{UAH} Low IQ responsible for Africa's backwardness

 

Written by Moses Baguma

Someday, as we cruised towards Speke Apartments, my new acquaintance asked me a very common but still relevant question and, apparently, the question might be relevant for posterity.

The question was: "Why is Africa backward?"

If you compare Africa of millennia ago with contemporary Africa, there's, of course, a stark contrast. However, that doesn't mean that Africa isn't backward. The backwardness is determined by comparing contemporary Africa with contemporary Caucasian countries.

My answer to the question was: An average African man has an IQ which is below average. The interlocutor protested my answer by contending: "I don't believe that it's because of low IQ that Africa is backward."

He proceeded; "I believe it's a society's or one's culture and sense of urgency that determine one's or society's degree of civilisation."

Good culture is broad and good culture might also mean setting and meeting deadlines and therefore acting faster. But, can someone act faster when they are mentally slow or disadvantaged? After a brief moment of meditation, I replied to him: one can't be faster when they are mentally slow.

Now, let's examine what precedes invention of good culture and having a sense of urgency. When and how does someone choose a good culture? I believe one chooses a good culture after appreciating a constant challenge(s). A constant challenge calls for a constant solution or set of solutions, which might be summarized in a new good culture.

For instance;

1) When one appreciates the need to accomplish tasks faster to meet the high, rapid and ever changing demands of life, they choose to invent a clock and calendar to set clear timelines for themselves.

2) When one appreciates the need to communicate content through writing - like chemical formulae of medicines and other compounds, laws, policies etc., they invent a culture of literacy.

Can we conclude that having a good culture and a sense of urgency has nothing to do with high levels of IQ? I think it would be disastrous to conclude that way.

In his book, Musings and Memories of an Autodidact, Nick Twinamastiko wrote: "Africa's greatest problem is that she doesn't know her problem."

I concurred with him because if you have low levels of IQ, you surely can't know your problem. It's not right to say that every mzungu is smarter than any African. But it's right to say that an average African's IQ is significantly lower than that of an average mzungu. So, when an average person in any society has an IQ below the average, we can conclude that that society is of people with low IQ.

Carlo M. Cipolla's essay, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, gives an X-ray view of what distinguishes countries on the rise from those that are falling. It explains;

Countries moving uphill have an inevitable percentage of stupid people, yes. But they enjoy "an unusually high fraction of intelligent people" who collectively overcompensate for the dumbos.

Declining nations have, instead, an "alarming proliferation" of non-stupid people( but not intelligent) whose behaviour "inevitably strengthens the destructive power" of their persistently stupid fellow citizens. There are other two distinct, unhelpful groups: The bandits and The helpless, besides the intelligent ones. Bandits are of three categories;

1) Perfect bandits.

2) Bandits who are more inclined to sheer stupidity.

3) Bandits who are more inclined to intelligence.

Bandits, in general, take positions of power which they use for their own gain.

The helpless are people out of power who sigh through life as if they are helpless. Certainly, in most - if not all - African countries, people under the two groups: bandits and The helpless far outnumber the intelligent ones.

Because Africans generally have low IQ, they can't even understand what civilisation is. Most Africans are indeed obsessed with tangible things like: good roads, towering buildings, power dams etc. without understanding how such things are achieved.

Africans don't believe that human sophistication is a great (actually the greatest) level of civilisation,  that's why things like literary works and other forms of sophisticated inventions don't catch an African's eye.

If you want to authenticate my claims, make a poll on Twitter, a platform with the most educated and intellectually curious Ugandans, asking how many books each tweep has read, outside academics, since they became of competent understanding.

When Elon Musk was asked why he has managed to build rockets, he simply replied: "I read books". When Isaac Newton took a break from college due to The Great Plague of London in 1665, he read books from then modern physicists and philosophers during the hiatus.

It's because of the books that his thought got provoked to write his most popular works about gravitation and optics. Reading reflects profound intellectual curiosity and high levels of IQ.

Caucasian countries have become militarily superior because they develop ammunitions, weapons and engage in warfare with too much attention to detail, a quality preceded by high level of IQ.

Well, as John Speke observed, an African man is only interested in sexual pleasure and beer. There's nothing like intellectual curiosity in him and because of such a weakness, for generations, Africa will always be in the gutters lagging behind in the race for civilisation - the reason why I wish God can excuse every African man, however sinful, from hell. We've had our share of hell from Earth.

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