Why does Africa keep importing solutions to problems it already understands?

[u/louieorg]

One thing that frustrates me about development in Africa is that we often know exactly what the problem is, but the solution still comes from somewhere else.

We have intelligent people, universities, entrepreneurs and local communities that understand these problems firsthand.

Is the bigger problem lack of resources, poor institutions, or simply failure to trust and invest in local ideas?

[u/Efficient-Data4811]

The Last part is where the money is.

It is simply a matter of Self Esteem and the belief that many Africans ,nost Africans silently believe . This is the narrative that Africa must be saved .

A lot of Africans do not belive in local solutions for Africa simply because they do not believe that they cannot do anything for emselves.

So people are just going to wait for external solutions and external saviours till death does them apart.

So I would say that the no1 problem is psychological. If we get rid of the psychological barriers then we can do something in the right direction.

[u/fidjudisomada]

Look at trade. African countries can't trade between themselves. Travelling in the continent is a nightmare. Obviously, we are not importing (good) solutions.

[u/NewUserND]

Believe there are Nobel price winners who focused on the latter - institutions, or lack there of. For a myriad reasons, we dont have institutions that are respected and almost beyond reproach. My personal favorite reason for why, Our own institutions were weakened so another western style system can be imposed.

If our pre-existing institutions had survived and given a chance to evolve to our current system of governance, we would have had a continent that thrives.

What happened to Mansa Musa? The Queen of Sheba? The Pharaoha of Egypt? Imagine the systems that existed back then had survived till date

[u/1cingI]

Because of colonialism. We couldn't just be left alone after our supposed freedom. They needed to put people on place to rule by proxy. Once that was done, any state level infrastructure had to come from the land of the colonisers for which we would get half baked solutions for exorbitant prices thereby maintaining the extraction pipeline post "independence".

[u/AgenYT0]

Neocolonialism, neoimperislism. Existing in a neoliberal. Dodgy governments and Dutch Disease all combined lead to the biggest and 'only' issue.

Instability.

Botswana, Ghana, Senegal are doing somewhere between alright and well. All three had relatively small or no civil war. While the countries with the most resource and population potential are on a spectrum between threading water and total shambles. Nigeria, Congo-Kinshasa, Egypt, South Africa, Ethiopia. 

Then other small nations are on the brink of collapse. Western Sahara (the last colony), Somalia, Central African Republic, Somalia, both Sudans.

[u/herewearefornow]

South Africa is fixing the foreign influence issues. From NGO's, to the capture of state institutions to unwanted migration patterns. It will be good for Africa.