No mere coincidence…many former colonies are offshoots of enterprises developed to exploit people and nature, to the benefit of European elites - kings, merchants, adventurers. They were not born as nation building, but as profit making projects.

In fact, the few colonies that did succeed, at least economically - take the USA as an example - were born out of a project by people who were escaping oppression and looking for a new land to build a new society.

the difference between the two models is that in the former established governance institutions were more extractive in nature, whereas in the later they were inclusive. And this institutional foundation explains most of the economic development failures we see today. This is, in summary, the argument laid out by Acemoglu and Robinson in “Why nations fails”. I find it pretty convincing.