Thanks for the responses. I’m going to be out of action for the next few days but hope to get back to this early next week.
@scudsucker is from Zimbabwe. Perhaps we can benefit from their perspective as well.
This is my understanding, I’m not sure how accurate it is.
Once you reach a per capita level of wealth of about $5000 or so, things stop improving dramatically for quality of life. Going from $1 to $5000 you see massive improvements in a nation on many levels. The level of education, the health care, how democratic the system is, civil rights, fertility rates, etc. But once you start going above $5000 or so the differences become more minor.
However that $5000 figure is from years ago, I don’t know what it would be now adjusted for inflation.
As far as happiness its my understanding that a good sense of community is a major factor in happiness. In the west we’ve lost that as everyone is pretty much isolated or in small nuclear families.
We just dont do stats on these things: all I can offer is my biased opinion.
I was firmly middle class in Zimbabwe, I am firmly middle class now, in South Africa.
But because Zim is a small country, and the affluent white population is tiny, my “rebel” friends and I used to venture out, on a regular basis, to the townshops for beer and music.
I had the advantage of a small country with a small population - and Zimabwe’s version of apartheid, though horrible, never reached the Eugene de Kok levels of "trying to find a poison that will kill only Black people’, South Africa was fucking brutal.
Fortunately, the Rhodesians were a little incompetent despite much hand waving and history rewriting, and the prevailing (mostly chiShona) forces basically forgave all the whites and enouraged them to stay (at least, until around 1989)
I’m not sure the two countries are that comparible, except in that both chose peace and an effort at eliminating race based inequality. In both cases, especially Zimbabwe, this is still an issue, whether it is just simple individual racism or something more coordinated.
I’ve been subject to racism: I’m a white guy, a Black woman parked in my reserved space at a third party parking area, and when I questioned her, she went straight to accusing me of racism, including racist epithets.
I laughed it off, because she chose to be racist herself, and it was a parking dispute. She was obviously having a bad day (or, not - but I will never encounter her again).
I shrug it off because, yes, my family and my ancestors were racist. Not so much my parents, but systemic racism is systemic. We try to be better.
Well, no, they just actually poisoned Black people…
Everything I’ve heard about the situation in Zim indicates it was more brutal than SA, not less. Shorter-lived and more in the open, but not less brutal, I’d say.
Ja, well, brutality is somewhat of a judgement call. Is action X worse than action Y?
I am not trying to whitewash the actions of the Rhodesian forces, especially not the RSAS and Selous Scouts - there was plenty of evil going on there, let alone the regulars.
The ZANU and ZAPU groups are also not without sin, often turning on themselves and each other.
Mugabe’s promise of a unfied nation lasted a good 18 years befor it fell apart. We have that to thank the old dictator for, if nothing else.
I mean, Bob Marley himself wrote a song about my country - https://youtu.be/tm9KHjxSzxw?si=zwHubPtjXWfbHPzt - and performed it in Rufaro Stadium, the (then) biggest stadium in the country. (Spoiler: his concert got shut down by over-cautious security provided by the police, meaning we tear-gassed Bob Marley)
Mnangwagwa has nothing to offer.
I am most curious about your opinions of the OP:
And this
Of course there are specific histories and circumstances that vary across the continent, differing national traumas, and some African nations may greatly differ in happiness than others, but the data I presented claims low happiness scores throughout. Hard to know how to interpret scales of subjective states across cultures I think, so hoping you both may have more informed senses of it.
This feels vaguely racist, as if most Africans live in grass huts and wear animal skins (which I assume is not the case).
The OP also sounds more like he is describing the fictional nation of Zamunda than an actual African country.
Not knowing enough about Kenya to comment on the accuracy of the OP’s observations, I can still offer my hypothesis.
Time spent addressing basic needs can often feel more rewarding than time spent on conference calls and building useless PowerPoint decks that no one will ever look at.
Going by the Internet (which a lot of people follow), America is rapidly developing a culture where only the top 1% matter in any field of human endeavor. Wealth, attractiveness, talent, whatever. It fosters a state of constant competition or at least indifference to anyone who isn’t in a position to advance your ambitions where nothing is ever “enough”.
Rather than differences between reality and expectations of wealth, I think a greater factor is expected stability of wealth. Americans are constantly worried that their job might disappear at any moment, while often living beyond their means to impress people they don’t really like.
Another Fight Club-esq quote “the things you own end up owning you”. I fight with my wife and her weird family of hoarders about this all the time. We don’t need all this crap cluttering up the house. it occupies space and collects dust. Figuring out if we “need” stuff and maintaining it takes up mental bandwidth and time out of my day.
It’s all fun and games until a Coke bottle falls out of the sky.
That’s crazy talk.
One of the most satisfying aspects of my first wife dying 3 years ago and me walking out on my failed rebound marriage a few months ago is totally re-baselining my personal possessions. As of now I own substantially nothing I didn’t buy in the last 6 months. And damn little total volume despite 10 years ago having had a fully furnished and equipped major league McMansion.
It is remarkably freeing to be nearly “stuff”-free. Of course it’s easy in that I’m responsible for just me, not me plus spouse plus kidlet(s). But I’m gonna bet that 5x my stuff to account for your headcount is still barely 10% of your stuff. Despite us being in a similar SES.
IOW: I feel your pain.
Having lived in Asia for more than 35 years, I am particularly wary of people claiming understanding of foreign cultures based on superficial observations, especially for short trips. Many people who have lived in foreign countries for years or even decades can misunderstand cultures and people.
There can be a genuine debate of the question of happiness compared to wealth, but I don’t accept that a casual observer can really tell how happy a culture is or isn’t.
There is a danger of taking isolated factors, such as how traffic works, and assuming it is an accurate indication of a greater characteristic such as cooperation.
There’s one country that tries to quantify happiness as a guide to policy;
And there’s been a lot of work on the idea in the UK, though the terminology now tends to be “wellbeing”, or you could say “prosperity” as a more compendious alternative to material “product”.
But of course the arguments over what to include and how to measure it are endless, just like the in-and-out changes to what’s included in measuring inflation.
By ethnic cleansing all the unhappy people?
There’s inherent risk in managing to a single metric, but that risk isn’t usually equitably distributed 
You really don’t want the guy in charge of national happiness to be the same dude who has a poster on his office wall saying “the floggings will continue until morale improves”.