African Economies

Max Petrungaro

2/8/17

Exam 1

Section 1: Short Answers

1. While reading this it brought me into a lot of thought. Who is the Chef? Who is marrying the Chef? What is the meal? One of the conclusions that I kept drawing myself to was that, in this scenario, the chef could be Africa. The only parallel that I kept coming to for this conclusion was that Africa is making the meal once for everyone else, all the nations helping them, and again when they go home. This can significantly hurt Africa because they are only getting paid for putting out one of the “meals”. Whereas the other meal does not count to the national income and at that point is just wasting the resources needed to make the meal again but to get paid for it. It could be less of a problem for the other nations, such as the United States, because they are getting the second meal for free. They are not having to pay for the second meal and therefore they are saving the money that they would have spent on the African meal because, in the example, they are married to Africa and do not have to pay for it.
2. In my personal opinion, the single biggest problem with studying African Economies would have to be the validity of the information that you are receiving. With the surplus of nations that are involved in the large continent there are some nations that are extremely advanced and know how to manage the economy and, for the most part, the information is passed on and recorded properly. There are also some nations that may not be as experienced or may not be recording the information that is given to them or they are simply just not reporting them. Jerven talks in the book that a lot of the African economies have been overlooked and that a lot of the information that is talked about cannot be positively traced back to an exact answer. To overcome this, there should be some main economic agency that can monitor and report the exact numbers for each of the African nations.

Section 2: Open-Ended Questions

        Contrary to popular belief, the United States and Africa are two, somewhat similar, places. They are similar in the sense that they both carry multiple religions, their economies are both partially driven by exports, they are both extremely proud of their cultures and they both have a rich agricultural history. They are, however, quite different in the fact that the education systems are differently valued, the amount of exports that each nation brings and send out, geographic differences along with climate and wildlife, and just way of life in general. While these two places are, in certain ways, similar, they are still two vastly different areas of the world and are special in their own ways.

          To begin with, The United States of America and Africa are similar in a few ways. Contrary to popular belief, both nations carry multiple religions. The United States have it implemented into the Bill of Rights, which consists of the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution, as the very first amendment. This amendment allows any citizen to come into the United States and freely, safely practice whatever religion they feel like worshipping. Nearly all of the nations in Africa carry some form of freedom of religion. Their nations carry Constitutions that do imply the freedom to practice other religions. The economies for each, the United States and Africa, are both in some way driven by their exports. All in all, there are mindsets out there that Africa and The United States of America are polar opposites. That they have absolutely nothing in common and, even in the slightest, share any similarities. Contrary to this belief, they actually do have a lot in common and this only highlighted a few of those similarities.