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by markatkinson
729 days ago
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Man oh man, I couldn't agree more. I've been living in Zambia for the last 3 years trying to start an export business. What a nightmare. I laughed out loud when I read "e-government". The sad truth is countries like Zambia are just not equipped or capable of running anything "e". I am forced to use Zambia's Electronic Single Window (https://zesw.gov.zm/zesw/). What an absolute shambles, a total failure. If you don't know the right individuals in the right departments you're getting nowhere. From my limited experience the problem is centuries of poor to no education and such an extreme level of poverty that individuals are constantly in survival mode. How can I make it through the next day/week/month vs. family, financial and career planning. So, if we can wave a "give Africa what it needs" wand, I wouldn't suggest Startup Cities, Cryptocurrencies & E-Governments, rather good quality education, healthcare and just enough financial security to exit survival mode. If you can hand that to Zambia (without the corruption that is there now), you'd likely see a nation flourish and carve their own path to success, probably without "startup cities" too. P.S. Zambia has Special Economic Zones: https://www.lsmfez.co.zm/. They're fine for large conglomerates who want to save a few kwacha in taxes but are mostly useless to all other small business owners. |
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If you look at Western Europe + the "Anglosphere" ex-colonies, there's a long history of how laws and attitudes evolved in such a way as to virtually guarantee rule of law, individual rights, democracy, property rights, and people doing their jobs with genuine effort and in good faith.
For whatever reason, it's been incredibly deeply ingrained into people here in the West - over millennia - to expect these things from and for themselves.
But in Africa, I don't know why, you just don't have all these ingredients. And so you can give it every resource and all the infrastructure and investment, but I don't think you can easily send the true source of wealth from one society to another one.
It's at least 1000x times easier to do business in North America than in Africa. Instead of getting stymied at every turn by some new idiotic stumbling block, the whole system here pulls in the right direction.
There are lots of metrics that are improving incredibly well for Africa, and maybe this is the start of an upward spiral. I certainly hope so - that continent badly needs a couple of centuries of extreme prosperity growth.