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Singapore, the island city-state, has achieved staggering economic success in the past 50 years. With little natural resources of its own, its food requirements almost entirely imported, with no fresh water resources to write home about, this small nation of 5.3 million people (the third highest population density in the world) started life as an independent country on a par economically with most African countries. Today it has left Africa behind by a good country mile.
Singapore’s former Prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, the father of the country’s economic miracle of the last 50 years, was a frequent visitor to Africa.... From what he saw, Lee Kuan Yew was not best impressed. “I was not optimistic about Africa,” he confessed later.
The main issue with Africa was its corruption, way of doing things and incompetent leaders. Sure Singapore like much of Africa did not have a democracy yet Africa would need to learn from Singapore example.
Not adopting a mixed economy is what many post colonial African governments did wrong.
Too many went with socialist dominate economies. In order to have a good economy it will require some degree of socialism and some degree of capitalism. Each country needs to sort out how much of each will be good for their country. Myself I'd prefer an economy that leans towards capitalism. With a market leaning economy you get more innovation and more accurate economic numbers.
Singapore, the island city-state, has achieved staggering economic success in the past 50 years. With little natural resources of its own, its food requirements almost entirely imported, with no fresh water resources to write home about, this small nation of 5.3 million people (the third highest population density in the world) started life as an independent country on a par economically with most African countries. Today it has left Africa behind by a good country mile.
Singapore’s former Prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, the father of the country’s economic miracle of the last 50 years, was a frequent visitor to Africa.... From what he saw, Lee Kuan Yew was not best impressed. “I was not optimistic about Africa,” he confessed later.
The main issue with Africa was its corruption, way of doing things and incompetent leaders. Sure Singapore like much of Africa did not have a democracy yet Africa would need to learn from Singapore example.
Most of Black Africa went Left post independence. Some went Marxist. Revolutionary rhetoric makes for nice movies and personality cults but offer little in the way of development. The two countries that went Right, Botswana & Ivory Coast enjoyed rising living standards with Ivory Coast recently falling off because of the mass importation of backward Muslims from poorer countries and Democracy.
I fear now Africa will be held back by increasing universal suffrage where illiterate peasants will be easily bought off by corrupt politicians. Honestly I don't know if Africa has the human capital to develop on par of a Singapore. It might not be in the cards.
Did he mention that the FIRST thing Singapore did was institute universal, complete education, raising the literacy rate to near 100% and educating virtually every child at least to the age of 16, in English. Yes, Africa can learn quite a lot from Singapore.
That, and other social improvements, will not be all that hard to do in any African country that consists entirely of one urban city, with no rural peasants or villagers in far flung areas that are days of travel away from the nearest school, medical facillity, etc. But I can't think of any African countries that have that huge advantage.
Give me an African country with 98% literacy in English and 2/3 secondary diploma attainment rate, and I'll make it produce whatever you want.
Not just Singapore, but Taiwan, Hong Kong & S. Korea. All of the "tiger economies" that saw rapid development over the course of a few decades can provide lessons for Africa. And indeed would already have done so had Africa wise leadership.
The single biggest difference btw Africa and these Asian nations in the post-colonial period was leadership. Asias leaders, though flawed were highly patriotic and cared about national prestige and national competitiveness.
Africa came into the hands of cunning praetorian generals who were concerned with enriching themselves and their clique rather than national progress.
Also, the statements earlier in this thread about economic systems is correct. We see how nations like Vietnam and China were crippled early on by marxism, and how they are now playing catch-up. North Korea & South Korea, same people, originally same culture, but very different levels of development currently.
The single biggest difference btw Africa and these Asian nations in the post-colonial period was leadership. Asias leaders, though flawed were highly patriotic and cared about national prestige and national competitiveness.
Africa came into the hands of cunning praetorian generals who were concerned with enriching themselves and their clique rather than national progress.
How do you cultivate patriotism and nationalism when Africa's countries were drawn up based on colonial borders?
People, Africa is a CONTINENT, not a CITY, nor is it a UNIFIED POLITICAL ENTITY.
People, wikipedia is FREE. Type in Singapore and Africa, read both those articles, then make another thread just like this one, and then delete both those threads
The single biggest difference btw Africa and these Asian nations in the post-colonial period was leadership. Asias leaders, though flawed were highly patriotic and cared about national prestige and national competitiveness.
Africa came into the hands of cunning praetorian generals who were concerned with enriching themselves and their clique rather than national progress.
No it isn't,, although that might be a factor, it is not the biggest one. The biggest factor is that the IQ of East Asians is about 20 points higher than Africans. The post-colonial period in Asia had thousands of years of intellectual and technological culture to fall back on, with a literate population already in place that had generations of experience in systematic science and philosophy.
Today's population of East Asia ia a product of peoples whose cultural survival was subject to the selection of those with the intellectual skills of technology, philosophy and literature, and the present day makeup of Africans was not. This does not say that Africans are "inferior", but only that thousands of years of evolution have not placed pressure on Africans to evolve through natural selection the skillsets that are currently found useful in the industrialized world. It was easier to survive in Africa without solving complex struggles against the environment, so more people did survive and carry on the gene pool without those talents. Which is why cold barren climates selected for more techno-genes than hot lush ones.
Before you start to scream that only a racist could think that, why would American "racists" devise and norm IQ tests so that East Asians would perform so much better than the biased and racially-preferred Caucasians? Geographically isolated cultures evolved different intellectualities according to the exigencies faced for survival , and a couple of centuries of colonialism is not enough to undo that-- it's not about race.
Last edited by jtur88; 08-14-2013 at 08:26 AM..
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