Its often prickly relations with Indonesia and Malaysia and its strained post-colonial difficulties with PNG do not make it the ideal regional sheriff.
Strikingly, Alan Patricof, a veteran American venture capitalist, has reportedly been raising a venture-capital fund for Africa, and is not alone in seeing new opportunity in small and medium enterprises there.One reason Mr Jonah is optimistic is that he regards Africa's post-colonial difficulties as not particularly surprising or problematic.
Postcolonial theory focused on the legacy of colonial rule and especially the difficulties faced by former colonial peoples in developing national identity.
Newfoundland reverted to colonial status in 1933, suffering from financial difficulties during the Great Depression.
After returning to England, he continued to advise the British government on colonial matters, calling for hardline responses to ongoing difficulties in Massachusetts that culminated in the 1773 Boston Tea Party.
America is not quite where Britain was in transitioning from colonial empire to the independent association of the Commonwealth, but its difficulties place Obama in a similar business of curtailment, retrenchment and bridge-building.
However, Salazar's insistence on maintaining Portugal's colonies in Africa could only be sustained with difficulty at a time when the other European colonial empires in Africa were being dismantled.
Despite various difficulties, particularly in terms of staffing, for institutions transitioning to national rather than colonial status following independence, many viewed the 1960s and 1970s as a 'golden age' for tackling trypanosomiasis.
Africa's difficulty in creating effective nation states is often laid at the door of the colonial powers and the arbitrary borders they created, but in fact those borders have often had a legitimising function.
He spent most of his years in the colonial administration of North America working to defeat New France, but his lack of formal military training led to political difficulties and his eventual downfall.
When conflict arose in the partnership, considerable difficulties were experienced in terms of locating the 'cause' of the issue within the matrix of colonial experiences, cultural values, organisational interests and individual personalities.
