Costa Rica is also a notable exception. People there are obsessed with keeping stuff clean and protecting wildlife, because I think they understand how much their livelihood depends on tourism. It’s a huge difference between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, even though culturally the countries are very similar otherwise.
They burn trash and toilet paper in the ditch beside the road in Guanacaste. To be fair, the roads aren't paved, and there are no gas stations or infrastructure. Yes, ecotourism is big in Costa Rica, but they aren't perfect either. Maybe only in the touristy areas....
I have to admit that I didn’t get to far out into the country but even “touristy” parts of other Central American countries are full of garbage — the beaches and everything.
Mandela wrote about this back in 1994 https://books.google.se/books?id=_ewvL93kFx4C&printsec=front...
But that is South Africa, not really a poor African nation.
* notable because usually the correlation is with income/culture, but Rwanda is not rich nor much different culturally from neighbouring trash-inundated countries.