[jnky]

I find that hard to believe. Wikipedia says its HDI is 0.555, placing it at 146 of 188. Wikipedia also says that 6.3% of the adult population have HIV, while female genital mutilation has a prevalence of 27%. Also some women are seemingly attacked and sometimes killed for witchcraft.

I understand there are worse places in Afrika, but for me that makes Kenya a proper shithole.

[cperciva]

The USA has a male genital mutilation rate of 79%, about 5% of African American males are incarcerated, and the vice president wants to defund HIV research in favour of funding "conversion therapy".

It's easy to cherry pick facts to make a country look terrible.

[jnky]

I agree with everything you said in principle, but I disagree with your conclusion.

I don't have to cherry pick facts to make Kenya look bad, I just picked a bunch of pretty bad ones about Kenya to illustrate my point.

I also find it telling that, instead of cherry picking positive things about Kenya to disprove my point, posters in this thread resorted Whataboutisms with respect to the US.

I really don't like being in this thread, arguing viewpoints that I myself consider borderline bigotry, but the notion that Kenya is somehow on par with the US or even any other developed nation is preposterous.

[cperciva]

I didn't think you were cherry-picking facts deliberately; but there's an inevitable amount of accidental cherry-picking when we evaluate other countries based on the factors we consider to be important. It's like the "paradox" that 90% of drivers consider themselves to be better than average drivers; people who drive fast praise themselves for driving fast and people who drive slowly praise themselves for driving slowly, because in both cases how they drive is driven (pun not intended) by what they consider to be "good" driving.

I absolutely agree than Kenya and the USA are not "on par" with each other; but before jumping from that to describing Kenya as "a proper shithole" I'd want to talk to Kenyans and find out how Kenya measures up under their standards.

[John23832]

You obviously have never been to Kenya...

But as a retort, in America, gay and trans people get denied rights and are killed everyday because they are "an abomination to god". Women are denied medican support by old white men who know what's best for them. Black people get killed by the police with no recourse. There is human trafficking that goes unaddressed because our economy is basically built on it. There is a horribly stratified economy, and a horrible opioid (and in my opinion, alchohol) epidemic...

But keep living in your shell man.

[Flimm]

No, LGBTI+people are not killed everyday in America for being an "abomination to God". It's a lot lower than that.

Women do get medical support, maybe not enough, it's not true that all women are denied medical support.

Yes, America is not a utopia, but it's not as bad as you paint it.

[John23832]

>No, LGBTI+people are not killed everyday in America for being an "abomination to God". It's a lot lower than that.

What does this even mean?

> Yes, America is not a utopia, but it's not as bad as you paint it.

And my point was that the same could be said for Kenya, if you knew anything about it.

[jnky]

Of course I haven't. But I was quite sure that you would say something along those lines. I think that if I went to Kenya, I would have a great time, see friendly people and come to the conclusion that the country has potential and is on the right track.

That may all well be true, but it doesn't change the fact that Kenya - as it is now - is not a country I would build a datacenter in. I don't have to go to Kenya myself to know if it is a backwards country or not. The facts are the facts.

[John23832]

> I don't have to go to Kenya myself to know if it is a backwards country or not. The facts are the facts.

I don't have to experience something to know anything about it. I'll make my opinion from a far from statistics that have no correlation to whether a datacenter could actually thrive in Kenya.

[jnky]

> I don't have to experience something to know anything about it. I'll make my opinion from a far from statistics that have no correlation to whether a datacenter could actually thrive in Kenya.

First of all, I reject the notion that only first hand experiences are a valid way of forming opinions. In fact I would argue that statistics and facts are better than feelings and impressions for making business decisions in basically every single way.

Second, I never said a datacenter wouldn't thrive in Kenya. It probably would, as Afrika is in dire need of a datacenter, which is the context of this thread. That said, I wouldn't build a datacenter in Kenya, because I - in contrast to your assertion that Kenya isn't "the backwoods that the west thinks it is" - think that the facts conclusively prove that Kenya is, in fact, a shithole.

Other countries (like America) may have their problems, but not at this scale and severity.

[John23832]

> Other countries (like America) may have their problems, but not at this scale and severity.

You've cherry picked problems, that you have no actual knowledge of, comment on the "scale and severity", and say that those problems disqualify Kenya from having hosting an AWS data center. However, the problems of other countries (the US, China, Brazil) don't disqualify them. Not to mention that there are other data centers in Kenya, which seem to operate just fine.

I assume that you think that Amazon would be clearing parts of the African Serengeti and protecting it's racks from lions, wildebeest and tribesmen.

In reality, they would buy real estate in Nairobi like every other major company.

>>>But keep living in your shell man.

[jnky]

> I assume that you think that Amazon would be clearing parts of the African Serengeti and protecting it's racks from lions, wildebeest and tribesmen.

And I assume you think of me as some kind of idiot. Of course I understand that Kenya is not as you just said, but I consider Kenya an underdeveloped country that does not have its act together. I really don't see how you can argue against that based on facts.