Why Africa/Kenya not developed -from quora

[RV Pundit]

If you ask a Matatu owner - Cops & cost of petrol would be up there with driver & tout stealing from him - both the tout, driver and police - will probably end up in same local bar to chew up the matatu money - entertaining local slut or bar lady if not infecting themselves with STDS - their kids and wives at home will be living miserable lives. In trucking - I think nearly every driver & tout - has like girl friend every town - and most have like 2 wives - they are mostly diseased with hiv-aids.I think what certainly help is education....those with form 4 - will be certainly more ambitious/more disciplined - than those who left primary school. The matatu will not have enough money to maintain the car or expand his business...and if he had bank loan..he would soon be in trouble.

The same is replicated in informal sector...and there is very little upward mobility. Combination of low IQ - with poor education - leading to a cascade of bad decisions, thievery and laziness. Everyone has now seen how chinese work like bees.

And we all want to blame politicians and gov for that.

State corruption is the evil ill that won't let Mwafrika innovate or use innovations optimally to enable the enterprises thrive and thus social mobility. Let us take a few case studies:

Matatus: Governments takes the licences and does not inspect or regulate the industry leaving it to thugs and police who thin out the profit margins thus a cyclical thuglike culture which will run mad any professional manager.

Hawkers: Inhumane councils all over Kenya take profits from and destroy the merchandise; making a murderous game rather than enterprise

Wines and Spirits: NACADA; County Liquor thugs; Police; MCSK

Ultimately, we need to understand why Mwafrika is not succeeding at MICRO-LEVEL. Is it really a question of lack of capital? Is it lack of trained labour? Or it's just SOFTWARE issues...lack of trust/discipline/ambition/long term thinking/delayed gratification?

From my observation at micro-level - it mostly software issues - that keep people down. Many are born to poverty but few are able to pull themselves out - instead sinking to drug addiction, laziness, thieving (therefore spoiling their credibility forever). Others just breed like rats, marry many wives and basically enjoy poverty - with zero ambition to succeed.

[Dear Mami]

Those cultural issues - greed, rent-seeking, etc - are not unique to Africa. They all describe subsistence businesses that join the beaten path. Hotel, retail and such business - face cut-throat competition. The lack of demand is driven by competition with no differentiation. Such businesses would not significantly transform the economy even where successful. The overwhelming majority of Kenyans are employed by MSMEs. It is disingenious to claim the same MSMEs don't survive let alone thrive.

Inventive business models - startups - are businesses that solve real problems. M-KOPA Solar, BRCK, One Acre Fund, SunCulture, Uber and such. Not duka or hotel or real estate - which just slice the pie and not grow it - so they are not even considered startups. Startups rarely have serious competition - because of their uniqueness - solving the unsolved problems. They create new wealth, jobs, taxes, etc.

It is these risky capital- and talent-intensive innovative enterprise capabilities Kenya and most Africa lack.

Nah, Robina. I'm not sure I agree with your definition of a startup. Google informs me it's just a business in it's earliest stage. I also disagree that you need these super innovative stuff to improve the economy. Most people in all countries are employed by regular businesses, nothing fancy. What improves the economy is getting every young able-bodied person working, producing, and funding govt and the rest of society that cannot produce (kids and old people). Also, all businesses solve problems or they'd not be in business- plain and simple. Demand does not come by magic but from people needing/wanting things, and businesses thrive by offering what is needed, whether that is food, shelter, clothes, cars, or whatever. We don't need any fancy genius ideas; we need an environment that allows people to be productive where they are without undue burdens and obstacles.

[Nefertiti]

I agree there are glaring "software" issues. I also agree official or GoK corruption is not the principal cause of poverty but the soft issues.

Now - why I talk about startups - they are transformational. All the debates we have had here about development - value adds or light manufacturing, manufacturing proper, services. The developed countries basically have these in high gear. Without research - patents, scientific papers and such metrics - we have no hope of catching up. Any leapfrogs like say China has these innovation metrics on the up. China now is the top science powerhouse or almost there. If you examine a productive economy you will find science, research and innovation are top. Startups are execution of research output.

So besides the software issues - which is talent gap - we further lack not just capital but proper science and research.

They rarely survive - and those that do - are basically owner-run and remain in that state forever - just making enough for the owner to keep them running - I am talking of business in transport like matatu, many in retail, hotel & accommodation --majority remain informal. Admittedly they are better than farming. They are few that graduate to SME - or less that become medium sized enterprises - and very few that go on to become large enterprise - and a tiny few like Equity tha become MNCs.

Now start ups is an interesting idea....but majority(if not all) are backed by foreign venture capital and managed by foreigners. Basically they seem to succeed in places like Israel where jews globally have their pursue opened for them or where founders knows where to get the money (say Silicon valley or New York) or through donors (most of start up you highlighted are social enterprises).

Ultimately, we need to understand why Mwafrika is not succeeding at MICRO-LEVEL. Is it really a question of lack of capital? Is it lack of trained labour? Or it's just SOFTWARE issues...lack of trust/discipline/ambition/long term thinking/delayed gratification?

From my observation at micro-level - it mostly software issues - that keep people down. Many are born to poverty but few are able to pull themselves out - instead sinking to drug addiction, laziness, thieving (therefore spoiling their credibility forever). Others just breed like rats, marry many wives and basically enjoy poverty - with zero ambition to succeed.

[Nefertiti]

Nah, Robina. I'm not sure I agree with your definition of a startup. Google informs me it's just a business in it's earliest stage. I also disagree that you need these super innovative stuff to improve the economy. Most people in all countries are employed by regular businesses, nothing fancy. What improves the economy is getting every young able-bodied person working, producing, and funding govt and the rest of society that cannot produce (kids and old people). Also, all businesses solve problems or they'd not be in business- plain and simple. Demand does not come by magic but from people needing/wanting things, and businesses thrive by offering what is needed, whether that is food, shelter, clothes, cars, or whatever. We don't need any fancy genius ideas; we need an environment that allows people to be productive where they are without undue burdens and obstacles.

Yes there is BIG room for business as usual activities. These are stymied by Pundit's 'software" of laziness, thieving employees, etc. We should fix that.

But oh yes we do need startups. Which is the execution of big ideas. We have debated the revolutionary M-PESA here for long - it is a fintech innovation that transformed many lives. M-KOPA sorts out gridless power. These  two (M-PESA and M-KOPA) are barely patentable inventions yet have a vast impact. I agree every business provides a good or service - but there is little or no leapfrog from that.

I don't want to digress but i don't believe in conventional competition - the one supposed to foster innovation and cut the cost for consumers. Because it is outdated economics that kills innovation. New models - what you call genius ideas - are by definition innovations. They are mostly monopolies and have the muscle to research and innovate. This space - of big ideas - is where we fall flat.

[RV Pundit]

What keep the negro in US of a down.Its not  the hardware.Its the software issues..none bigger than lack of integrity.The economy like many things is a confidence game.Software issues like reputational risk scare away desperately needed investment.African Hz e to realize how important these soft issues are ..

[Nefertiti]

I agree on integrity and trust issues. But surely  integrity is nurture more than nature? Blacks trail despite clean environment and  working legal systems to deter fraud or theft in say US. The problem is more insidious than integrity -  you may not agree but the iQ or intelligence of black people is objectively lower than whites' as well. Iko chida kubwa sana. It is just politically incorrect to point it out. I have read raw analysis by Brits and Americans - in cables to the Crown or DC - that the African does not have the "energy and efficiency" of the white man or the Chinese.

These items are collectively lack of enterprise. Talent gap.

What keep the negro in US of a down.Its not  the hardware.Its the software issues..none bigger than lack of integrity.The economy like many things is a confidence game.Software issues like reputational risk scare away desperately needed investment.African Hz e to realize how important these soft issues are ..

[gout]

Education and health are government functions:

Chinese are controlled by the government - funded and watched like an eagle. The guys at the top have discipline and moral authority not our land grabbers, drunk sailors and pickpockets.

If you ask a Matatu owner - Cops & cost of petrol would be up there with driver & tout stealing from him - both the tout, driver and police - will probably end up in same local bar to chew up the matatu money - entertaining local slut or bar lady if not infecting themselves with STDS - their kids and wives at home will be living miserable lives. In trucking - I think nearly every driver & tout - has like girl friend every town - and most have like 2 wives - they are mostly diseased with hiv-aids.I think what certainly help is education....those with form 4 - will be certainly more ambitious/more disciplined - than those who left primary school. The matatu will not have enough money to maintain the car or expand his business...and if he had bank loan..he would soon be in trouble.

The same is replicated in informal sector...and there is very little upward mobility. Combination of low IQ - with poor education - leading to a cascade of bad decisions, thievery and laziness. Everyone has now seen how chinese work like bees.

And we all want to blame politicians and gov for that.

State corruption is the evil ill that won't let Mwafrika innovate or use innovations optimally to enable the enterprises thrive and thus social mobility. Let us take a few case studies:

Matatus: Governments takes the licences and does not inspect or regulate the industry leaving it to thugs and police who thin out the profit margins thus a cyclical thuglike culture which will run mad any professional manager.

Hawkers: Inhumane councils all over Kenya take profits from and destroy the merchandise; making a murderous game rather than enterprise

Wines and Spirits: NACADA; County Liquor thugs; Police; MCSK

Ultimately, we need to understand why Mwafrika is not succeeding at MICRO-LEVEL. Is it really a question of lack of capital? Is it lack of trained labour? Or it's just SOFTWARE issues...lack of trust/discipline/ambition/long term thinking/delayed gratification?

From my observation at micro-level - it mostly software issues - that keep people down. Many are born to poverty but few are able to pull themselves out - instead sinking to drug addiction, laziness, thieving (therefore spoiling their credibility forever). Others just breed like rats, marry many wives and basically enjoy poverty - with zero ambition to succeed.

[RV Pundit]

Actually the more I think about this...the more I am convinced it's upbringing. You really don't need high IQ to do many things in life. How we bring up our kids as Africans or African American is the start of the rot. There is no integrity (say what you mean and do what you say) or discipline or hard-work - that you see Bazungu instill on their kids.

[Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants]

Actually the more I think about this...the more I am convinced it's upbringing. You really don't need high IQ to do many things in life. How we bring up our kids as Africans or African American is the start of the rot. There is no integrity (say what you mean and do what you say) or discipline or hard-work - that you see Bazungu instill on their kids.

[gout]

Politicians and governments are designed to remove these software and hardware obstacles for all. The white previlege and state capture across Africa explains the no/under development among majority mwafrika and nyeuthi in America.  Kenyattas, Mois, Odingas, Ruto and their bootlickers are way above development not because of integrity or hard work but because the systems and structures serve them at the disadvantage of the hawkers and makangas.

Government will rush to jail Kavonokia memebers for resisting census but will allow street children to roam all over!!

[Dear Mami]

You really don't need high IQ to do many things in life. How we bring up our kids as Africans or African American is the start of the rot.

It's not IQ. I think it's amazing how the IDW has spread the IQ myth counting on the fact that most people won't bother actually researching the stuff they claim from actual experts.

First of all, Black Americans are disproportionately affected by poisoned water and lead in their houses that has been shown to damage IQ performance; and it affects them right from pregnancy, in disgustingly large numbers.

Secondly, Black American schools are grossly underfunded because of how Americans organize their public school funding using tax from real estate which ensures that only families that were already rich (White!) can/could send their children to good schools whereas a huge number of black people go to places where they are guaranteed not to proceed beyond a certain stage.

Third, the crackdown on the crack epidemic also grossly targeted black people. It is a statistically proven fact that black people, especially boys and men, were arrested and jailed for the same minor drug offences (use) that Whites did in the same degree and proportion but were not targeted. It's incredible the numbers of black boys/men who were thrown in jail as a result, leading to many unnecessary fatherless homes. This continues to happen to the present day.

Fourth, the IQ of Black Americans has been steadily rising each decade since the end of the civil rights movement. So I don't know why people are so quick to follow racists like Murphy in his lazy explanations for complex phenomena when actual IQ experts dismiss those lazy explanations for precisely the above and many other reasons I haven't mentioned.

Outside the developed world, IQ is not seen as capable of comparison because of the wide cultural disparities that it cannot cater for. Just think, giving an IQ test to a Turkana boy, a boy in Kisii who has never left the village, and my Nairobi kids and expecting it to tell you something meaningful about the innate intelligence of Turkanas vs Kisiis vs people in Nairobi. IQ outside the first world will not tell you anything about how innate intelligence of populations compares to each other, and has been shown to follow development (i.e to increase as development increases, over decades) across all populations--not the other way around.

[RV Pundit]

But isn't work ethic an upbringing thing or cultural thing?

[Nefertiti]

Dear Mami, Pundit and bitmask - on work ethic, since we agree it is so crucial to development, what stops Africans from improving it? Doesn't that show lack of intelligence? I mean, the obvious failure to adapt shows what am saying.

[Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants]

But isn't work ethic an upbringing thing or cultural thing?

You are right.  It's culture and upbringing.  I was highlighting the environment too.  There are those who don't(and can't) do their jobs because they depend on others doing theirs.  It becomes a feedback loop.

[Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants]

Dear Mami, Pundit and bitmask - on work ethic, since we agree it is so crucial to development, what stops Africans from improving it? Doesn't that show lack of intelligence? I mean, the obvious failure to adapt shows what am saying.

Is the African too stupid?  I really don't think so.  That is even more tragic.  I will concede he is not unlocking the potential of his brightest, due to many forces, some(not all) outside his control.

[Dear Mami]

Dear Mami, Pundit and bitmask - on work ethic, since we agree it is so crucial to development, what stops Africans from improving it? Doesn't that show lack of intelligence? I mean, the obvious failure to adapt shows what am saying.

I don't see any failure to adapt, at all. I see very fast adaptation to wholly foreign systems imposed just a short while ago. If I ask you to show me 'fast' mzungu adaptation, you will not find it. Because mzungu was a stone age people who took many centuries, not decades, to 'adapt' to the Roman civilization, which was itself a Mediterranean civilization, thousands of years in the making. This lack of adaptation just doesn't exist when seen from a wide historical lens. The only thing here is the fact that it is happening alongside civilizations that passed this stage long ago, (which in itself creates problems for those playing catch up because of how international trade is organized) so it looks like failure to adapt if you throw away history. But go see the pictures of Baafrika taken in the 1910s all over Kenya at our museum, and show me an example of any other people who just skipped from THAT to the modern first world in a century.

The discovery of agriculture in Saudi Arabia 10,000 years ago, and the routes it took in spreading and the differences in when it reached where/whom can alone explain a ton of the disparities many people see as 'differences in capacities to adapt'.  Evidence shows humans everywhere have responded to the same challenges the same way. Those differences don't exist.

I also think the tiny group of educated/exposed Africans like the kind that frequents nipate stimes gets it twisted and we assume we are 'Kenya' or 'Africa'. Go read some World Bank reports on education alone and it will really sober you up about just what/where decolonized countries were starting with/from in the 50s/60s/70s. Wholly uneducated populations inheriting western systems from educated/trained colonial officers, all over the place. Not to mention these were totally different polities that had been smashed together in the mzungu experiments of the overpowered colonial state, which lead to strife for decades in many places that are just starting to be settled. And we still not there even now.

[Nefertiti]

Is the African too stupid?  I really don't think so.  That is even more tragic.  I will concede he is not unlocking the potential of his brightest, due to many forces, some(not all) outside his control.

Why is the world perpetually out of the African's control? We have seen fast adaptation from the Chinese for instance. Beating colonial oppression, then civil war, the failed communist experiment and many odds. While they are not all naturally hardworking - work ethic is strictly enforced. The wayward bits of the system are brutally knocked into line. What you call nurture, upbringing or environment - is built by the society - so I call it nature. Nurture stems from nature. You can say it is in the Chinese nature to adapt, improve and work their way out of misery into prosperity. The African not so much.

[Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants]

Dear Mami, Pundit and bitmask - on work ethic, since we agree it is so crucial to development, what stops Africans from improving it? Doesn't that show lack of intelligence? I mean, the obvious failure to adapt shows what am saying.

I don't see any failure to adapt, at all. I see very fast adaptation to wholly foreign systems imposed just a short while ago. If I ask you to show me 'fast' mzungu adaptation, you will not find it. Because mzungu was a stone age people who took many centuries, not decades, to 'adapt' to the Roman civilization, which was itself a Mediterranean civilization, thousands of years in the making. This lack of adaptation just doesn't exist when seen from a wide historical lens. The only thing here is the fact that it is happening alongside civilizations that passed this stage long ago, (which in itself creates problems for those playing catch up because of how international trade is organized) so it looks like failure to adapt if you throw away history. But go see the pictures of Baafrika taken in the 1910s all over Kenya at our museum, and show me an example of any other people who just skipped from THAT to the modern first world in a century.

The discovery of agriculture in Saudi Arabia 10,000 years ago, and the routes it took in spreading and the differences in when it reached where/whom can alone explain a ton of the disparities many people see as 'differences in capacities to adapt'.  Evidence shows humans everywhere have responded to the same challenges the same way. Those differences don't exist.

I also think the tiny group of educated/exposed Africans like the kind that frequents nipate stimes gets it twisted and we assume we are 'Kenya' or 'Africa'. Go read some World Bank reports on education alone and it will really sober you up about just what/where decolonized countries were starting with/from in the 50s/60s/70s. Wholly uneducated populations inheriting western systems from educated/trained colonial officers, all over the place. Not to mention these were totally different polities that had been smashed together in the mzungu experiments of the overpowered colonial state, which lead to strife for decades in many places that are just starting to be settled. And we still not there even now.

So you think it's because Africans were recently not far removed from hunter gatherers.  In which case the most meaningful comparison that can be made would be between Africans and Central Americans(Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Belize etc).  In today's world there is no time for organic growth.  So they are being forced to adjust to foreign systems and solutions.

[Dear Mami]

Is the African too stupid?  I really don't think so.  That is even more tragic.  I will concede he is not unlocking the potential of his brightest, due to many forces, some(not all) outside his control.

Why is the world perpetually out of the African's control? We have seen fast adaptation from the Chinese for instance. Beating colonial oppression, then civil war, the failed communist experiment and many odds. They are not all naturally hardworking - work ethic is strictly enforced. The wayward bits of the system are brutally knocked into line. What you call nurture, upbringing or environment - is built by the society - so I call it nature. Nurture stems from nature. It is in the Chinese nature to adapt, improve and work their way out of misery into prosperity. The African not so much.

This is the lack of historical perspective I mentioned: the fact you think China was where Baafrika was in 1910 says it all, Robina. China is the only other place where agriculture was discovered independently long ago. From it, a civilization grew that is very old. You are comparing potatoes and maize.

[Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants]

Is the African too stupid?  I really don't think so.  That is even more tragic.  I will concede he is not unlocking the potential of his brightest, due to many forces, some(not all) outside his control.

Why is the world perpetually out of the African's control? We have seen fast adaptation from the Chinese for instance. Beating colonial oppression, then civil war, the failed communist experiment and many odds. They are not all naturally hardworking - work ethic is strictly enforced. The wayward bits of the system are brutally knocked into line. What you call nurture, upbringing or environment - is built by the society - so I call it nature. Nurture stems from nature. It is in the Chinese nature to adapt, improve and work their way out of misery into prosperity. The African not so much.

I mentioned earlier on the thread that Africa is still struggling with very fundamental stuff, like who the hell are we?  It's unstable at a deeper level than the Chinese were say 100 years ago.  So many tribes.  Forced together in less than a century.  That makes Africa unstable in a more inherent way than Chinese who have been Chinese for God knows how long.