Do you actually mean what you just said?
How many patent get registered in Africa? How many patent get registered in Western nations? Which group has the better science culture?
See there's your correlation. The fact that a correlation exist should be really easy to see.
Similarly, internet usage is indirectly correlated with life expectancy, although the correlation isn't anywhere near strong enough to make reasonable judgments of one from the other.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2012/07/human-immortality-could-be-possible-by-2045-say-russian-scientists.html
The nice thing about Russians (I'm from that neighborhood originally) is that they are absolutely crazy and will try just about anything. They also probably have/had second-best science culture behind US (though they suffered significant brain drain as huge numbers of educated Jews left in the last 25 years). They have less regulation and quite a few rich people with ideas. Seems like a worthwhile group to keep in touch with.