This Question was posted on Quora and J.C. Hewitt, Internet Economist gave a very insightful view on the question. Since many won't visit Quora or for other reasons might not get to see this, I have decided to post it here for all to read.

It is a big issue. Just feeding Africa - doesn't solve anything. we have hungry,diseased unfortunate uneducated people with no future. If we solve hunger we will have just diseased, unfortunate, uneducated people with no future. On its own, this doesn't solve anything really.

So what are the COMPLETE strategies that can slowly INCREASE standard of living in Africa and uplift this continent to a level where it can actually contribute to the world on the scale they really can.

Africa isn't an object that's passively waiting for you to 'develop it.'

African development will only occur when people stop asking the question "how can we develop Africa" and start asking the question "what are outsiders doing to block or impede economic progress in Africa?"

The truth is that charity and foreign aid tend to smother the development of nascent market economies. When you send thousands of tons of 'free' food to African countries, you bankrupt local farmers, replace trade networks with aid bureaucracies, and make populations of millions dependent on the misguided good will of others.

Foreign aid also disproportionately ends up in the hands of oppressive governments, empowering tyrants.

The link in Michael Wolfe's answer to The Economist article reflecting this perspective shows just how much closer to reality that Western commentary has progressed in the last half-decade.

Africa isn't a place to go to for you to 'save' and 'develop' so that you can impress people at parties and burnish your college applications.

There are certainly a lot of problems in Africa that aren't related to Westerners. However, if you're concerned about economic progress in Africa, it's best to first examine your own culture first, because you have more of a capability to impact it.

This change in ideas underlying Western relations with Africa may herald a great improvement in material conditions on the continent over the next several years.

Culture begets material advancement and not the other way around. The central error of most development and aid projects is the belief that ideas are irrelevant, and that progress can come from donated capital.

My favorite book on this topic is The White Man's Burden by New York University professor William Easterly.

Here's the synopsis from Amazon:

An informed and excoriating attack on the tragic waste, futility, and hubris of the West's efforts to date to improve the lot of the so-called developing world, with constructive suggestions on how to move forward.

William Easterly's The White Man's Burden is about what its author calls the twin tragedies of global poverty. The first, of course, is that so many are seemingly fated to live horribly stunted, miserable lives and die such early deaths. The second is that after fifty years and more than $2.3 trillion in aid from the West to address the first tragedy, it has shockingly little to show for it. We'll never solve the first tragedy, Easterly argues, unless we figure out the second.

The ironies are many: We preach a gospel of freedom and individual accountability, yet we intrude in the inner workings of other countries through bloated aid bureaucracies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank that are accountable to no one for the effects of their prescriptions. We take credit for the economic success stories of the last fifty years, like South Korea and Taiwan, when in fact we deserve very little. However, we reject all accountability for pouring more than half a trillion dollars into Africa and other regions and trying one "big new idea" after another, to no avail. Most of the places in which we've meddled are in fact no better off or are even worse off than they were before. Could it be that we don't know as much as we think we do about the magic spells that will open the door to the road to wealth?

Absolutely, William Easterly thunders in this angry, irreverent, and important book. He contrasts two approaches:

(1) the ineffective planners' approach to development-never able to marshal enough knowledge or motivation to get the overambitious plans implemented to attain the plan's arbitrary targets and

(2) a more constructive searchers' approach-always on the lookout for piecemeal improvements to poor peoples' well-being, with a system to get more aid resources to those who find things that work. Once we shift power and money from planners to searchers, there's much we can do that's focused and pragmatic to improve the lot of millions, such as public health, sanitation, education, roads, and nutrition initiatives. We need to face our own history of ineptitude and learn our lessons, especially at a time when the question of our ability to "build democracy," to transplant the institutions of our civil society into foreign soil so that they take root, has become one of the most pressing we face.
http://www.prisonerofclass.com/africa-what-are-possible-strategies-for-developing-africa/