Cover Story Africa
must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.” And history teaches that nations have been built from dis-
parate groups, and nations have become prosperous by moving systematically from their former poverty-stricken condition by dint of visionary planning, state intervention, hard work, and sometimes skullduggery. Even more critically, history teaches that all the nations that
went from poverty to wealth all used the same toolbox, first de- veloped by the city-states of Florence and Venice in Italy, and the Dutch Republic in today’s Netherlands, borrowed and enhanced by Britain, and emulated by all the others who came after Brit- ain, including the USA and the latecomers in Asia – Japan, Tai- wan, South Korea, China and India! All without exception! (See opposite for the toolbox.) It, therefore, behoves a still impoverished Africa to find that
toolbox; and having found it, press itself to the task of using the contents to progress from poverty to wealth as the others had done. And where is that toolbox? Strangely, it is never far away
from prying and determined eyes. At least two brilliant books published in the past seven years have pointed the way. Te first was by the Norwegian economic historian, Erik S. Reinert. His book, How Rich Countries Got Rich … and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor, first published in Norwegian in 2004 and translated into English in 2007 and reprinted in 2008 and 2010, ought to be Africa’s number one economic bible. Reinert is besotted with rare economic books and texts. Af-
ter 30 years at it, his book collection now stands at a staggering 50,000 volumes, documenting the history of economic thought and policy of the last 500 years! So he speaks, teaches, and writes as a heavyweight who knows his subject inside out. As Martin Wolf of the Financial Times put it: “Unlike much
of the writing produced by opponents of contemporary globalisa- tion, [Reinert’s] is a serious book, by a serious person. It deserves to be read.” Martin Vander Weyer of the Daily Telegraph agreed: “[Reinert’s book] lands powerful punches and leaves the thought- ful free-marketeer wondering indeed.” Jose Antonio Ocampo, the former UN undersecretary general for economic and social affairs, had the best punchline: “Reinert forces you to think,” he wrote in his review of Reinert’s book. Tus, Africa will have nothing to lose but its poverty and underdevelopment if it takes a serious look at Reinert’s work, and uses the toolbox the others used which he offers for free in his book. Te second book that also deserves to be read and taken se-
riously by Africa is Bad Samaritans – Te Guilty Secrets of Rich Nations & the Treat to Global Prosperity. It was written by the South Korean economist who teaches at Cambridge University in the UK, Ha-Joon Chang. Published in 2007, this book is so complimentary to Reinert’s, nay so similar, it is uncanny that the two authors did not sit in the same room, at the same table, at the same time, and write their two books which, interestingly, came out in English in the same year of our Lord, 2007. How amazing that great minds think alike! Chang’s book should equally be Africa’s economic bible
(No. 1B). Te great Noam Chomsky, the American linguist, philosopher, author, and political activist, describes it thus: “Lucid, deeply informed, and enlivened with striking illustra- tions, this penetrating study could be entitled ‘Economics in the Real World’.”
10 | April 2011 New African
“ How come the USA no longer
understands the link between industrialisation and ‘civilisation’ perceived so clearly from George Washington to George Marshall?”
The bottom line So what is Reinert and Chang’s bottom line? “We live in an age of great ignorance today, when established qualitative argu- ments exploring the process of economic development have been abandoned… Te banality of today’s explanations about poverty being a result of climate and corruption amply testifies to this ignorance, fortified by the absence of historical knowledge and interest in proven principles that have brought nation after na- tion from poverty to wealth over five centuries.” Tis is Reinert, and he continues: “We have collectively forgotten how to create wealthy nations
– an art that was successfully employed as recently as 50 years ago – and so our responses to the challenges of poverty today, however well-intentioned, amount to an attack on the symptoms of poverty rather than its deep causes. After the Second World War, the world understood that economic development was the result of synergies and increasing returns. Combined with the political threat of communism, this understanding made it pos- sible to overrule the free trade ideologies in Washington, and re- industrialise Europe and parts of Asia. In order to restart growth, it is necessary to reinvent this type of theory.” Reinert goes on: “When it was important to build a defence
line to protect Asia and Europe from the communist threat, the United States understood that the way to create wealth was to industrialise the nations bordering communism – from Norway and Germany to South Korea, Japan and Taiwan – and to support
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