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I haven't heard anything about trends, stereotypes, positives, and negatives regarding IT and development in Africa. Following HN's guideline to increase curiosity as topics get more divisive (as this subthread has), and looking for "the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says" I'm going to assume the best:

What's the story here? I assume this group was chosen for a reason and didn't meet expectations.

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The non-profit works in Africa and is all about using local resources when at all possible. They knew some people that worked with a group out of Nairobi that talked a good game and they liked the people they met and the non-profit folks are NOT technical, they jumped on it. It's a classic story really--I've been on this side of the table many times before with outsourced work.

If they had brought me in before hand I could have saved them a lot of work by asking the hard questions and reigning in the tech overspend.

"We don't know a lot about this, what could go wrong?!" Sigh...

They're sweet well meaning people. They're very familiar with the realities of working in Africa, but they always assume people will try and do the right thing at the end of the day.

"We don't know a lot about this, let's hire some experts to handle it for us"

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