The question remains: why are African countries not doing those things? Many of them have excellent climates for food crops; nutrition shouldn’t be a barrier. One possibility is that they’re not smart enough to operate agricultural systems effectively. Agriculture is a high-skill, high-risk occupation - for example, you need to know how to manage predators (of domestic crops and animals), and that’s hard. If you’re an idiot, you’ll fail even more horribly at agriculture than you will at practically anything else.
Then there’s the thing about vaccines: it’s a common belief in several African countries that vaccines are a tool of imperialism or have bad magic in them. Yes, I know that happens in the West too, but it’s almost always people at the crappy end of the bell curve who subscribe to theories like that.
‘Them’ is the problem. A lot of these countries are highly fractured and have multiple tribal groups at each other’s throats. Places like Nigeria and Cameroon , they even have different groups of language speakers all uncomfortably wedged together That has to be a big part of the problem.
That’s as maybe, but ideas can’t be hoarded. Not all the land is in the hands of the oligarchy. What’s the problem with the other 80, 90% of it that’s in the hands of the peasants (de facto if not de jure)?
Probably there are some answers in how much land per peasant farmer, how nutrient rich it is, if they have access to fertilisers and water, what’s the infrastructure like, how stable is the local climate…
My impression from afar is that many of these countries have major political issues and corruption which is holding them back.
They don’t modernise their agricultural techniques, as for example the Chinese have done in.certain African countries in chicken farming. Additionally a better road system might help.
We have to go to that local village and see what’s happening there . They are probably directly competing for resources with the next tribe or village. Lack of an overarching authority could be a problem
This might be true somewhere like Nigeria, but countries like DRC are sparsely-populated, so it can’t be true there.
Quite probably. But again: does this not reflect somewhat on the general intelligence of the population? Smart people do tend to get themselves organized.
I think we would be best to visit different parts of DRC before passing judgement. I recall it is bigger than France (4x Biggerl) and doesn’t have one proper highway. It could be too big an entity for their current state of development . They seem also to be affected by regional wars such as in Rwanda.
Anyway, fascinating place, not sure if one will go in and come out in one piece though !
Rwanda I think is an intriguing example. The place is massively overpopulated and I suspect that had something to do with the massacre that occurred there. Now, a lot of smart people must have died (I suspect the idiots were the ones doing the culling while the desk jockeys were less able to defend themselves). Yet today it’s one of the continent’s more successful countries. People read books. They have ambition. They want jobs and development. And they appear to be getting more intelligent.
What happened to Rwanda is very simple: they got a smart (and ruthless) leader, who invited lots of other smart people in to come and sort things out. Reports on the ground suggest the plebs are still a bit dim, but it seems to me that not allowing dim people to make bad decisions is having a useful effect.
It is true that western civilization has tended to have a very good ability to plan, and organize systems. The industrial revolution being just one example. I’m not sure if that is correlated with IQ scores especially if we consider somewhere like Taiwan’s road system !
I remember back 20 years ago when I was in Jr High and High School we heard all the time that US test score on average was way behind Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Korea. That these countries would take over the future. We were spending too much of our time childhood summers playing while kids in Asia were in After school and summer school studying 24/7. 20 years later Google, Apple, Facebook, Artificial Intelligence, Amazon, Quantum Computing, Tesla, Space X happened. Apple/Google overtook Japans dominance in Mobile Phones replacing a huge amount of consumer electronics Japan used to invent… Just goes to prove creativity and innovation pushed the future(our present) not route memorization and test taking.
True they take in a lot of the Smartest people India has to offer into the tech, AI, sectors. Not as many Indian Geniuses headed to China, Taiwan or Korea. Some to UK and EU and Canada.
For instance even if you could move to China given the numerous practical and legal challenges why would you ? Japan， it’s just not open enough to outsiders.
Europe is another question . But your examples illustrate a whole host of factors come together to determine success. Now a lot of workers would deem no guaranteed leave and firing at will not much of a success.