Good Morning Charles,
These accounts are quite amusing and innovative. I, too noticed creative entrepreneurship when residing and working in Africa and elsewhere. That's said, I don't necessarily believe it to be "a sign of a state's success but its failure". Much can happen as a result of this creativity.
For better and sometimes for worse.

I highly recommend a film called "Central Station". Set in a contemporary (1990s) Brazilian city, Sao Paulo or Rio de Janerio. The lead character, a middle age woman writes/types letters for people who can't write or type ( I actually recall seeing a woman do this in Yaounde, Cameroon BTW) for a fee. The story is more sophisticated than that. But, it is an example of clever entrepreneurship.

Also, have you ever seen "Mister Johnson"?

Very interesting post. thanks.

When I travel to developing countries, particularly Vietnam, I'm struck by the sheer intensity of entrepreneurship that is teeming everywhere.

For instance if your beamed the Stranger offices to the frenetic muggy streets of Saigon, out front on 11th would be two dozen Pho vendors, cobblers, sandwich vendors, vegetable stalls, etc. And it has always been that way.

Why we ever thought that country was ever going to be some threat to capitalism is mind boggling. Those people are not mindless Marxist utopian automatons anxious to suck off the teat of the state. They are movers and makers. It's incredible.

Very interesting post. thanks.

@2

"Much can happen as a result of this creativity" is the warm fuzzy that Peace Corps, "feel-good" movies, and international aid orgs all want us all to feel. Sounds like you drank the Kool Aid.

But the reality is, if all that creative entrepreneurship really worked on a mass scale, developing countries in Africa wouldn't have the rampant corruption, poverty, barriers to quality education, etc, that they *still* have today. Charles gets it. Of course it's more pleasurable to hear stories about village ladies basket-weaving their lives into the middle class--the warm fuzzy feels nice and makes you feel less guilty--but it's the exception not the rule.

@2,

Given that the primary plot point of that movie is organ harvesting orphaned children, I find it odd that you'd cite that movie as an example of positive third world entrepreneurship.

@6: Thank you, Captain Obvious.

The challenge in Africa is that people are very entrepreneurial at the community scale but not at the regional/national scale. This is partially because very few regional/national services exist, and partially because the nations that had a heavily socialist colonial power (which is to say most of them) were pickled in an anti-capitalism attitude that persists to this day. The former French colonies, for instance, are particularly bad examples of this.

@6,
Never drank the "Kool Aid". I didn't vote for Obama.
I did however, serve in the Peace Corps in Africa and worked elsewhere abroad. I merely viewed humans under difficult circumstances undertake "creative entrepreneurship". I cited the woman in Yaounde as an example and from my point of view for the better.

@7,
You missed my point.
I purposely didn't mention anything else about the film precisely because I didn't want to give anything away about the sophisticated story. Again, I merely cited an example of clever entrepreneurship of a character in that film who did the same thing that woman in Yaounde did.

Charles your post makes such a lovely counterpoint to this bit from the NYT http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinio…