What Africa should learn from Singapore
The magazine African Business dated June 2013 profiles 250 of Africa’s top companies. This should make interesting reading. Even more interesting if not compelling, is the supplement on Singapore written by Anver Versi, the editor.
Singapore is a tiny island in the Far East or East Asia. Can such a dot on the global map have enough people to teach Africa, the earth’s second largest continent? Are science and wisdom not the monopoly of the mega-States?
History teaches us that great civilisation and religions started in what are now considered very small countries. Take for example, Greece the matrix of European science, philosophy and literature, and Israel whose prophets led foundations for world-wide religions. Yes, small countries have some knowledge to contribute; yes, Singapore has something to teach Africa.
Singapore was a British colony. It gained independence in 1965, eight years after Ghana the first colony south of the Sahara to gain independence and one year after Malawi and Zambia.
When it started its independence, Singapore had fewer resources than Malawi not to speak of Ghana and Zambia and most African countries. In the period of nearly 50 years, most African countries have metamorphosed very little, whereas Singapore has marched from Third World to First. It has become a member of the developed group of countries and one of the richest.
In a nutshell, what has been Singapore’s secret? Anver Versi quotes Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew as saying Singapore’s only resource has been the will and determination of its people to lift themselves up from dire poverty to abounding prosperity.
Anver Versi says: “But all people need leadership and this is where the country has excelled. It has been blessed with great leaders—people of outstanding intelligence, imagination and energy. Singapore is testimony that honest and dedicated leaders produce honest and dedicated citizens and that for such, nothing is impossible, no matter what the odds.”
At the beginning of their independence, Lee Kuan Yew reminded the Singaporeans that the world did not owe them a living, and that they could not survive on a begging bowl.
He saw industrialisation as Singapore’s hope for survival. The problem was how to entice the world’s multi-national companies to go to Singapore. It was no easy task since Singapore had fewer investment attractions, than its neighbours.
In 1901, Lee formed the Economic Development Board as one-stop agency for investors. Teams of the best and brightest persons were sent all over the world to try and entice investors to the island. It took visits of 40 up to 50 before one of the companies responded favourably.
He saw the desirability of creating a First World Oasis in a Third World region. This meant he had to train his people and equip them with First World standards.
The government built the infrastructure and provided well planned industrial sites, equity participation in industries fiscal (tax) incentives and export promotion.
One of the things Africans can learn not only from Singapore but other East Asia countries as well, is their love for learning at all social stages.
Singapore has achieved a 97 percent literarcy percentage. But that is not all, leaders there insist on their ministers and technocrats to delve in books and magazines concerned with industrial achievements of other countries. Lee Kuan Yew used to fly to Harvard University in the United States to attend seminars on industrialisation. The Prime Minister of Malaysia once travelled through Japan incognito to learn how the Japanese organised their industries.
Industrialising a country cannot be achieved by people who stop reading once they have obtained their diplomas or degrees. While a second or third degree is not absolutely necessary for managing an industry, without advanced knowledge and skills no one can make products that can compete on world markets.
In Malawi and perhaps in other African countries as well, we need institutions like Singapore’s Economic Development Board which are equipped with the best brains. These people should have attractive salaries, long-term contracts secure from political machination. They should not, for example, be subject to automatic removal when the regime which hired them has been displaced. No one will waste their time and money acquiring skills and knowledge if they know any time they may be fired.
Malawi should study the institution of countries like Japan, Singapore and Taiwan which piloted the industrialisation of those countries.
Lastly, but not least, the Economics Association of Malawi (Ecama) should be accorded guano status be subsidised and mandated to conduct research surveys.
Thats exactly what we need as a society people of this calibre able to articulate issues relevant to our needs.|You are such
spot on kind of a person,more lectures please.
thanks for your articles that have seen me develop a reading culture. i wonder how we would manage to get leaders that will instill in us mindset to become determined to start setting visions, be committed & act so that we lift ourselves up from dire poverty to abounding prosperity at household level. we malawians, im afraid to say,are so dependent that development seems impossible. worse still, most of the time, our leaders encourage us to become dependent and this has become the norm for our living. If say from a household one member goes to school & becomes a doctor, the rest of family members will relax and stop working and expect to be fed by this one doctor & render him common man till he dies without a house. At national level everybody is expecting to be fed by the govt and the govt nods to such demand. Abled boys and girls drop from school and marry and tomorrow will ask the govt to feed them. Meanwhile the govt will continue to hire expatriates to fill posts that malawians are less educated to take, shame on us. All the resources around us, with our independence in 1964, we still have leaders who say we can not feed ourselves? shame. It may be tough to start now standing on ourselves but later it will be rosy.
You are forgetting that Singapore is a nation comprised mostly of Chinese descendants. While every human being on this planet has more or less the same skills, worry about more or less the same things, feel more or less the same emotions, there are still inherent biological differences between people separated by geographic distances or national boundaries, endowing them different degrees of various talents, be they physical or mental. It is no accident that almost every east Asian nation on this planet has managed to become an economic powerhouse in such a short span of time with little outside help. Even North Korea, under one of the most oppressive regimes on this planet, with an economic and political isolation that has left it on the brink of starvation, is still technologically leaps and bounds ahead of almost every country in Africa. I think Singapore is a lesson worth learning, but I doubt the same story would ever play out in Africa.
It forgot to mention one thing. Lee Kuan Yew did a lot of things to unite all three races in Singapore. African leader cannot even unite one races. Tribal rivalries happens all the time. Corruption is also another big huge factor. Lee Kuan Yew live in small wooden house. My house is even bigger then his and he make sure every ministers, government officials and individuals are not corrupted. Also not to forget the fact that Singapore started its development without borrowing from IMF heavily while most African nations resort to IMF and the payment is never ending. That is the first big huge mistake African nations did during their earlier years of independence. However if Lee Kuan Yew we’re to face the same situation, I believe he could recover it in no time. Chinese people had a steely determination to get out of poverty. If the Chinese can do it, so does everybody else. But, in order to achieve that, very2 strong leadership is required.