Read more about the history of the continent.
Running away seems a valid option. Europe seems a good place to run to. Who would have thought.
If I look at a country like Zimbabwe, it’s in worse shape than when it became independent and the West had not interfered. If anything it supported it with development funds.
Zimbabwe, we’re talking about the one that had China, USSR and SA providing weapons and training up until the end of Rhodesia around 1980? Then IMF/World Bank imposed market liberalization in the 90s, then sanctions from 2002-2024?
Truly, can’t understand why they’d be in bad shape, must be all their own fault. My brilliant white brain thinks it must be something genetic, if you know what I mean, nudge nudge wink wink.
As for Zimbabwe, nobody forced them to ally with the USSR and China. That was their decision. As was their agreement with the IMF.
It’s not great to infantalize nations like Zimbabwe and act like they have no agency. They fought for their independence, got it and made their own bed.
Oh, interesting, because you're treating time and ethnicity, as the only factors in economic development. If you take a country full of Ugandans, and a country full of Singaporeans (the countries in your theory are the same of course), and terminate "colonization" (which is the same thing everywhere) at roughly the same time, if the Singaporeans do better, that means the Ugandans are... stupider? Less good at capitalism? What's your full, stated theory here? Can you please say it outright?
Anyway, you're ignoring a lot of other relevant factors. The two countries decolonized at roughly the same time, however Singapore is a tiny maritime city-state, whereas Uganda is a large, landlocked, agrarian country, and its agrarian economy completely taken over by cash crops.
Btw it's also a bit bizarre that you're just saying, "Africans." Africa is a huge continent with wildly different ecologies and economies across it. Regardless, Ugandans do indeed have agency, and that agency is the same as anyone's agency: operating within the constraints into which they were born.
Overall, bad people try to seize power -- that's a constant the world over since bad people will always exist and they have less moral inhibitions than anyone else. It takes a lot of good luck, courage, and a tremendous amount of organization[1] for good people (or more commonly, people who are at least not outright bad) to prevent it -- and even more of those to reverse it once it's happened. And the struggle will never end.
Bad and incompetent people mismanage everything since their only priority is self-enrichment and power, so because they won most of the struggles in the poor countries, very little has improved for the common man compared to what should have been possible.
The only way that things will improve in those countries will probably involve tremendous bloodshed - revolutions. The leaders who can't or purposely won't let commoners share in what wealth is available aren't going to just spontaneously abdicate.
I want to point out that I actually don't blame Ugandans or any other poor-country commoners for not overthrowing their corrupt overlords. If and when they do, it will require a tremendous sacrifice of lives to achieve it. I know I would personally not have the cojones to charge the palace armed with rocks and clubs -- whether I had a crowd of 10,000 other freedom fighters behind me or not. I'd just deal with the banal bullshit of the regime and make the best of it to avoid the high likelihood of getting shot.
[1] by this I mean the organization of a good government system -- a constitution for example and empowered courts and law enforcement to actually enforce it. Or in its absence, organization among incredibly-brave individuals to build their own system that can outmaneuver the bad leaders.