What Can Africa Learn And From Whom?

AFRICA has two moods.

There is the Africa that wants to go it alone – pointing in the direction of self-reliance. This type of Africa is confident and proud of its past achievements, conscious of present dilemmas and hopeful of the future but at the same time aware of its place in the broader structures, processes and trajectories of contemporary world development.Then you have the other mood that tends to lean towards others, rather like the leaning tower of Pisa.This is the Africa with a begging bowl in the hand.Call them, for a lack of better terms, endogenous and exogenous tendencies.But as they say, these are two sides of the same coin and you can’t keep the coin without having to carry both sides on you.One can decide which side of the coin to look at at any given time, though.Since the 1960s, Africa has gone through these moods intermittently.Political leadership and the prevailing world political climate, at any given time, have always determined which mood would prevail.Put in simple terms, this quest for Africa’s place in the sun (never mind that it is the sunniest) has centred on the search for capital, knowledge and know-how.But since the late 1980s, the continent has increasingly been looking to the outside for help.The collapse of Socialism and the subsequent onslaught from an animated capitalism – masqueraded as globalisation – explain this scenario.I hope I’m not treading on eggs here.But people have to distinguish between internationalism and globalisation.The former was a way of looking at the world through the lenses of humanity; whereas globalisation is an ideology about market solidarity and the centrality of capital and its right to disrespect national boundaries.And Africa is now once again caught in the vortex of having to search for direction in terms of political and economic alignment.And this time the compass is pointing eastward.We are told China and India have been the missing link in the continent’s quest for renewal and development.The latest edition of African Business magazine’s cover has this bold headline: ‘China’s March into Africa’.To which I add: triumphantly.The article deals with the likely competition between China and the West over Africa’s rich natural resources and also the likely benefits that Africa would reap from a greater China’s engagement in terms of high commodity prices, technology transfer and capital injection.Similarly The Namibian carried an article: ‘China can lift Africa from poverty’ in which Jeffrey Sachs, the special adviser to Koffi Annan, echoed the same views as those in the African Business.There is thus this unwarranted faith that Africa’s salvation will come from outside even among well-meaning people like Jeffrey Sachs.We have been through these promises and hopes before – only to have them dashed.At independence most African students graced the halls of universities in the countries of their former colonial masters and they still continue to do so, perhaps even in much greater numbers than before.These were seen as the core cadre that would kick-start development on the continent.The rest, as we now know, is history.But Africa’s belief that it can learn from somewhere in order to spur its own development continues unabated – perhaps blindly.So, you have endless trips by high-ranking Africans to foreign lands in search of this rare commodity called knowledge.A Namibian delegation, for example, goes to India to look at their green scheme or to France to study decentralisation.Africa, however, is a continent that can’t draw some hard lessons from past experiences, which is the best way of learning.Or maybe it tends to forget easily.There are number of lessons that Africa need to learn and they are pretty simple: the fundamental one is that no outsider can develop Africa – Africans themselves have to.The other is that technology is never transferred – unless, of course, we are talking about some fairly mundane technology like making toothpicks or toilet paper.One of my professors in Egypt used to tell his class that “technology is never transferred; it’s stolen”.The other point that we are missing is that both China and India are also learning.Learning from the very West that we say we are turning away from.There are literally thousands of Chinese and Indian students at any given time at some of the leading universities in the US, Canada and Europe.They take this mass of information back to their countries and apply it.And here comes the difference between a typical returning African and an Asian student.T he African is likely to have excess baggage full of the latest designer wear, electronic gadgets, music CDs and films on DVD.The Asian is likely to carry a suitcase and bag full of CDs loaded with information to be used back home.Just to underscore this point – have you ever heard of an African being arrested or expelled from the West for industrial espionage? Africa must learn to learn while on the move – experiential and continuous – like a scavenging pack of wild dogs.The West is going East to learn, in addition to exploiting the emerging markets there.As an example, India and the USA recently signed an agreement for closer co-operation in nuclear technology on the sidelines of the last G-8 summit in Moscow.But how easily we tend to lose track of history.Remember how in the 1970s and 80s everyone, including Africans, saw Japan and the five Asian Tigers as models of development to be emulated? The conventional wisdom was that the Asian Tigers shared the same characteristics as Africa and therefore we could learn from them.Well, maybe Africa learned something from them but unfortunately those experiences remained in the conference rooms there and never reached African shores.So, let’s learn from our own mistakes, but more importantly from our own people – they are a repertoire of knowledge and should be the first port of call in our journey towards learning and development.It’s high time Africa applies mind to matter.This type of Africa is confident and proud of its past achievements, conscious of present dilemmas and hopeful of the future but at the same time aware of its place in the broader structures, processes and trajectories of contemporary world development.Then you have the other mood that tends to lean towards others, rather like the leaning tower of Pisa.This is the Africa with a begging bowl in the hand.Call them, for a lack of better terms, endogenous and exogenous tendencies.But as they say, these are two sides of the same coin and you can’t keep the coin without having to carry both sides on you.One can decide which side of the coin to look at at any given time, though.Since the 1960s, Africa has gone through these moods intermittently.Political leadership and the prevailing world political climate, at any given time, have always determined which mood would prevail.Put in simple terms, this quest for Africa’s place in the sun (never mind that it is the sunniest) has centred on the search for capital, knowledge and know-how.But since the late 1980s, the continent has increasingly been looking to the outside for help.The collapse of Socialism and the subsequent onslaught from an animated capitalism – masqueraded as globalisation – explain this scenario.I hope I’m not treading on eggs here.But people have to distinguish between internationalism and globalisation.The former was a way of looking at the world through the lenses of humanity; whereas globalisation is an ideology about market solidarity and the centrality of capital and its right to disrespect national boundaries.And Africa is now once again caught in the vortex of having to search for direction in terms of political and economic alignment.And this time the compass is pointing eastward.We are told China and India have been the missing link in the continent’s quest for renewal and development.The latest edition of African Business magazine’s cover has this bold headline: ‘China’s March into Africa’.To which I add: triumphantly.The article deals with the likely competition between China and the West over Africa’s rich natural resources and also the like
ly benefits that Africa would reap from a greater China’s engagement in terms of high commodity prices, technology transfer and capital injection.Similarly The Namibian carried an article: ‘China can lift Africa from poverty’ in which Jeffrey Sachs, the special adviser to Koffi Annan, echoed the same views as those in the African Business.There is thus this unwarranted faith that Africa’s salvation will come from outside even among well-meaning people like Jeffrey Sachs.We have been through these promises and hopes before – only to have them dashed.At independence most African students graced the halls of universities in the countries of their former colonial masters and they still continue to do so, perhaps even in much greater numbers than before.These were seen as the core cadre that would kick-start development on the continent.The rest, as we now know, is history.But Africa’s belief that it can learn from somewhere in order to spur its own development continues unabated – perhaps blindly.So, you have endless trips by high-ranking Africans to foreign lands in search of this rare commodity called knowledge.A Namibian delegation, for example, goes to India to look at their green scheme or to France to study decentralisation. Africa, however, is a continent that can’t draw some hard lessons from past experiences, which is the best way of learning.Or maybe it tends to forget easily.There are number of lessons that Africa need to learn and they are pretty simple: the fundamental one is that no outsider can develop Africa – Africans themselves have to.The other is that technology is never transferred – unless, of course, we are talking about some fairly mundane technology like making toothpicks or toilet paper.One of my professors in Egypt used to tell his class that “technology is never transferred; it’s stolen”.The other point that we are missing is that both China and India are also learning.Learning from the very West that we say we are turning away from.There are literally thousands of Chinese and Indian students at any given time at some of the leading universities in the US, Canada and Europe.They take this mass of information back to their countries and apply it.And here comes the difference between a typical returning African and an Asian student.T he African is likely to have excess baggage full of the latest designer wear, electronic gadgets, music CDs and films on DVD.The Asian is likely to carry a suitcase and bag full of CDs loaded with information to be used back home.Just to underscore this point – have you ever heard of an African being arrested or expelled from the West for industrial espionage? Africa must learn to learn while on the move – experiential and continuous – like a scavenging pack of wild dogs.The West is going East to learn, in addition to exploiting the emerging markets there.As an example, India and the USA recently signed an agreement for closer co-operation in nuclear technology on the sidelines of the last G-8 summit in Moscow.But how easily we tend to lose track of history.Remember how in the 1970s and 80s everyone, including Africans, saw Japan and the five Asian Tigers as models of development to be emulated? The conventional wisdom was that the Asian Tigers shared the same characteristics as Africa and therefore we could learn from them.Well, maybe Africa learned something from them but unfortunately those experiences remained in the conference rooms there and never reached African shores.So, let’s learn from our own mistakes, but more importantly from our own people – they are a repertoire of knowledge and should be the first port of call in our journey towards learning and development.It’s high time Africa applies mind to matter.