Nairobi — Since 2006, Africa's leaders have been hugged collectively by summits held in Tokyo, Beijing and New Delhi.

This has been accompanied by corporate hunters from Japan, China and India trooping into the continent to clinch deals. What has been lacking has been willingness by African leaders to chat with their silent citizens about these goings on and hunts.

One possible reason for this death-at-birth of such dialogue may be a possible Oriental viral infection. The Japanese have flourished by using silence to promote their business successes in Africa. For example, they are happy to finance road construction and pay road usage tax in an African country. However, they are most delighted at the roar of the engines of their home-manufactured Toyotas, Nissans, Suzukis and Mazdas which dominate the same roads.

The Chinese have crept into Lagos and Kaduna in Nigeria's south and north, for example, and, in wise silence, colonised millions of stomachs of Nigeria's children with a noodle food. They have also taken over textiles, including the exotic architecture of head ties that women wear at ceremonies.

In 2005 Boye Lafayett De Mente published Japan Unmasked.

A former colleague in graduate school brought it for me as part of her adult literacy campaign. The book was being highly celebrated because it gave managers of Euro-American transnational corporations valuable guides to the opening up the cloaks of silence that their Japanese competitors use so effectively in beating them in the war of profits and business survival. The book's launch, combined with the high praises it attracted in the media, was in sharp contrast with the silence, and almost certain blindness, with which Africa's political leaders and business managers are making deals with the Orient.

The level of study of Japan, China and India in Africa's educational systems and the media has remained pathetic. The generation of Africans who had gates to their minds strongly guarded by colonial warders, recall the sneer with which merchandise bearing that mark: 'Made in Japan' were held.

They were perceived as of low quality by virtue of their birth. Africa's historians and journalists owe us researched information about the puzzling distance that separated Africa's politicians from interest in the history of industrial growth in Japan and South Korea. Those of them who studied in Europe and North were somehow intellectually inoculated from being enchanted with Japan under the dictum that "the enemy of your enemy is your friend."

China, the Koreas, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines had felt the horrendous brutalities of being Japanese colonies and, paradoxically, may have benefited from seeing, at close range, the ideology and practices of non-Europeans acquiring industrial and commercial power both at home and on the global stage. It is bewildering that Africa continues to ignore research and knowledge of the Orient yet there is much to be learnt from Japan's record of self-reliance as the road to growth by a continent that could do with De Mente's book.

For starters, he emphasises the vital role that ancient Japanese tribal values continue to play. A core value is that of a Japanese worker seeing excellence in the quality of a product as a religious virtue and the road to heaven in the afterlife.

This virtue has been constantly invoked as Japanese workers who make Toyota, Nissan and Mitsubishi cars and other products are told that their products must outdo German, French and American vehicles in the global market.

This and other values make the worker to embrace working cooperatively with others instead of competing. In this land, there is no virtue in seeking to shine above others as a way of seeking advantage and promotion from one's bosses.

This humility gives strength to what has been collectively produced through each worker putting in his best energies and talent and is further encouraged by the management treating workers as part of a family. A worker who is not keeping up with others is not fired but moved onto areas where his contribution can still count.

The worker who falls ill is taken care of as a member of the family till he regains his health. The Japanese have, thereby, built into their modern industrial strength that high value they put on the communalism that they share with Africa.

Shunning selfishness

Since the end of the Cold War, they have been struggling to defend this spirit against the virus of "privatization" and Euro-American individualism and triumphant economic selfishness.

Japanese writers: Kamekichi Takahashi, Mitsuaki Okabe and Tetsuji Okazaki note how Nissan and Mitsubishi as "holding companies" (zaibutsi), adapted tribal familyhood into running their companies.

Unlike what Takahashi calls "shareholder myopia" (by which shareholders blindly prefer earning their dividends immediately instead of keeping it in reserves that can be re-injected into research and development), combined with managers paying themselves huge salaries and bonuses, the zaibutsi took the route of pushing financial credit and close supervisory managerial staff into their branches.

The notion of "shareholding" moved from the Euro-American notion of the individual holder of shares in a business, to that of branches and banks holding shares in each other and having daily inter-locking managers working inside in each others' firms.

Compulsory savings

The Japanese have, over time infused the notion of the extended family into the modern corporation.

At an earlier phase, that ran effectively unchallenged by the Americans well into 2002, the Japanese government anchored the sourcing of the capital to be loaned out to corporations in their version of Nigeria's esusu system.

Using a compulsory Post Office savings scheme that paid depositors a very low interest rate, the government scooped out the funds so collected and loaned them out to firms like Toyota, Sony and others.

With managers from the Bank of Japan and the Ministry of Commerce and Trade, government and other stakeholders rigorously monitoring how the funds were being used, lack of corruption and accountability were ensured. The success of such a business was in a significant sense very similar to the success of farms tilled collectively by villagers in rotation all across Africa. Japan had modernised a tribal cultural technology without being held back by inferiority complexes such as the blind adoption of "international standards."

We can also note what seems like the Japanese adaptation of their traditional wrestling into a method of corporate governance. The traditional Japanese wrestler has power located in his trunk and not on his head or feet. Like a huge tree-trunk that defies stretched arms of an opponent to go round it, power is dispersed away from the top and the bottom. The wrestlers push power against power through their bellies.

De Mente reports that it is a mistake to negotiate with the chief executive of a Japanese corporation because he does not have the final say. It is the vast mid level management whose consent matters the most.

Anchored in tribal genius

The power of consultation with middle-level managers and workers is crucial in this style of corporate governance. Prof Ali Mazrui has insisted that it must be recognised that in Africa the power of the will of the community is so strong that the people will resort to making their ruler drink poison (and commit regicide) rather than let his dictatorship bring disaster to the whole community.

In this regard, listening to Japanese historical wit may yet help Africa's corporate managers see the ancient wisdom of Africa in putting premium value in the will of the community as a vital ladder to business competitiveness in the 21st century.

Africa must unmask Japan, China, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia in the search for corporate governance that will yield wealth and industrial power anchored in ancient tribal genius.

Africa Insight is an initiative of the Nation Media Group's Africa Media Network Project