"A Compound WTF, Wrapped in Proto-Colonialism, Wrapped in Bacon"

Guys, a new bar has been set for reader emails. We have received a tip from alert reader Ashley* notifying us of the following post on furaffinity.net, an online community for furries and their friends:

Need some help with a cool idea.
Well me and a friend have come up with this crazy idea that we should get a ton of money together and buy a poor African country. Build up its infrastructure and medical care. Then let the nation prosper.

However we are not sure what nation to go with. So we have made a few points of intrest.

Must have a coast.
Not be totally aids ridden, by African standards.
Have some semblance of a national army.
Not totally jungle or totally desert.

Preferably former English colony with a substantial English speaking population.

So any ideas are welcome and encouraged!

It was posted by a 19 year old kid from Saskatchewan with a thing for crying playing wolf.** A few days later, he followed up with a list of countries that he thought might meet his exacting standards:

So I have a rough list that ill be chopping down. This is a list of most African countries that would fall close in line.
Only stipulation thus far is that there coastal.

In no particular order:

Mauritania; Madagascar; Liberia; Kenya; Guinea-Bissau; Ghana; Gambia; Gabon; Ethiopia; Eritrea; Djibouti; The Ivory Coast; The Republic of Congo; The Democratic Republic of Congo; Cameroon; Benin; Angola; Algeria; Nigeria; Namibia; Tanzania; Sierra Leone; Senegal

List of countries that I could take and build up. Any input would be wonderful!

Although one commenter responded to the first post by suggesting that this plan was "wildly unrealistic, wholly unethical, deeply racist, proto-colonial, and unbelievably insulting to people in any developing country, African or otherwise," most of the rest of the responses have been along the lines of "ooh, cool, man!" (And shockingly, no one has queried whether the DRC's whopping 23 miles of oceanfront real estate really qualify it as "coastal.")

We'll spare you the usual "Ow, my brain!" rant. We figure you're familiar with it by now. (And if not, feel free to construct your own from the following list of nouns, interjections, and adjectives: gah!, colonialism, stupid, lions, poverty, ignorance, rape, argh!, presumptuous, oil wealth, magenta.)

Instead, we'd just like to ask whether a little less "save them, white people, you're their only hope!" flavor in mainstream discourse on Africa could have prevented this tragedy. And maybe propose a new journalistic standard to our news-editor friends:

Perhaps next time you're polishing a story, you might ask yourself if your article would give a 19 year old kid, whose previous leadership experience consists of sitting in front of a computer wearing a set of bunny ears, the impression that the people of an entire continent are so abjectly helpless and miserable that they would prefer their country to be purchased and ruled by him and a few of his fluffy little friends.

Just a thought.

*We've re-purposed Ashley's email subject as a post title because it was awesome.

** With regard to whether or not the posts are just a joke, we think Ashley said it best in her initial email to us: "I don't know if it's a joke. Rephrased: it is clearly a joke, but it's unclear if it was meant as one." We agree - we wish it seemed like the kid wasn't serious, but, uh, it doesn't seem that way.

(If we've said there's more after the jump, or you want to see comments, you should probably click here)