What do you think is slowing down Africa's development?

This is for my Extended Project. It would be really helpful to get a range of ideas . Thanks

We're talking about a continent that has countries where witch doctors are common and where albino hunting still occurs.

I don't expect to see it become like Futurama any time soon. I had to laugh the other day when they friend tried to convince me, in all seriousness that Africa would have become, in time, developed just like anywhere else such as Europe/Japan etc if it weren't for Imperialism.

Sure, Buddy, let's blame imperialism for state-sanctioned slavery still being present in Togo in 2014 or guys wearing zebra fur murdering cats to help their team win football matches against their rivals......

I don't expect the place to become like Futurama any time soon, OP.

The primary interest of the west is not the "development" of Africa. The primary goal is one of control and exploitation of their raw materials. Secondly corruption is endemic. Thirdly most countries simply lack sufficient educated people with any kind of stake in the economy.

Saudi is there in terms of infrastructure and China is getting there, despite both having outdated beliefs (i.e Wahhabism and medicine using rhino horn).

The corruption is the biggest problem - as it stands the divide between rich and poor is rapidly widening, with the top end of African society developing quite rapidly but the bottom end going virtually nowhere. I'd wager a big reason for its particular prevalence in Africa is that in contrast to historical development elsewhere, most of the money and technology that's supporting African progress is coming into the continent from the outside rather than the inside. As it stands, Africa has a lot of natural resources but not much money or technology to do anything with them, whereas other nations from other continents have a lot more money/tech and want (but don't need) the resources. This outside source of support means that there's less need to keep the populace happy and well-treated - as long as you still control the resources the money will keep flowing in. This leads to Africa almost 'skipping stages' in development - again influences from the outside mean that the small top-end of each economy is rapidly rising into the services sector and the like while the rest is stuck in agriculture and limited industry due to the lack of funding and technology trickling down. This is all in contrast with, say, the development of Europe - there there isn't really a big external source of money so a big portion of the financial and technological growth has to come from the internal industrial progress before you can get ahead of the game with a superior product.

In some areas, I think Islam really slows down development there. People will call me a racist for saying that but it's true.

Perhaps fundamentalist beliefs in religions such as Christianity and Islam is more of a symptom than a cause of backwardness.

This is for my Extended Project. It would be really helpful to get a range of ideas . Thanks

Saudi is there in terms of infrastructure and China is getting there, despite both having outdated beliefs (i.e Wahhabism and medicine using rhino horn).

Name a Chinese outdated belief that is still practiced. Not out of custom, but where people genuinely believe in something. Medicine does not count, I know countless cases where western medicine has failed yet the Chinese Herbal medicines has worked miracle, it does actually work, out of thousands of years of experimentation and experience.