They're not using the malaria nets wrong
You come into an African country that is struggling with malaria and give out nets. They use them as bridal veils, wear them as a shawl as “protection”, while exposing the rest of their body, or use them to catch fish.
We forget that, even in the West, we hardly get credit for the flood that doesn’t happen, or the disease that doesn’t make you ill. We get credit for catching more fish, having nicer weddings, or countersignaling our health by showing that we can afford an expensive net and not use it properly.
What’s the difference between Asians, Africans, and Westerners? One component is internalizing vs externalizing problems. Externalizers will try to offload burdens onto others. Internalizers like Tarzan and Kurcheck will take “problems” while people like Clayton will externalize. There’s a sense in which internalization is more human than externalization. You absorb the sins and problems of others. You take responsibility for them.
Leftie whites internalize inequities between blacks and whites and seek to create more fair systems. Right wing whites externalize, but in cases where they clean up after protests, they’re internalizing. Black BLM protestors protecting a Target are internalizing while black conservatives accusing lefties are externalizing. White lefties kissing the boots of black men are internalizing.
Abel unintentionally internalized the sins of Cain by dying. Cain externalized the cause of his own misfortune by killing his brother. Christ internalized the sins of the world by carrying the instrument of his destruction, not resisting, and being complicit in himself being sold by Judas to be taken in. The Pharisees would be externalizers in that they killed Christ after he drove out the money changers. But was Christ externalizing by doing this?
Native Americans have a smaller Carbon footprint on the world than Europeans. They empirically care more for the environment. It’s hard for me to know what Africans and Asians do. What if they’re both suffering from excess of rationality rather than its lack. It’s easy to make this case for the Chinese, but I dunno about Africans. In places like Burkina Faso they have shaman who sometimes require body parts to perform rituals. Innocent children are killed for these rituals. But superstitions abound in Europe with witchcraft, and Asia with the eating of shark fins, etc.
The Africans may recognize that it doesn’t matter what their level of technology is. Technology only obscures genetic fitness. Instead, you want fitness to be obvious, and you can’t do that if you have so much tech that you wouldn’t be able to survive something catastrophic like a Bronze Age collapse. Perhaps we should just leave them be and not try to “civilize” them into adopting our brittle Western social systems.