In that case, all this bad luck could be a precursor of even worse times ahead.

From Three Reasons to Be Worried About Africa’s Progress by Tyler Cowen.

One of the saddest stories of the year has gone largely unreported: the slowdown of political and economic progress in sub-Saharan Africa. There is no longer a clear path to be seen, or a simple story to be told, about how the world’s poorest continent might claw its way up to middle-income status. Africa has amazing human talent and brilliant cultural heritages, but its major political centers are, to put it bluntly, falling apart.

Three countries are more geopolitically central than the others. Ethiopia, with a population of 118 million, is sub-Saharan Africa’s second-most populous nation and the most significant node in East Africa. Nigeria has the most people (212 million) and the largest GDP on the continent. South Africa, population 60 million, is the region’s wealthiest nation, and it is the central economic and political presence in the southern part of the continent.

Within the last two years, all three of these nations have fallen into very serious trouble.

A worthwhile column ending with this glum speculation.

These sub-Saharan political regressions might just be a coincidence in their timing. But another disturbing possibility is that the technologies and ideologies of our time are not favorable for underdeveloped nation-states with weak governments and many inharmonious ethnic groups. In that case, all this bad luck could be a precursor of even worse times ahead.

I have great faith in the Age of Enlightenment world view and its capacity to generate prosperity and well-being for everyone.  I would not write it off, even if we cannot currently quite see the pathways forwards for African nations.

However, that comment about "inharmonious ethnic groups"?  That ought to be a warning to the Critical Race Theorists in the US.  We have succeeded so magnificently based on the tolerance embedded in the belief of human universalism and individualism.  The pursuit of group interests and an insistence on group or race identities is a reliable recipe for disaster.  As Africa currently demonstrates.

There is a fundamental challenge for the Age of Enlightenment world order.  AoE is a function of emergent order from established principles.  We too often view progress as an engineered planning approach and AoE delivers desirable outcomes via free people, with free speech, pursuing individual aspirations that accumulate into common shared prosperity in a way that is incompatible with the engineering view.  There is no visible plan other than the confidence that the AoE world view works, has worked, and will work.