Actually, I think that a "random African" likely knows a lot more about what would improve his standard of living than you or I, and my mind boggles at any other presumption.

So why haven't they all done so? An RA may well have more on-the-ground knowledge, but a do-gooder may well have more of the kind of knowledge that you learn in school. Since the D-G is not seeking to take over the RA's entire life, it's a case of two heads are better than one.

If he'd rather spend his money on beer than bednets, but you give him a bednet anyway, then I hope it makes you happy, because you're clearly not doing it for him.

You could do with distingusihing short term gains from long term interests. People don't pop out of the womb knowing how to maximise the latter. It takes education. And institions: why save when the banks are crooked.

But these "institutions" are not laws of nature, they aren't even tangible things - an "institution" is just a description of the way people co-ordinate with each other. So yes, people in developing countries often can't co-ordinate because they have bad institutions, but it would be equally true to say that they can't have good institutions because they don't co-ordinate.

It would be truer still to say that good institions take a long and fragile history to evolve. They didn't evolve everywerhe and they arrived late where they did. Go back about 500 years and no one had good (democratic, accountable, fair honest) instituions.

Apart from the reasons you already mentioned, marketing creates a brand which reduces information costs. This is of course particularly important in a low information market. Spending money to promote your brand is a pre-commitment to provide satisfactory quality products.

It's hard to know where to start with that lot. Brands aren't information like lib raries are information, they are an attempt to get people t to buy things by whatever means is permitted. They can be wors than no information at all, since African mothers would have presumably continued to brest fee without nestle's intervention:

"The Nestlé boycott is a boycott launched on July 7, 1977, in the United States against the Swiss-based Nestlé corporation. It spread in the United States, and expanded into Europe in the early 1980s. It was prompted by concern about Nestle's "aggressive marketing" of breast milk substitutes (infant formula), particularly in less economically developed countries (LEDCs), which campaigners claim contributes to the unnecessary suffering and deaths of babies, largely among the poor.[1] Among the campaigners, Professor Derek Jelliffe and his wife Patrice, who contributed to establish the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA), were particularly instrumental in helping to coordinate the boycott and giving it ample visibility worldwide."