Good question, you've made me think. I wouldn't have said it in person (it would have been a question 'have you lived abroad?')
My brain took a statement which I thought was an error, and could have been based on lack of personal experience, then jumped to the conclusion that it was lack of personal experience.
Second, I made a logical error that I wouldn't have made face to face. Developing countries is a very broad term. So I think now there are countries where the quoted sentence is true, and some where is isn't.
In real life, I probably would have clarified which countries the OP had in mind (from subsequent discussions he clearly meant the poorer ones in the group 'developing countries')
