Key lessons for Africa from China’s development model
Africa’s poor governance and lack of determination hinder its economic progress, leading to retardation comparatively across time and space. On the other hand, China’s resilience and timely update of its policies and implementation strategies may serve as a lesson to Tanzania’s - and Africa’s - development at large.
Up until the mid-1970s, for instance, Cameroon and Tanzania were global leaders in palm and cashew nuts production, making their total income far higher than thoseof Malaysia and Vietnam, respectively. Thesetwo were the-then forerunners on the agricultural and economic fronts.
However, the latters’ overtaking of Cameroon and Tanzania in terms of production and revenues serves as a point of departure for the losers to inquire into what went wrong - should they hold their minds open enough and accept to learn from experience.
While the global forces may have contributed to the downfall, such an argument needs to be treated with care as several other countries survived the same hardships, and even faced more devastation as evidenced by Vietnam which survived a war against the US, but came out strong.
The other countries’ failure to withstand the global tensions, then, becomes harder to explain: although the winner/loser explanation seems tempting to apply, the situation is more complex - and requires a richer explanation than the parrotism inherent in the prevailing analysis.
After all, the winner/loser analogy implies a fight between two sides, a situation that may not have existed in any form - subtle or confrontational - in some of the loser states. Cameroon, for instance, fought no war that made it lose its glory.
Even if a country engaged in a physical fight or an invisible war, it still should/could have carved a strategy to recuperate and plan its way out after the end of the crisiaccording tto this logic, then, blaming Africa’s underdevelopment on the economic slowdown of the mid-1970s, the Cold War, and slumps in the prices of oil and agricultural products, equals escapism - and a cliché.
On an equal note, one could argue that placing the blame on the losers equals to blaming the victims. This is given the proxy wars, and the resources committed toward the liberation of other countries like Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia which remained colonized until the late 1970s.
However, Western imperialism and other problems didn’t affect Africa alone. China also battled imperialism about the same time - with some of the consequences being the stripping of its legitimate seat in the UN in favor of the west-leaning Taiwan.
But, looking at the position of China and Vietnam today - among other countries - it remains for Africa to move beyond the usual narrative of always being the victim without figuring out what went wrong and how to carve out the way forward.
We learn through mistakes - and, of course, maintaining the status quo will NOT take one anywhere. The world needs to embrace changes and stop living in the past. We need to invest in the present, using the past only as a lesson, period!
Using China’s success in lifting the majority of its citizens out of extreme poverty despite the numerous imperialist maneuvers to sabotage its efforts, Cameroon, Tanzania, and other developing countries could embrace resilience and determination as two main attributes in effectively fighting poverty.
Despite the tumultuous period that China had gone through, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has stood firm enough in defence and implementation of the guiding blueprint ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ while opening up for take-over by a market economy.
Had these countries focused their efforts on development, they wouldn’t have been swayed by the global imperatives requiring them to abandon their socialist approaches and succumb to imperialist exploitation. Socialism and a market economy - seemingly two impossibles - would be compatible together, as is the case in China, for the benefit of the people.
Under the CPC, China has been updating its strategies from time to time to reflect the current needs of its society, as evidenced recently by the various resolutions adopted during the 19th Plenary Session of the CPC Central Committee concluded in December 2019.
It is the resolve to maintain China’s political, cultural and social composition - and the determination to open-up and move out of poverty - that has helped China to register the socioeconomic progress it has achieved today. And, it is the lack thereof that has made most African countries economically stagnant and socially chaotic today.
Thus, as far as African development is concerned, both the discourse and the deeds have to dwell more on what to do now - and later - for the benefit of the society than to perpetually blame others and sit back without acting. after all, both omission and commission constitute liability.
