The difference Togo has going for themselves is that they are like a startup country that has to be lean and resourceful because they just don’t have the money

The difference Togo has going for themselves is that they are like a startup country that has to be lean and resourceful because they just don’t have the money or - for lack of a better phrase - bureaucratic structures in place. The article is calling Togo “poor” but that’s from the perspective of the West. Poverty is the norm, not the exception in such countries, which means that everybody is in the same boat trying to use what they have to make it work. I think in the US, there’s much more hesitation to dive into new things with a willingness of accepting potential failure ahead of time and pivoting if needed. Put another way, if Togo tried this and failed, they can just say “well we’re back to where we started, let’s try another way”, whereas if that happened in the US it would be seen as a major fault and carry a lot of political consequences. Put into a tech perspective, a new tech startup might be willing to live with their business logic running cheaply off clever “hacks” that suffice, but if you approached a big company with that solution there would be like 10 levels of managers all critiquing it and running CBAs to assess the risks firsts.