There are tons of low IQ people all over the West too — why isn’t their presence slowing down the rate of economic development we see there?
That there are lower IQ scores in Africa doesn’t mean Africans are all hovering at an IQ point above an idiot. Instead, I would argue that a Western-style education is positively correlated with an increased performance on Western-style IQ tests, and if an African is not trained Western-style, his scores on Western-style IQ tests would be expected to be low. Besides, “low IQ Africans” transplanted to the West (e.g., Nigerians) are able to thrive much better than “high IQ Westerners” transplanted to a city in Africa.
That’s why I’m more inclined to agree with the takeaways of Charlie Robertson’s The Time-Travelling Economist that the biggest predictors of development in Africa is likely not something innate to the individual (i.e. IQ), but structural/infrastructural factors like education and electricity/power, as well as fertility rates (which one can argue is a corollary of education).
Originally posted on Substack Notes, May 2026.