"Deaths from malaria in Africa fell from 800,000 per year in 2000 to 400,000 per year today because of the introduction of affordable mosquito nets. That fact alone refutes your entire arguement."
This statement only enhances my argument. Africa is a bountiful land of resources and ostensible human capital for labour. They should easily be able to afford (or make their own) mosquito nets.
Consider the vast numbers of unemployed people - and that making 'mosquito nets' doesn't require any skill or frankly machinery. The only ostensible 'import' would be some very inexpensive textiles. We're talking a few pennies per person. And that the 'upside' from the effort would yield dramatic benefits, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of saved lives. How on earth are zillions of people dying from something that literally only a few million dollars in 'external financing' (if they don't have the money, which they do) - and some pragmatic planning - should solve? That there needed to be intervention to solve this problem only highlights how dramatically dysfunctional the situation must be.
And as far as 'some' governments, no, it's pretty much all of them, maybe save Botswana, the shinning example, at least for now. [1]
Also - it's not just 'governments', and it's not just 'corruption' - it's lack of civic function all the way up and down society.
[1] https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_percept...
One booming industry is kidnapping [1]. I worked on a technology that would have helped with that problem in one of those African states. We made the sale, delivered our equipment, and prepared to install and activate the first phase. The equipment vanished and the negotiations stalled on the next phase. It seems half the government was interested in preventing kidnappings, while the other half was perpetrating them. Furthermore, the budgeting process involved some kind of internal process where someone gets approval to spend some money, the money is issued, but it gets "taxed" on its way to the vendor until nothing is left. Total loss for us.
1. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mapping-kidnappings-in-...
ps - Our teams visiting in country needed armed escorts, for obvious reasons.