African economy
Although it has abundant natural resources, Africa remains the world's poorest and most underdeveloped continent, due largely to the effects of tropical diseases,
the slave trade, corrupt governments, failed central planning, the international trade regime and geopolitics; as well as widespread human rights violations, the negative
effects of colonialism, despotism, illiteracy, superstition, tribal savagery and military conflict (ranging from war and civil war to guerrilla warfare to genocide).
According to the United Nations' Human Development Report in 2003, the bottom 25 ranked nations (151st to 175th) were all African nations.
Widespread poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition and inadequate water supply and sanitation, as well as poor health, affect a large majority of the people who reside in the
As a victim of both Fascist Italy’s 1935 aggression and the negligence of the League of Nations to protect member nations from aggressor nations, Ethiopia was always invested in collective security and peaceful co-existence of all nations. When North Korea, supported and encouraged by China, crossed the border with South Korea, and the United Nations asked members to protect the country, Emperor Haile Selassie saw it as a collective security issue, and agreed to send some of his best troops. The Ethiopian Battalion was recruited from and trained among the best professional Imperial bodyguard soldiers, and were mostly over six feet tall.
