The Reporter (Addis Ababa)
Dr. Kassa Bekere
22 December 2007
opinion
Addis Ababa — One thousand years from know, it was said, the men who will inhabit part of the world that we do now, will recognize this period as the inception of Ethiopian renaissance; or putting it another way as the mark of Ethiopia's return to its greatness of the first millennium; or still, putting it differently, this is the period when our country started the journey 'back to the future'. Back to the greatness of the first millennium: the future to be regained in the coming years.
I share this rather modest idea without a grain of reservation. Some dismiss the idea because they take it to be too much infused with optimism. The easiest way I employ to talk to this 'nay-sayers' is to wish them a reincarnation right after a thousand years. And this article? No, it is not about a thousand years; it is about what is going on under our own very nose. Just allow me to take you only ten years back and forth. This article is what the 'nay-sayers' would call another one too much infused with optimism.
Wishful thinking never appealed to my mode of thinking; neither does cynicism. This article intends neither to support any man's wishful thinking nor to defend mine. If one opens an unprejudiced eye to what is going on around us and to project the implications to the nearest future, 10 years, not a thousand, what lies ahead is startling. Positively, of course.
A few decades ago whoever thought of China to become such a prosperous and great nation? Few did. It exploded under everybody's nose. However, analysts who wrote and are writing now about China are taking the pain to tell us that it started a few decades back. Only, 'we failed to see it coming'.
This writer, modesty aside, claims to witness that the grain to a great future is being sown everywhere; it is only that we failed to see it. Although it took many varieties of a grain to make a promising future habitat, I reasonably took business to be the most important of all. Throughout history business activities determined the rise and fall of nations. Nearly in all great civilizations trade and/or business played a major role, though an underestimated one. Napoleon dismissed his advisors' concern about Britain's fast rise in business when he made a joke about Britain as 'a nation of shopkeepers.' It was no later than soon that his ridiculed Britain emerged as the legendary great power of the world and routed Napoleon's invading army. What made into this great nation was but, to Napoleon's dismay, what it had done with its money-mongers-the businessmen.
An internationally renowned business newspaper once wrote, "Once upon a time there was a poor continent. Its name was Europe. It discovered three things: The rule of law, technology based science, and free enterprise. Now it is rich."
Does it sound like a tale? And a simpler one at that? (Remember many great ideas are simple.) But it is working everywhere? What else had gone to the making of the US, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and China? 'China is not known for upholding the rule of law,' one may say. But is it not a wealthy one or one in the making on an unprecedented scale? That is why I singled out business (free enterprise) as the most important factor that greatly contributes to a great future. Business has the power to guide the course of the other two factors (rule of law and technology based science) to the right direction. Long before Europe had come to be an exemplar democracy, it was a commercial continent. So was America.
Why business? After all it is just a mechanistic, low order, anti-spiritual human phenomenon vested with greediness and a necessary evil. Haven't we heard it all the time? Sorry, but you know what the business of the American people is: it's business. If human history has got its minorities, not the usual way of seeing it, businessmen have been the most condemned minorities, though undeservedly. When people think of the source of the wealth of nations, it is common to suffix it either to a purely physical phenomenon (because a nation has huge natural resource) or rarely a purely spiritual phenomenon (like a nation's wealth is fetched from its ingenuity -mostly given to a given race or nation genetically.) Yes, natural resource, and ingenuity may get to play to a nation's development. But only if they are put into synergy. That is what businessmen do to the universe. It is unduly unfair to say God blessed one barren land with ample natural resources, and now that is America. Neither Japan, nor Germany, nor England, nor North Korea-no one of them-is the consequence of the foolish mind vs. matter: Dichotomy. Their opulence is a manifesto of the marriage between the mind (creative thinking) and body (bringing it to reality production). And businessmen are the perfect representation of that unity. They toil in their labor and mind to bless their soul with the riches nature has endowed us with. In doing so they made life easy and happiness normal for all of us. If that unison and harmony between the mind and the body is fostered with free enterprise, it is not wishful thinking to envision a great, wealthy Ethiopia sooner or later.
Despite many factors our society is embracing the idea of business as never before.
The factors contributing to it: here you go.
Religion and Business
Martin Luther, John Calvin, Huldreich Zwingli are giants of history in their own right. They were the three most influential reformers of Christianity. They initiated and led the Protestant Reformation. That is what they are remembered and considered great for. I consider that a complimentary remark at best and an understatement at worst.
James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg, in their international best-selling book, The Great Reckoning, put it this way:
"The Protestant Reformation, which began early in the sixteenth century, can be crudely and simply understood as a theological justification of savings. In fact, the Protestant denominations become among the more effective vehicles for the promotion of savings ever devised. They contributed to this end through a variety of means. In the first place, they provided an immediate theological justification for saving and lending money at interest.... protestant leaders like Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli defended the payment of interest on money lent, and thus significantly increased the return on money.
They also greatly discounted the costs of operating and supporting churches. One of the chief charges of Luther and other reformers against the Catholic Church was that it had grown too opulent. Protestant denominations...built simple, even austere, churches. And they garbed their ministers in the same spirit. Plain black frocks replaced the often-opulent robes of the priests and bishops of the Catholic Church.
This spirit of pruning costs was carried over to the religious calendar in ways that altered the relationship between rich and poor. Protestant denominations reflected this change by scraping forty feast days of saints and other holidays. Rogation Day (sic), Shrove Tuesday, and many others were no longer celebrated. These holy days or "holidays" had provided for almost weekly revels in medieval Europe.
Reform of the religious calendar was an integral part of the theological revolution that reduced the costs of living a pious life. The shift in emphasis from good deeds to faith as the key to salvation helped lift the burden of redistribution that had made it all but impossible for the more industrious peasants and burghers to accumulate capital. It was normally they who had to outfit the table at the incessant village feasts that dotted the old calendar. So much is consumed in these frequent revels that in and of themselves they almost provided a minimum for survival by the poor or the un-industrious. The Puritan rejection of both the feasts and the doctrine that provision of alms and good deeds were keys to salvation effectively cut the tax rate for industrious Protestants. It helped launch a new middle class of prosperous farmers, tradesmen, and freeholders. It also obliged those among the population who consumed more than they produced to work harder. The poor could no longer depend as before upon alms and feasts at the expense of their neighbors.
Puritanism lent still another hand to savings by discouraging consumption. From the earliest Protestant sect, the Moravians, private as well as public opulence was generally frowned upon as sinful. Protestant sects barred the faithful from holding private parties, even on such traditional occasions as baptisms, weddings and wakes. The throwing of grain at weeding was banned, along with dancing, dressing in fine clothes, and over-indulgence in drink. Frequently, alcoholic beverages were banned altogether and other dietary austerities were encouraged. The attempt to discourage alcohol marked a crucial distinction between the emerging middle-class culture, which emphasized self-control and discipline, and that of the lower classes, who consumed prodigious quantities of beer. Per capita consumption figures for seventeenth-century England were "higher than anything known in modern times."
A penny saved is a penny earned. The compound effect of many pennies saved was to greatly facilitate the accumulation of capital by individuals and families who had never had any before. In this respect, there was an inherent connection between ...the revolution in the religious and moral life of Western society."(1993, page 77-78)
These great men taught their followers to refrain from unmindful spending, encouraged them to save, declared that giving alms is no guarantee for salvation, wealth if it is earned is a sign of virtue. This is how it all started. People refrained from conspicuous consumption, started to work hard and save. According to the textbooks, saving leads to investment, investment brings more money, more money represents extra saving and this again encourages investment ...
It was their thought and teaching that paved the way to the emergence of a large middle class society and the spread of capitalism, and, thus, to the formation of the western world as we know it now.
This is what is happening in Ethiopia's Orthodox Church. No, I'm not saying the Protestant Reformation of the religious version is under way here. But the church is becoming pro-business implicitly if not the other way round. Look at the business complex at Lideta cathedral, the same building at Ouraiel and a school building at Gibe Gabriel. The first was built and started operation a couple of years ago, the second was finished recently and a bank has opened a branch already. I have not been to Gibe Gabriel lately.
Throughout the centuries religion and religious teachings shaped their followers' outlook of the world, through that the future of the individuals and the nation they inhabit. Until recently, a person who devoted his life to serve the church and its followers earns his daily bread from alms collected from churchgoers. The three churches mentioned above reversed this. It is far better to establish an income generating center to support the church's 'employees' living than looking at the hands of the believes for alms.
One rarely finds a sermon in the church, especially those in towns and cities, glorifying destitution and condemning wealth and the wealthy. Wealth is no more considered to be the source of all evil. Wealth is not an endowment from the devil; it is a product of unrelenting effort backed by the power of the mind. Is that not the lesson the church is offering? Both through omission and commission.
Have not you seen people getting startled out of their skin when an elderly priest talks over a mobile phone, rides a Mercedes, checks email at an internet café, joins a debate about Bill Gates & Steve Jobs --- thank God the priests are no more antagonistic to technology. What do the followers infer from this? "Business is good; technology useful: wealth worth a pursuit."
What is most astounding above all is, would-be preachers of the church are being offered business courses (such as management, economics and accounting) at the churches' theological school. That is such a great leap forward.
Changes, or ideological changes so to speak, rarely come without strong, aggressive, committed, and knowledgeable member/s of society, any society. I attribute many of the subtle changes under way in the church to members of Mahibre Kidusan (literally meaning Society of the Sacred). The churches' Sunday School fellows established the society years back. In addition to their profound knowledge of the Bible and the teachings of the church, many of the members of the society are qualified professionals in different fields from different universities, here or abroad. And they are strong, aggressive, committed, and knowledgeable...
As for the Muslims, one cannot over-emphasize the role of the Muslim community in the country's business scene. To say that they are the pioneers and modernizers of business is simply a restatement of fact. Many Muslims own and run every variety of small and large business across the country. This seems to continue in the future, as no facts on the ground prove otherwise.
Koran forbids Muslims to collect interest over a loan. "Allah hath blighted usury," says the Holy Koran. Given the large number of Muslims in the country, Ethiopia is the only country without a single Islamic bank. Others with a far less Muslim population have had one. This may sound surprising but not so much, taking into account that our Muslim fellowmen are business-friendly. That explains why we have many rich Muslims.
Dr. Kassa Bekere is from Addis Ababa University
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