Here's your slice...

Through the lectures, I've learned about the Berlin Conference. Basically a German Chancellor by the name Otto von Bismarck invited 14 other Western Countries, including the 4 superpowers of that time (1884-1885) Portugal, British, France and Belgium and none from the African countries to dissect the African regions up to their own preference and colonize them.

Probably the ideal image to sum up the whole scenario.

Now, part of the reasons why they do this was of course to exhibit their colonial power not just to the Africans but to their fellow Western rivals. In simple terms: the more land you own, the more power you have.
Another reason was because of Africa rich resources and raw materials. Even before the discovery of oil, Africa was abundant with diamond, palm oil, cotton and so much more. By monopolizing more of these resources is to be able to control the market.

By taking up the African countries to themselves, it is with no surprise that this comes with serious issue like genocide and slave labor to name a few. Even centuries after the Berlin Conference, Africa is still feeling the effects and repercussions of it. From civil war, countries secede from one another to the entire region heavily dependent on aid and debt.

Here is a video to summarize and illustrate the events after the Berlin Conference, the Scramble for Africa:

In conjunction of Independence Day in Malaysia.

    Yesterday was the 59th Independence Day of Malaysia and I thought I should reflect upon some of the accomplishment the country has achieved in relations to the current issue of Africa that we are facing. Coming from a multicultural country with its diverse ethnicity of people, Malaysia too started off as a colonized land by the British. Due to the pushing of economy reasons in the land used to be named as Malaya, there was an influx of Chinese and Indian migrant to help with not just mining but also farming reasons. Since then the Chinese, Indians and Malays have been living under the same country alongside with other groups of indigenous community or Orang Asli.

One of the achievement that did us proud as Malaysians was when Malaysian athletes bagging a few medals for its country in the recent Rio Olympics 2016 in Brazil. I'm sure many of you are familiar with Lee Chong Wei being one of the top badminton players in the world recently just won himself the second place in the Olympics.

Lee Chong Wei, top Malaysian athlete in the badminton world.

However, we have to ask ourselves: what have we truly accomplish as we are just 4 years away from Vision 2020, which is part of the nation's strategy towards being a 'self-sufficient' industrialized country by the year 2020

As some of you may have heard about the recent news behind the infamous 1MDB scandal of the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak being accused of siphoning state funds through this company and into his own personal account. Yet, despite numerous attempts in bringing this case to court, a number of local judges has opted to close the case instead despite dozens of relevant unforgiving evidence.

In terms of its resources and putting it in contrast with Africa, Malaysia too has its fair share of abundance rich oil around the coast as well as timber located at East Malaysia that is currently being exploited off.

Given that the richness of resources in the country that essentially should be share with the public and instead the Malaysian politicians are seen to be sharing these reward among themselves. So the question that I asked in this post to ponder about is: will Malaysia ever going to succeed as a nation against corruption or will it end up falling into the same fate as Africa, constantly having its nation's riches to be exploited people with power and their temporary position?

Only time will tell.

Malaysia Boleh...