I’m astonished that you put South Africa & Botswana in the same category as Ethiopia, Eritrea & Zimbabwe. The last has gone from being a lower-middle-income country to destitution, with famine & mass population flight. Ethiopia & Eritrea have never developed, remaining at mediaeval income levels. S. Africa is pretty developed. It has shanty towns & rural poverty, but that’s due to income inequality, not because the overall economic level is at all comparable with Ethiopia. By, for example, 1950s standards, South Africa would be a rich & developed country.

It is affording those Gripens on military spending which is about half the percentage of GDP the USA spends.

Botswana is about as rich per head, but without the diversified industrial base that South Africa has. Most of its wealth is derived from minerals. Perhaps the most democratic country in Africa. Both are better-governed, by several orders of magnitude, than their unfortunate neighbour to the north, or even Eritrea & Ethiopia, & their incomes per head are higher than many Latin American countries, or the poorer countries of Europe. Similar to Russia.

Namibia falls somewhere in between these two & the poorer lot. Like a less prosperous, more authoritarian version of Botswana. But still, much better run & much richer than the others you mention.

Your lumping together of countries merely because they’re on the same continent reveals a lack of knowledge. May I gently suggest that a little research might help you understand the diversity of Africa?

A superb post, precisely what I would have said had I seen this thread earlier.

Whats interesting is that Mr. B2707 completely ignored it as well.:rolleyes: