I think the problem with the "West" and Africa, is that we view Africa as mostly a single unit, and not the individual countries that make up the continent. From a westerners prospective, African countries have a huge corruption issue, and years of "give-a-man-a-fish" charity from the West appears to have labeled westerners as someone to be taken advantage of and to get free handouts from. It's difficult to evaluate the legitimacy of a company ran be people who think much differently than you.

I've been following the story of a Westerner (I believe he is American) that is taking a land trip through Africa[1]. While there are areas of great, geniune people, many of his stories involve people, both government and private, in the countries trying to exploit him for money, gifts, etc...

He went into a rant in one of his posts that I think has been removed now, but the gist was that years of free handouts from the West is the reason for this behavior.

I don't know how to fix it, but this mentality and perception has to be fixed by the African people -- the West is not going to change on its own. The problem seems to ultimately have been created by the West, and should be fixed by the West, but the reality of the situation is that is not likely to happen. If Africa wants Western investment, it will need to address these stereotypes and perceptions, otherwise China will continue investing. They are not involved in African politics now, but wait 50 years and see if that is still the story. They have to establish their grip on the money first. Once they have solid control of the money, the control of the people will follow.

[1] http://theroadchoseme.com

Your first point is spot-on (so much so that people have made things like this[1] just to point it out).

Your second is more complex, but the general principle of a rich visitor being shaken down is very, very old - after all, you clearly have the means to come visit, while the reverse is not generally the case.

1: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/24/africa-clinton

> Africans don't need charity. The NGO industrial complex has failed to create modern states, it can deliver great help to badly affected communities but it can't leapstart growth.

Since this is a startup/hacker forum, what do you think about entrepreneurs moving there to not only start a business, while being ethically charitable and involved in the locally community (rather than just being a digital nomad). Would this be accepted culturally, or would I just be viewed as a rich foreigner trying to trick/scam the populace?

I've only visited the continent as a tourist, but am very interested in your perspective on cultural viewpoints. And followup question -- are certain African nations more open to outsiders than others?

Certain countries are more open to this than others. It'd be tricky to start such a business in West Africa but Kenya in particular is a big tech hub which has quite many Western expats playing a role in it. Kenya would be my pick for where you could do something like that and not be seen as weird/not welcomed.

In other African countries the racial context would prevent it (Southern African countries) or they're more protectionist(Anglophone West African states).

I could also see Uganda and Rwanda also being quite welcoming of such an effort as they're making big moves on trying to grow their tech sectors. The latter two are repressive dictatorships though politically. Economically and socially however the people are largely free. Kenya by comparison is a deeply messy and perhaps perpetually corrupt democracy.

Is it true to say the US donates more (like Tom’s shoes) than legitimate investments?

It would be hard to quantify, what we can say is that China focuses more on hard infrastructure, which African countries have a huge lack of capacity of, and which the West has't really focused on development wise since the 1970s.

America excels more traditionally on capacity("soft" work to do with say governance, healthcare, NGOs, and also committed through the IMF/World Bank).