Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
I don't think anyone can point to a case, anywhere, where meaningful "development" was engineered from the outside. Countries do develop, but they cannot "be developed" by an external force.
Sure they can, even without colonization.
It's just not worth the effort, for the self-sustaining indigenous forces for development are almost free by comparison and more powerful by orders of magnitude.

The question is thus not one of how to push a foreign country to modernity, but whether there's a trigger for making it move towards a certain development direction on its own and how to identify and activate it.

Compare *shameless self-promotion* my text about Germany's post-WW2 recovery, for example */shameless self-promotion*.


A trigger for an average African country - say Zambia - could be to find a way how the powers that be can profit of giving women much more relevance in the non-subsistence economy. Add the Japanese custom of wifes managing family finances (an awesome limiter on alcohol and cigarette consumption as well as whoring), maybe through some African-made movies, bank regulations and the like. This could lead to substantial economic growth.