I cannot speak to this directly, not being African myself, but from my few visits there, I'm inclined to completely agree with this. From my limited impressions, this seems to be the power hierarchy, but people outside of it (of which they are many) are excessively disgruntled about it.

Being there and seeing the kinds of corruption there helped me see better the kinds of corruption we have here now that I am back in the states. Healthcare+Insurance is probably the most similar kind of scheme, especially in the powerlessness it evokes. Not imagine that level of extortion for housing, groceries, social circles, cars, etc. Everything business-wise has a significant "tax" on it at every step of the way (let's say, for example, if it's a 15% skim then you get .85^(number of tiers of leadership) of the initial money through. And even then after it exits that chain, there's a good chance the next chain of command will skim it out too. So it's basically guaranteeing that that money goes near to 0 very quickly.

I'm way beyond my experience at this point but I'd venture this heavily discourages investment, innovation, and hard work because the guaranteed money needed to live comes from securing a place in the hierarchy. And if you do not do that out of principle, someone else starving is willing to do that as well. I'd consider it a disease and everyone talks about "corruption bad" but I got this sneaking feeling that when corruption "happened to" play in people's favor, more blind eyes were turned. Everyone has stories they tell themselves, I suppose, and I can't say whether or not I would do the same in that situation. I don't like starving or living in slums where the mud smells like a diahrrea and urine latrine when it rains because there's now sewer system or really much running water to boot. I empathize with it, it's I think a very bad locally nash-optimal solution* (*I think I'm understanding this right, not sure) that only can be escaped if everyone basically (up to a small percentage tolerance) refutes it, pushes against it, and revolts against it.

I think this next part is up to personal interpretation, but after seeing the layers of corruption and how most well-intentioned NGOs can cause a lot of communal harm, my political views swung through conservative to small government liberal. UBI in particular as a form of support. It has some obvious weird corner cases (why pay taxes on something you get right back or vice versa?), but I think I realize now why something like that has appeal -- in its strictest form (i.e. "everyone gets $2k a month"), admin overhead is excessively low due to scale and more importantly there is almost 0 overhead for corruption due to admin/population decisions. It's one valid opinion of many, I know, but coming back from the coastal villages and hearing how sustenance farmers (no money to buy food at market obvs) are starving because global warming disturbed the near-perfectly-constant rain cycles, and that they can starve there or maybe miraculously make it to the slums of the city and be effectively in slavery for a while, that plus a lot of other things changed my perspective on my contribution to society and my responsibility for a social safety net. I guess to many it may seem weird but we all have our reasons, and for me, it's a combination of guilt and shame about myself over what I've seen, and a love for these people that I hope to one day proximally help even if it's through higher tax levels or a kind word to a stranger.

Much longer than I planned, but hope that helps explain more of the situation at depth.

Best of love,

T&co.