Becoming a Professor in a Developing Country after a PhD in the US: Feasibility and Challenges I'm applying for PhD programs and I'm thinking about what I'll do afterward. Specifically, I did my undergraduate in a well-respected US university and am applying to similar tier universities for a PhD in a STEM field.

From my undergraduate experience I know I like teaching and research- so I'm thinking of trying to go into Academia and be a professor. Turns out this is really competitive. It also turns out you don't get a lot of flexibility about where you live, which is quite important to me. 

So I had a thought: what about trying to be a Professor in a developing country? I spent most of my childhood in a developing country and helping to improve education/opportunities in developing countries is something I've cared about for a while. Also, I'm not a US citizen, and I've spent little time living in the EU country I am a citizen of, so have fewer ties to the Western world than some.

So question 1: How easy is it to become a Professor in a developing country having a STEM PhD from a US university?

And since that question is quite broad, I'll say regions I'm interested in: Sub-Saharan Africa, China (if that's still considered a developing country), Indonesia.

Question 2: After getting in, what issues is one likely to have? (Academic culture, still being able to work competitively in interesting/cutting edge research, funding, etc). Especially if people have experiences of going from the US/EU to be professors in STEM fields in the aforementioned regions I'd be interested to hear about them.

Note: I am aware of this similar question but it seems to be more about short-term programs rather than becoming a longer-term professor.
There are two distinct circumstances that occur in regard to your question. Either A) the developing country is your home country (or a country that you once lived in) or B) it is a country you have not been extensively to. This will, I believe, affect the outcome. I'll try to answer for the two cases in my experience (and from what I have seen / heard from friends who went back to North Africa/Middle East/China)

Q1 : STEM Ph.D. from the US, especially if they arise from a good university or research group, are generally well seen outside of the US and, more specifically, in developing country or in China. As such, if there are position available in that country, when applying  your candidacy has high chances to be considered. However, for that, there has to be positions available. Some countries are really low on budget for academia and as such do not hire as many professors in research/teaching position, but mostly solely on teaching positions.  If a position is available, you have good chance if you know the custom (language, culture, etc.) of the country where you would like to work. However, position opportunities might be more rare.

Q2: I can only speak from experience of friends. However, what I have seen is that in some developing countries, professors at university have a much higher teaching workload than in the US, they have less funds and they have less opportunities to hire/pay international Ph.D. students. Therefore, it can greatly affect your capacity to do research because A) you have less time/money to dedicate to it and B) it's harder to find students.