Rich state, poor state

By Greg Mills, Brookings, 04 September 2024 

Over the past 60 years, Africa has changed dramatically. It is imperative to end our business-as-usual approach to development. The demographic circumstances of Africa—where the continent will double its population over the next 25 years— demands that we strike out on a new, reformist path that will deliver higher growth and more opportunities, especially for this young cohort. If we fail to do so, it is reasonable to expect mass migration, political instability, and widespread state failure.

And yet there are a variety of different opinions about why Africa is comparatively poor: For the donors, in general, the problems are about governance and a lack of opportunity more generally, and their solution is thus to try and provide a more enabling environment. Everyone has a different view about the solution: Africans, and especially their governments, are commonly externalist in their diagnosis, that change in the continent demands altering terms of trade and more inclusive systems of global financing and governance.

The academic community finds itself caught between aid as the solution and the problem itself, while their diagnosis does not explain why countries go from being extractive to inclusive. The business community tends to pay lip service to democratic and governance niceties, since they have seldom found a government that they did not like, preferring stronger, big-man style leadership which offers expedited decisionmaking and ease of entry and exit of capital. And the NGO community unsurprisingly prefers aid as the solution, along with spending benchmarks and greater volumes.

While of course one cannot crudely lift a development template from one situation and apply it to the next, there are critical and key tenets which are consistent between the reformers studied in the book “Rich State, Poor State.”

None of the reformers in “Rich State, Poor State” had any particular advantages over their counterparts at their moment of independence. So what has made the difference between Singapore and Swaziland, or Spain and South Africa or, to take a comparative African success, Mauritius and Comoros? We have learned a number of key lessons from development success stories and failures.

For instance, difficult geography, climate, or types of religion is not a consistent predictor, neither is colonialism or its particular type, as terrible as this inheritance may have been. Rather the challenge is to not be a prisoner of your past. Also, while wars of liberation may have been costly, and stability can itself offer great opportunities, this is not a reason for failure, as Vietnam illustrates. And nor is the imperative of political stability an excuse for slow reforms, viz the experience of the Baltics.

“The answer [to development challenges in Africa] does not lie in the technocratic details of reform but rather the choices that lie behind development, and the leadership and relationships that drive those choices”.

Rather, the answer lies in the search for constants: leadership (including vision, prioritization, attention to detail, astute diplomacy, deployment of political capital, institutional efficiencies) and building policy and relationships internal and external conducive to growth, along with stamina and the recognition of the need to shift away from a political-economy of insiders and outsiders. Overall, the answer does not lie in the technocratic details of reform—since these are comparatively easy to identify and specify—but rather the choices that lie behind development, and the leadership and relationships that drive those choices. Just like the problem is not the cost of competition and globalization, to the contrary, also the answer lies in more and improved systems of democracy.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CEMAS Board.