I’m from Nigeria, and I can ascertain that our borders are a joke. At this point, they can just declare visa-free travel across Africa for anyone…it’s not like they’re many desirable destinations on this continent that need to be gated.

I'm concerned this is going to further facilitate the exploitation of unskilled labor in these countries by the business class. I saw something online a few years ago about foreign workers in Kenya being treated much worse than their Kenyan peers (they were working in construction). Do you think this is a valid concern?

They don’t need foreign workers. Locals are already exploited enough because labor laws are lax or non-existent. I can tell many stories of white-collar workers being treated like trash, talk less of unskilled labor.

This will just continue the status quo until we find a solution to the exploitation.

Yes. It's exactly what the UK is doing by shipping illegal immigrants to Rwanda.

Who will probably now be sent off to Kenyan camps, one could speculate.

It can also work in the opposite direction: legal immigrants can bargain for better wages and report abuses to the authorities, while illegal immigrants are under the constant thread of being reported and kicked out of the country.

The real purpose of the visa is money from fees. The people who arrive in the airports are the ones dealing with the visa process and they're all paying $50/visa or so - it's a big money maker.

Saying this shows you aren’t following any type of news in Africa at all. Living ranges from decent, bad, worse, to all levels of terrible. Kenya is a place with a lot of decent and bad, surrounded by countries with decent and bad as well, alongside various levels of terrible.

I love this move from Kenya but it does have real risk, and I’d hate to see another South Africa scenario, xenophobia wise

> I’d hate to see another South Africa scenario, xenophobia wise

For the uniformed, South Africa has a growing nativist political vigilante movement which violently targets foreign people and businesses called Operation Dudula [1] (Zulu for "push out/forcefully expel"). They attribute South Africa's social and economic problems to other migrant Africans, rather than the mismanagement and corruption of the ANC.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-66808346

The problem is that there aren’t any real leaders that are loved in their country. Ironically, the closest to be liked (atleast externally among Africans) are the Rwandan and Ghanaian presidents. But the citizens living in said countries have varying levels of dislike for said leaders.

It will be an easy task for said leaders/citizens to put blame on migrants for the movements. South Africa has been mentioned, but a lot of people in Ghana’s opinion on recent tourism friendly attitudes range from dislike to blaming it on inflation/devaluation there.

Immigration is always an easy scapegoat, it’s almost cheating.

Worked great for Zimbabwe!

We have had visa free travel within East Africa for a long while now, and nothing massively horrible has happened, despite the other countries in East Africa having it, to various degrees, worse compared to Kenya. Plus Kenya already spent decades hosting millions of refugees fleeing wars from South Sudan and Somalia, again to no massively horrible effect.

Why are you saying that ;) there are right now several cyclists from Morocco traveling a long the coast, true Nigeria had problems in the east with extortionists going rampant, but overall our continent is beautiful and full of lovely people.

https://youtu.be/pSHgn8BGyI8?t=471

> But overall our continent is beautiful and full of lovely people.

Mehn spare me, I have heard this over and over again, and yes it’s true.

But being “beautiful and lovely” doesn’t build a nation. Hidden behind this facade of beauty is a horrible culture that celebrates corruption, tribalism and lack of cooperation, backbiting, and shortsightedness, which is why our continent remains poor.

Africa will remain a basket case until we reform our culture into one that celebrates honest work and mutual cooperation over corruption and cheating to earn a living, which is doable :)

But, no matter how much lipstick a pig wears…

>Hidden behind this facade of beauty is a horrible culture that celebrates corruption, tribalism and lack of cooperation, backbiting, and shortsightedness

These are all acute problems in Western nations. The fundamental impediment which Africa faces are it's rich natural resources and the nations which exploit them.

Any "anti-corruption" cultural efforts will be snuffed out long before it becomes a threat to this lucrative expropriation

There is no cultural solution to the boot of political and economic struggle.

I’m not buying this but sure, we Africans never take responsibility. We’ll first blame the other tribe, then the country next to us, then long-gone colonial powers, and finally the devil when we run out of excuses.

As if it’s not our leaders selling out the country to foreign interests for pocket change. Maybe they could pick up a book from Lee Kuan Yew and learn how he rejected a bribe from the CIA.

And these leaders are all fairly and democratically elected?

Without the influence of the money of former colonial states (or their puppets in the form of expropriative enterprises)?

Consider the trillions of dollars made by other countries from Africa's people and resources. Why _wouldnt_ they spend a fraction of that killing any chance that a cultural movement picks up.

This isn't fantasy, Nestle, Chiquita, etc have a long history of funding anti-revolutionary agencies for exactly this reason.

One man rejecting one bribe will do nothing, a single cup cannot drain an ocean.

I wonder why those rich Middle Eastern petro states aren’t being controlled and kept poor by the Western powers if that’s the case.

We can all go back to the past and find excuses of how someone did bad and blame them for the present even if they’re long gone…we Africans are very good at that.

What we’re not good at is ever taking responsibility for f**ing once instead of blaming invisible conspiracists hiding in thin air.

You’re getting these responses because Americans have been trained Pavlovian style to never ever claim that some cultures are better than others. This is despite most, including those who think they don’t, implicitly believing this

I'm curious which cultures you believe are worst than others?

Which one is the worst?

Radical Islam for one is rabidly anti-intellectual. The only conservative Muslim countries that are anything to write home about are oil-rich and have extremely small populations.

As a result, it's easy for the government to subsidize their citizens heavily and build lots of shiny skyscrapers to attract western tourists without developing human capital significantly.

Call me Islamophobic but I say this as a Nigerian, living in a country with the largest Muslim population in Africa (second-largest in the world after Indonesia) where people still get lynched and burned for "blasphemy."

Radical religious groups are always rabidly anti-intellectual. The better question to ask is why there are so many more radical Muslims than radical Christians. That's where I think a wider view is important.

The main difference is that you can fully implement a 'Christian' values state and it isn't going against the grain to base it on mercy, equality, and not 'othering' those who don't agree. In other words a fully Christian society can fully implement the teachings found in the New Testament and not be considered 'radical' in any sense by a non-Christian living in that society. While it may be 'missionary' oriented it also wouldn't require exporting its philosophy. It also is comfortable separating civil and religious law - 'render unto Ceasar.'

Islam, fully implementing the Koran, is basically the opposite.

It requires fidelity at the threat of death and the forced conversion of outsiders. It requires civil and religious law to be the same.

Iran for instance instantiates the tenets of Islam in fact.

The Christian theocracies are basically historical dead letters at this point- and were mostly overlays on existing government structures:

The Roman Empire for instance continued to be Rome after the Emperors became Christian- it never really, despite the Pope's best efforts, become more than a light overlay on existing government structures, with King's utilizing theories of 'Divine Right of Kings' as a useful way to perpetuate their existing hierarchies. Even countries like Armenia that claimed explicitly to be Christian states aren't actually ruled by the priesthood- they have established national religions in many historical instances, not a truly religiously run state like Iran where the mullah's are the ultimate authority.

Rome/Papal States, Peter the great, Geneva/Calvin, some slice of the Byzantine empire, along with pre-United States Utah (and in a smaller scale the city of Nauvoo,) where you have had the clerical and government structures completely united in a Christian state that I can think of off hand. England in a much looser sense qualifies. And in these cases you generally again have, relative to Islam, a non-radical, especially as it relates to outsiders, experience.

Muslims are 'radical' because they stick to Qur'an, their book. Christians should also be sharing most of the same principles, if they are honest about following both Testaments. But hey, apparently they are mere "tales" nowadays if you ask a self-proclaimed Christian and you can see churches with pride flags. Christianity is dead because there is no one left who lives as per their book. It's arguably not very possible too, given that it is self-conflicting in many instances. Muslim view on this is that Jews tried to kill Jesus, weren't able to, and then corrupted the original Bible in an attempt to divide Christians.

> It requires fidelity at the threat of death and the forced conversion of outsiders.

Islam does not require forced conversion of outsiders. It can be said to require dominating Earth as a goal, but Christians and Jews lived peacefully under Islamic rule for millenia.

Fidelity at the threat of death is only if the person committing adultery is married and at least 4 people witnessed the incident. This requirement is rarely satisfied, while being enough too deter people to stay away from this act.

> Iran for instance instantiates the tenets of Islam in fact.

Iran is Shiite. They are a deviant sect. Doesn't mean all their practices represent Islam. There will be multiple deviant sects in any religion with billions of population. Vast majority of Muslims are Sunnis who are following the original teachings.

Important to note is all Islamic punishments regarding sins apply to Muslims, not people of other religions. They are (and historically were) free to do whatever they want, barring things like insulting people and betraying the state, which are also punishable under current secular law.

Christianity got killed first in the hands of St. Paul who basically changed Bible to his liking - and then by the Roman emperor whom I forgot his name who selected 4 out of the 400 Bibles available at the time in that famous meeting.

And it's annoying like hell when I (a Nigerian) try to explain to an European/African how I can't move an inch without paying a bribe and they tell you to focus on the bright side or abstract notions like the diversity of the continent, blah blah blah.

Most African countries got independence in the 1940 - 1970s. Israel was established in 1948, while Singapore became independent in 1967. While most African states busied themselves with denouncing colonialism, playing around with the Soviets, or murdering any ethnic minority that didn't agree with the party line, Singapore went from being a slum to an economic powerhouse; Israel is essentially indispensable to the west as the economic/military intelligence key to the Middle East now.

So, i's hard to celebrate any advancement when we could be much further. Western optimists might feel otherwise, but perspective is everything, I guess?

Singapore is a special case, Korea is more a fair comparison, the country was by most metrics in a worse shape than most (african & non) colonies at the indipendence/civil war. Korea developed well considering its starting position

Singapore had a much stronger base than any other Asian country other than Hong Kong in the mid-20th century.

Singapore was one of the richest Asian countries on a GDP per Capita basis in 1960. It was comparable to other middle income countries in that era like Southern Europe and South America [0].

LKY talking about Singapore as if it was a third world hell hole is just disingenuous PR to make the PAP look much more impressive. Even Taiwan and South Korea were much poorer than Singapore back then, but they've both caught up to Singapore by 2023. In fact, if you compare Singapore with other cities in first world Asia, then it's largely been outpaced by Seoul and Tokyo.

[0] https://cepr.net/documents/publications/econ_growth_2005_11_...

> Most African countries got independence in the 1940 - 1970s. Israel was established in 1948, while Singapore became independent in 1967. While most African states busied themselves with denouncing colonialism, playing around with the Soviets, or murdering any ethnic minority that didn't agree with the party line, Singapore went from being a slum to an economic powerhouse; Israel is essentially indispensable to the west as the economic/military intelligence key to the Middle East now.

To give two more examples, in 1960 South Korea's GDP/Capita was similar to Sudan and significantly lower than Taiwan's which was similar to Northern African countries (Tunisia, Morocco). Algeria was much richer than either, I assume thanks to oil.

Is this a form of moral relativism where everyone and everything must have equal intrinsic value?

What if we argue a 1971 Ford Pinto is actually just a good a car as a 2003 Honda Civic. Sure, it's old, the fuel tanks rupture in an accident, and it had the largest recall in automotive history, but at least it was affordable, allowing societal mobility?

What is this phenomenon called?

I never said they would be kept poor.

I also wonder why none of those Petro states are bastions of democracy and cultural excellence

Because a generation ago they were undeveloped/developing countries.

Saudi in 1990 had developmental indicators comparable to Bangladesh (a country that is still counted as a less developed country by the WB and IMF).

In 2023, it now has developmental indicators comparable to Poland or Czechia.

In 1990, the UAE had developmental indicators comparable to South Africa today.

In 2023, the UAE has developmental indicators comparable to the US, Israel, and Japan.

It takes time to build democracy as a developing country

The same description can be applied to many South American countries.

Typically, I believe that sufficient welfare and prosperity are what reduces corruption and crime, not the other way around.

As an argentinean citizen I believe that corruption and crime are what impede prosperity. How can prosperity arise when power is in the hands of corrupts?

Welfare is a method of fighting corruption though. Corruption means taking money from the public. Welfare is giving money to the public.

But when the ones in power are corrupt, they are the same people who would have to implement the welfare. And of course they steal a big percentage of the welfare money. And also inflation. Look at inflation numbers in Argentina. Look what "giving money to the public" can do. Don't be blind to the consequences of economically unsound intentions of welfare.

Do you think the West earned its prosperity through hard work? Fossil fuels and colonization built their civilizations, not them. Humans are no more genius than they were a millenia ago. They just accessed a new free energy source, which is soon to deplete, taking the civilization it built with it, into a horrible famine.

It's an unrealistic reduction to talk about "The West" as if it was an homogeneous entity. The whole world used fossil fuels, and you should read the history of the big nations of the East too.

What's your point? Are you defending Argentina's corrupt politicians?

Has that hypothesis been tested against other nations that developed prosperity? How was their corruption through my the process?

Isn't it more likely to be the way around, that societies where the people have learnt to work together, prosper?

It’s a feedback system. The only problem is that governments tend to ignore the welfare/education/prosperity part and focus entirely on austerity laws.

In Argentina it's not like that. The corrupt government has always focused in welfare.

Well that doesn't seem true on the world stage. I mean China has seen rapid GDP growth but still remains extremely corrupt. But I think you are missing the [parent's point, it's not the corruption they are complaining about, it's cultural values that they think are determental to economic success. And having been to Africa (Zambia) and origionally being from a poor country in Asia myself, I think there's a lot of truth to what he's saying.

That description of the culture also describes very well Argentina's culture, and I also believe that it's what causes Argentina to remain poor.

I think you probably put your finger on the rational driving force here.

If you can't/don't control the borders anyway... It might be more rational to just go with that and enable official channels and/or rules to work.

Insisting on the impossible, or the not-going-to-happen... It's a mistake politics makes regularly. Policies are only as effective as you can make them.

Anyway, if Kenya is in then this is a serious thing.

> The number of Africans who would prefer to live in Kenya is enormous.

Visa-free travel doesn't mean you can (legally) live/work there, though.

It seems that that’s the goal though:

> According to the African Union's website, the African Passport and free movement of people are intended to "remove restrictions on Africans ability to travel, work, and live within their own continent."

> The African Union also established the African Continental Free Trade Area, a free trade area spanning the whole continent with an estimated value of $3.4 trillion. Its goals are to promote economic growth and provide a single, united market for the 1.3 billion people living on the continent.

Sounds like EU.

AU definitely has goals that bring it closer to the EU. Time will tell how well they do. In many ways it's a similar problem: 1/ big and small countries, 2/ lots of land on a full continent, 3/ major differences (languages, which side of the road people drive on, GDP, government stability, etc...), 4/ value from working together.

The EU has all of those problems as well (UK, IE, MT are right-hand drive) and its been a success in my opinion. I'm not sure if the AU is ready to go as deep as common currency. A unified trading block makes trading with larger nations a lot more even.

The EU has two separate provisions:

- The Schengen agreement, i.e. no border controls between countries

- The fundamental right to free movement for citizens of the EU.

There are countries where Schengen applies (you can go without visa or with the same visa as the rest of the EU, there is no border control for people normally), but there is no right to live there automatically (Switzerland).

There are countries without Schengen so there are border checks, and the visa system for foreigners is separate, but EU citizens still have the right to live there (Ireland).

Switzerland isn't in EU.

Did I say that Switzerland is in the EU? It is in the Schengen agreement (which managed by the EU and part of EU law, but also extends to other countries).

I am also shocked and confused. It doesn't sound like it's just for those who come by air, though. Which is wild.

Not really. The border with Somalia is closed because of the threat of Al Shabaab terrorist group in that country, and citizens of Tanzania and Uganda can already travel visa free by virtue of being member countries of the East African Community. The only existing problem with illegal immigration in Kenya, is from Ethiopia, and most of those are transiting to South Africa.

Recently on the news - Austria has entered into an agreement to move asylum seekers to an African country (a la UK to Rwanda). Now, it must be Kenya, if it's also "opening the borders".

This is all in place to prevent mass-migration to Europe. Allow migrants to "try" other local countries first.

Or maybe African countries have agency and this is unrelated

Changing countries is hard. And most people either do it for good job(which is good for Kenya) or refuge(which generally doesn't happen for middle income country due to all the social risks). e.g. Romania's GDP is ten time worse than Luxemborg and they have a free movement but not everyone is moving there.

Have you been to Rwanda?

Extremely clean and safe, massive tech sector and lots of entrepreneurs. I’d rather live there than Kenya

Rwanda, you know it for sure, is a bit of a "police state".

you have the feeling there are people listening around, especially if you talk about politics (and, never talk about the president): it may be just feelings, but you feel it clearly

but don't get me wrong

What Rwanda is doing is great, and a lot depend on that president.

What is revolutionary for me is having a country in Africa where:

* police (and the state) has very low corruption at least interfacing ordinary people

* basic services works (schools, roads, assistance for people with needs: food and health especially)

* clean (and Rwanda is really clean!!)

* and of course without the white ruling elite

so that any African visiting it will just ask him/herself:

* "omg, so it is possible in Africa?" and then

* "so, why the f. in my country everything is so shitty?"

Add to this president's quote: "Africans are the future of global tourism" and you have a great trigger.

Maybe the issue here is that the border is so porous in the first place. Instead of trying to combat the inevitable, taxing it with visas will be much more profitable for the government.

I've got a theory that sub Saharan Africa will develop a lot faster than many people think. I think of lot of why it did not in the past is it was mostly cut off from information. Until about 2000 there was not much in the way of books, newspapers etc that most Africans could afford and long distance communications were terrible. Also it was hard to get around unlike the areas where much culture developed around the med where it had been easy to get around by sea. Now they all have smart phones and internet and are on much more of a level playing field with the rest of the world.

It will develop, but it will take 3-4 generations.

Just looking at East Africa, even Kenya's current HDI is at 0.575, and the rest of East Africa is much lower. Rwanda is at 0.534 (this is potentially suspect as Rwanda has been fudging numbers [0]), Tanzania is at 0.549, and Uganda is at 0.525.

It is a similar story in West Africa as well.

While there are some bright spots in human capital in Kenya, it's much less diffused than similar undeveloped to developed stories like Bangladesh or Vietnam, let alone China, India, Thailand, etc. Going from less developed to developing requires some kind of a nudge and capital, and in South Korea, Bangladesh and Vietnam's cases it came from Japan, India and China respectively.

There isn't a similar case in sub-Saharan Africa yet. If South Africa can get it's economy back in track, there might be a shot for the rest of the continent, as they are in the right position to diffuse capital, human capital, and businesses.

[0] - https://www.ft.com/content/683047ac-b857-11e9-96bd-8e884d3ea...

If you look at the rate of increase in HDI though then less developed Africa is the fastest improving.

(Average annual HDI growth from 2010 to 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...)

The other region which has grown fast is the China area but that may slow a bit as China de-accelerates.

True, but it's at a lower base. HDI is a mixture of per Capita income, life expectancy, and literacy.

Life Expectancy and Literacy rate has been growing at a significant amount in plenty of sub-Saharan Africa over the past few years, but that's from a low base. The extremely low hanging fruit will be largely caught within a decade, which will then slow down as that requires significant reforms and expansion in healthcare and education quality and availability.

Per Capita Income will still always be a significant issue though, as my earlier point still stands. You need a strong economy to further grow out, and that is largely a factor of good education as well as you need to climb up the value chain.

Climbing the value chain is hard without outside stimulus. Most countries that have seen a rapid transformation were able to do so because another country decided to mentor and invest a massive amount in the country's economic base.

There just isn't a reason to do any manufacturing or high value services in most sub-Saharan African economies. There are plenty of cheap and well integrated Asian countries right now like like Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, parts of India that can still be competitive in low manufacturing for the next 1-2 decades.

It will anyhow take 1-2 decades for some sub-Saharan countries to anyhow invest in human capital. Kenya and Tanzania have been doing some very hard work on this regard.

With Rwanda, less so if we're being honest. Flashy projects like CMU Kigali and Thailand level cleanliness aside, Rwanda hasn't been able to bring a high value industry into the country yet. It's GDP per Capita is barely $800, median income is around $750-780, and around 60% of public and infra investment is coming directly from foreign aid.

The business culture there is simply much less mature compared to that in Nairobi or Dar es Salaam, and what happens when Kagame dies?

The same thing happened with Ethiopia. Addis Ababa became very flashy and clean, yet the country ended up collapsing into civil war and almost a decade of development was washed away.

> other region which has grown fast is the China area

China's GDP growth was

Sometimes free market economics lets countries grow without a government plan. "Rwanda hasn't been able to bring a high value industry into the country yet" implies a lack industrial planning but googling a bit finds:

>KIGALI, July 11, 2023—Rwanda’s economy grew by 9.2% in the first quarter of 2023, following 8.2% growth in 2022.

implying they are doing ok. I wish we had that sort of growth in Brexit Britain where I reside! Here we get:

>UK economy grew by 0.2% overall between April and June, after a surprisingly positive performance...

which is not quite the same.

A significant portion of that growth is coming from Donor Aid. In 2019, foreign donor aid represented 14.8% of GDP [0]

FDI within Rwanda has actually been decreasing because of a larger pullback of donors out of Rwanda [0][1]

Most high value projects that are being built in Rwanda are being targeted at the energy sector [2]. Specifically in oil refining. The other half of major exports from Rwanda is gold, that is primarily extracted from DRC and exported from Rwanda.

Compared to its peers in East Africa, the Rwandan economy is much less complex than it should be. In all honesty, it's smokes and mirrors exacerbated by a strong PR relationship between the Rwandan govt, donors, and NGOs. You don't hear half as much about Kenya, Tanzania, or Uganda as you do about Rwanda, yet almost everything within Rwanda is basically being managed by donors, and a couple Chinese and Indian conglomerates making a quick buck [3]

> Sometimes free market economics lets countries grow without a government plan

Free Market economics still requires a formal vision or strategy to develop a country. South Korea had a formalized strategy in the 80s and 90s, China in the 90s and 2000s, India in the 2010s, etc.

If you go purely free market, then there is no actual incentive.

Take a look at neighboring Kenya. Tanzania, and Uganda. They have actual formal industrial and Human capital development projects with the intended aim of building out that muscle locally. The kinds of programs Rwanda creates like this (eg. CMU Kigali) simply don't have an RoI. The exact same thing happened in Ethiopia.

> implying they are doing ok

High GDP growth is expected at Rwanda's stage of development. But Rwanda's rate of growth is not as impressive compared to Cambodia and Vietnam when they were at a similar stage to Rwanda, but with a much lower dependency on foreign aid. Around 1.3% of GDP growth in Rwanda can be attributed to foreign aid alone. With foreign aid, it ends up getting disbursed and managed by NGOs and Donors directly, not the government. As such, this causes a significant deficiency in institutional knowledge. This has been seen with falsified poverty and economic data from Rwanda.

[0] - https://issafrica.org/iss-today/could-fdi-be-rwandas-lifelin...

[1] - https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RWA/rwanda/foreign-dir...

[2] - https://www.gov.rw/highlights/economy-and-business

[3] - https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/China-and-India-stage-invest...

Well, I've never been to Rwanda or know much about it but good luck to them. I quite liked the concept of being the Singapore of Africa having spent some time in actual Singapore and also Hong Kong which had a similar model to Singapore. Both those worked well although they both had strong rule of law and low corruption which often doesn't apply in Africa.

I'm sticking with my hypothesis that info tech will let Africa develop faster than most expect though. AI probably even more so.

> that info tech will let Africa develop

I agree that ICT will help development massively, but that's Kenya and to a certain extent Tanzania.

ICT makes up around 15% of Kenya's exports and 10% of Uganda's, and they've both been working hard on actually building a both a strong tech industry and a strong financial industry.

Tanzania doesn't have as same a size of tech industry as Kenya or Uganda, but has been investing a massive amount on building that muscle. They also have a fairly decent industrial economy for their relative position as a LDC.

Rwanda just doesn't have a similar base or bureaucrat class as Tanzania or Kenya or Uganda. Also, Rwanda doesn't actually have a tech industry. The handful of tech companies that are even there are Indian and Chinese run MSPs there to help Indian and Chinese conglomerates that temporarily setup shop there.

My guess of info tech letting Africa grow is more that they can use it and go on Wikipedia or Youtube for how to fix stuff. I'm not really expecting them to produce much tech themselves. Africa's economic strong area seems more in resources which may be sort of old tech but which has made Australia say quite wealthy.

I'll believe that when I see a single startup come out of Africa and compete on the the world economy. 0, I see exactly 0. What about innovations or websites. Against 0.

Look at Forbes list of African innovations - it's bull, a pedal powered toilet, an electric pedicab made from recycled materials (like what?!)

This isn't a country we're talking about, this is a continent. Something is wrong.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mfonobongnsehe/2014/02/13/seven...

This guy's explaination hits on what I saw there. In Africa business and politics go together. The money isn't going to support innovators or entrepreneurs or business. It's going to politicans and that's it. That's where taxes are going, that's where foreign aid is going, that's where it's all going.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpbyDIpIStc