> The problem is rule of law, or lack thereof. Rule of law is critical infrastructure.
I agree 100%
> Also, South Africa isn't sub-Saharan Africa.
Indeed. Which made me even less impressed by my example of power outages. South Africa clearly has a massive political problem with corruption; they have the money and technology to keep the power on.
The details are interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskom#Corruption