Building institutions and culture takes centuries and can be lost quickly. Take heart that the West is burning its cultural capital quickly and becoming low trust as people start to realize they're in a reputation poor environment.

I can think of a few that seem to be developing nicely: Botswana, Mauritius, Cape Verde, Rwanda, and Namibia.

>You can't literally point to a single African country that's developed and successful

/me lifts hand and point finger to Botswanna.

It's tribal and there is in most of Africa, no culture for rewarding merit or excellence.

But there is always willingness to blame everybody else.

Look at a map of how alphabets spread and literacy rates. I think a more productive question would be not what is wrong with Africa but what was right with Europe.

Religion played a part. The best selling book after the printing press emerged was the Bible and majority of book sales revolved around religious texts. There was money to be made from this so it spread.

The great leap forward didn't come during the renaissance as many people imagine but as late as the 19th. The 20th for communist countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_literacy_campaign

  Before the campaign, the rate of illiteracy among city dwellers was 11% compared to 41.7% in the countryside

Present day Nigeria is still somewhere around 50%, somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

Without universal literacy a country can't escape corruption, it is a necessary but not sufficient requirement to move to to the next stage. Not so long ago most everyone most everywhere was an illiterate peasant, the first places to grow out of that got first mover advantage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

> You can't literally point to a single African country that's developed and successful...

Botswana. If you want to count the island nations, Cape Verde, Seychelles as well too.

Europe, America, China and even Russia have mercenaries corps (e.g. Glencore) that help African countries choose the right rulers, and when the ruler isn't right he gets replaced. The right ruler needs to be a chaotic plutocrat who cares only about himself and looks the other way when his home country is looted. As for IQ, it's a side effect of the above: NK and SK are the same people who live under different rulers for less than a century, but NKs are already much shorter. My guess is that in a hostile environments, the smarts and height genes stay dormant.

It is my impression that Rwanda has been improving under the Kagame rule, but that the improvement is still precarious.

> I've always wondered what's wrong with my continent.

It's a source of raw materials for powers outside of your continent, who pour money and arms into the hands of the cliques most willing and able to get those materials out of the country at the lowest price.

Any hint that a resource-cursed country wants to reign in its elites, regulate its environment or labor, or negotiate better prices is replied to with a torrent of funds directed to the people most willing to murder the reformers.

i tend to disagree. Africa has some countries with very good GDP growth over the past 20 years, higher than some developed countries (Japan) that are struggling with debt and demographic collapse.

In most other countries this same problem is solved by raising prices. Which is better seems a subjective question - the zavway at least gives low income people access to some reasonably priced electricity.

Relevant:

There Are No Successful Black Nations | And the indignity and helplessness of blacks in America won’t end until we have a first-world African nation to lift up our people. <https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/4x2vbu/there_ar...>

I suggest reading Guns Germs and Steel for some context

Imperialism has a lot to answer for.

What's wrong with your continent?

This whole thread is making me feel like I'm in an alternative reality...

The continent was raped, looted and pillaged by Europeans and Americans. Complete populations were enslaved. Natural resources were stolen, cultures were destroyed.

And of course, in the best traditions, divisions were sown where one set of Native people were marked as better than another set, in a move that takes many generations to heal.

My country (Ireland) was colonised, we lost half our population to famine and emigration. We, almost, lost our language, out culture. We still have sectarian conflict. We didn't have one quarter the shit that was done to many parts of Africa. And, without Europe's money, we would still be a state completely dependent on our former colonisers.

Healing will take time, but to not mention the damage done, and still being done there is nonsense.

The top post on this thread is saying the apartheid government was bad yes... But they made the trains run on time!