allAfrica.com: Africa: Forget About Africa's 'Lost Decades',We're Marching On, Kagame Tells Asians (Page 1 of 3)

Africa: Forget About Africa's 'Lost Decades',We're Marching On, Kagame Tells Asians

President Paul Kagame on Thursday concluded a three-day visit to Singapore as part of his current visit to Asia. Below is the speech he delivered at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore on Thursday.

I am delighted to be here with you this evening, and thank the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy, for the invitation to share some thoughts on how Africa and Rwanda are making the transition from "crisis to development".

I also look forward to discussing some of the questions you may have on the topic later on.

I want to argue that the perception of Africa as a continent in perpetual crisis, and an investment unfriendly place - famously declared by the Economist magazine in March 2000 as the "the hopeless continent" - is no longer in keeping with reality.

The same is true for my country Rwanda , which in the last fourteen years has moved beyond a difficult past, and is pursuing our vision of a reconciled, united and prosperous nation.

Despite occasional tensions and isolated conflict hotspots in parts of our continent, there can be no doubt that Africa and Rwanda have undergone profound changes in the past decade, with greatly improved prospects for economic growth and development.

Before going into greater detail on contemporary Africa , it is useful to provide a historical context that explains why our continent fell behind.

I will begin with the well known fact that most of Africa was notoriously ill-equipped at independence to conceive and implement an effective development agenda, a shortcoming that saw the continent drift from crisis to crisis.

With a few exceptions, both state and non-state actors, especially the private sector, were grossly underdeveloped at the end of the colonial era.

The problem stemmed from a combination of factors. These included weak or non-existent institutions, and limited technical capacity and competence - a consequence of the absence of a critical mass of professionals.

The subsequent years, up to the early 1990's - generally referred to as "the lost decades" were characterised by stagnation or decline of almost all social and economic indicators.

Even in the relatively successful cases, the developmental strategies pursued in Africa were problematic, as was the case in other countries of Latin America and Asia .

By this, I mean the import substitution models pursued, that sought to promote enterprises by using high tariff barriers, as protection from international competition.

This strategy promptly fell apart when international development agencies imposed structural adjustments, which stipulated removal of subsidies to industry.

In our case in Rwanda , not only was the country adrift, it was led by people who championed a backward ideology based on elimination of a section of the citizenry, further complicating the socio-economic and political crises - and culminating in the genocide in 1994.

What happened to change this "old Africa "?

A number of factors during the 1980s and 1990s account for this.

First of all, Africans themselves begun to challenge the old order - most military and civilian dictatorships were swept aside.

Elsewhere in the world, spectacular changes were taking place that had significant impact on the African continent - including the collapse of the communist system, which had sustained many African despotic regimes supported by both sides of the cold war.

The strongest economy on the continent, South Africa , reached a negotiated settlement to end the apartheid system that had disfranchised the largest segment of the country's society, and marginalised a potential source of productive capacity and domestic market.

Finally, the technology and information revolution gained momentum in Africa , increasing the pace of globalization in the form of larger flows of foreign investment, finance, and innovation.

The circumstances that I have just pointed out have combined to change Africa fundamentally, resulting in improved investment climate, as illustrated by an economic growth rate averaging six percent in the last several years.

Part of the success story may be attributed to the fact that commodities, which form the bulk of the continent's exports, are fetching high prices in international markets.

Beyond raw material exports, however, Foreign Direct Investment to Africa has also increased steadily - for example, it doubled between 2004 and 2006 to reach thirty nine billion US dollars.

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