Since the end of the cold war, there's actually been a net improvement in democratic practices, and individual and press liberty in Africa. Sadly, economic development has been lagging. Despite the chronic knee-jerk reactions of ignorant anti-American and anti-capitalist morons to claim otherwise, Western governments and multi-national corporations have promoted democracy and an expansion of freedoms, not impeded it. Companies make a hell of a lot more money investing in free, well-developed, well-educated, stable democratic regions like say, Western Europe, than they do in underdeveloped and unstable regimes in regions like sub-Saharan Africa.

It's especially sad to see nations like Nigeria with vast natural resources suffer under monumental levels of corruption, political and social instability stemming from numerous ethnic and religious rivalries, complicated by ambitious, autocratic, greedy military chiefs threatening the fragile pseudo-democracy which has emerged in recent years. And it's absurd to claim that Western companies like Shell Oil are responsible for the problems existing there or are somehow working against development. They have no friggin' choice but to cope and deal with the realities they find on the ground - and the truth is that Shell and other companies would make a lot more money in Nigeria if the country was developed to the point of a typical Western European democracy.