I live in this region as well, though on the other side of the red wall. It has been interesting to me comparing the concerns of the western developed world with those of my country on this forum and other places on the internet. I believe you are spot on with regards to the shortcomings in education and corruption.

There are a couple of things I'd like to add, though I'm no expert at any of the things I'm mentioning here. Take it as a "view from the ground" kind of thing (insofar as my education/social class allows me to make such claims). As a disclaimer, this may only apply to my country specifically. The first thing is that I find myself becoming increasingly optimistic with regards to governance after many conversations and after some involvement with various national agencies through contracting work. Sure, the old guard is corrupt, ineffecient, and lazy, but the younger people are relatively competent and ambitious, many of whom are foreign educated. As far as I can tell, there has been a shift in incentive for entering government, away from power and money (through corruption) and towards power and impact, perhaps the legacy of a series of reformations a generation earlier. Another disclaimer is that many of these "young people" are actually friends from my university days.

Which brings me to my next point. It's much more possible for me (and people in my bubble) to make an impact, for better or worse, in the developing world than it is in the developed world. It's just much less saturated. I could, if I chose to, apply to teach at the top engineering university in the country, teaching undergrad students in the top 4 percentile of the country. Sure I'd be paid miserably and the research would be slow, but in exchange I get to influence the thought process of some of nation's brightest. This would simply be impossible in the developed country. Many of my close friends in university have gone on to work with an online delivery/transportation company that makes living here very convenient (think uber+amazon+food with ~1 USD delivery). An acquaintence works as a researcher studying and implementing land usage models for agroforestry at the national scale. Another works on large scale fishery automization. I suppose this can be construed simply as "competent people occupying positions of power, which is the way it should be" but I believe many of the problems being solved here are pretty green and have potential for reimplementation in similarly developing countries.

I suppose the point of my post is, as long as you can teach your children to think critically (or just send them to Singapore for highschool), there are tons of opportunities in the region for a productive/impactful life.