Asian Lessons Learned? Now Where Is My Own Economic Miracle?

By Asoka Ranaweera

The writer is the founder and CEO of a company that advises investors on structuring investments and developing projects in West, East and Central Africa.

A lot has been written and said about the Asian economic miracle and how lessons learnt there could be applied to other developing regions. Even more is being said today about China’s economic miracle and how it can serve as a model for other countries going forward.

To an extent, I am quite skeptical when it comes to comparing such diverse regions, countries, histories and political systems, and then extrapolating a general framework that ‘experts’ advise be applied elsewhere, quite often wholesale.

Yet we have to acknowledge that in the case of the Asian economic miracle in general and China in particular, at least in appearance there are common threads that bind and led to one of the greatest periods of economic growth human history has witnessed in such a short space of time.

As Africa reemerges economically and socio-politically can Asia’s experience be replicated with an African twist? I have taken three common factors that contributed to the Asian economic miracle and discuss them below to see if indeed this can be the case.

It would seem to me that one enduring feature of Asia’s success at the beginning was strong if not overwhelming authoritarian control of every aspect of their citizen’s lives. At a stroke policy was imposed from top down and there was no debate about the merits of following a certain strategy, course and/or approach.

Therefore, almost always a single leader and in some cases a small group of people decided the fate of a country’s future whether this was the right thing to do or not is naturally contentious, and we can leave this point for a subsequent discussion.

For some Asian’s, democracy with its competing interest groups and panache for debate was too much to bear at least at the beginning of the long road to economic development. But no one can argue today that democracy has not improved significantly in most of Asia, because it clearly has, albeit with Asian characteristics. Let us not forget that the world’s biggest democracy in terms of population size resides after all in Asia.

So a question for Africa is whether or not, a new generation of leaders should follow what happened in Asia politically? Given that most African countries have experienced authoritarian regimes at one time or another and that only relatively recently has there been a movement towards increased political choice, entertaining an outcome like this seems unlikely to say the least? But political control in Asia was not the only answer to the development conundrum. Several other things happened too.

Political control enabled many Asian countries to plan their economic futures. They literally took stock of what they had, with many countries having absolutely nothing to compete on; they then set economic goals and objectives and followed them to the letter.

Through trail and often through error several laid the basis for industries that became formidable global competitors transforming their economies in the process. And as time progressed, they revised plans, changed goals and objectives and continued the process over and over again until they ultimately go somewhere.

So, the question arises should African countries do the same? Or is this simplistic reasoning, which fails to account for the fact that the rules of the game were a bit different for Asian countries forty years ago, than there are now for African countries? For example, in the midst of the Cold War the U.S. actively encouraged some Asian countries to export to America’s vast market as a way of bolstering its allies.

Yet today because of agricultural subsidies in the developed world many African countries cannot compete in a sector in, which many are productive and employs the largest amount of people. I suspect the answer to this question is a bit more complex, yes; it can be hard to plan in the face of barriers and challenges, sometimes maybe even impossible ones. Yet, many countries in Asia faced challenges equal to what some African countries face today. So, effective future planning, goal and objective setting can be a lesson learnt?

So, while political control and economic planning and then re-planning were important in Asia, implementation was too. Early on, many Asian countries realized the importance of having educated and experienced administrators and technocrats at the helm. Those that could be trained and deployed domestically were supplanted by an elite group of foreign trained and educated civil servants often at great budgetary sacrifice that would collectively form the foundation for the future economic miracle.

These technocrats and administrators formed a separate group, capable in time of running their countries often without instruction from their political masters. Could something similar be applied to Africa? It would seem to me, to be the case unequivocally, because it’s so important to have an effective group of people trained to manage and lead a country as it goes through the often haphazard and uneven process of economic development. In general who can ever argue against investing in human capital?

Despite my reluctance to apply general ‘lessons learnt’ from Asia to Africa, perhaps, there are some merits in doing so? At the very least it provides a good academic exercise, at most it provokes further introspection and self examination about future possibilities not just in Africa, but of course in other developing regions too. It might even lead some of us to ask where is my economic miracle? Some of the answers to this question might just reside in Asia.