My Beauty Best Teacher

Andrew Rice reviews Martin Meredith's new book 'The Fate of Africa' "...he writes that "what is so striking about the fifty-year period since independence is the extent to which African states have suffered so many of the same misfortunes." Some countries, like Nigeria and Zambia, have gone through cycles of reform and decay. But Meredith's subtitle--From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair--sums up the overall trend. It's hard to imagine now, but in the heady days of the 1960s, much of the continent was no less prosperous than South Korea or Malaysia. While those Asian nations have transformed themselves into economic "tigers," however, gross domestic products across Africa shrank during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Africans are getting poorer, not richer. They are living shorter, hungrier lives... The decline of an entire continent confounds our preconceptions about human advancement... How can one continent be so out of step with humankind's march of progress? Everyone agrees that Africans are desperately poor and typically endure governments that are, to varying degrees, corrupt and capricious. The dispute is about causes and consequences. One group--call it the poverty-first camp--believes African governments are so lousy precisely because their countries are so poor. The other group--the governance-first camp--holds that Africans are impoverished because their rulers keep them that way. The argument may seem pedantic, but there are billions of dollars at stake, and millions of lives. The fundamental question is whether those who are well-off can salve a continent's suffering, or if, for all our good intentions, Africans are really on their own..."

From Reuters:

Struggling countries must manufacture more and be given better access to global markets to expand their economies, the U.N. Industrial Development Organization said in a report...The discovery of oil or gold can suck labour out of manufacturing, raise the price of goods and push the economy away from exports and into domestic sectors, the report warns.
African countries should learn from Asian states such as Malaysia that developed their economies through wealth creation, rather than focusing solely on cutting poverty, the report says.
Africa has been dogged for decades by the "happy peasant syndrome", where donors give money to alleviate poverty instead of targeting the aid for economic growth,says Kandeh Yumkella(UNIDO DG)

Kofi Akosah-Sarpong writes:

Africa has seen all kinds of development paradigms that have never fully factored in her rich values and experiences, unlike places like Japan, South Korea, and Malaysia. Why should Africa be made to go through all these non-African-created development paradigms? Because the Western world thought that Africans are not developed, or more appropriately, not "civilized," and that they could replicate their values and experiences in Africa in their self-imposed "civilizing mission." They did this without factoring in Africa's values and experiences because they wanted to play God by re-creating Africans in their development image...Still, in terms of Africa's development progress, almost all the foreign development paradigms are not bad. The problems have been how to mix Africa's environment with these development paradigms so as to facilitate a better sustainable development, as advocates of the modernization theory say. This inability of African elites to creatively mix their values and experiences with their colonial legacies and the enabling aspects of the global development values, have not only seen Western governments continue largely with the modernization theory but also international development agencies' programs that come in the form of foreign development aid.

Suman Bery writing in the Economist:

With the two exceptions of Malaysia and Indonesia these countries did not enjoy rents from significant mineral resources. As such they were not subjected to the so-called “resource curse” of a struggle for control of these rents, the problems of an appreciated real exchange rate, and lack of competitiveness of the tradables sector. Also, at the time of their fast growth episodes, most of the Asian countries were well into their demographic transition, with the dependency ratio declining as the labour force expanded. This led to a rise in their saving rates, complemented in many cases by significant foreign aid.
As Angus Maddison pointed out a decade ago (in his "The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective") Africa’s underlying circumstances are much less favourable. (His discussion includes Mediterranean Africa, while I will restrict myself to sub-Saharan Africa.) Several of its major economies enjoy enormous mineral riches, which the world over pose tremendous problems for economic management. The prices for these minerals fluctuate violently in global markets causing volatility in revenues; the easy availability of mineral revenues inhibits the growth of a domestic taxation culture essential for the development of accountability to the citizenry; the struggle for illegal control of the mineral resources has been a source of fierce conflict and corruption; while the easy foreign exchange revenues the mineral exports make available boost the real exchange rate. This inhibits the growth of labour-intensive manufacture, which was the source of Asia’s growth.

John Cheruiyot writes "...The rise of Asia, the rise of China, Sinagapore, Malaysia, India and other tigers is fundamental. This change is a product of creativity and innovation by the East.
The East believed in themselves. They believed in their ideas and their ideals. They were brave to chart their destiny in a direction contrary to the western logic. They manufactured goods for the poor. They made technology respond to the needs of their poor. They provided electronic, textile, machinery and gadgets within the purchasing power of the poor. They used their cultural wisdom and traditions to mould a world contrary to the western ego. They used their languages, their food and their medicine. They followed their precepts and tenets handed over from their ancestors. Hence they shaped the their world..."

In 234Next Ayo Okulaja reports:

“The only way to fight corruption that is endemic to the entire world is to develop a culture that rejects corruption in the formative years; that is in schools and at home.” This was the postulation of the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Bin Mohamad.

From the IMF's Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa,2008(PDF):

The term “emerging market” was coined in 1980 to refer to countries that had stock markets and were in transition toward having the features of the mature stock markets in industrial countries.This box suggests that some African countries fit within the emerging market group and supports this view by benchmarking these African economies of 2007 against the ASEAN countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore,and Thailand) of 1980, when the term “emerging market” entered the lexicon.
Selected African countries compare favorably with the ASEAN countries of 1980. The ASEAN countries were already experiencing strong economic growth. Yet, in many other respects, the ASEAN countries looked quite different from what we see today. Inflation rates were still high in some cases, the depth of their financial sectors was limited, foreign direct investment had yet to accelerate, and their financial
resources, reflected in international reserves, were adequate but not high. Many African countries have perhaps reached broader macroeconomic stability than the 1980 ASEAN benchmark. Growth is strong, inflation moderate, and international reserves relatively high. Like ASEAN, financial depth remains limited.Foreign direct investment is quite high, although this is in large part a reflection of the larger share of naturalresources such as oil in the case of African countries.2 Debt-to-GDP ratios are low.