Martina,
although we’ve already had a bit of a discussion, I feel I owe you a reply.
My experience of Africa is limited to the Songhoi region in the north of Mali, and even if it goes quite deep there because I was a worker on a rural building site and not a tourist, it was probably wrong to extend what I saw there to the whole or most of Africa. Also, the word ‘notoriously’ wasn’t a lucky choice because it has a slightly negative connotation, as you pointed out.
That said, I don’t think there’s anything wrong in asking questions. They are at the bottom of all learning, and I chose this particular question because I know that there are quite a lot of people who do think that white Europeans and US Americans are somehow superior to the rest of the world. Simply dismissing those people as racist is not enough because they will still be there no matter how much you despise them. You have to prove them wrong.
So let me put another question: Why aren’t Germany, France and Spain former colonies of the Yoruba, Bambara and Aztec Empires, respectively, having gained independence only in the second half of the 20th century and still lower (although catching up) in their gross national products, literacy and car ownership rates, standards of medical care, you name it, than their former colonial powers? Given the fact that homo sapiens, genetically, comes with the same potential for intelligence, belligerence and social behaviour around the world (which can easily be proved by studies on children who grow up in a different cultural hemisphere than their parents), why did history take the course we know and not one where African, Australian and Native American peoples colonised large parts of Europe? That’s the question Diamond sets out to answer in Guns, Germs and Steel.

I hook up to these words to express my appreciation for your professional ethics in general and for this really inspiring blog in particular; your classes are not too bad either 😉
Thanks a lot for your recent book tip; these three books seem to be valuable brain food.

Still I am puzzled by two of the placed questions:
“Why are most African countries notoriously poor while Europe and North America seem to be predestined for wealth? Is it because Africans are less bright than we are?”

My basic assumption underlying this comment is that we (more or less educated inhabitants of the global north) have developed an awareness of the cycles of social change in a global and timeline context. We all know about the rise and fall of highly developed societies or cultures and the collapses of empires.
But considering ourselves as an elite at the peak of whatever we’re sometimes failing to adopt different perspectives in terms of geographical, ethnical, cultural or historical aspects. Interaction and assessment on an equal footing corresponds better to our common but asynchronous rise-and-fall-history. To me the questions quoted above implicate a pervert, one-eyed-view of Africa, leading into a stereotype trap, as well as evoking a connotation of white supremacy.

Referring to “notoriously poor” African countries which are, in fact, famously rich in resources I’d like to introduce some rather unknown facts. By the end of this century, Africa will be home to 40% of the world’s population and the youngest continent by the average age of its population. Human resource in abundance and equally challenging! But the less told story is Africa’s economic rise: seven of the world’s 10 fastest growing economies are African. The World Bank now classifies 27 of Africa’s 54 nations as either middle- or high-income countries. The African middle-class is constantly increasing to almost 40% of the population by now. According to McKinsey and Co., Africa already has more middle class consumers than India, which has a larger population. The winds of democratic change in the Arab world have begun to billow south; pro-democracy movements have perked up. Multiparty democracy and free elections have undoubtedly gained ground. Yet growing numbers of Africans, with the burgeoning educated middle class to the fore, are calling for such things. The (mainstream) media have largely failed to pick up on these trends, hewing instead to their long-running traditional narratives of African violence and suffering to the exclusion of most other news.
The question about comparing “brightness” is a no-go and more than embarrassing. It is probably more path-breaking to compare and discuss indigenous knowledge systems or current education systems. Although there is a great potential in Africa’s transition process, it cannot be denied that this process is, apart from climate change, threatened by an educational nightmare with all its epiphenomena like illiteracy, unemployment, social exclusion etc. Great efforts were made in improving formal education, but still most African countries will miss the UN Millennium Development Goals on education. Roughly every third child is not attending or cannot attend any sort of school.

To highlight this last chapter by adding some bright aspects, two links to infographics on African education are inserted:
http://mgafrica.com/data/2015-03-17-timeline-the-story-of-2350-years-of-education-in-africa-in-one-infographic
http://mgafrica.com/article/2015-03-26-infographic-shocks-and-surprises-from-africas-higher-education-sector

P.S. I dont’t know how to use these HTML tags and attributes. Sorry!