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The ways Africa outperforms America

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From mobile to marathoners, some countries on this continent have successes that visiting President Obama could only hope for. The Washington Post’s Africa bureau chief, Sudarsan Raghavan, lists a few of them.

1. Mobile technologies The region is much less dependent on land lines and personal computers. In Nigeria, 19 out of 20 phones are mobile. Africans were years ahead of America in widespread texting and reading by phone. And, like much of the world, the bill is often much cheaper than in the United States. Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images

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