Well some people made me tricks profiting of my naivety on that point. (like in year 1998/99 ? Nah...) I've seen a lot of comments ending or beginning by "in year 2024" (for example) to feed their point, and what I can say is that it's totally ridiculous. Just a warning, everything is not shiner and some things impossible just because we are "in 2024"... just sharing my experience here.
As to third world countries, alas they are wormed by first world ones, USA, Russia, China, with presumably not so good intents here or there, so I wouldn't say "they are recovering from centuries of colonial exploitation", I would rather say "they are kept down and exploited by those powers still to today".