I honestly think the lack of education is a major issue. Malawi has a relatively low literacy rate compared with many other countries in Southern Africa.
We don't know why Malawi is poor
101–110 of 147 posts
Re: We don't know why Malawi is poor
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Immigrants to any country are a unique slice of the population because they chose to migrate for a better life. Hence immigrants in most countries tend to do well economically (sometimes after a generation). Uncertain that cultural differences are the reason for different economic outcomes you observe.
Swedish speakers in Finland are not immigrants anymore than Dutch speakers in Belgium are, though (the Dutch speaking area also generally does better than the French speaking areas, for a variety of reasons).
it is interesting to note that since the industrial revolution it was the french speaking part of belgium that flourished due to its steel industry, and the dutch speaking part was the poor one. only when the steel industry stopped being competitive the economy switched away from industry to service where the french part stagnated and the dutch part started to flourish,
so clearly who does better has nothing to do with the language but with the economy and who has the better resources and is more adaptable to serve the current needs.
Re: We don't know why Malawi is poor
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
As the article states, that Malawi hasn't developed much industry or exports is more of a description of poverty than an explanation. Malawi can grow coffee, but mostly doesn't. They have rare earth element deposits, but little mining. Why haven't they developed more?
> They have rare earth element deposits, but little mining. When it comes to mining it looks like china has been screwing them over https://adf-magazine.com/2026/02/chinese-mines-openly-break-...
"belt and road" in action
Re: We don't know why Malawi is poor
#104Perhaps there are cultural reasons that explain this, such as attitudes towards work, entrepreneurship, private ownership etc? I have no idea if Rwanda and Malawi have difference there, but globally one can see clearly see the impact of culture. Just look at how well Japan did despite losing WW2 and having little natural resources, or how badly Russia has done despite its huge landmass and resources, because the poli…
This viewpoint never made sense to me, because you have variation within any culture, and because advantageous strategies win out over time, any culture will evolve. Therefore, it never made sense to me to consider culture a static immutable group of homogeneous people. To me it is pretty obvious that some systematic challenges must exist that keep what we consider to be successful strategies from succeeding in those…
> win out over time
And people define victory in different ways. Having many children is how some people define victory. Having no children and a diploma on the wall is how some people define victory.
Re: We don't know why Malawi is poor
#105We don't know all the reasons, but I can guess one. Debt.
And yes, debt can be 'good'. But just as for people, if you are poverty stricken, debt will almost invariably not be.
Who actually benefited from taking on the debt?
Re: We don't know why Malawi is poor
#106[flagged]
There is no such thing as "average IQ" for countries. An ultra-common low-IQ take, ironically. What is the average IQ of Malawi? Literally nobody knows. Anybody who claims one is lying to you. In "IQ & The Wealth Of Nations" (the Ur-source for these kinds of claims), they got a number for Malawi by averaging Congo, Zaire, and Tanzania. In turn, the Congo numbers were based in part on general cognitive test scores tak…
[flagged]
Re: We don't know why Malawi is poor
#107Perhaps there are cultural reasons that explain this, such as attitudes towards work, entrepreneurship, private ownership etc? I have no idea if Rwanda and Malawi have difference there, but globally one can see clearly see the impact of culture. Just look at how well Japan did despite losing WW2 and having little natural resources, or how badly Russia has done despite its huge landmass and resources, because the poli…
Malawians have a reputation of being extremely kind people, maybe that makes them bad at capitalism?
It would be the opposite. Kindness = respect for other's property = capitalism.
Re: We don't know why Malawi is poor
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but for "land locked". I've been owned.
I seriously don’t get the mentality you have. You didn’t read the article, but you did a half-hearted search for some reason, and posted a completely incorrect comment as a result. Why? What are you trying to achieve? When people claim that LLMs don’t have superhuman intelligence yet, this kind of behavior is a counterexample.
Nobody's perfect, friend. You're totally right.
Re: We don't know why Malawi is poor
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Malawians have a reputation of being extremely kind people, maybe that makes them bad at capitalism?
I mean, is it beyond belief that many of them are OK with living a simple agrarian life? Or have very little opportunity to learn that there is any other way to live?
Makes you wonder if less public debt and less focus on growing cash crops to service that debt might actually make for a more comfortable 'simple agrarian life' overall. Even if this meant lower GDP.
I've often thought there's something wrong with the way we put a simple dollar figure on poverty. Less than $3 dollars a day with or without easy access to land, shelter, and fresh water?
Re: We don't know why Malawi is poor
#110> It ranks 107th out of 180 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, which is middling, but not especially bad, roughly comparable to Indonesia and Brazil. I would still guess corruption is a major reason. Sometimes the way it’s measured and how it’s reported is not accurate. People internalize corrupt practices as normal and stop viewing it as corruption. A bribe is a gift, a nepotistic appointm…
The Tranparency International's index is a horrible measure. It's more dependent on the press reporting corruption than of any other factor, for the extent that it measures anything real it focuses exclusively on small scale corruption, and it incredibly biased by cultural factors. It's a mistake to use it to compare one country with another, and it's a mistake to use it to spot trends in a single place. AFAIK, it's…
Does anyone even give them credibility in the first place…?
Such an exceedingly complex thing just seems improbable to take at face value, without an enormous amount of proof and well reasoned methodology backing it up.