> I think #4 is very subversive (for unfortunate reasons). It really made me think what would it take for an African country - be it Nigerian, Botswana, South Africa etc - to compete with the likes of Singapore or California.

Part of the conceptual difficulty, I think, is the Western vision of Africa as being one place with one peoples. It's a bit like how Western nations view their own indigenous groups, only worse: with a broad, homogeneous, inaccurate portrayal.

The futures of Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Nigeria, Ethiopia and South Africa are likely to lack homogeneity.