Some facts aren't easy to swallow. Given that: - land area (http://www67.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=kenya+vs.+germany+size) Kenya - 224 962 mi^2 (square miles) Germany - 137 847 mi^2 (square miles) Now consider these facts: - road length (http://www67.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=kenya+vs.+germany+road) Kenya paved road length - 8933 km (kilometers) Germany road length - 644 480 km (kilometers) - railway length (http://www67.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=kenya+vs.+germany+rail) Kenya - 1726 miles Germany - 29 959 miles - GDP (http://www67.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=kenya+vs.+germany+gdp) Kenya - $29.51 billion per year (US dollars per year) Germany - $3.317 trillion per year (US dollars per year) Germany's GDP is approximately 11 THOUSAND PERCENT larger than Kenya's (according to WolframAlpha.com) - literacy rates aren't spectacularly dissimilar (http://www67.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=kenya+vs.+germany+literacy) Kenya - 85.1% Germany - 99% So what's the problem? Perhaps literacy rates aren't correlated much with GDP (check out the scatter-plot at http://www67.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=literacy+vs.+gdp), whereas road and rail networks seem to be much more correlated to GDP (scatter-plots at http://www67.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=roads+vs.+gdp and http://www67.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=railway+vs.+gdp respectively) - More general stats at http://www67.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=kenya+vs.+germany On a "brighter" note: at least we're marginally better than Madagascar (http://www67.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=kenya+vs.+madagascar) Saidi