MIT Study Reveals Why Africa Is Still Poor

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Why is Africa Poor? Thumbnail: Not What You Think Video: Exactly what you thought

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"Adoption of the wheel was limited in Africa, because Africa was ruled by regional kings with unchecked authority, unlike Europe." is a hilariously out of pocket "theory."

About 20 years ago a (white) work colleague cycled from the UK to the very south of South Africa. He wrote a book about his experiences. ''Why Africa will never win the World Cup.'' Although he met some good people on the way he encountered endless corruption. Almost every border crossing involved some form of bribe. He got arrested in Zimbabwe because he foolishly cycled past Mugabe's Palace. A kindly Police Sergeant allowed him to leave in the dead of night with the advice; ''get over the border asap.'' He set off with optimism but returned sadly chastened.

I moved to Kenya for a job, curious about living on the continent. I thought I understood corruption, but corruption in Africa is on a whole other level.

The irony of an Australian saying bad farmland and geographic isolation made Africa poor...

I work in Algeria, where the amount of red tape to get the simplest of tasks completed means that the simplest of tasks usually don't get completed.

The graphic at 13:43 is misleading. Only about 10% of enslaved Africans went to the "13 colonies" in North America. The vast majority went to South America and the West Indies.

I live in Ghana and what I've realized was the missed opportunity when Nkrumah was overthrown. He had his way of steering through the obstacles of international affairs. He created a lot of factories that collapsed after his overthrow. The problem now we face is the devaluing of the cedi against the dollar which makes costs go high because we mostly import with the dollar. Our exports, unfortunately, don't exceed our import demand and so the cedi continuously depreciates. Ghana needs to do more exports and it is challenging because we need to find the market for our products. Worst of all, most of our products exist in other countries and so penetration is costly as a lot of money has to go into expensive marketing.

I'm a simple man, I see Betterhelp, I click dislike.

Different ethnic groups is just poor excuse. Reminder... Most European countries are made out of different tribes who used to fight each others in the past.

"This time period on the continent was truly horrific, to the point where we can't go into too much detail or this video will just be taken off Youtube" If that is true, then something is very wrong with youtube

Tagline is “not what you think” - but it’s corruption and leadership - exactly what people think, no?

”corruption have been known to happen” was a understatement if I ever heard one 😅

It's a bit weird because there is another video on this channel investigating why Australia is rich when in fact it shouldn't be.

The video drones in the background while I feast on comments 😂

Residing in Zambia, Africa, for the past 30 years, I've never experienced conflict or war. It's rare to even see a police officer with a gun where I'm from. My realization is that it's corruption that continues to impede our progress and perpetuate poverty. Until our leaders prioritize the development of our nations over personal gain, obstacles to progress will persist. While external forces significantly contribute to corruption, which further reduces access to resources and capital that we need for development we must eventually take responsibility for addressing and combating these issues.

Barack Obama had some blunt feedback on this years ago while hosting the Young African Leaders Initiative. He pointed out that when his father was in Kenya in the 1960s, the GDPs of Kenya and South Korea were about equal. Now, as he said, "it's not even close." He then went on to say that this was because of decades of poor choices and missed opportunities by Kenya's leadership, and it's a similar story for much of Africa. He closed by expressing hope that this generation of Kenyan, and African leaders would not be looking back in 50 years on another era of missed chances.

Well, I was going to say tribalism is a big factor, but so many beat me to it. So, I will simply say selfishness is a grand factor, fueled by tribalism. Instead of "all for one and one for all", there is "all for me, and none for you". Such division of thought makes for a weak nation in a continent of nations. It would make me happy to see all rise up and reach their potential. So much senseless suffering. Botswana looks to be leading the charge on development, so I wish them success.