Do you see signs of Africa undergoing the developmental transformation we’ve seen in past decades in places like China and Vietnam? I’ve been expecting it for a while.
Well, scoped to just Botswana, when my dad was 10, in the 60's, we had just 15km of tar road in the whole country.
In the 80's when we moved to the village I grew up in, we didn't have a phone - we had a telegraph address.
In the 90's, to get fresh fruit and cheese, we would drive for 3 hours across sand roads to another country to shop at a supermarket.
In 1998 my village got its first chain restaurant and it was a big deal.
In 2009 I tried to modernise the family business by getting our managers to use email and very few of them could navigate the internet. In 2012, my family's vegetable farming plot was one of many that were claimed by the government to start the BIUST and I couldn't fathom how they would staff it.
Africa is not a country. Some countries in Africa are doing much better than others. Some are the stereotype of a new revolution every few years bringing in a new corruption. Some are stable and growing.
In the 80's when we moved to the village I grew up in, we didn't have a phone - we had a telegraph address.
In the 90's, to get fresh fruit and cheese, we would drive for 3 hours across sand roads to another country to shop at a supermarket.
In 1998 my village got its first chain restaurant and it was a big deal.
In 2009 I tried to modernise the family business by getting our managers to use email and very few of them could navigate the internet. In 2012, my family's vegetable farming plot was one of many that were claimed by the government to start the BIUST and I couldn't fathom how they would staff it.
And in 2025, the BIUST launched a satellite.
Lots of problems, but certainly progress.