I was watching Haiti on the news last night. Street vendors are set up selling clothes and jewlery while people just sing and dance, eat beans and rice compliments I'm sure of some "aid". Sewage in the streets, no one is picking up the trash or making an attempt to do anything. Just able bodied men & women milling around.
Technology requires a population that values learning science and achieving, high tech economics requires a group psychology that Haiti does not have. Culture matters a lot, just as it did long ago for the hunter gatherers versus the farmers. Liberals will not face this brutal fact because they want to promote multiculturalism. Mutliculturalism is one of the big lies of the left, it basically says we are all the same and the culture of Haiti is just as viable as the culture of Japan. They then blame all economic differential outcomes on racism. In other words white americans loved the Japanese (even though we nuked them), but have it in for Haitians, and whites owe everyone a living.
The most elemental and fundamental characteristic for economic growth and prosperity is "Culture". Get 100,000 Germans and Japanese in the middle of the nothing in the Sahara desert. Come back 10 yrs later and I guarantee you their society and economy would be in pretty good shape. Also.......most barriers in technological advancement are psychological.
The only barriers to tech advancement are the capacity of human mind and energy/resources availiable. There is no upper limit, and in the future the human mind will no longer be a constraint as computers are becoming ever more able to 'think'