Well, you're only as good as your neighbors. The reason why we consider African countries to be "poor" is because many of their trading partners are also poor. This reminds me of the West Germany vs. East Germany thing. American propaganda will have you believe that East Germany wasn't as rich as West Germany because "CoMMUNisM bAd", but in reality it only managed to thrive because of its very wealthy trading partner--the Good Ol' US, and many other Western European trading partners who got lots of fiancial aid from the US. East Germany only had very poor Soviet countries, like Albania and Yugoslavia, to trade with. Now, let's go back to Africa. South Africa only managed to flourish as well as it did because of its strong trading relations with countries like the US, UK, Australia, etc. The rest of Africa was not as fortunate. How is it feasible for a country like the Republic of the Congo, whose trading partners are primarily Angola and Cameroon, to reach the heights of wealthy Canada??
Yh that was one thing of the obstacles/issues I was referring to in my post.
If we had medieval Italy next door to us we would've been a different country altogether.
However we weren't totally isolated unlike most of Africa.
We had access to the red Sea which would have connected us to Egypt, Jerusalem and in turn the Mediterranean civilizations.
We were also exposed to the Indian subcontinent and other Asian cultures throughout the years through sailors (foreign and our own).