As I wrote in The Distributist Review slightly over two years ago, Madagascar had the potential to become a Distributist state and still does. Recent events have put that possibility farther away than it should.
Daewoo Industries, one of South Korea's largest and most influential, has signed a deal with the island's government that appalls. The multinational conglomerate signed a 99 year lease with the Tananarive government for millions of acres of arable land. How many millions? They're equal to half – literally half – of all the arable land in the country. The size of which is equal to the entire nation of Belgium! The BBC reports on it HERE. And the influential South Korean blog The Marmot's Hole goes into further detail on it HERE.
Why? Thanks to the idiotic rush to speculate on world food prices – and the disaster it inflicted on world food supplies – nations like South Korea want to protect itself from any similar calamity. So it has turned to Africa to use it's largely untapped mineral and agricultural wealth to feed it's people. The Communist Chinese are doing similar projects regarding the Dark Continent's mineral wealth, especially with its fellow Marxist counterparts in Zimbabwe.
This is neo-colonialism returning to Africa, albeit under a more economic-oriented disguise. And such things must not be allowed to continue. Like all the other nations of the world, the people of Madagascar must be taught of Distributism. The God-given insights of Belloc, Chesterton, Schumacher and Solzhenitsyn and those who come after them have a desperate need to be applied.
South Korea and Madagascar could have a better economic relationship than what they've settled upon now. And that would under Distributism, not neo-colonialism.
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3 comments:
Excellent post. I was remiss as a Catholic blogger in South Korea for not bringing this story to wider attention, but you have done a better job than I could have and I have linked to your post. God bless.
Joshua, thank you for your kind remarks. On behalf of myself and Jovan, please make us one of your links on your links page.
And many thank yous in return.
Roy, you've been linked on my page for sometime now. Keep up the good work.
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