Maybe Model thinking and Game theory are what's missing in Africa

Sun Tzu's "Art of War" has found applications in  the military, law, corporate strategy, politics to sports. Brazil's world cup winning football coach Felipe Scolari is said to have studied the art of war on his way to the world championship. In many ways, game theory and model thinking have become the Art of War for the modern times, finding applications in everything from anthropology to zoology.

In just about every situation using models and game theory will produce a better outcome than not using them. From what I've seen in Uganda, model thinking and game theory is used in very little of our policy engineering. But its not just the locals, it is possible that even the donor communities and the various aid agencies aren't working with accurate models and game theory in Africa. But i'm getting ahead of myself, lets do definitions;

Game theory: My favourite short definition comes from this reddit thread and says simply, Game theory  is the mathematical study of strategies. Some say Decision theory  is a more descriptive term for it. In case there is any doubt about how serious it is, 8 game theorists have won the Nobel memorial prize in economics. John Forbes Nash on whom the movie and autobiography A Beautiful Mind was based is one of these 8. His work is today used in economics, computing, biology, artificial intelligence, accounting, politics and military theory.

Model thinking is a superset of Game theory, while game theory deals with mathematical models of players, strategies, and the associated payoffs of each strategy; model thinking is broader and includes just about every process in life. This is my own understanding of it so it might be slightly(or way) off. I took this course on Coursera by Scott E. Page of the University of Michigan and I found it amazing. Where game theory was fairly heavy on the math this course teaches you things that will affect the way you view everyday problems and generally make you a better thinker. Here's a quote from the course page;

Evidence shows that people who think with models consistently outperform those who don't. And, moreover people who think with lots of models outperform people who use only one. Why do models make us better thinkers? Models help us to better organize information - to make sense of that fire hose or hairball of data (choose your metaphor) available on the Internet. Models improve our abilities to make accurate forecasts. They help us make better decisions and adopt more effective strategies. They even can improve our ability to design institutions and procedures.

Model thinking, Decision theory, Game theory are proof that the developed world is actively working on improving the way they think and approach problems; not just on improving the things that we in Africa associate with development like infrastructure, health and poverty eradication. While these things are important, it can be argued that better thinkers make for better solutions, so perhaps greater focus should be given to making us better thinkers. Model thinking is a great way to do this. The formal education you get in an African country like Uganda teaches more of 'what to think,' than 'how to think.' This makes for a people very poor at coming up with new solutions for old problems or good solutions for new problems.

Better models for Africa would mean less uncertainty and that in economics is usually a good thing. It would mean more investor confidence, and more predictable outcomes from actions taken. But these models need to come from within Africa, outsiders are unlikely to come up with accurate models of what is going on inside.

Lastly I highly recommend you take  this course its free, its very interesting, it won't take too much of your time and will likely give you new ways of looking at problems. You won't regret it!