If literacy was natural, the word ‘illiteracy’ would not exist.

The French word 'Alphabétisme' may be a better term to remind us that literacy is simply about mastering the reading, writing and articulation of the alphabet, considered historically as a human 'invention' to produce a standardized and retrievable physical record of speech.

Africa is a huge continent; it would take several lifetimes of thousands of researchers testing in hundreds of languages to collect a valid sample of anything, especially IQ. Most Africans do their schooling in a second language, not their mother tongue. How many people would accept to be tested for their IQ level not in their primary language?

When considering grand plans for effective communicable disease control in this time of Ebola peril, malaria continues to kill nearly a million people a year world-wide, and by far the single most reliable protection against malaria is to sleep under a mosquito net, but one of the major impediments to this basic and effective malaria control is that many people, regardless of education level or country of origin, in malaria endemic zones don't install and use one, not that they can't get one, but because they don't think the mosquito net 'looks nice.

It's a lot like the Wild West out here... just with tea shops instead of saloons. Wild West Sahara, that is.

Shovels aren't very glamorous, but they've been liberating entire communities from malaria for the past 5,000 years.