From: Mike Linksvayer (ml@gondwanaland.com)
Date: Thu Apr 11 2002 - 20:46:44 MDT
On Wed, 2002-04-10 at 18:45, Forrest Bishop wrote:
> It is next to impossible to keep your eye on all the balls in play these days. Two non-ME situations are just as important to your
> well-being.
Many situtations around the world _could_ turn out to be important.
Most don't. Not all are bad. Some very encouraging news from Senegal,
the westernmost country in Africa:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/10/international/africa/10WADE.html>
"I've never seen a country develop itself through aid or credit,"
said Mr. Wade, who was trained as an economist in Senegal and at the
Sorbonne. "Countries that have developed — in Europe, America,
Japan, Asian countries like Taiwan, Korea and Singapore — have all
believed in free markets. There is no mystery there. Africa took the
wrong road after independence."
Most of Africa's post-independence leaders believed in strong
federal governments and vaguely socialist economic policies. In
Senegal, Mr. Wade was known as the only intellectual of his
generation to be staunchly anti-socialist and a strong supporter of
a free-market economy. He was a pan-Africanist, believing as the
revered Ghanaian statesman Kwame Nkrumah did in the eventual unity
of Africa — but a capitalist one.
Wade is now president of Senegal after decades in opposition and has
emerged as one of the three most prominent African leaders on the world
stage. In the runup to Wade's election I recall reading (probably in
the Economist) that Senegal is one of the few or perhaps only African
country with an effective independent judiciary.
The emergence of one or more "tiger" economies in Africa would be a
major boon to the world economy and totally unexpected in most
quarters. It can happen: South Korea was poorer than most African
countries immediately after the Korean war. Singapore's first
paternalistic leader originally stated a goal of emulating Sri Lanka's
success.
Senegal is also the location of Touba, a city run by an Islamic sect
entirely on donations. See the article "No Politics Here, Thank You"
from the 2000.02.26 Economist (no free online copy).
Mike Linksvayer
http://gondwanaland.com/ml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:13:25 MST