“60 million acres of uncultivated arable land. Nearly 60% of the world’s total.”
Might be technically “arable” but much of it is very marginal, acidic soil in which most food crops don’t grow well.
The son of one of my neighbors worked in Africa as a missionary for 2 years-as a grad of A&M, he was helping the ag people there figure out why the soil was in such poor condition-for starters, the farmers just planted, replanted year after year the same stuff-never thought of rotating a crop or enriching the soil and letting a field lie fallow for a year.
They either didn’t learn-or refused to learn rotation from the White farmers at all, either. It isn’t the soil-it is that the people never listen to anyone they hire to help them-they are either stubborn or just dumb-either way, it is not any other continent’s problem after all this time-surely a couple 1000 years is enough time for people to learn simple farming and animal husbandry when they have been taught by everyone starting all the way back with the Egyptians...
Their statistics are pretty bad even compared to neighboring countries. Per capita GDP: $980. Life expectancy: 53.7 years for men, 56.4 years for women. Infant mortality rate: 84.2 for every 1,000 live births. 48.2% of the population undernourished.
But if they would just rename the country Wakanda things would be much better.