By the way, you were implying that giving money to poor Africans is optimal altruism.

This is clearly false.

By doing so, you merely make up for other people's policy failures and create perverse incentives and moral hazards for the causes of poverty. In addition, other people are more likely than you to give money to the poor rather than to abstract causes, which means that you have an intellectual comparative advantage in focussing on those other causes.

I think all of the following are better candidates for hed.utils. than poverty relief:

• lobbyism (only very narrow topic range)
• technological and scientific research (again, only a small topic range)
• liberal eugenics
• research and advocacy against nonhuman suffering (not many good candidates, but some are better than all povery relief charities)
• utilitarian munchkin ideas like hedonium or artificial utility monsters
• singularity and x-risk stuff (again, not many good candidates, but some are better than all poverty relief)