AJ Kalam's 2020 visions for India were inspired by his 1997 visit to Malaysia. He wanted India in 2020 to be on par with 1997's Malaysia. Not exactly a "first world superpower".
Today India's GDP per capita is roughly half of Malaysia's 1997 GDP per capita. India definitely underperformed but not by the several magnitudes of orders that people assume were AJ Kalam's visions.
I look at Africa and see a continent that was chopped up by colonial powers into borders designed to create social and ethnic conflicts. It was a project to create as many wedges as possible so the colonists could keep power by the ol' divide-and-conquer (which the Brits were pretty apt at). Then you have some of the usual colonial genocides, resource extraction with no further improvements to the source, etc.
It's not cultural if it was designed to create issues, it's such a stupid reduction of a problem that's been entirely manufactured by colonial powers for centuries. Or is that what you are calling "cultural problems" by now?
Today India's GDP per capita is roughly half of Malaysia's 1997 GDP per capita. India definitely underperformed but not by the several magnitudes of orders that people assume were AJ Kalam's visions.