So long as developers want to be paid by the hour rather than paid for a specific result, I would say this is fine too. The problem everyone is waffling on here

So long as developers want to be paid by the hour rather than paid for a specific result, I would say this is fine too. The problem everyone is waffling on here isn't the competitiveness of the wage, it's the gap between the value of what the labor produces and the value offered to produce it. But you can't escape that gap so long as you're fundamentally trading time for money. If you want to capture more of the value of your work, you become a contractor and bid firm-fixed or cost-plus contracts instead of labor-hour or time-and-materials. If you want to capture even more value than that, you work on building business systems and selling a valuable product or service rather than spending your work hours doing the tasks themselves. Whether you're in Kenya or the US and whether you're doing undesirable or highly desirable work, it is not a moral failing of the business you are working for that they did not also take the time to ensure that you could have become a contractor if you wanted to or that they did not ensure that your economic situation allows sufficient market opportunities for you to quit and form a business if you wanted to.