Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Oxford Martin School.
And thank you for coming on this lovely day or not, not quite as nice has been for the last few days.
It's an enormous pleasure to welcome you here this afternoon to a lecture.
African transformation economic development in the age of that, which is given by Carlos Lopez.
Karzai is a very good friend of the school and spent quite a lot of time here.
It's always nice to welcome someone who has a new and fascinating book out.
It's even nicer when that book was actually written in this building, just in fact in the offices across there.
So we're particularly proud of this cast.
As Professor in the Mandela School of Public Governance and the University of Cape Town and is a visiting professor at Sales PO in Paris.
Because has had a long and very distinguished career and I can't mention everything, but he led, for example, several United Nations institutions,
including the Economic Commission for Africa from 2012 to 2016,
and has many other links with this country, including being a associate fellow at Chatham House.
So with no further ado, let me invite you to the lectern to give your lecture.
Good afternoon. It's really a pleasure to be back in this city and at this school.
Thank you, Charles, for the introduction. I'm very pleased to present to you my new book that was especially written here in 2017,
and it was an attempt at the time to basically structure some of my thoughts after the experience of
working at the Economic Commission for Africa for years and being an actor in transformation processes,
discussions in Africa, being very close to the African Union and trying to influence that agenda in different ways.
Very happy and excited that now the African Continental Free Trade Area has just been
signed last year and the ratifications have reached a point where it can enter into force.
This is a battle of many decades, and it's really something that can change the landscape quite significantly for reasons that I will mention to you.
So the book is basically an attempt to try to revisit why Africa after more than doubling its GDP over the past 20 years.
And making progress in areas such as education and health, improving governance systems,
creating the world's second most attractive region for foreign direct investment,
reducing poverty slightly despite the explosion of the demography and rapid urbanisation.
Why this continent is still very much in lack of real economic and social transformation.
Partly industrialisation, we know is the necessary step towards economic and social transformation,
and Africa has missed many opportunities to accelerate industrialisation.
It's not like the continent doesn't have any experience with industrialisation.
In fact, Africa produces right now about 500 billion dollars worth of goods from the industrial sector.
But if you take into account the size of the continent and the size of significant
developments that took place in other regions of the world in industrialisation,
certainly we can see that Africa lacks industrialisation not only because of its
importance in terms of modernising the social and economic systems of production,
but also because this is an indication that Africa has been very slow in structural
transformation and that has implications in terms of absorbing its huge youth bulge.
And as a result, you know, you have problems of employment, you have problems of the economy responding to the needs.
It is important to mention from that angle that industrialisation is not just manufacturing.
Manufacturing is obviously a very important dimension of it, but it's more about modernising the economic systems.
And that includes modernising but also formalising the economic systems.
If you have a reality that is mostly dominated by informal transactions,
obviously it's much more difficult to talk about policy proposals that are based on formal economies like policies, fiscal policy, taxation, etc.
So the book tries to revisit this dilemmas, try to understand the ecosystem that exists right now in most African countries.
Obviously, taking into account the diversity of the continent because you have countries that are more industrialised than others,
and it tries also to bring the debate to the industrial policy debate of today,
which is a debate about how the technological impact is going to change the rules of the game with the robot ization,
with automation and machine learning.
It's going to be much more difficult to sustain certain types of jobs that were based in the equation where labour costs were very important.
Now, labour costs are a dimension that is becoming less and less relevant in some of the policy decisions that you have to to make.
And as a result, industrial policy from the perspective of certain specialists is now much more difficult and much more complex to undertake.
For instance, let's take into account the notion of productivity.
The terms, productivity and performance are commonly used within academic and commercial circles.
They are, however, rarely adequately defined or explain.
Indeed, they are often confused and considered to be interchangeable, along with terms such as efficiency, effectiveness, profitability,
measurement and improvement regimes are often built without a clear understanding of what is being measured and what needs to be improved.
This can be regarded as simply a pragmatic approach to improvement or a missed opportunity to fully
understand and therefore optimise important factors relating to competitiveness and success.
I mention all of this being much more complex when a lot of the dimensions of productivity,
effectiveness and efficiency are influenced by algorithms rather than what we used to attribute to human interventions.
Manufacturing value addition, for instance, which is the way you know economists measure the contribution of manufacturing to GDP,
are now very much in question as a good measurement.
There are some authors like rather and close to Joseph Stiglitz that talk about premature deindustrialisation,
where they try to identify factors that are influencing the peak period for industrial possibilities of manufacturing,
adding to GDP becoming much more earlier in stages of development of countries.
And therefore, you know, African countries as late comers industrialisation will be the subjects of this premature industrialisation possibilities.
In the book, I try to challenge that. I try to demonstrate that in fact, there are lots of negative set that associated with industrialisation,
but also some positive elements that Africans can build on.
The book tries to go beyond economic arguments alone, even if we can go quite a great deal in detail on issues relating to industrialisation.
Because it's a strong proponent for the structural transformation.
The book has tried to go into the politics, into the social dimensions as well,
and it tries to increase our understanding of the meaning of transformation from an historical perspective,
all the way to revisiting some concepts that started in the heart of Europe in the 18th
century when Industrial Revolution took place on two of the contemporary discussions of today.
There are eight challenges that that identified as the most relevant for transformation.
They range from the choice of development policies, the reforms of the the policy space, the respect for diversity,
which is quite evident in a continent with more languages than the other in the world and more cultural diversity than the other in the world.
The issues relating to agricultural productivity,
revitalising the social contract and what its meaning is when we revisit the concept of sustainable development, taking climate change into account.
And finally, the last chapter is about harnessing the relationship between Africa and China.
It's picked on purpose because this this partnership is going to define,
to a large extent, the future of the continent's relations with the rest of the world.
The controversial link between democracy and development is not avoided in the book,
and I tried to institute the debate based on the African intellectual contributions to this debate.
I avoid categorisations that are favoured outside Africa, such as liberal versus socialist systems and the like.
The tendency today is for the division between all totalitarian minded developing states and open democracies,
which unfortunately often produce no patrimonial or rent seeking a.
And I try to divide the countries in Africa more or less in these two categories.
The reformers and the rent seekers, I go into the detail about how democracies like Botswana demolishes the scenic channel for development.
What we can learn from them. The book also assesses some other aspects that they are influencing our politics.
Like, for instance, the Washington consensus exposing in the book the internal tensions and arguments that contributed
for the changes that occurred and made made the Millennium Development Goals possible,
basically moving from the period to decades, 80s and 90s, where most of the discussions in Africa were on prescriptive policies.
Structural adjustment policies toward. And after the 2000 where the Millennium Development Goals became the mantra
and what was the most important contribution from the Millennium Development
Goals discussion was that we moved out of prescriptive policies into goals
and obviously with different ways of attaining those goals becoming possible,
but not as much as probably we we think it was.
And the book goes into the detail, starting by revisiting the Washington consensus orthodoxy,
looking into how internal debates of the institutions have promoted it.
Like the IMF, the World Bank were taking shape and how, for instance,
the evaluation department of the IMF was so critical of the ways in intellectual attitudes of
the IMF staff UM became possible and how Africans have to take advantage of this opportunity.
The windows of opportunity, where there are doubts,
where there are discussions to basically assert a bit more that interests and create more policy space for themselves.
In Africa, the weak performance of structural adjustment policies is not questioned.
For instance, the continent GDP grew only one percent between 79 and 92 compared to countries in East Asia and the Pacific regions,
about five percent during the same period.
Precisely because they were not playing with the same policy recommendations and were actively promoting industrial policies,
I think after the financial crisis of 2008 2009, all the neo classical notions of market efficiency are now being questioned more openly.
The choice of Taiwanese then Justin Lin, a former military man who joined Mainland China after, you know,
being born in and making a good career in Taiwan to become chief economist of the World Bank was also a surprise.
It was, in fact, um, a good indication that the more the model of development of his country based on the role of the state,
as we know, China was now welcome in the discussions within the Washington circles.
It's true that Justin Lin did not last too long as chief economist of the World Bank, but his Monacan, his sprint is very much there.
The book reviews also the point of view of several other economists, like Thomas Piketty,
author of The Monumental Capitalism of the 21st Century that analyses the deepening of inequalities in modern societies tries
to translate that debate into African inequality issues that are quite significant or somewhat like What is your blood sugar?
Which was the former chief economist of the IMF. 2008 2015.
Or believe that the pendulum and moved from the more neo liberal traditional ways of
perceiving the markets to giving a much more prominent role to the state as a regulator,
but also as a facilitator of some of the structural transformation processes?
Try to compare some of the African developments to countries outside Africa,
because that's the best way to demonstrate that Africans are often shortchanged.
Like, for instance, if we look into what happened and the way Ukraine on Ireland was treated,
it was very different from the way we treat the same African countries in terms of the list of conditionalities,
the type of policy recommendations, etc. So it's very important to bring these type of comparisons.
And I think all of this is basically to try to give the impression that we need
to ensure agency on the part of the Africans to ensure agency Africans have
to demonstrate that they really are prepared for what the world considers to be
the three pillars of the current transformation processes in the continent.
They have to be much more ambitious, much more sophisticated and much more coherent now of the ambitions.
It's basically about bringing on board the megatrends,
like the megatrends of demography and the megatrends on the climate that are going to oblige every country to set a vision that is not just.
Based on what they know right now, but what may happen, which is quite phenomenal in many respects,
but also being capable of the fighting, particularly the young people, because, you know,
the average age in continents right now is 19 years old is five people to actually
contribute to that vision and all the reform minded leaders who really are in this,
uh, sort of, uh, frame of mind.
Otherwise, you know, you will not have that sophistication because we are now exposed to value chains that have become all global.
So if you want to do anything that is prominent in terms of economic development,
particularly if we talk about industrialisation, but it's also relevant for other areas like like services or agriculture.
One needs to know the value chains globally and gets to know what are the issues of opportunities that one given country has.
You cannot too many. So this is about focus. It's about priority setting.
And this is the most difficult part because most countries believe that they have to do everything.
It is very difficult to go and try to revisit the concept of competitive advantage.
Some believe that competitive advantage is static is what you know.
The hearse has given a country either his geolocation or its riches in terms of natural resources or some,
you know, neighbourhood that facilitates certain types of economic activities.
Those are all static elements. You can create your own competitive advantage by being very aggressive but also sophisticated.
So the book goes into some examples like, you know, Vietnam creating a naval industry out of nothing or, you know,
different countries doing things that were not really in anybody's mind that created
their own competitive advantage out of this sophistication and then coherence,
because we're at the time where planning and the way management of economic activities was shaped and based on sectoral policies is over.
It's not that sectoral policies have disappeared, but to make a difference today.
You need to have a certain number of very well can see it,
but very few priorities the thought of national undertakings and from those national undertakings that everybody has
to identify what is their collaborative dimension to make them happen and countries that are really making it happen.
And in the discussion, we can, you know, talk about some of them.
They have this capacity to make their machinery coherent and not just the state machinery or the administration of the state,
but also bringing the economic actors, private sector and others into the picture, too.
To make this coherence, you know, sort of a national national undertaking.
So if I had to metaphorically.
Synthesise the book, it could have been with the title that I chose, and the publisher refused because it felt that it was not commercial enough.
And the title was, you know, the smooth seas don't make skilful sailors because of the difficulties that the continent is facing.
You can actually be quite skilful, and if you are you, you are a winner in terms of transformation.
It's not given to everybody. It's not given to every country.
So few will succeed. Most will not.
But that's what makes the whole process very dynamic. And that's why, you know, I wrote the book so we can have the challenges of the dilemmas.
And at the same time, some of the solutions that can respond to the most difficult debates that are taking place around each one of the dilemmas.
Thank you. Thanks very much indeed, tell us, which gives us plenty of time for discussion.
Who would like to go first with a question to our lady over there?
I think that was a fascinating talk. And you mentioned the Millennium Development Goals as a real game changer,
and it made me wonder what your thoughts were about the Sustainable Development Goals and whether they're going to be another game changer,
a continuation, a positive or or a barrier to this development.
Well, I did say that the Millennium Development Goals were extremely important to move us from the prescriptive policies period to, you know,
sort of a more open policy space because shifting the debate towards goals gave
the latitude for different countries to select how they would reach those goals.
But there are three difficulties with the Millennium Development Goals that are
important to mention if we are going to talk about the Sustainable Development Goals.
The first issue is that they were not universal.
So it was still a compact of sorts between developed countries giving money or support to developing countries to do the right thing.
And, you know, the compact worked in the following way you deliver good governance,
meaning countries that are going to receive that support developing countries,
you deliver good governance and will support you to attain these goals and the goals were attained.
Actually, they were surpassed universally, but mostly due to the excellent performance of about two countries China and India,
as we know, because of their demographic size. They made all the goals being attained.
The second problem with these goals is that it translated universal defined, not universal application,
obviously defined targets to national realities, and that is completely unfair.
It's like asking, you know, I'm going to use a metaphor is like asking a marathon is to run with the sprinter.
You see, uh, you have a country that has to reduce poverty by half.
But let's say it has eight percent of poor running at the same time as the other countries that has to reduce poverty by half.
But there's 80 percent of poor. So reducing 40 percent of your population is not the same as four percent.
So but we basically apply these rules. As if the countries were all the same, and they obviously they are not the same.
And this is particularly important because Africa obviously coming from a much lower base, was set by this definition to fail.
So it was not possible for all of us, for countries in Africa to succeed because they had a long way to go.
And even if their level of effort was superior and when I was in economic commission for Africa,
we made the statistics of efforts for the MDGs implementation rather than attaining the targets.
And then out of the 20 most impressive performances, about 15 were African.
But, you know, they were not given any credit for it.
So that was the second problem, the third problem is that the Millennium Development Goals were based on an assumption.
That was still coming with basic needs in mind.
It was mostly about, you know, making sure that the social is fixed rather than real transformation, for instance,
what you will find in the Sustainable Development Goals is very much akin to structural transformation as defined by the economists.
You know, you have like infrastructure is the domestic resource mobilisation is there.
You have even support for industrialisation there.
But all of this was absent from the Millennium Development Goals. So it's important just to mention this because.
It was a good effort because it changed this from prescriptive to, you know, more policy space, but it was not enough an effort.
Now the Sustainable Development Goals have gone too far in the pendulum, in the other direction.
Because of the success of the Millennium Development Goals to a large extent. The ambitions of the Sustainable Development Goals are unattainable.
And any expert in a specific area of the 17 areas will tell you my area is unattainable.
It's aspirational, is so aspirational that is like you reading the Bible or the Koran.
You know, it's it's not possible. We are not going to in 15 years finished with all diseases, all the problems of education on Earth, oil poverty.
The slogan is Leave no one behind.
I mean, very nice. But that's that's an ideology that's not really a target.
And I don't think it is going to be possible.
Now we have even built a second problem because the aspirations are so high, you have created a discussion about the truth.
That really bothers me because more and more people,
they see the Russian organisations and state and governments organisations as proclaiming these things that are not attainable,
and then this creates frustrations, and we have not really calculated the risk of creating expectations that cannot be met.
And I think that is really a big problem. And then the third problem that I see with the Sustainable Development Goals is
that the Sustainable Development Goals are supposed to be this time universal, meaning as much for Sweden as it is for Burkina Faso.
But is it? Is it going to work like that? Obviously, what we can expect is that we'll have a report prepared by UN agencies for Burkina Faso,
but who is going to produce really a report for Sweden? I don't even dare mention the US.
So this is going to come to the fore. It's not yet there.
It's coming to the fore. And last but not least.
Every single international agency, not just the UN or the international financial institutions, even a big NGO.
Every single international organisation is faced with decreased funding.
To justify not being a bit cynical, you forgive me.
To justify what they do, which is the best of intentions, obviously.
They need more resources than what they have right now.
So the only way they can attract the attention of the public at large is by demonstrating our bed.
Their specific area of concern is so you have these aspirations that are going all the way to the top and then
the people that are in charge saying it's going so bad because they need the money to attain the aspiration.
So this gap is going to be very difficult to manage. Carl, can I ask you a question?
And it's about a narrative you hear quite a negative narrative about South African.
You touched upon it a bit in your talk.
And that is that the way large areas content developed is by utilising the comparative advantage of low wages and argument to South America to Asia.
Did it? And then a negative bet is that Africa is missed that boat, that automation,
especially in Asia South America, means that South Africa can't change advantage in that.
Do you think there's truth in that narrative? And if there is, how will South Africa be able to do that?
I think there is truth in it, obviously, because we are entering a stage of the industrial systems where machine learning
is occupying a lot of functions that were previously occupied by humans,
but it's still very expensive.
And you know, part of the research about job losses due to automation has actually been done here at Oxford Martin School.
So I had the privilege of going through what has been produced, and I'm very familiar with the debate.
I was a member of the Global Commission for the Future of Work of the ILO, which, by the way, is co-chaired by the Prime Minister of Sweden.
And the president of South Africa, and this is very interesting because both of them are now,
of course, in leading positions in their countries, but we are trade unionists in the past.
So they kind of have this background and we can say, you know, one of them has become a big capitalist, too.
But that's what I think it's interesting in this debate is to is to not confuse how
we measure costs across the world with how we measure cost in a given economy in,
let's say, an African country, because obviously if you are talking about the world.
What serves as a reference point is the most productive in the world, and therefore, you know,
the labour costs are going to be measured against that level of productivity and Africans being late comers will not fare well in that comparison.
But this comes with one advantage lots of disadvantages with one advantage.
Amongst the disadvantages just to start is the fact that obviously we cannot imitate the
industrialisation that others have done because those conditions are no longer available.
It's not just the labour costs is the intellectual property regimes,
it's the regulatory systems that are in place right now, like certifications of health, environment and you name it.
It's the fact that trade conditions have changed dramatically is the fact that supply chains have become extremely complex.
We can go on with the list all the way to Africa has less infrastructure, Africa is less skilled labour and so on.
So those are the disadvantages. We cannot do import substitution like Latin America did.
We cannot do export oriented industrialisation like Southeast Asia and China did.
As the main vehicle for industrialisation, but there is one thing we can do.
Look at our demographic dimensions. The population is going to increase to two billion by 2050.
Most of the growth that Africa has experienced in the last 20 years has been propelled by internal consumption.
Precisely because of these demographics. Now,
this first line of consumption that people have when they have a bit of income is going to be
used mostly on low manufacturing value addition products and also on agro processed products.
This is very interesting because if you create a space within Africa that is protected
with some tariff regimes like the free trade area that is being established right now,
you have possibilities for agro processing that are immense because Africans will consume first,
you know, your pasta, your yoghurt and you name it before they go for more expensive things.
And in terms of the labour costs themselves,
there are certain types of industries where it's still competitive to go human rather than full automation.
You can do part of automation. Full automation is still a bit too expensive.
This is going to offer a window of opportunity that is very short in time.
So Africans have to rush and occupy that so they can scale up quickly.
But it is true it is still possible to do it. And some countries are doing it with success that is mixed, but it's it's happening.
Thank you. I should have reminded people that we webcast this.
So when you ask a question, do you remember your broadcast, Simon and David?
Yeah, thank you. Mentioned another megatrend as climate change in relation to your framework of sophistication and coherence.
Where do you see that elements of preparedness, response and opportunities in relation to climate change within the continent?
I think it's in the first element of vision.
If you don't include the two most important megatrends in the continent, demographic and climate, you are going to fail.
And I'll tell you how much the link with industrialisation is powerful.
Most of the debates on climate change tend to, you know, box the Africans on the discussion about adaptation.
And obviously, there's nothing wrong with adaptation. Most of the things that are.
Very difficult to argue in terms of policy debate is because it's not necessarily wrong, it's like the is not necessarily that is wrong.
It's it's the nuance. And of course, adaptation is good.
But Africans should not limit themselves to adaptation alone because if they are going to now industrialise as late comers,
they will have to do it differently. They cannot do like the others with smokestacks and basically doing it the old fashioned way.
Africans can generate power from renewables at the cost that is matching fossil fuel,
if not going to take advantage because it's going to be cheaper than fossil fuels.
No other region in the world when they industrialised and this luck, that's a look.
So we can go straight to green energy. So that's just the energy element that we know now that you can build in a completely
different way than what you used to build before can build in a sustainable way.
You don't need to imitate the way factories were conceived in the past can go straight
into a much more modern and sustainable way of constructing the same for infrastructure.
And the list goes on. So climate has to become part of this equation.
That's why in the vision, if you know leaders, but not just leaders, if a country does not have that type of ambition is going to miss the boat.
Thank you, David. And David MacDonald wild card, as you mentioned, various attributes and aspects and opportunities about Africa that are special.
And one of the things about that continent is its environment and indeed its wildlife, and we happen to know that those are enthusiasms of yours.
So considering that specialness, do you see opportunities for Africa to develop to industrialise alongside its
environment that can be developed in ways we have not seen in other parts of the world?
I would say, David, that is even a must because Africans come late to this game again, just not to repeat, they have to leapfrog.
But in leapfrogging, they really can learn a lot from what is the right thing to do.
For instance, I'm going to take the example of my little country, Guinea-Bissau, which is an amazingly biodiverse country.
So when the government started discussing what should be done in terms of structural transformation for Guinea-Bissau,
they asked my advice and I went there and sat with the policymakers on a retreat
and we had a very long discussion and eventually that made emerge a plan that,
unfortunately, because of political instability, has not been implemented so far.
And the plan was all about making Guinea-Bissau a biodiverse jewel because
that was the most important ingredient for the transformation of the country.
And, you know, people say,
what is the link with industrial industrialisation because we tend to think industrialisation always in terms of manufacturing first.
But in fact, this is about modernising it. It's bringing the economy to the industrial era of transactions and relations more formal.
So we have less informality. We have the capabilities of, you know,
basically providing a social contract that is much more enhanced than what exists
in terms of subsistence and informality that people leave out of right now.
And for that, we need a modern economic structure that modern economic structure in a country like that, it's about sustainable tourism.
That's industrialisation. And, you know, making sure that, you know, with Echo Echo Resorts and so on,
you can take advantage of of of the of the opportunities offered by nature, the same in terms of fisheries.
The way fisheries can help a country is it is very different from the way it is exploited right now.
We have these agreements with the European Union,
each one of the coastal countries in Africa that basically are exhausting the seas, and there is no need to go that route.
If you actually have the introduction of aquaculture, different types of industrialisation that actually protects the biodiversity.
So it's always possible to link the two. Question here.
Hello. You mentioned that the last chapter of your book was about the role of China in transforming Africa.
Can you just briefly explain how you see that playing out?
First, I try to correct the perception that we are very important for China.
I think China is very important for Africa, but the reciprocal.
View is is missing. I think for China, Africa is just a reservoir of sorts, because if you see,
for instance, in terms of foreign direct investment, outward foreign direct investment.
Africa represents about four percent of Chinese foreign direct outward investment.
That is as much as Pakistan, the entire continent receives as much as Pakistan.
So that puts things into perspective when it comes to investment, when it comes to trade.
It is true that the trade dimensions have evolved over time and we now see trade the Chinese number one.
African trade partner. As a country, yes, but if you take the EU 28, soon, 27, we don't know.
It's much more important than China by far.
But what is fascinating is that what is our place in terms of being a trading partner for China and Africa is like No.
17 as a continent. Whereas for Europe, we are number three after the US and China were the third.
Trading partner of Europe. Europe is number one for us.
We are number three for the. And I think that tells you that the relationship and the partnerships have to
be shaped in a very different way from what the debate right now is offering.
The other very important aspect that I bring in the book is the African agency in its relationship with China,
because less talked about is the fact that China receives foreign direct investment from Africa,
that China as a very large African community living in one of their cities, Gwangju,
that basically serves as the most important link for a lot of trading relations with the continent.
And I revisit some of the other aspects that are quite interesting. For instance, the fact that now you have six African airlines that fly to China,
and only last year, China for the first time started flying to to Africa.
So there is some agency on the part of the Africans, and for those who don't know the largest of the largest enterprises in Africa.
Is Naspers based in Cape Town,
just basically I.T. communications group that invests in different parts of the world and one of their assets is in Tencent,
which is the third largest I.T. company in China.
And just out of that investment, they have a capitalisation of about 120 billion dollars, which is in terms of size and importance.
I'm not comparing apples and oranges just to give you sort of reasoning about the agency of the Africans in terms of size is like,
you know, uh, five times what China invest in Africa per year.
So we have to put things in perspective. Thank you.
At the moment. So thank you for the really interesting talk,
and I'm interested that you say there was this demographic dividend keeps coming up on the youngest continent and so forth.
And I'm curious to hear if you have examples of how countries have worked towards setting
up the education sector to be able to handle this industrialisation and if at all,
is anything happening in that space? Or will it still be a lot of imported ideas, imported foods, imported technologies?
Yes. Some countries are very, very much aware of the fact that they need to prepare and that their use for the jobs of the future,
not for the jobs of today. For instance, Ethiopia has decided to have universities across the country.
You can question the quality of those universities, but the bottom line is this they have the lowest.
They have the lowest urbanisation. In the continent, 20 percent.
And that is because, you know, they basically decentralised their education system now.
Also very interesting, they are now building some of the most innovative industrial parts.
They have started with one in the USA. Now they are doing in different parts of the country that the total number of products planned 12th.
Each one of these products is next to a university, one of those universities across the country.
Outside of this, only one is not is actually. Now, I I'm quite familiar with the was industrial park,
which was the first one because it has been the subject of a lot of studies, including from many people here in in Oxford,
because of its fascinating combination of innovations,
some not yet to the point where you can judge whether they were successful or not, but everybody is accompanying them very closely.
And I really find it fascinating that, you know, the University of Iowa that.
Shares a wall with the industrial park, so it's really neighbour.
Has been reoriented in terms of its offering to basically correspond to the needs of the park.
You know, you have it's a park is specialised in Techstars,
so you have people that are doing chemistry because they work with the collar in the collaring and so on.
You have people that are textile export, all kinds of things relating to the employability of of those people.
And we can say that Ethiopia has been very successful so far in attaining at least two things that we can measure.
One is reducing the fertility rate.
Second, reducing urbanisation that is quite significant, coming from the second largest population in the continent, you know.
And I think it's a good example, but we have other examples in Rwanda and Mauritius.
They are introducing universities that are so innovative and so different from anything that has been experimented so far,
not just in the continent, even worldwide.
Like this, African Leadership Academy has now, uh, produced, uh, one of the Africans to be recognised in the Time magazine.
100 the most famous influential people.
You know, the value of that is what it is. I mean, I'm not giving too much importance to it, but I know the gentleman is Fred.
Swaniker is a Ghanaian, and he's really quite impressive by bringing completely different ways of understanding the role of higher education.
But some someone dreaming is fine.
But when he when he gets the backup that he's getting from the likes of the president of Rwanda or the government of non-issues,
it's something to take notice. Thank you. Thank you.
She must have a doctoral student in business school.
Thank you. Professor Canners. Uh. My question is to add to I don't know whether you can give me to two questions.
And the first question is on MTG and stages.
In the course of your dog,
I'm afraid you are not specific that it appears no statistics on how many African countries and 10 MDG fully before the estimates are in,
my question is this the cost of your work? Nigeria is a key African country, which I'm afraid.
MDG was a very critical policy of the.
Videos, government and the current deputy deputies as children of an Indonesian,
Amina Mohammed was the head of the MDG goals, do you what do you see is wrong in Nigeria and concepts in terms of MDG?
A. Means that's the key question. Second question Nigeria is here.
Oyo Rich Nation is known globally. Well, it appears that the oil and money.
Receipts have to help the poor to such an extent and policy.
I mean. Regulation of a policy subsidy issue, functionality, functionally less functioning refineries.
Issues which have a bit of no transparency in the industry and the cost of your work.
What is is wrong with Nigeria in terms of the flying economy so that the unemployment,
which is critical at this current time and the three percent as we speak?
And then is there anything you can speak about Nigeria positive way and the negative aspects?
Thanks so much. Well, of course, I follow Nigeria very closely because being the largest economy in the continent,
its influence is immense, but also because it's the largest country in terms of population.
So both are reasons for being quite curious about everything that happens in Nigeria.
And I would say also because Nigeria has incredible talent and innovation in many areas like,
for instance, creative industries that are one way of defining sort of the future.
Nigeria is by far the most talented African country.
To the point that surprise, surprise in rebasing exercise, the the contribution of creative industries for GDP has surpassed agriculture.
So it's something that people normally don't know.
So definitely Nigeria is very important in in many respects when it comes to the MDGs.
I think all countries in Africa have adopted their messages as their sort of policy because it was still the time we are talking about.
The early part of this century, the first decade, it was still the time where a lot of the policy debate was around what was agreed with the donors.
Even countries that don't depend on donors. Nigeria doesn't depend on donors still were influenced by that policy debate.
So, for instance, the main institution in the African Union dealing with economic issues is not by mistake.
It's called the New Partnership for Africa, a new economic partnership for Africa, developing NEPAD partnership or these days.
So it's like we can't define. The policies of development of the continent without the partnership, meaning the donors, because that's what is meant.
And everything was about how this compact that I mentioned is going to work, we deliver good governance and receive support,
and the support could come in different ways, one of which would be through concessional lending.
What people don't realise is that concessional lending in the late part of the
90s and concessional lending today has not increased significantly in size,
but the economies have more than doubled. So what was available in terms of concessional lending?
Then in what is today is diminishing significantly in relation to the size of the economies.
Therefore, countries have to go and contract that or find other ways of financing their development,
and part of it has to be through, you know, increase the efficiency of their fiscal fiscal machinery.
So fiscal pressure in Africa being so low, if you don't collect taxes because you don't modernise the economy,
you are going to be dependent on debt or you are going to be dependent on foreign direct investment if you can be attractive enough to get it.
Or you forget about all that, I just said.
And here comes Nigeria, and you leave out of the rest of your product that is sort of your your.
Gift from God. In this case, oil, the problem with that is that it becomes like a vicious circle.
You depend so much on oil that your public revenue is almost all based on oil, and therefore when the oil prices go down, your public revenues suffer.
Part of those public revenues they use actually to subsidise oil consumption because the refined oil you don't refine it, you imported.
So you have to subsidise it. And we end up with this difficulty that countries that tend to depend too much on the
commodity don't reform enough in terms of having other sources of public revenue.
And this is the problem with with Nigeria and its problem with Angola is a problem with a number of countries.
If you go into the list of the most reform minded countries, you'll find that it's not a coincidence.
Those who are leading the pack are not natural resources. Rich.
Because they had to find another way. And the others are now nicely following that lead.
If you don't have your own resources, how are you going to implement the MDGs?
You are going to implement it partly with lip service because you don't have the
revenues and it doesn't matter how brilliant and mindful those in charge of them are.
If the structure of the economy doesn't change, we are not going to make the dent that is needed for,
you know, the kind of aspirations that are in the images now in the SDGs.
So it's not specific to Nigeria what I'm saying, but it definitely applies to Nigeria.
So we just have time for the last question.
Rick, thanks very much for the fascinating talk in discussions about development in Africa over the last 10 years or so.
The same success stories have been named. Again and again, it's Botswana, it's Rwanda.
You mentioned Mauritius, which is a tiny island, of course, over the next 10 years.
Are we going to hear the same names over again? Or do you see other countries coming to the fore?
And if so, which ones and why? Well, I can expand your list.
I would include the number of other countries that are really making incredible changes in terms of their economic policy.
I will include in that list, you know, countries like Morocco that has accelerated its industrialisation as very coherent
policies for industrialisation is doing quite significant transformations right now.
I can include countries like Djibouti and Togo, small countries, but with ports that have become huge logistical centres.
Djibouti, now the largest port in East Africa and Lomi, the largest port in West Africa.
I can include countries like other small islands like Cape Verde that is growing at more than five percent.
I can include countries like Cote d'Ivoire, Senegal,
Ghana that are actually very consequential in their reforms and are changing completely their infrastructure and the way they are dealing with it.
And I would include countries that are not doing very well in terms of economic growth, but they are transforming like Namibia.
And the reason they are not having a very significant economic growth is because they are
part of a customs union with South African and South African economy not growing enough.
They are penalised significantly in terms of the value of the rand and the way that transactions depend so much on South Africa.
So my list is growing. Now, what I think is important is for us to bear in mind that in the last 24 months.
Twenty four months, we had 19 changes of leaders in Africa.
That means almost one per month. You get the rest.
Thanks very much, Colin. And the visitor programme the Martin School is due to the generosity of Lillian Martin, who gave us the gift to win that,
and Lillian wanted us to be enabled to bring some of the world's leading thinkers on solution oriented ideas and research to Oxford and to the school.
And you can say in Call us our perfect visitor. Thank you so much for coming back and launching your book here.
For those of you who want to buy the book, we have plenty of copies outside the added benefit of it being signed by us as well.
So please do come and join us for a glass of wine to talk further to call us and join me in thanking college for a fabulous talk.