Sometimes it's impossible to have a conversation without generalization. While my post may have discredited my knowledge of Africa, the continent is a small hobby of mine, and I periodically read and watch movies about it. I'm even considering traveling there if I save enough money. To see and feel how it's like with my own eyes.
The disclaimer wasn't meant to spread magic dust over my post, just to show I realize my knowledge has blank spots.
I'm not looking forward to 54 separate conversations, and that's the the other extreme you're suggesting ? I also read many of Ryszard Kapuściński's books, I know sometimes you can have more than 50 languages on a single street. I also know about de-colonization and how many countries are still abused by the old colonial powers, it's just the form of abuse that changed (like economical exploitation or dumping e-waste).
Okay, I over-emphasized warlords. My fault. I should have said instead that Africa has a potential to have a lot of money, but is highly dysfunctional.
From what I read in Kapuściński's books, the corrupt officials may be small fry but they make exploitation by foreign powers possible. They are often put into power by foreign powers too.
According to Basil Davidson ("Black Mother"), the consequences of slave trade are much more devastating and lasting to this day than is generally thought. For some 300 years societies and kingdoms were rotting from inside and men were turned against each other. Wars were started to get more slaves. He listed many examples (like in the delta of Congo) where Africans fought against Europeans to get them out and stop the slave trade, but it was bloody hard to do. If you refused to trade in slaves, European ships arrived at your neighbors, sold guns to them and your neighbors could raid you. To completely stop it, it would require African kingdoms along the west coast at least to ally and cooperate. That was a hard problem. So another thing they tried was only selling a slave for a musket. Later, armed to the teeth, they could repel Europeans.
Africans were smart enough to realize the importance of seafaring ships. They (for example mani-kongo, the ruler of Congo) tried to buy them and pay for the technology. They were repeatedly refused.
What I'm trying to say is that it's very unfair to repeat the old propaganda of slave traders and say Europeans brought order to Africa. Africans had order and powerful, civilized kingdoms. At first Europeans were just thrown out by strong armies and diseases.
Fun fact: Africa had feudalism, just not on the scale dim Portuguese could comprehend. It had a feudalism of peoples. Tribe A is a vassal of tribe B, tribe C is a vassal of tribe B.
Europeans systematically destroyed Africa using corruption (slave trade). They mostly didn't come and kidnap slaves, they bought them until kingoms were thouroughly rotten and a foothold could be gained. This lasted for 300 years. Don't underestimate the power of 300 year old corruption on society.