa can develop by skipping some of the shittier stages of agriculture-&gt;industry-&gt;post-industry evolution that we&#x27;ve experienced in the US, or Europe, or China, then that&#x27;s a good thing.