Editing Post-Cold War (section)

=== Africa ===
Within the past few centuries there have been widespread problems across the continent of Africa lingering even after the Cold War. 
The causes are numerous and include generational tribalistic conflicts, the slave trade, wars over resources and direct interference from European governments until the end of the Colonial Era during the Cold War. The most prominent example is the Scramble for Africa, which involved building plantations, mines and railways to support plantations and mines with white guys doing as much of the technical work as possible (and with the native inhabitants being deliberately kept uneducated and untrained lest they learn to use the infrastructure by themselves or make more). At the same time, it was a common practice to exacerbate existing tribal conflicts (and sometimes even create new ones!) in order to keep the locals too busy squabbling with each other to join forces against their overlords.  

This dependence on a colonial regime running everything combined with the elimination of pre-colonial social structures led to power vacuums when the various foreigners left, which were often filled by authoritarian strong-men.  Various nations also used countries of Africa as a dumping ground for obsolete weapons after the Cold War, which were eagerly seized by governments and warlords seeking to establish control over their newly seized domains.  Unsurprisingly, this has led to a series of conflicts and civil wars, notably the Rwandan Genocide.  This also discouraged governments of those countries from developing their own technologies when they could claim the cast-offs of Western or Eastern nations for much less effort.  Despite that, there has been a gradual rise in standards of living in many countries of Africa, including fair and free elections, health care and stable economies.  Algeria, Tunisia, and Rwanda to name a few have made significant improvements with their GDP and literacy rates. Several nations of Africa are also the world's leading exporters of various goods - for example, Nigeria has seen considerable GDP growth and industrial development over the last three decades. Even so, it has been a long and difficult climb and not without internal corruption in some places.

That being said, in many cases Western countries retain disproportionate influence over much of Africa via economic and cultural means (e.g., multinational corporations exploiting cheap labor while reducing countries' access to their own natural resources) while Middle-Eastern and Asian countries are making disturbingly similar in-roads.  Some observers have dubbed this phenomenon "neocolonialism"; gaining/retaining control of a region without open use of military force. In this view, the aforementioned exporting is less of a sign of economic progress and more of an indication of their continuing role in extracting resources on the behalf of their former colonizers (this phenomenon is not uniquely inflicted on African countries or solely perpetrated by European nations).