[Z]

It's a rather simplified and not exactly congruous way to look at it I know, but I just see the continued desperation in Africa as a scaled down version of how the "first world" operates - you have a very small group of people with all the wealth and power who are determined to keep everyone else (relatively) poor to continue their way of life as the rich elite. Take away vast amounts of money (though certainly not in every case, looking at Mugabe as an example given in this thread) and it's the same concept - a small powerful elite keeping everyone else poor in order to maintain their grip on being a powerful elite.

The heads need to be chopped off; but of course every time this has been tried in the last however many decades, somebody else has immediately taken their place; and the West doesn't really want to intervene because keeping other countries poor means that they get to continue to be the rich, powerful elite.