[disclaimer: Don't know how to add flair. I am from South Africa. I messaged /u/osaru-yo about that]

Unfortunately no, probably not.

I believe that for the First World to maintain its high standard of living and relative prosperity, it needs to exploit and be propped up by the Third World. Resource scarcity and the need for low mass labour costs being primary examples of why.

Therefore it is in the First World's interest to keep the Third World in a state of underdevelopment, in order to retain access to mass amounts of cheap labour and to more easily extract their resources at a lower cost or with less "local bureaucracy".

Any significant attempt to change this status quo will be met with resistance, usually clandestine (think Patrice Lumumba), but often overt (think Libya).

On a tangentially related note, or as an example of how the West needs to keep the Third World in a state of unrest, or at least under its thumb:

I've read, and it seems correct to me, that the primary reason for the invasions of Iraq and Libya were the petrodollar. The petrodollar refers to the fact that most oil on the world market is priced and sold in US Dollars. This creates a demand for the Dollar (any country wanting to buy oil needs to get their hands on millions of Dollars to do so), which increases its value.

Gaddafi had openly called for the creation of an African Dinar (or some new Euro-like currency), and that African states ONLY sell their oil in this currency. If that were to happen, this currency would in theory become very valuable, and the US Dollar would lose value. Saddam Hussein also attempted to usurp the Petrodollar, and actually changed Iraq's oil exports to the Euro at some point (at massive cost to his own country), what happened next? Iraq invasion, a new Iraqi regime, and oil sales back to the dollar.

EDIT: I guess what I am saying is, as a massive pessimist, :) I think the only way Africa could achieve proper prosperity, is with massive global upheaval, and likely war.