Clark Kent
"“Famines in Africa usually have more to do with gov'ts than with population.”, what a true statement."

No Clarky its not a true statement, theres no use in selecting a few countries to summarize such a poor statement based on Africa as a whole. This focus on governments and corruption is exaggerated, governance ratings for countries such as Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal are rated as 'good' based on World Bank Governance Indicators. What you fail to establish is that the level of governance is typical for countries at the same level of income, the more people earn generally precipitates better governance, better governance does not equate to higher incomes.

TRTL
"Basically, when you are faced with a country where everybody else is looking after themselves, you have no choice but to do the same thing to survive."

No your generalising, basing assumptions on hearsay. Tanzania, where ive lived for several years, has an absolutely iron clad emphasis on family, community, culture, and looking after one another. The practice here in Australia of shipping old folk off the nursing homes to die, for example, is considered an abhorrent idea over there! god what a hypocritical statement, we live in the land of the individual, individualism is emphasised to death in the West no wonder we lack many of the common virtues that are considered the norm over there! and for what? a shampoo that makes you 'feel' like an individual.. piss off

sorry for my last rant i got a big hot under the collar, its just wrong to generalise the issue, if it were that simple the problem would have been solved a long time ago. This is a continent, consisted of a myriad of cultures, customs geographical landscapes, tribes etc, not simply political borders, the effects of poverty vary greatly among these different contexts.
In extreme cases yes the 'individual' is brought out in these people but thats a simple human mechanism brought about by poverty, it doesn't reflect Africa as a whole.

Peachy..yer' darn tootin' it's not the same all over the continent, because the majority of the bloody continent is in ruin!...and why we ask? weeeellll...we know why don't we?

That "simple" mechanism has many names: "government" "greed" "communism" "bad religious leadership that hide behind government" Religious leaders being able to have a say in political matters, that do not concern them.

Typical topics of interest: "persicution with no resolution", need I say more?
The so-called leaders are rotten from the ground up and there is literally no-one on Gods given earth, that will stand up to a government hell bent on driving whats left of the African continent into the same abyss that Zimbabwe has fallen into, all on the fickle promises of a lying S.O.B. who earns a living on his people's demise.

The African Continent will become the seething, desease ridden hell hole it's cut out to be.

An overpopulated country is highly susceptible to mismanagement. With a stable population, bad government may lead to fewer TV's and microwave ovens, but the people aren't going to go hungry. Overpopulation is the ultimate cause, government only the proximate.

SPANKY
"My question: Is the money they recieve, actually being used for relief like we are being led to belive? Somehow, something does not add-up."

To answer your question no the money they receive is not entirely used for relief, in 2002 $30 was allocated per sub-Saharan African from the entire world (both development and emergency aid). $5 went to consultants from the donor countries, $3 was allocated to food aid and other emergency aid, $4 went to servicing Africa's debt, and $5 went to debt relief operations, $12 remained for each African per annum (UNICEF).
To believe that more aid is simply going to increase the population is false, high fertility rates remain in countries whom are poor, theres a strong correlation between poverty and high fertility rates and this only isn't in Africa as its merely a result of household circumstances. As more children survive the need of having more children diminishes along with economic development.
"As households are able to obtain modern health services, including family planning and modern contraceptives, they are able to follow through on their changing desires about family size"
This is exactly the reason why the Western world has achieved a marked reduction of total fertility rates and a sharp slowdown in population growth.
As I stated previously corruption is intrinsically linked to the level of peoples income, civil society in 'some' corrupt African countries cannot be empowered to keep the government honest in the same way other countries can because they simply don't possess the means due to their personal circumstances i.e. poverty. A country such as Benin was in 2004 ranked 27th out of 167 countries in the Worldwide Press Freedom Index (Reporters Without Borders) because they have a strong entrenched civil code that has brought about a political system with very little corruption, which has allowed them to achieve 5% growth over the last 6 years.

Your profoundly ignorant SPANKY and statements such as;
"The African Continent will become the seething, desease ridden hell hole it's cut out to be."
is testament. You really underestimate the depth of the situation.

Peachy,
You are incorrect to state that poor countries have a higher fertility rate than more affluent countries. The poor countries have a higher reproduction rate, i.e. more children, but to use the term higher fertility is a misnomer. The reason women in affluent countries have less children is simply because of birth control.

How soon a woman begins to ovulate, after giving birth, depends upon her nutrition level. That is why in G-Grandmothers time there was a belief that a woman breast feeding would not become pregnant. Better nutrition put paid to that theory.

So in countries where nutrition is low, the more food women receive the sooner they begin to ovulate again and, unless there is birth control, become pregnant again. This applies to humans and most warm blooded animals.