Ah! The Doctor!
As you know very well, Doctor, there are individuals on the African aviation scene who are quite capable, regardless of nationality, race, gender or what-have-you. Then there are those who are a hazard to themselves and others, people who really should not even be allowed out of the house without strict adult supervision. Again, we can find those regardless of nationality, etcetera.
The problem I have seen is that when there is lax regulation then you see those in the second category allowed to work as pilots, engineers, examiners and regulators. In fact, you may find that they are even more successful in the long run than the more capable people! Yes, some of them do manage to kill themselves, at least the pilots do (along with not a few of their passengers and those unfortunate enough to live in the path of their doomed aircraft), but somehow there seems to be such a large supply of them that they crowd out the capable, who are able to move on in any case.
Where else but Africa would you find someone who had just piloted a fatal flight being presented for employment with another operator? Not just that the man was not penalized for having killed a few people, but that someone in a high place was pushing for him again to be given work as a pilot! I was there when the guy was being evaluated, when I wondered why he was so darned nervous. Later I remembered where I had heard his name, when the penny dropped. In the States or Europe you would be out of a job after doing something like that, which must be part of the reason that the accident stats are so very different.
When I think about it, it is not a question of 'locals versus ex-pats,' as many seem to think. I can count off more than a few accidents which were down to ex-pat crew, so that I think it comes down to lax safety regulation, with aviation simply reflecting the way a society as a whole either functions or malfunctions.
Proof of this, in a way, is that you can take a local out, put him in a First World environment and find that he succeeds there, but put an ex-pat into the African environment and find that he fails there. That might show that the problem lies in the environment more than in the individuals operating in that environment.