Your analogy is flawed. We cannot spend a few dollars to ensure that a chimpanzee gains cognitive ability. We can spend a few dollars to ensure that someone with nutritional deficiencies or easily curable diseases has a vaccine or proper vitamins to substantially increase their IQ and ability to function. In which case, the "incapacitation" you refer to is actually a vicious cycle, a structural problem, that's aid-solvable.

Also, there's an enormous leap from "they're not incapacitated... " to "they can do whatever they want!"

Edited to add: Again, people downvoting, but nary a peep about why this logic is wrong. Focus on the essence, rather than the blasphemy? Anyone?

Sigh...

I think I'm just going to give up on this community. Good luck with your goals, everyone. ;)

Firstly, I am not obligated to tell you why I downvote.

Secondly, it is hard to justify responding to a comment like this. The amount of clarifying questions I need to ask to fully understand how your examples relate to the point requires more effort than I want to expend.

As best as I can tell, this is the crux of your point:

If you believe that Africans are somehow physically or mentally incapacitated, then you should treat them much the same as you treat chimpanzees.

On the other hand, if you believe that they are not incapacitated, then they aren't powerless. If they aren't powerless, they can organize their community any way they like.

If we narrow the field from Africa to someone unjustly imprisoned, should we help them? The point of this question is to clarify whether there is a difference between someone who is powerless and someone who has the potential for power. It makes no implicit claim on whether we should help Africa.

This is similar to Rain's comment about spending a few dollars on chimp cognition.