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Comment by graemian | Hacker News Reader

Get out of Africa. Africa will steal your life.

If you choose to stay in Africa and have your potential limited by silly things like bad Internet and no electricity, then make that choice consciously, and for good reasons, like wanting to be near family. If you stay because you feel some deeper connection to Africa because you were born there, get over it. Get out of your comfort zone, live your own life. Consider carefully the costs of maintaining that irrational connection. Personally, I think it's a cop out, an excuse to be mediocre. It's a global world, stop thinking locally.

What would Elon Musk have achieved had he stayed in Africa? Substantially less. Get yourself into an environment that is supportive of your dreams and goals, not one that works against you.

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Wow, it seems like you don't really know what you're talking about. It's not easy to move away if you're born and grew up in Africa. It's not like renting a U-Haul, pack your stuff and drive across the country.

You need a visa. But it's impossible to get a visa to work in US/Europe unless you have a job. And even trying and applying for a visa costs more than most people's monthly salary. And there is no money-back guarantee.

But finding a job is also not easy. Applying to some IT company in the US without being able to show of significant work experience? No college education from a well-known university? How can you get job experience that is sufficient to apply for an IT job when you live in a country that has the problems the article talks about?

And no, you cannot just apply to some junior entry-level job. You won't get a visa unless you are so qualified that the host country has a huge demand for people with your skills. And this is just one of the hundreds of problems you're facing when deciding to leave Africa.

So yeah:

>Get out of Africa. Africa will steal your life.

Thanks for that advice. Very helpful.

I was born in Africa and I'm trying to get out right now. It's not easy, but it's not impossible. I didn't get as good a deal in the birthplace lottery as Steve Jobs and others born in Silicon Valley, but I'll be damned if I'll use that as an excuse for a life of mediocrity.

Frankly, if the factors you describe are really what's stopping you from reaching your goals, you're likely to fail anyway.

>>Frankly, if the factors you describe are really what's stopping you from reaching your goals, you're likely to fail anyway.

A very narrow perspective of the world.

Though I hope not, but some day if you fail for reasons beyond your control despite your best efforts may be you will see for yourself why not all failure happens due to a individual's short comings.

The world is full of examples of people who work heroically only to meet chronic failure.

Exactly! You're more likely to fail for reasons beyond your control (like no electricity, bad Internet) in African than in San Francisco.

But those things ARE actually under your control. Just move to San Francisco :-)

Spoken like someone who has never lived or worked abroad, and n ever met anyone who has. You can't just move to another country and expect people to let you in.

FYI: I've lived in San Francisco for 1.5 months, and I've met plenty people who have lived and worked abroad.

I'm not sure what your point is.

The point is they don't just let people in at the border, especially not from non visa waiver countries, and especially especially especially not when they think you might want to stay to find a job.

> The world is full of examples of people who work heroically only to meet chronic failure.

I'll bet that a large percentage of those people worked in Africa

I was born in Africa and I'm trying to get out right now. It's not easy, but it's not impossible.

I am also working at emigrating, and it is a painful process. Huge amounts of bureaucracy. I have to shell out for English exams (despite English being my first language). I then have to shell out more for my work experience and degree to be assessed by the Australian Computer Society. Getting letters from ex-colleagues has proven to be challenging, because the letters need to be notarised - hopefully these will be acceptable- no guarantees.

I then lose an arbitrary two years of work experience points (at least) because I didn't study in Australia. Finally, assuming that I have enough points, and there isn't a revision to the Skilled Occupation List, and I am invited to apply for a Visa, there is another small fortune to be spent on visas. Any small oversight or error, and my money is gone. If I don't have enough points, I have to spend the same amount to have my experience assessed again in six months.

Fortunately, I have enough saved up enough money to play the emigration game, the same probably applies to you. Most people have not.

You have a point regarding electricity - South Africa was having rolling blackouts a few years back, not sure what the state is now.

One thing to consider is that it might be easier to grow into a big fish in a small pond than in a big pond. I've seen people in small pond countries grow into big fish then move to a bigger pond with their big fish credentials. Whereas when a small fish moves from small pond to a big pond, with only small fish credentials, it becomes food, forever battling it's way nowhere. Not always, of course.

Interesting conjecture. I would like to see if there's any hard data to support that.

You've not noticed the massive barriers to legal immigration being built in the West, have you?

You've found an excuse to give up on your dreams, have you?

I'm in the West looking out..

Remember that immigration effort is once-off, and the payoff is life-long.

I agree with you. This is basically the reason I left the US ten years ago. However, there is something to be said for staying and improving the place where you were born and raised - and that goes double (or triple!) if you feel a connection to that place and its people. I definitely think it would be out of line to tell people trying to improve the lot of themselves and their nation that they should 'get over it'.

I genuinely wish those who "feel for Africa" the best of luck in their endeavors to improve it. I'm just not one of them. I urge anyone who thinks they feel this obligation to carefully consider it: is it genuine, or is it just an excuse to stay in your comfort zone?

In other words, vote with your feet. I get it. The idea being, if the government notices (and cares) that it's losing smart, productive, tax-paying (I assume) citizens then the government will have an incentive to do something (hopefully, something good) about it.

This is one of the reasons for the mass exodus away from certain US states and into others. People vote with their feet, and eventually policies catch up due to consequences.

That would be a mistake. Economically speaking, Africa is one of the last place on earth that is widely underdeveloped and has huge economy wide upside potential.

If you ask me, winds are blowing the right way for Africa. It's a good time to be there.

Much of Africa is indeed the land of opportunity (with the exception of South Africa, which has serious structural and political issues, and is in a sort of terminal malaise).

The calculus changes once children enter the picture though. The continent (a huge place to generalise about) isn't exactly the sort of place to risk raising a family, unless you are rich enough to be able to maintain a ready escape plan for them, and to educate them privately. You don't want to risk having them complaining in 20 years about the same things the OP talks about and being stuck here.

Maybe if you want to sell commodity stuff (furniture or cars or beer), but not for innovation. How many ground-breaking tech things have emerged from Africa? Very few. And that's unlikely to change any time soon.

What continents should someone try? What's the immigration procedure like?

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