What's more likely is you're seeing the fact that democracy helps but what helps more is the same societal characteristics that are salient for developing a str

What's more likely is you're seeing the fact that democracy helps but what helps more is the same societal characteristics that are salient for developing a strong democracy Yes. More important than democracy itself is a strong system of property rights and a functional market (these are things that tend to be present in democracies, hence the confusion). The problem in Africa is frequently that property rights are not respected, so warlords and gangsters are able to confiscate the food and sell it themselves, or dole it out to their minions.