Milton Friedman had an interesting related comment.
He observed a third world construction project, and asked if it would not be more efficient to use a backhoe, instead of the many men they had digging with shovels. The manager/politician in charge told him that they did it this way to provide more jobs. Well then, why not have them dig with spoons then? asked Friedman. It was more an indictment of the Government’s wastefully inefficient economic policies than it was of third world culture.
Sometimes they don’t have the equipment, sometimes they don’t have the know-how, sometimes it is due to culture (traditional or political). Whatever the reason, it is changing at dramatic pace, by historical standards.
Technology is spreading much more quickly now than ever before, with better transportation and communication. No place is out of reach anymore. The percentage of the human population that lives in abject squalor - a hand to mouth existence of less than a dollar a day - has been plummeting in the last few decades, and will probably decline into the single digits within a generation, or be done away with entirely. Africa is not just the next frontier for industrialization and a modern standard of living - it is the last such frontier. The robots that are teetering around with their baby steps this decade, will automate much of farming and production next decade.
Enjoy the quaint eccentricities of the old third world - they will make for unbelievable tales for the children of future decades.
Cousin worked for a major oil company in Indonesia.
They had a golf course inside their fenced compound.
Every morning 100 guys would be out there with weed whackers "mowing" the fairways, each getting a buck or so a day.
Same with maid service. Maids did everything, got a couple bucks a week. Pay more than that and you get in trouble, 'cause it makes everybody jealous, etc.
Friedman was right. If the best man could afford an excavator, pretty soon he'd have a crew, his crew would start to have crews, the country progresses...
Though I do not agree with your prediction about technology and progress spreading, enriching, emancipating. If you have lived for a few generations under dependency and shiftlessness then THAT becomes your ethos....maybe one out of ten ever escape.