Because they labour under massive debt burdens and yet are unable to take advantage of mineral resources because these are plundered by foreign firms and their industry is hampered because you yanks have bought up all their carbon quota because you won't give up your polluting ways. Post-colonial Africa should, like India, be a fast-growing, rich industrial hotbed but they are not being allowed to. With their population, mineral wealth and capacity for food production - if it wasn't all exported to leave Africans starving - could make Africa the new world power, but unlike China who have the world economy by the balls they remain hamstrung. Corruption, lack of education, superstition and an unforgiving climate do not help, neither do old grudges between ethnic groups, but at the heart of it is the colonial hangover.