Starvation-threatened Africans are being encouraged to eat insects by a UK aid initiative.

African caterpillars, migratory locusts and black soldier flies are on the menu under the initiative taking place in Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo - but locals are rejecting the offer due to the taste and cultural norms.

Dr Alberto Fiore, the project lead who has whipped up a dish of locally farmed mopane worms, cereals, and fruits, has also created a insect-based porridge containing grains including sorghum and millets, which he reassured the Guardian is palatable.

  • Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.ml
    32·
    2 years ago

    There is a wealthy & corrupt local elite that is benefiting very well from the exploitation that is done by western, Asian and also some local companies on the African continent.

    Mate you are the one that brought this up. Aiming to defer blame from the western imperial core with your “everyone is doing it” response. It’s very clear what side you are batting for here.

    No, not everyone is doing it, the western imperial core is doing it. The Chinese are not, and the claim that they are is nonsense.

      • Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.ml
        32·
        2 years ago

        Ok I see the problem here.

        Do you understand how international finance and investment works?

          • Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.ml
            32·
            2 years ago

            No mate, clearly fucking not.

            Why do you think it’s all foreign companies and not domestic? Because there isn’t a domestic industry, it either needs to be built, lacks pre-requisites, or other matters are a greater priority in the moment.

            So what to do for a developing country? They have resources but they do not have the means to do anything with them, so they invite foreign companies to make deals for those resources. Investment in return for debt.

            The devil of that debt however is in the details of the deal. The IMF and World Bank make many of these deals for the west in the global south and they have always been absolutely dogshit, but the global south having no other options always accepted them. China on the other hand makes extremely fair deals, even with countries that have no negotiating position, and as you can see from earlier links they also write off these debts all the time. Yanis for example had first hand experience dealing with China but they were incredibly reasonable, much more reasonable than he expected.

            So why did I bring up debts? Because investment in natural resource extraction by foreign companies in the global south is always about some form of debt. It’s literally how finance works.

              • Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.ml
                21·
                2 years ago

                I already explained the difference here, good debt from fair deals and bad debt from deals that are unfair that create political leverage because of the unfairness of the debt. You’re intentionally ignoring everything I say, you have done so since the very start of this interaction.