Abdul Rotimi Mohammed's Blog: Enlightment blog, page 2

The Race to build Global Universities: Where is Africa in all of this?

There are few factors that are as critical in determining the level of development (or underdevelopment) of a nation as the quality (or lack thereof) of its education systems. This is especially true of the tertiary education system, which includes among others, the universities, polytechnics, teachers’ colleges, professional institutes etc. For the sake of brevity, I shall be concentrating on the universities because they are charged with producing a nation’s intellectual elite who man the commanding heights in government, business and society, and on whose shoulders a disproportionate share of the responsibility for national development fall on. Universities are also charged with producing the research that serves as the intellectual fuel of national development.

There is plenty afoot going on in the world’s universities that any nation’s leaders and engaged members of the public ought to be mindful of, given the critical importance of the university system’s twin missions. There is a growing trend in which potential university students are increasingly likely, to shop for a university education beyond their nation’s borders. This is largely driven by domestic supply’s inability to meet the burgeoning demand and by an increasing taste for a world class education. This is putting immense pressure on universities everywhere to upgrade their facilities, standards, courses etc. in a bid to attract this fleet footed army of student hopefuls, who bring with them hard currency and more importantly, often number among the best and brightest from their home countries and thus are a potential source of research talent that are fed into the pipeline of the host nation’s development engine. This race by universities to build global stars takes place along a number of dimensions and we shall explore them one by one.

The forces of globalization have worked to create a more open, increasingly borderless world. Higher education has not been spared the effects of this phenomenon, and as a result universities have become increasingly more global in outlook, both in terms of practices and the recruitment of students. The U.S, leads the way here and has done so for long time. Nations as diverse as China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Germany and France among others, are caught up in a race to create U.S.-style research institutions designed to be competitive at the highest levels. The UK (Particularly Oxford and Cambridge) and Australia have for some time now given the US some measure of competition, but it remains the unquestioned leader for now. It perhaps behooves us to briefly look at the American University model that happens to be the object of such worldwide admiration.

The US began its ascendancy to the top of global university space shortly after World War 2. It overtook the previous leader Germany, for two reasons. The first was Germany, obviously being distracted with the rebuild effort after the horrors of WW2. The second being that the US borrowed and perfected a university model originally pioneered by Germany in the 19th century, which placed heavy emphasis on research, thus bringing to the fore the graduate school experience, many say to the detriment of undergraduate teaching. Prior to this German innovation, universities all over the world, focused almost exclusively on undergraduate teaching. In the US today, there are still many tertiary institutions that focus exclusively on undergraduate teaching. Such institutions are referred to as colleges, while the appellation, universities is reserved for those institutions that in addition to the undergraduate portion, offer graduate programs and professional programs like medical, law and business schools. Often the undergraduate portion of a university would be referred to as a college. For example, the undergraduate portion of Harvard University is referred to as Harvard College. The rebuild of Europe and the adoption of the research model in America, combined to make the US, the premier destination for the best and brightest, seeking the best education globally available.

It is tempting to ask where this so called best and brightest come from. According to Open Doors, an NGO that tracks these things, the percentage break down of country of origin of international students for 2022/23 are as follows:
China – 27% India – 25% South Korea – 4% Canada – 3% Brazil – 2% Nigeria – 2% Japan – 2% Taiwan – 2% South Korea – 2% Saudi Arabia – 2%

China and India alone account for 52% of all international students. A population that numbers over 6.4 million people in 2021.

I should also point out that upgrading indigenous universities to world class standards is not the only modus operandi of countries looking to build global universities. Forming partnerships with, or local campuses of internationally recognized university brands is another method being actively pursued. Singapore is a good example of this. It has partnerships with Yale University, Chicago Graduate School of Business, Johns Hopkins University, Carnegie Mellon University, and INSEAD among others. It has also done quite well in building world class universities of its own given that its National University of Singapore (NUS) has attained global recognition.

Saudi Arabia is another rather interesting example. In 2009, it launched the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). In a country that typically segregates male and female students from each other, KAUST is uncharacteristically co-educational. A necessary compromise, if it was going to be successful in attracting the top flight students, faculty and partners from around the world that it was hoping to attract. Its initial partners included the mechanical engineering department at the University of California–Berkeley; the Institute for Computational Earth Sciences and Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin; Stanford University’s computer science and applied mathematics departments; the biosciences and bioengineering departments at the University of Cambridge; and the departments of chemical engineering, materials science, and engineering at Imperial College, London.

The globalization of universities has led to or perhaps grow along side with and become intertwined in a parallel development that though mired in great controversy, shows no sign of going away. I am talking about the emergence of various rankings of universities at the national, continental and global levels. Rankings ostensibly fill a market need, the desire for a simple, reliable metric for gauging the quality of education attainable at a given university, but there is so much passioned debate about how reliable that metric is. Criticism runs the gamut of, that rankings have a heavy research bias and not enough emphasis on the quality of teaching, that there are important institutional quality factors that can’t be captured by numbers, that they often focus on reputation instead of actual accomplishments, that rankings focus excessively on “inputs” rather than “outputs” by giving colleges credit for admitting well qualified students rather than for how well they actually educated those students, that they encourage fraud, that the factors used in the rankings provide colleges with perverse incentives to focus on the factors that are measured rather than taking on the more elusive task of providing the best possible education for their students, that there is insufficient academic rigor underlying the rankings, and that it is just a meaningless exercise as an instrument of national policy.

The various rankings have tried to evolve in response to these criticisms and wholly new rankings have been created to cater to specific criticisms. However, ranking are increasingly used not just by potential students but also by policy makers and industry officials. Also others have pointed out that rankings have the potential to radically democratize the entrenched academic pecking order and thus force the leading universities to continue to earn their places at the top of the academic food chain. What is clear and unquestioned about rankings is, love them or hate them, you can’t just ignore them.

Yet another important trend in the global university education space has been the emergence of education companies that provide university education services to market segments that are very different from the traditional clientele of traditional universities. Most traditional universities around the world are public universities. The most prestigious universities in the US, though private are non-profit organizations. These education companies run universities that are clearly out to make a profit like a traditional business. They also tend to target working adults who want practical, part-time courses that will improve their standing in the job market as opposed to the traditional universities that target the national or global student elite. The education companies tend to aggressively leverage technology to provide flexible courses and to bring down costs of administration. The market for the services these education companies offer is very large, running into at least several hundreds billions of dollars and as demand as demand for post-secondary education continues unabated in the developing world, the market for flexible, practical, career-oriented education will only get larger.

I have tried to give a picture of the evolving global education landscape. In researching this piece, I couldn’t help but wonder what Africa’s place in all of this was. The main text I used for research barely mentioned Africa at all. It would seem that Africa, like in the case of global free trade, seems to be again on the periphery of the global free trade in minds. The continent’s university education system seems to be beset by more fundamental problems. It is to this I turn, in my next piece.

BEFORE YOU GO: Please share this with as many people as possible. Also check out my book, Why Africa is not rich like America and Europe.

Bibliography
1. Wildavsky, Ben. 2010 The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities Are Reshaping the World New Jersey: Princeton University Press

The founding of America and the samurai warrior who saved Japan from poverty

Only in the movies..in real life Pocahontas was a little girl at the time. John Smith, after showing uncommon courage and resourcefulness in saving the first English colony in North America from starvation numerous times, would be sidelined by his backers...he would return to England disgruntled...without kiss


In the very early 17th century, the English crossed the Atlantic in a bid to colonize North America. In this, they were following the Spanish who had a 100 years earlier colonized South America, which was considered the better half of the Americas because it was rich in gold and silver. The English colonists founded their first settlement called Jamestown in 1607. They planned to capture the Leader of the native Americans and through him force the rest of the populace to work for them, the same way the Spanish had conquered South America.

However, they would soon find out that this was not possible because the native Americans of North America lived in widely dispersed, largely independent relatively small groups. This was in stark contrast to the South America that the Spanish found, which had achieved very large degrees of political centralization, such that there were at least 3 major empires, the Aztec (central and southern Mexico, and parts of Guatemala), Incan (Peru, western Ecuador, south central Bolivia, northwest Argentina, a bit of southwestern Colombia and a large portion of Chile) and Mayan (southeastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras and El Salvador) empires. Another major difference was that North America wasn’t rich in mineral resources such as gold and silver, the way South America was. The different very trajectories of North and South America up to the present after the initial founding of the English colony in Jamestown, again show that true national wealth isn’t built on natural resources but on sound institutions and technology.

When the colonists realized that the native Americans couldn’t be made to work, they resorted to trying to trade with them as they were running dangerously low on supplies. It is here that a character some of us know from the Disney movie, Pocahontas made the most singular contribution. Captain John Smith was a part of the Jamestown colonists and he led the trading missions with the Indians. During one of them he was captured and taken to the chief of the Indian tribe that captured him. It is here that he was reportedly saved from death by the chief’s daughter, Pocahontas, but in real life at the time, Pocahontas was little more than a girl, probably around 11 and not the strapping young adult ready for her first taste of love as depicted in the movie. At some point, the colonists lost the trust of the Indians (with good reason) and so they would no longer trade with the colonists. At this point John Smith realized if the colonists were to survive they would have to work the land themselves to produce food and other needed supplies.

Now the colonists’ expedition had been sponsored by a company back in England called the Virginia company. They had been backing the expedition financially for 2 years at this point and had seen no profit. By this time, John Smith, after showing uncommon courage and resourcefulness that saved the colony from starvation on numerous occasions, had been sidelined by the company, and had since gone back to England, disgruntled. The Virginia company had by now, decided on a new mode of operation. If the natives could not be forced to work, they would force the English settlers they had sent into accepting a draconian work schedule that would generate the wealth they were looking for. This new scheme too, could not work because of the extremely low population densities of North America at the time (more than 500 times less than that of South America). If the work became too stressful, there was plenty of unoccupied land that the colonists could run away to. The Virginia company was then forced to provide incentives that would make the colonists they had sent to work willingly. These incentives would eventually grow into the inclusive institutions that would be developed by the original 13 colonies that would eventually form the United States of America. Note that this was not a smooth process, and it took roughly a century. In the original colonies there existed a governing elite who tried time and time again to put in place extractive institutions that benefited a privileged few like what Africa has had through much of its history and mostly has, till now. Each time the attempt failed for the reasons cited above.

America’s inclusive institutions would eventually become firmly grounded, making it possible for the Industrial Revolution to occur there in the 19th century, to such an extent that it would overtake Britain as the world’s leading economic powerhouse.

In 1868 Japan was an economically underdeveloped country that had been controlled since 1600 by the Tokugawa family, whose ruler had taken the title shogun (commander) in 1603. At this time, Japan was as poor as Djibouti, a small country in the horn of East Africa. The Japanese emperor had been sidelined and played a purely ceremonial role. The Tokugawa family, along with their military retainers, the famous samurai warriors, ruled a society that had strict occupational categories (Your occupation as an adult was determined by the part of the social hierarchy that you were born into), restrictions on trade, and high rates of taxation on farmers.

The Tokugawa’s domination of Japanese society wasn’t complete though. In the south of Japan, there were parts that were relatively free of the Tokugawa’s control. In one such area, an enlightened samurai realized that Japan’s institutions required radical reform if it was to make real progress. He formulated a plan to overthrow the shogun but disguised it under the pretext of wanting to restore the emperor to his rightful position. The plan was successful. Soon after, there was a radical transformation of Japan’s institutions which provided the foundation for the modern, successful, wealthy Japan that we know today. The event is referred to as the Meiji Restoration.

By 1890 Japan was the first Asian country to adopt a written constitution, and it created a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament, the Diet, and an independent judiciary. These changes were decisive factors in enabling Japan to be the first beneficiary from the Industrial Revolution in Asia.


Samurai X..about to unleash his hiten mitsurugi style!!

Over this three-part series, we have looked at examples of both extractive and inclusive institutions operating in very different societies and at different points in time throughout history. It should be clear that despite these differences, extractive and inclusive institutions where ever they occur manifest themselves in similar ways that we all can recognize. They transcend skin color, religion, tribe and any other marker for differentiating human beings into groups. We might have also noticed that preventing extractive institutions from dominating a society requires active resistance by the populace. The reason this is so lies in a fundamental fact of human nature. Given the opportunity, most human beings would set up a system to benefit themselves, to the exclusion of others. This is true of human beings in general, not just politicians. So in order to avoid this, those who stand the risk of being exploited need to stand up to the potential exploiters. This fact highlights what the major attraction of democracy is.

The major attraction of democracy is not that it is perfect or that democrats are supposed to be honest but that it is a system of government that formally recognizes the right for the populace to express dissatisfaction and provides mechanisms for expressing it, the most well-known being the vote. Unfortunately, expressing dissatisfaction and suing for social change will often need to go beyond mere voting. Two notable examples of this would be the civil rights movement of 1960s America and the feminist movement globally in 20th century and continuing into the 21st. These two groups couldn’t have used the vote to change things because one of the changes they were suing for was the right to vote. It should also be noted that these two groups largely achieved their aims without violence, hotheads would do well to take note.

Oftentimes, for meaningful changes to occur, broad coalitions of many disparate groups would have to apply concerted effort using the institutional mechanisms available for expressing dissent in a bid to influence public policy. Some may ask what would be the goal in concrete terms?

The goal would be a successful modern society. I have taken a lot of pains in my posts to a paint a picture of what a successful modern society looks like. A successful modern society runs along the lines of science, technology and reason, not faith, tradition and natural resources. It is almost impossible for the bulk of a society to live above subsistence, without that society running on scientific precepts. So the plan would be to look at what economic institutions and policies are necessary to bring this about and what is it about the current economic institutions and policies (or the lack of them), that prevents them from coming into being. Such an investigation will ultimately lead to the political institutions that shape the economic institutions. Reforming these too, would also be necessary. Constant monitoring by the broad coalition will be necessary to make sure that the changes are not merely a façade on the surface while things continue being done pretty much the same way on the inside. This is truly a tall order but only with the achievement of this, will we truly be on our way to mass prosperity.

BEFORE YOU GO: Please share this post with as many people as possible and check out my book Why Africa is not rich like America and Europe on Amazon.

Bibliography
Acemoglu, Daron et al. 2012 Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty. London: Profile Books Ltd

Birkland, Thomas. 2015 An Introduction to the Policy Process: Theories, Concepts, and Models of Public Policy Making. London and New York: Routledge

The Kleptocrat and the Statesman

Mobutu Sese Seko. First President of independent Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo. You have to love the Leopard skin hat

As I hinted in my last post, the rape of the Belgian Congo would sadly continue after independence, under the rule of the rather colorful Mobutu Sese Seko. The country would be renamed Zaire after independence.

Mobutu’s greed knew no bounds. He built himself a magnificent palace in his village that cost about $100 million at the time. The village also housed an airport that was capable of handling supersonic Concorde jets, which he frequently leased from Air France. He would order the seizure of about 2,000 foreign enterprises without compensation, in what was ostensibly a nationalization program. The seized assets were typically handed out to himself, friends and family. He treated the Central Bank like his personal account, funneling huge sums abroad to buy luxury houses, office blocks and grand estates in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and other countries. Zaire would experience almost unbroken economic decline from 1965, till when he was ousted in 1997 by Laurent Kabila. He would die months after from cancer. Kabila himself would be murdered in the aftermath as Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) descended into chaos, with a number of African countries in the region trying to exploit the situation. For an almost unbroken period of at least 500 years, the vast majority of the people of the Congo have been miserably poor because of the extractive political and economic institutions they have had to live under.


The great Seretse Khama. The first Prime Minister of independent Botswana

On a much brighter note, we now move on to the life of Seretse Khama. He was the first Prime Minister of independent Botswana. During the period of the African independence movements of the 1960s and 70s, Seretse Khama was a singularly exceptional man. He was uninterested in amassing personal wealth and much more interested in adapting Botswana’s institutions to the modern world. Interestingly, this work of modernization did not start with him. It started in the 19th century with his grandfather, King Khama, who was a chieftain in what was then known as Bechuanaland. King Khama played a key role in the setting up of political institutions known as the Kgotla, which constrained the power of the chiefs like himself and also introduced some measure of accountability of the chiefs to the people. Incredibly, these institutions survived unscathed during the colonial period but this was partly due to the fact that the British, relatively speaking, never took more than a marginal interest in Botswana compared to other places in Africa that they were active in. Had they sensed that Botswana had vast diamond deposits, perhaps this might have been different. The diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes based in what would become South Africa, must have sensed this, for he planned to move aggressively on Botswana. The territories of northern and southern Rhodesia were already named after him. They became Zambia and Zimbabwe respectively. The famous Rhodes scholarship was also set up in his name. King Khama and two other chieftains managed to outsmart Rhodes by getting Britain to take greater control of Bechuanaland. Greater control by Britain still left them with significant autonomy. Under Rhodes, they would have had none. The diamonds would eventually be discovered after independence.

Seretse Khama and the other Botswana elite made sure that the diamond discovery was used to fund public services and education (like I said in my last post). So even in Botswana, getting ahead is still a function of how seriously you take education. The result of this is that today, Botswana has one of the highest GDP per capita in Africa, if not the highest. It is comparable in wealth terms to successful eastern European countries like Estonia and Hungary and to Latin American ones like Brazil. It is significantly less corrupt than South Korea, but South Korea’s dominance in scientific and technological development ensures that it has a much higher GDP per capita. From the inception of independence, it has been democratic, holds regular and competitive elections, and has never experienced civil war or military intervention.

At this point, I would like to discuss how inclusive institutions were developed in other parts of the world. We shall specifically be looking at Britain (more accurately, England), the United States and Japan.
England’s journey towards inclusive institutions spans several centuries, with each wave successively reducing the arbitrary powers of the monarchy and opening up political power to ever wider segments of society. The first major milestone was laid in the early 13th century during the reign of King John (King John looms large in the world of entertainment. Shakespeare wrote a play about him and he often appears in Robin Hood stories as a villain). At the time, the English monarchy had completely unrestrained power. The English barons who constituted the elite at the time, were fed up with this, so they drafted a document that became known as the Magna Carta (Somewhat similar to Botswana’s Kgotla). In it, were some stipulations that acted as a measure of restraint (far from complete though), on the King’s arbitrary power. It is considered the beginning of the emergence of the rule of law in England. Unsurprisingly, King John didn’t like it and tried to get the Pope to annul it, but the influence of the Magna Carta remained. England had begun the march towards inclusive institutions.

The power of the monarchy was further constrained by the first elected Parliament in 1265. Despite consisting of elites, a significant portion of it consisted of men who represented broad segments in society; in commerce and industry for instance, that didn’t have close ties with King. These men would consistently oppose the monarchy’s attempts to increase its powers.
In 1381, another pivotal event occurred. This was known as the Peasants’ Revolt, which as the name suggests, saw the further redistribution of power, not just from King to the elites but to the masses.

England’s political reform was not a smooth process. From time to time, a new King would arise who would try to push back the reforms. This back and forth would eventually culminate in civil war in 1642, between the monarchy and parliament. Some members of parliament would fight on the side of the monarchy. The war would last till 1651. The struggle over institutions would continue even after the hostilities had ceased. This would lead to the second civil war in 1688. This time, parliament would be more united and better organized. They not only won but also changed the nature of the monarchy to one bound by a new constitution designed largely by them. This event in English history is referred to as the Glorious Revolution. It played a decisive role in further opening up political and economic access to broader segments of society.

After 1688, parliamentarians started making a series of key changes in economic institutions and government policy that would ultimately pave the way for the Industrial Revolution. Parliament began a process of reform in economic institutions to promote manufacturing, rather than taxing and impeding it. It would also embark on financial reform, creating the Bank of England in 1694, as a source of funds for industry. England would embark on the world’s first Industrial Revolution in 1760, jumpstarting the mass prosperity era for English society.

In the final post on this subject, we will look at the rise of inclusive institutions in North America and Japan.


BEFORE YOU GO: Please share this post with as many people as possible and check out my book Why Africa is not rich like America and Europe on Amazon.

Bibliography
Acemoglu, Daron et al. 2012 Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty. London: Profile Books Ltd

Meredith, Martin. 2014 The Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000-year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour. New York: Public Affairs

Vulture Institutions or Eagle Institutions...The choice is ours

I fear that what I consider a rather colorful title might need some explanation. By vulture institutions, I mean societal rules of the game that have been explicitly set up to favour a narrow elite at the expense of the rest of society, like vultures feeding on a carcass. Social scientists call them extractive institutions. In contrast, eagle institutions are those that give broad access to society’s opportunities; that explicitly set up policies to improve and harness human potential; that seek to create broad based wealth through innovation of the kind driven by science and technology, in short, institutions that make societies soar like eagles. These are formally referred to as pluralistic or inclusive institutions.

Unfortunately, for most of human history and in most parts of the world, extractive institutions have been the default. It should prove instructive to take a look at some examples from history. Our first example will be the Kingdom of Kongo from precolonial Africa.
The Kingdom of Kongo, despite having some really forward looking political traditions for its time that I briefly touched on in a previous post, was not an inclusive society. It had highly extractive political and economic institutions explicitly set up to serve the interests of the Kongo elite. As a result, there was widespread poverty in the Kongo as far back as the 16th century. Unfortunately, the extractive institutions of Kongo society were typical across precolonial Africa.

The wealth of the Kongo elite was built on the business of the slave trade and predatory taxation and much of this wealth was used to import European luxury goods (some things never seem to change) and weapons to conduct slave raids. The taxation was so bad that ordinary citizens of the Kongo moved their villages as far away from the markets and roads as possible in order to escape the clutches of the elite and their propensity for plunder. They also did this to escape the slave traders working for the elite. I strongly feel the need to point out here that the governing elite couldn’t even secure the most fundamental of rights of the people, namely the security of person and property. Instead, they were actually the biggest violators of these rights. Such extractive institutions generally remained in place up until colonial times.

The next example we will look at will be that of ancient Rome. The Roman Republic (which later became the Roman Empire shortly before the birth of Jesus Christ) was founded around 510 BC. The republic cleverly designed institutions with many inclusive elements. The republic’s institutions had a system of checks and balances that reduced the ability of anyone person to concentrate power and that distributed power fairly widely. All was not well though, as the Republic had significant extractive components, the vastly unequal ownership of land being one prominent one. Hence, the republic was inherently unstable. Citizens did not have equal rights and slaves had no rights at all.

Things took a decided turn for the worse, when Julius Caesar (I once came across an estimate of Julius Caesar’s net worth in today’s money, inflation adjusted. The figure was $4.9 trillion) overthrew the Roman Republic in 49 BC, Julius Caesar himself was murdered in the aftermath and after a series of rounds of infighting, one of his supporters named Octavian ultimately emerged victorious. Octavian would transform the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. He would do away with all of the somewhat egalitarian features of the Republic and concentrate all power in himself. He would also adopt the title Augustus Caesar in 28 BC (He was Caesar at the time Jesus Christ was born). The Roman Empire would progressively decline in the following centuries, experiencing a civil war or coup almost every decade during its last 300 years (scary, I know), until around 500 AD, when the Western Roman Empire (The Eastern half had already been lost and was now referred to as Byzantium) was overrun by various foreign groups which had previously been Roman subjects most notably the Goths, Huns and the Vandals (The English word that is derived from the name of this group should give you an idea of what they were like), an event popularly referred to as “Barbarians at the gate”. Other notable former Roman subjects include the English and the Gauls (ancestors of modern France).

Yet another example would be the city-state of Venice (today a part of modern Italy). Roughly around the 10th century, it was arguably the richest place in the world, with the most advanced set of inclusive economic institutions underpinned by nascent political inclusiveness. Venice made its wealth from long distance trading as it was positioned advantageously between the Muslim and Christian worlds.

One of the key bases for the economic expansion of Venice was a series of contractual innovations making economic institutions much more inclusive. The most famous was the commenda, a crude form of joint-stock company, which formed only for the duration of a single trading mission (an innovation borrowed from the Islamic world). A commenda involved 2 partners, one who stayed at home and one who travelled. The sedentary partner put capital into the venture, while the travelling partner accompanied the cargo. The sedentary partner usually put in the lion’s share of the money. Young entrepreneurs who didn’t have wealth themselves could get into the trading business by travelling with the merchandise. It was a key channel of upward mobility.

This economic inclusiveness and the rise of new families through trade forced the political system to be more open. This would lead to further reforms like the creation of independent magistrates, courts, a court of appeals, and new private contract and bankruptcy laws. These new Venetian economic institutions allowed the creation of new legal business forms and new types of contracts. There was rapid financial innovation and we see the beginning of a modern banking system around this time in Venice.

Unfortunately, it would not last, there were always established elites who resented the rise of new elites because their trading activities ate into the profits of the established elites. This shows the dangers of basing an economic expansion program based solely on trade, and neglecting the harnessing of human creativity, aided by science and technology to create new products, new markets which ultimately create new streams of wealth. The established elites whenever they had the chance, would try to rewrite the rules of the game (i.e. replace inclusive with extractive institutions) in order to restrict access to economic opportunity. They would ultimately be successful. Among the many mechanisms the established elites used to restrict access was the banning of the commenda, which we saw was a key channel of upward mobility. All this would lead to Venice’s eventual and irreversible decline. Today Venice, once richer than the whole of France, is little more than a tourist attraction, where foreigners come to admire Venice’s illustrious past.

I had mentioned previously that extractive institutions were experienced all over Africa in precolonial times. Sadly, this would continue under the colonial masters, sometimes even more viciously. The Belgian Congo is a particularly extreme example. I had mentioned in a previous post that during the “Scramble for Africa”, the Kingdom of Kongo was divided amongst the French, the Belgians, and the Portuguese. The French got what is today the Republic of Congo (Congo Brazzaville) and parts of Gabon, the Belgians what is today, Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire), and the Portuguese, Angola.

The rainforests of the Congo were rich in wild rubber. Until the 1890s, rubber sap had little value. But the invention of the pneumatic tire, fitted first to bicycles and then to motor cars, and the increasing use of rubber for industrial products such as electrical wiring, hoses and tubing, led to soaring demand. At this point, I feel the need to reiterate a point I made in a previous article. These things that we somewhat misleadingly refer to as “natural resources” have little or no intrinsic value in themselves. They only become valuable to the degree that industry can find a use for them. What goes for rubber, also goes for oil. Oil had relatively little value until the invention of the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) in the late 19th century, which serves as the engine for most vehicles on the road. This leads to the illusion that the African continent is overflowing with boundless wealth. The real wealth comes from the industrial process that converts the natural resources into manufactured goods. Yes, natural resources can bring some wealth, but all too often, it does so in the form of natural resource rents for an elite few, who control access to the resources. Even in the rare case of having an elite that deeply cares for the rest of the people (Yes, this is possible, even in Africa, Botswana is an example, more on that later), you can’t just say that you will divide the resource wealth equally among the people and hand it out in the form of cash transfers. That will only stoke up inflation, because handing out cash does NOT improve the productivity of the people, which is where true wealth comes from. What is supposed to be done is that to the extent that it can (natural resource wealth has limits), natural resource wealth should be invested in human capital, in the form of solid education systems (particularly in science and technology) and public services. These two more than anything increase the capacity of people to be productive citizens.

With this new found opportunity of wild rubber in the Belgian Congo, King Leopold II decided to exploit the opportunity to fullest before other plantations in Asia came on stream. What followed is arguably one of the most egregious examples of human exploitation and cruelty. The native indigenes of the Belgian Congo were given quotas for rubber which they had to meet or risking losing a hand, foot or even life. Many did lose all of the above for failing to meet up with their quotas. It was only tireless efforts a few Europeans to bring the scandal to light that eventually forced the hand of European governments to put an end to King Leopold’s scheme but not before Leopold had become one of Europe’s richest men from it and the Belgian Congo had lost about 10 million people, estimated to be roughly half of the population at the time.

Sadly, the exploitation of the Belgian Congo did not end with Leopold’s brutal colonial rule. The Belgian Congo would suffer another round of extreme exploitation after independence under Mobutu Sese Seko. By then it had renamed itself Zaire. That is the story of another post. In that post, we shall also take a look at the life of Seretse Khama, first Prime Minister of Botswana, a man as different from Mobutu as a man could possibly be. We will also look at how some western societies were able to build (not without effort and serious resistance, mind you) inclusive institutions.

BEFORE YOU GO: Please share this post with as many people as possible and check out my book Why Africa is not rich like America and Europe on Amazon.

Bibliography
Acemoglu, Daron et al. 2012 Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty. London: Profile Books Ltd
Meredith, Martin. 2014 The Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000-year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour. New York: Public Affairs
Koehler, Benedikt et al. Apr 2015 ‘An Introduction to the History of Capitalism 600-1900 AD’ Legatum Institute

Bureaucracies…We hate them but can’t live without them

Bureaucratic hopefuls sweating it out with the Imperial Exams of ancient China

I was at an AI (Artificial Intelligence) tech meet not too long ago, where the co-founders of a start-up, two decent chaps were making a presentation. Theirs was a product targeted at university students, and at some point in their presentation, they made it known that they were at the beta-testing stage and that they were dealing directly with the students one on one and bypassing the school authorities all together. They were asked why, to which one of them answered that he hated dealing with bureaucracy. A deafening silence hung in the air. At this point I smiled a wistful smile, because just a couple of days before that meet, I was reminded in the most visceral way, why we all hate bureaucracies, irrespective of whether we are trying to renew a driver’s license, passport, get a voter’s card or like in their case, land a contract. I had been involved in a shouting match with an employee of a federal parastatal that was so loud and fierce that two of her colleagues had to come from their own office to calm me down, ask me what they could do to help. One even offered to get me water to cool down. The two of them eventually sorted me out, though it took a few days but the lady was the physical manifestation of everybody’s worst bureaucratic nightmare: the bureaucrat that is only concerned with whether he/she had followed the rules, irrespective of whether your problem was solved or not. It was this memory I recalled, as the co-founder expressed his distaste for bureaucracies. Despite that, I still voiced out what clearly what other people were thinking and that it was that, it was inevitable that he would have to deal with them.

I feel the need to explain why I was especially irate. I had been to no less than five of the offices in Lagos of this federal parastatal (six, if you count one office at the state level from which I needed something to meet the requirements) before I found the one responsible for handling my case. It needed something from the other office where that nightmare bureaucrat worked and the two of them were playing me back and forth between themselves like ping-pong (which I already suspected they would). It is kind of fitting in a very annoying sort of way that they would be playing me like ping-pong, since the game is extremely popular in China, and modern bureaucracies can trace their roots to ancient China.

Bureaucracies first arose in the ancient city of Sumer (which today, would be in Southern Iraq), which itself arose some 7,000 years ago (around 5,000 BC). [1]. At the time of the development of writing around 3,500 BC, which also first occurred in Sumer, scribes would record agricultural produce on clay tablets as a form of book-keeping [2]. Sumerian bureaucracies, however were distinct from modern bureaucracies in that Sumerian bureaucrats were hand-picked by the rulers often from the noble families without recourse to meritocracy in any shape or form and the positions were inheritable. Descendants of bureaucrats could inherit their positions when they were dead.

A little bit over 2,000 years ago (around 200 BC), a new form of bureaucracy emerged in ancient China. In contrast to the Sumerian model, the Chinese emperor at the time started to pick officials based on merit [3]. Not all his motives were altruistic, part of the motive was to break the power of Chinese nobles. No more than a few centuries later, another emperor decreed that formal, written examinations be used to select officials into the Chinese empire’s bureaucratic cadre. This is referred to by historians as the Imperial Examinations system. The Imperial Exams were legendary for their difficulty [3]. The entry level exam had a passing rate of 10-20%. The highest cadre exam had a passing rate of 1-2% [4]. Not a few rebellions were started and officials murdered, as a result of the difficulty of the exams. Chinese classical literature seems to corroborate this. I recall when reading one of China’s greatest literary classics titled Outlaws of the Marsh (known in China as the Water Margin), a Robin Hood like story, which was set in the 12th century (coincidentally, that is roughly the same century that the most famous version of Robin Hood is set in) about a band of outlaws fighting corrupt officials, one character was described as having decided to become a bandit after failing the imperial exams [5].

The book also happened to mention a game that struck me as being very similar to football and on further investigation and to my utmost surprise, I discovered that it was indeed football (known as cuju in Chinese). So you see, they knew what they were doing when they made the movie, Shaolin Soccer.

The Chinese bureaucratic model would soon be emulated in nearby countries like Japan and Korea. As a result of the work of European missionaries and diplomats in Asia, the Chinese Imperial Examination system would be adopted by Germany, France (with suitable local modifications of course) and one of the world’s first megacorporation’s, the British East India Company (EIC) [6]. The British government would then borrow the model from the EIC. The US government in turn would borrow the model from Europe. African governments of course inherited it from their colonial masters.

It goes without saying without saying that bureaucracies have become a fixture of modern life. So much that one of 20th century’s greatest novelists, Franz Kafka, made a name for himself writing fiction almost exclusively about them and their penchant for causing alienation (I recommend The Trial. It’s very good). Such was his influence that the English language evolved the word, Kafkaesque from his name, which is used to describe nightmarishly complex administrative situations where in, the individual feels powerless to understand or to control what is happening. You know you are chilling with the big boys when your name becomes an adjective or verb like “google”. His influence doesn’t end there. In tech, the Big Data ingestion tool, Kafka is named in his honour.

We probably all have had a Kafkaesque experience at one time or the other. I think it behooves us to try to objectively understand why an institution so important causes so much anguish. There are multiple dimensions to it. One obvious one if you take the time to think about it is the large-scale complexity of the problems that bureaucracies are typically tasked with. From your point of view, it’s just a simple identity card or driver’s license but from the bureaucracy’s point of view, it is a gigantic coordination problem involving tens of millions, possibly hundreds of millions individual parts. When looked at from that perspective, that the experience is going to be a nightmare for members of the public from time to time shouldn’t be too surprising.

Another dimension is a well-known problem in economics I discussed when treating privatization that is known as the principal-agency problem. There I had explained that the owners of a company and the managers who run the company on a day to day basis often have misaligned interests, such that it is often a struggle for owners to get managers to do what is in the best interests of the company and not just follow their selfish interests. A similar dynamic exists between elected politicians and bureaucrats. Politicians are supposedly elected based on their electoral promises and visions for the country. However, it is the bureaucrat who is going to implement those promises and visions on a day to day basis. So a constant problem for the politician is how does she make sure that bureaucrat does what is supposed to be done in the best interests of the country and not follow her selfish interest. This is made more complex by the fact that the bureaucrat, having a lifetime of expertise in that area will very often know more than the politician that is supposed to supervise her. The solutions politicians typically come up with to this problem is an extensive body of detailed rules trying to govern every aspect of bureaucratic behavior, such that monitoring becomes relatively easy for the politician and any deviation from the rules could be met with punitive measures. This goes a long way to explain the apparent insensitivity that members of the public often encounter when dealing with bureaucrats. This tends to happen because it is impossible for the politician to come up with a rule or procedure that covers every possible scenario. In such circumstances, bureaucrats are often hamstrung because not many would want to take the risk of using their initiative or judgement in an unclear situation, only to be penalized later for impropriety.

This discussion would be incomplete without discussing problems peculiar to developing countries like the effects of corruption, tribalism, nepotism, favouritism and every other “-ism” on bureaucracies. Good bureaucracies by design are meant to be impersonal organizations run on abstract, scientific principles. The implication of this is that, in order to have high functioning bureaucracies in a society, a rational, scientific culture needs to be pervasive in that society, so that bureaucratic recruits in general have the right mental models for performing their jobs at the highest levels. A scientific and rational mindset cannot be described as being pervasive in Africa, where a traditional mindset with a focus on family and tribe predominates. This unfortunately causes a significant number of bureaucrats to see their organization as a fiefdom, rather than as a place to render public service. It also leads to a vicious politics where the object of the game is to control the source of economic rents to distribute to friends and family rather than an inclusive political setting where the object of the game is to design institutions that enable largely homegrown science and technology to deliver the high productivity needed for inclusive economic development. These are hard, seemingly intractable problems but it might be a source of encouragement to know that other climes that we associate with having a more enlightened political culture have had similar problems in their past. 19th century American politics was notorious for corruption though mostly at government levels lower than the federal government [7]. This was driven partly the large-scale migrations to America by many different ethnic groups from Europe and Asia [8], creating a culture of ethnic politics. This led a number of American cities, particularly New York, Chicago, Jersey City, St. Louis, and Kansas City (among many others) becoming synonymous with corruption, kickbacks, and bribery. Some political leaders were even nicknamed “Boss”, mafia-style and the entire phenomenon itself was nicknamed “machine politics”.

Solving problems of the kind discussed in the last paragraph, is by nature a slow, gradual process that cannot without major institutional reform. Institutional reform is necessary because such situations imply that a society’s rules have too many loopholes. Effective institutional reform requires active involvement of a significant part of the populace beyond voting in elections because coming up with rules that are fair to everyone requires the active participation of a large number of disparate groups in the reform process. That is how the west came to evolve fairer societies. In the relatively distant past, their societies were just as unfair as any one that can be found in the developing world but getting to where they are now would imply doing what they did, which means more of us would need to get out of our comfort zones and get involved.

BEFORE YOU GO: Please share this post with as many people as possible and check out my book Why Africa is not rich like America and Europe on Amazon.

References
1. Wikipedia article on Sumer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer
2. Wikipedia article on Bureaucracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureauc...
3. Wikipedia article on Imperial Exams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperia...
4. Ibid
5. Shi Nai’an. Publication date uncertain. Outlaws of the Marsh
6. Wikipedia article on Imperial Exams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperia...
7. Rubinstein, William D. et al. 2010. ‘Weber, Bureaucracy and Corruption’ Open Access Repository www.ssoar.info
8. Ibid

Institutions…What are they?...Why are they important?

I had hinted in previous posts about the need to do a series on institutions and the critical role they play in development. This is the first of such posts and perhaps there is no better place to start than to ask what are institutions anyway?

An institution is a humanly devised structure of rules and norms that shape and constrain individual behavior [1]. Institutions are building blocks of social order: they represent socially sanctioned, that is, collectively enforced expectations with respect to the behavior of specific categories of actors or to the performance of certain activities [2].

Laws, rules, social conventions and norms are all examples of institutions. Institutions occupy a very wide spectrum ranging from the highly informal (like shaking someone’s hand after being introduced to them), to the semi-formal (like policemen stopping cars at a legal checkpoint in order to extract an illegal bribe), to the highly formal (the written constitution governing a country).

Throughout history, institutions have been devised by human beings to create order and reduce uncertainty. In successful modern societies, institutions play one very crucial role; They reduce the transaction costs for carrying out the large-scale industrial production necessary for mass prosperity. This perhaps needs some elaboration. All economies have transaction costs-the myriad costs that go into doing business. How successfully an economy develops significantly depends on how well it can create institutions that minimize those transaction costs [3]. Institutions and the way they evolve shape economic performance. Together with the technology employed, they determine the cost of transacting and producing goods and services [4]. A set of political and economic institutions that provide low-cost transacting makes possible the efficient industrial production that underlies economic growth [5]. If you notice, a lot of the professions in modern society involve work that don’t produce tangible goods that individuals consume (production of tangible goods is typically done by scientists and engineers. They are the production layer of an economy). Some of those professions are lawyers, bankers, politicians, accountants, civil servants, to name a few but are yet an important part of a modern economy (Okay, some people may not agree that politicians do anything useful for society but I digress…). These occupations form the transaction layer of an economy. They are there largely to design the institutions that reduce the transaction costs of industrial production carried out by manufacturers. You can understand this division of labour better using the computer analogy. The transaction layer is like the operating system (OS) like Windows or for the show offs among you, MacOS (if you like, call me jealous. I don’t bloody care), while the production layer is like the actual programs installed in order to do something useful like Microsoft Office for preparing all manner of documents, programming languages like C++, Java, Python, Rust, Go etc. for writing computer programs and graphics packages like Adobe Photoshop, CorelDraw etc. for graphics design. You don’t use the OS directly to do anything useful, but it goes without saying that if the OS is not working, nothing useful can be done.

It is extremely important for a society to pay close attention to the design and operation of its institutions. Institutions have this habit of making themselves invisible. That is what makes them so powerful. Institutions exert enormous influence on the thought processes of individuals without them realizing it. People instead tend to think their thoughts as just being “natural” [6]. Some social scientists even contend that it is impossible for people to have thoughts outside those that have been made possible by their society’s institutional constraints. They refer to these a society’s unthinkable thoughts (or what Donald Rumsfeld, Defence Secretary under George Bush Jnr, famously described as unknown unknowns). In short, a society’s institutions do much of the thinking in any given society [7]. It is imperative for any society that wants continuous progress to constantly question the nature of their institutions with the goal of improving them. To do that though, one must first be aware of how much they influence one’s thinking. Developing quality institutions by the way, is actually what some of us mean when we say “Government needs to create an enabling environment.” You don’t create an enabling environment simply to have an enabling environment. You create it because you want to enable something. That thing is industrial production.

One should note though, that improving institutions is by nature a slow and incremental process, not least of all because institutions to a large extent determine the distribution of benefits in a society and thus, those enjoying the best of the benefits will fight to maintain the status quo [8]. Resistance from those benefiting from the status quo is not the only reason institutions change slowly. Since institutions are meant to bring stability, order and create certainty where there is uncertainty, there is a natural bias for institutions to only change slowly [9]. Too much institutional change could lead to anarchy. Nevertheless, institutions do evolve, though there is no guarantee that their evolution will lead to a social arrangement that is of greater benefit to the greater mass of society. The opportunities thrown up by the natural stresses and strains that force institutional change have to be seized by social reformers working for the greater benefit of society for that to happen [10].

It is important for me to point out that there is some ambiguity as regards the definition of institutions. They also refer to organizations as well as rules and norms. Very often in the public sector, organizations are brought into existence to enforce certain rules and norms (e.g. Ministries, Agencies, Departments, the courts etc.)

We can now take a brief look at the major institutions that affect economic growth. They can roughly be divided into four. They are the legal, political, economic and social institutions. We shall take each one in turn:

Legal Institutions

There is a general consensus that the quality of legal institutions correlates with levels of economic growth, though there is some ambiguity as to which causes which [11]. Most likely, they coevolve and reinforce one another. There is also general consensus that the most important aspects of legal institutions for economic development pertain to the ‘Rule of law’ particularly the enforcement of property rights [12]. An environment where investors, both local and foreign believe that their investments are safe from expropriation by government and other powerful elites, is one in which they are likely to invest.

A major challenge with building legal institutions in the developing world is that western-style legal systems inherited from colonial masters often conflict with traditional customary law. One area where this problem is particularly stark is in the area of land ownership. Western legal systems emphasize individual ownership of land, while traditional customary law emphasizes communal ownership. Western nations once too, many centuries ago operated along the lines of communal land ownership but slowly changed to an individual system because they found an individual system to better suit the needs of modern capitalism. Imagine you want collect a loan from a bank to expand your business and you want to put up a piece of land you share with your brothers and sisters as collateral. Perhaps one of your brothers wants to use it as farmland, one of your sisters wants to put a container on the land and turn it to a beer parlour, another brother says that the land should just be sold outright and all of you share the money. Every single brother and sister has his/her own idea of what to do with the land. You would agree with me that there is a decent chance that absolutely nothing would be done with that land since you can’t all agree on a single course of action. Much work still needs to be done to harmonize western style systems with customary law.

Political Institutions

Human development has been positively linked with state capacity. By state capacity, I mean the technical skills and administrative reach of government apparatus. Thus it is generally accepted that government policies intended to improve the welfare of citizens on a national scale can only be achieved the effective bureaucracies [13]. Lack of effective bureaucracies is a major problem in Africa. One that observers say threatens almost all development efforts as well as basic public administration [14].

In general, the world is increasingly converging on an ideal institutional framework. This framework consists of a democratic polity with decentralized markets with well-specified and enforced property rights [15], though there is understandably, a great deal of variation, in how well countries have implemented this framework.

Economic Institutions

Every society needs to make effective use of the scarce resources. Goods and services have to be produced to meet the basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter, etc. While the institutional set up of a country in general has a profound effect on its economic performance, there are specifically economic institutions that are tasked with the optimal organization of the production, exchange, distribution and consumption of goods and services [16]. These economic institutions can be roughly divided into three groups namely:

• Those establishing and protecting property rights
• Those facilitating transactions
• Those permitting economic co-operation and organization (through formal companies and informal organizations like cooperatives)

Examples of the property rights group would include intellectual property rights, patents, copyrights etc. Those of the facilitating transactions group would include measures, weights, standards, public information on markets, physical provision and organization of markets (e.g. stock exchanges, auction rings), banking conventions, auditing and accounting conventions etc. Those of the economic cooperation group would include laws on limited liability and bankruptcy, competition policy, regulations on charities, cooperatives and civil associations, employment regulations etc. [17].

Social Institutions

Here we have some of the most fundamental institutions in society; family, marriage, kinship, religion and education. The part they play in relation to economic development is in producing people with the right values and formal skills needed to make them productive members of society. Values such as thrift, hard work, a love of learning etc. and the scientific and technical skills required to boost national productivity, hence creating wealth.

In the next post, we shall take a critical look at bureaucracies.

BEFORE YOU GO: Please share this post with as many people as possible and check out my book Why Africa is not rich like America and Europe on Amazon.

References
1. Wikipedia Article on Institutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institu...
2. Ibid
3. North, Douglass. 1992 ‘Transaction Costs, Institutions and Economic Performance’ International Center for Economic Growth
4. Ibid
5. Ibid
6. Douglas, Mary. 1986 How Institutions Think. New York: Syracuse University Press
7. Ibid
8. Douglass North. 1992 ‘Transaction Costs, Institutions and Economic Performance’ International Center for Economic Growth
9. Ibid
10. Ibid
11. Ogus, Anthony. June 2004 ‘The Importance of Legal Structure for Regulation (and Deregulation) in Developing Countries’ http://idpm.man.ac.uk/crc/
12. Ibid
13. Gerring, John et al. March 2002 ‘Political Institutions and Human Development’
14. Ibid
15. Douglass North. 1992 ‘Transaction Costs, Institutions and Economic Performance’ International Center for Economic Growth
16. Economic Institutions II
17. Wiggins, Steve et al. July 2006 ‘Economic Institutions’ www.ippg.org.uk

How South Korea got Rich

I had mentioned in my last post that I was going to embark on a series of posts about Institutions. Given that I have to do some original research on the subject they will take some time. In a side task I had been preparing a write up on the South Korean economic development story for an On Air Personality (OAP), in the hope that it could serve as the basis of a radio program. I have decided to turn that write up into a post and in order to save time and effort, I am reproducing the original write up almost verbatim.

Hello Gabriel (not real name). Trust you are good? Here is the script I was talking about. I wrote this script so you could understand how in trying to solve our economic problems, how misplaced our emphasis on natural resources is.

I had already treated this topic in general terms, in one of my posts titled The Illusion of Natural Resources.

What I want to do here is specifically focus on the developmental story of South Korea. South Korea went from being poorer than Ghana in the 1960s to being one of the richest in the world in the space of 30-40 years.
South Korea was in very bad shape at the end of the Korean War with North Korea in the 1950s. In 1961, the yearly income of the average South Korean was $82. That is less than half what the average Ghanaian was making at the time, which stood at $179. Half of its manufacturing base and at least 75% of its railway system had been destroyed in the war. Their primary schools were even more crowded than African primary schools in the 70s and 80s. Today, South Korea ranks amongst the world’s wealthiest nations. Samsung, is emblematic of the journey the South Korean economy has undergone as a whole and is a pointer to the economic structural change the economies of Sub-Saharan Africa need to undergo, if our economies are to generate mass prosperity. From its inauspicious beginnings in 1938 as an exporter of fish, vegetables and fruit, Samsung is now a world leader in the production and export of high end mobile phones, semiconductors, computers and consumer electronics in general, as well as ocean-going ships.

The following table shows the changing percentage composition of GDP going to agriculture, Industry (Manufacturing, mining + Utilities, Construction) and services in South Korea.



I don’t have data for the remaining years till date but if you do a Google search, you will find that in 2021, around 56.98% of South Korea’s GDP went to Services, 32.45% went to Industry and less than 2% went to Agriculture. For comparison, the figures in 2021 for Nigeria are 43.79% went to services, 31.41% to industry and 23.36% to Agriculture. You should bear in mind that official statistics doesn’t track the informal economy, which takes the larger share of economic activity in Nigeria (roughly between 50-80%) and is heavily skewed towards subsistence agriculture and low income services like hairdresser, bricklayer, welder, labourer etc. So what I am saying is that the share of manufacturing in Nigeria’s real GDP (official + unofficial) is probably overstated, perhaps significantly so. Plus, not all manufacturing are alike. The bulk of Nigerian manufacturing goods will be of the most basic kind (agro-processing and basic chemical products), lacking the sophistication and richness of the high value goods produced in South Korea. You shouldn’t interpret South Korea’s declining share of industry in GDP as a diminishing importance of Industry. A significant amount of services are created as a result of demand from industry. To take an example from the British Fashion Industry, 90% of the jobs in that industry are involved in conveying the product to the consumer, not making it but without the 10% required for making the product, the other 90% would not exist.

The following table shows the change in South Korea’s production pattern, basically, its top ten exports over the decades.



Notice how in the 1960s that its top 10 exports were exclusively natural resource based? They were agricultural, aquacultural, forestry and mining produce. In just 10 years, they had started exporting light manufacturing products that used these natural resources as inputs. Here I am talking about textiles, Wigs, footwear, tobacco, iron/steel/metal products. They had even started exporting electronics (most likely consumer electronics like radios and TVs). Note that for them to be exporting means that they were already successfully producing for the domestic market. By the 2000s, a mere 40 years later, they were exporting advanced electronics like semiconductors, computers and wireless telecommunication equipment. By 2015, South Korea, representing less than 1% of the world population, became the fifth largest exporter in the world, accounting for 3% of world exports.

That is the kind of progress we need to be making if we are to create mass prosperity in Sub-Saharan Africa. Note also that this is also typically the pattern of development for any country that has industrialized and managed to pull the bulk of its population from poverty.
The South Koreans and the other East Asian Tigers were able to achieve this economic miracle as a result of aggressive Industrial Policy.

Industrial Policy is a country’s official strategic effort to encourage the development and growth of all or part of the economy, often focused on all or part of the manufacturing sector. The government takes measures aimed at improving the competitiveness and capabilities of domestic firms and promoting structural transformation.

The Industrial Policy implemented by South Korea in 1960s and 70s radically and drastically changed the South Korean economy from an agrarian one to an export-oriented industrial one.

Successful industrialization in the modern era has nowhere and never been an accident. It has always been based on some policy that aimed at supporting manufacturing. Few fully realize that industrialization is a crucial necessity for economic development and requires design and implementation of appropriate policies. Many countries ignore industrial policy or fail to employ it effectively.

Industrial policy is used to change the production structure of an economy in favour of the manufacturing industry by channeling a government’s selected budgetary and non-budgetary resources and by channeling private capital, labour, and entrepreneurs towards the manufacturing sector. Industrial policy, as other ‘structural policies,’ is designed and implemented in order to improve the long-term growth performance of the economy. In particular, it helps countries surmount the so-called middle-income trap by raising growth performance over the long term. This is made possible by the innovational and growth-inducing nature of the manufacturing sector.

Today’s industrialized nations which experienced their industrial revolutions after the British have all employed industrial policies at different times in their development cycles. This is confirmed by the stories of France, the USA, Japan, Germany, and Russia. In each of them, one or more dominant leaders pushed for economic (and social) reform and industrialization. They did it for the country to become powerful both militarily and politically. Industrialization has thus been used as a tool for military and political power.

Overall, industrialization is a capacity-building process that materializes through real manufacturing experience over time. It requires the development of human and institutional skills.

It is also important to understand that Manufacturing is the pioneering driver of growth; it is the sector in which the productivity is relatively high and which raises the growth of the sector. That in turn leads to productivity increases (and hence growth) in the non-manufacturing sector, importantly including services, amply demonstrated by the British Fashion Industry example above.

That’s it. Let me know what you think.


Bibliography
1. Chang, Ha-Joon. 2007 Bad Samaritans: The Guilty Secrets of Rich Nations & the Threat to Global Prosperity. London: Random House
2. Yulek, Murat A. 2018 How Nations Succeed: Manufacturing, Trade, Industrial Policy, & Economic Development. Singapore: Palmgrave Macmillan

So why did all this scientific achievement not transform Africa like it did Europe?

The Major Axes of the Continents

For the past four posts I have been discussing achievements in science and technology on the African continent in times past. A question possibly on the minds on all who have been reading those posts is why such achievements didn’t lead to the economic transformation that lifts most people out of poverty as it did in Europe. That would be a particularly tough question with possibly many interacting factors and that may be impossible to answer definitively. Nevertheless, I will try to do the question justice.

Perhaps we should start with the well-known link between population density and political organization. Political scientists are well aware of the fact that as human societies reach certain levels of population density, they forced to adopt increasingly more complex forms of political organization with modern nation-states being the most complex. Modern states are characterized by the presence of strong, centralized governments, cities, fiat money, distinctions between rich and poor, and many other political, economic, and social institutions. Now, modern states are able to concentrate resources in a way that enables large-scale scientific and technological deployments in a way that societies at lower or simpler levels of political organization simply can’t. Perhaps some figures will help furnish the necessary perspective. Africa in 1975 was reaching a population density that Europe had already reached in the 1500s, some 400 years earlier [1]. Even in the year 1900, when Japan’s population density was 118.2 persons per square km, and China’s 45.6, sub-Saharan Africa’s own was 4.4 [2]. Now it is important to note that while Africa did have some recognizably modern states about the same time or even earlier than Europe and I have mentioned some of them in previous posts like the Kingdom of Kongo and the empire of Mali, the fact is right up to the eve of colonization in the late 19th century, at least half of Africa consisted of small tribal societies [3].

It should also be obvious that with low population density, it is harder for ideas to spread. As a result, exceptional individuals with the capabilities and the outlook necessary for scientific achievement on the continent in times past, very often found themselves isolated, and whatever breakthroughs or innovations they made tended to die with them. This wasn’t particular to Africa only. In fact, this was the general pattern also in the rest of the world until the 16th-18th centuries when Europe made the crucial breakthrough of creating “institutional memory”, such that institutional mechanisms were set up such that the knowledge of individual geniuses was captured and made available to be deployed on a society-wide basis, independent of the geniuses that originally thought up the innovations [4]. More on that later.

You might be asking “but how did Europe achieve the population densities that set them on the road to modern development so quickly (relatively speaking)?”. That was primarily determined by the different rates with which different societies in different parts of the world transitioned from hunting and gathering, to agriculture, and the natural geographic features of the different continents plays a crucial role here [5].

The continents of Europe and Asia, collectively called Eurasia, (with North Africa often considered to be a part), has a mainly East-West Axis as opposed to Africa (and the Americas) that has a mainly North-South axis. What I mean by this is that Eurasia spans a much greater distance going from East to West than from North to South whereas in Africa, the reverse is the case. Now because Eurasia has a major East-West Axis, much of it lies within the same latitudes. Locations sharing the same latitudes share exactly the same day length and its seasonal variations. To a lesser degree, they also tend to share similar diseases, regimes of temperature and rainfall, and habitats or biomes (types of vegetation) [6]. For example, Portugal, northern Iran, and Japan, all located at about the same latitude but lying successively 4,000 miles east or west of each other, are more similar to each other in climate than each is to a location lying even a mere 1,000 miles due south [7]. The different orientations of the major axes of the continents played a crucial in determining the onset of agriculture and the relative ease with which agricultural innovations could spread from place to place. Among the first places to develop agriculture were Sumer (that would be southern Iraq today), and China [8] (The rest were in the Americas). From these two centers, agricultural innovations could spread with relative ease to the rest of Eurasia because of its East-West axis. The spread from the original centers of agriculture in the Americas to other parts in it, was much more difficult. This was also true of Africa though to a less extreme degree, and the reason in both cases being the North-South orientation of their axes. The onset of Agriculture increased food production, thus increasing population and hence population density, thus leading to the more complex political organization of societies that had acquired agriculture, thus making them increasingly capable of developing and deploying science and technology on a wide scale. It is important that you realize that this process was thousands of years in the making.

Moreover, the onset of Agriculture created food surpluses that required bureaucracies to manage, thus creating demand for useful technologies like writing. The first writing system was developed in Sumer. It was known as cuneiform and it was strictly used for record-keeping [9]. In the 15th-17th centuries, writing alongside the development of the Gutenberg printing press, the development of institutional mechanisms like the academic journal and formal scientific societies helped create the institutional memory talked about previously that helped turn scientific development in Europe into a self-sustaining process [10]. If you want to read a definitive account of how geography decided the fate of nations, you can do no better than Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel.



Another crucial factor that that emerged roughly during that same period of 15th-17th centuries in Europe was attitudinal in nature, in that there had developed in Europe a widespread, relatively extreme curiosity about the natural world such that there was a determination to unlock nature’s secrets and use that knowledge to manipulate nature in order to extract material benefits for mankind as a whole. Such a worldview led to a very comprehensive experimentation program. Some point to the emergence of Protestantism as a leading cause for the development of this worldview [11]. This is in contrast to what obtained in contemporary China, where the values tempered such curiosity such that a premium was placed on keeping in natural harmony and balance with the environment thus leading to a much a less extensive experimentation program [12]. Also in Europe there was a much greater separation between spirituality and scientific activity compared to elsewhere. The mixing of the two seems to act like a brake on the experimentation necessary for obtaining material benefits useful to a society and instead steer focus to divining the will of the gods and what that means in the personal lives of people seeking divine guidance. I will illustrate with an example. The Ifa divination system of classical Yoruba society of South-West Nigeria has a highly intricate mathematical foundation based on binary logic and hexadecimal systems [13]. It is essentially as sophisticated as identical systems that has been produced by western Discrete Mathematics. Such abstract mathematical systems coupled to extensive physical experimentation and devoid of spirituality, has led to the development of digital computing in the west. In contrast, with the Ifa divination system where the mathematics is mixed up with spirituality (some would say fetishes), the most common use cases today are probably young ladies seeking husbands and politicians seeking election (or re-election) victory.

You would have noticed that in the myriad of factors discussed, the subject of genetics or more specifically, intelligence has not come up. I am really hoping that this exposition would convince all once and for all that genetic superiority of other peoples is not the reason we are behind. You would have also noticed that I didn’t discuss corruption. Corruption, while currently a major problem on the continent, is a very recent phenomenon, relatively speaking. The factors that have determined who has raced ahead and who has been left behind like I said before, have been thousands of years in the making.

Some may be tempted to infer that given the significant role geography has played in our relative positioning with the rest of the world, that we have been cursed by God. I don’t think that would be wise. It hasn’t been all bad. If I remember correctly, Africa has the most stable tectonic plates making natural disasters like volcanos and earthquakes a rare occurrence here. Also more hurricanes happen in the U.S than the rest of the world combined. Such a skewed distribution can’t be random. It is actually caused by specific wind patterns that start off mildly from the African coast and gathers a murderous rage once it reaches the coast of the Americas. One shudders to think of what would be happening here if the wind patterns worked in reverse.

Finally, even if you don’t subscribe to the idea of us being cursed, you might nonetheless think Africa’s fate has been sealed by geography. There is room for optimism. Virtually all of Africa now is organized along the lines of modern nation-states with the associated institutions, though generally fragile or flawed. Strengthening those institutional mechanisms will be key to getting the breakthroughs we desperately need. In the next set of posts I will be discussing those institutions (as a result of increasing demands on my time the posts won’t come as quickly as this series on science has). I have insinuated in a previous post that those institutions are built on a value system that we are yet by and large to imbibe. Doing that will take enlightenment. I try to do my part by writing. Each of us playing a part will make the process faster.

BEFORE YOU GO: Please share this post with as many people as possible and please check out my book, Why Africa is not rich like America and Europe on Amazon. Thank you


References
1. Fukuyama, Francis. 2011 The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution. London: Profile Books
2. Fukuyama, Francis. Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
3. Ibid
4. Cohen, H. Floris. 2010 How Modern Science Came into The World: Four Civilizations, One 17th century Breakthrough. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press
5. Diamond, Jared. 1997 Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton and Company
6. Ibid
7. Ibid
8. Ibid
9. Ibid
10. Cohen, H. Floris. 2010 How Modern Science Came into The World: Four Civilizations, One 17th century Breakthrough. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press
11. Ibid
12. Ibid
13. Segla, Aime Dafon, 2016 ‘Viewing Formal Mathematics from Yoruba Conception of
the Sky’ Journal of Astronomy in Culture Vol. 1, No. 1

Arab and Black African Muslim Scholarship: A History

Lion King…with family, friends…and foes

It is pretty self-evident that Arab culture has had a significant influence on the African continent for centuries, most notably in the form of the religion of Islam. What is not well appreciated is that along with Islam came an intellectual culture, which was a mixture of indigenous Arab intellectual pursuits and classical learning from ancient Greece, Persia (modern day Iran), India and Syria. This culture would do much to shape Muslim scholarship on the African continent. Much of this scholarship would be centered around the great city of Timbuktu in the empire of Mali, but there were other centers of Muslim learning as well, like Mauritania for instance.

The Arab world experienced a golden age of scholarship and intellectual enquiry, as well as economic and cultural flourishing from about the 8th century to the 13th century [1]. At the center of that intellectual splendor was “The House of Wisdom”. The House of Wisdom was a public academy and intellectual center located in Baghdad (In modern Iraq), which was then the world’s largest city, [2] that attracted the keenest minds from all over the Arab world to carry out scholarship in many areas of intellectual inquiry. The political rulers of the time had a strong love for learning, which led to scholarship being an extremely remunerative profession. The best scholars could command salaries that were comparable to professional athletes today [3]. Imagine what the Lionel Messi of philosophy would be paid…or the Michael Jordan of mathematics. There were other intellectual centers scattered throughout the Arab world but the House of Wisdom in Baghdad was the most influential, with many being modeled after it.

One of the great undertakings of the House of Wisdom, that was to later have a profound effect on the intellectual development of Europe was the translation of ancient classic texts into Arabic. The most important texts came from ancient Greece but they were accompanied by others from Persia, India and Syria [4].
Among the more notable translation works carried out by the House of Wisdom, were the translations of many of the most important philosophical and scientific texts of the ancient world. The works of the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Euclid, Archimedes, Hippocrates (medicine), Galen (medicine), Ptolemy (astronomy) and many others were translated. It should be pointed out that this work of translation was not carried out by Muslim scholars only. Many Christian scholars had already been translating ancient works into Syriac (Language of ancient Syria) and as a result, many of them were commissioned by the House of Wisdom to translate those ancient works into Arabic [5]. Many of those Arabic texts, would much later be converted to Latin and would utterly transform the nature of scholarship in Europe (Yeah, the Arabs and the Chinese were once ahead of Europe) leading to periods of intense intellectual flourishing such as the Italian Renaissance [6].

Translation was not the only work that went on at the House of Wisdom. Two centuries of translation were followed by another two centuries of original thinking and outpourings (both were sometimes simultaneous) in various fields particularly in Astronomy, Mathematics and Medicine but also in Philosophy, Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, Geography, Botany, Agronomy, Ophthalmology, Pharmacology, Zoology etc. [7]. Some of the most notable scholars from the House of Wisdom include:

Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi; widely regarded as the “Father of Algebra”. The word algebra itself is Latin and is derived from the Arabic word al-jabr. His impact doesn’t stop there. He lent his name to the most fundamental concept in computer science. The word “Algorithm”, which refers to a precise, step-by-step procedure for solving a problem, is simply the Latin version of his name [8]. His reputation in Europe became so great that all that was needed to end many a mathematical argument was to say “thus spoke Al-Khwarizmi” [9]. His full name by the way, means Muhammad, son of Musa from Khwarizmi. He was also instrumental in the adoption of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, which eventually went on to be adopted globally (The way of writing 1,2, 3... that you were taught in primary school and still use up till now is what is being referred to here).

Ibn Sina (aka Avicenna); preeminent physician of the Islamic Golden Age. Famous for writing The Canon of Medicine, the prevailing medical text in the Islamic World and Europe until the 19th century [10].

Ibn Rushd (aka Averroes); Muslim philosopher who was famous for his commentary on Aristotle [11].

Al-Jahiz; Polymath famous for describing certain principles related to Natural Selection roughly 1,000 before Charles Darwin [12].

Omar Khayyam; Poet, mathematician, and astronomer most famous for his solution of cubic equations [13].
The Banu Musa brothers; Remarkable trio of engineers that may have invented the world’s first programmable device [14].

Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham (aka Alhazen); Perhaps the most influential of all. Widely regarded as the “Father of Modern Optics”. He was the first to correctly explain the theory of vision. His work would be later cited by Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Christian Huygens and Galileo. More importantly, he was also an early proponent of the scientific method, the concept that a hypothesis must be proved by experiments based on confirmable procedures or mathematical evidence, five centuries before Renaissance scientists in Europe [15].

It wasn’t all serious. The poet Rumi wrote some of the finest poetry in the Persian language and remains one of the best-selling poets in America today. And there is of course, One Thousand and One Nights, that collection of folk tales that had such a huge influence on Middle Eastern and Western literature and popular culture with such classics as Aladdin, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Sinbad the Sailor [16].

All good things must come to an end they say, and unfortunately that was the case here. After about roughly four centuries of flourishing, a decline began to set in. Reasons given for the decline include, the appearance of rulers not interested in funding scientific research, the appearance of narrow interpretations of the Quran (as opposed to broad interpretations of the Quran that led to the Golden Age in the first place) that arrested the development of science and philosophy (these two reasons are probably related), disruptions as a result of the Mongol Invasion (The Mongols were a group originating from present day Mongolia that built a massive empire under the leadership of the legendary Genghis Khan) in 1258, which led to the destruction of the House of Wisdom [17]. According to the writings of an eyewitness, "So many books were thrown into the Tigris River that they formed a bridge that would support a man on horseback." Many of the books were also torn apart by pillagers so that the leather covers could be made into sandals [18]. The invasion was led by Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan. There are alternative accounts that suggest that the golden age lasted up to the 16th and 17th centuries before experiencing decline.

Much of the ancient Greek texts translated into Arabic would find their way into Timbuktu in the Mali Empire leading up to the city’s golden age between the 13th and 16th centuries. The Mali Empire was founded in the 13th century by Sundiata Keita [19], who is widely believed to be the inspiration for the Disney Classic, Lion King, though Disney animators claim that they were inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet [20]. Well…maybe. My reading of it tells me that the animators only used the analogy of Hamlet because the execs were having problems understanding the plot of Lion King (What you don’t understand, you don’t bankroll). It’s hard to believe now but at the time of its making internally at Disney, Lion King was not rated highly. In fact, Pocahontas, which was being made at the same time was rated higher. Sundiata is derived from “Sogolon”, his mother’s name and “Jata” which means lion. On becoming emperor of Mali, he assumed the title “Mansa” meaning King, thus becoming the “Lion King”. He was also the great-uncle of the Malian ruler Mansa Musa, widely regarded as the wealthiest person of all time. The city of Timbuktu is referenced in another Disney Classic, The Aristocats.



What is it with Mali and cats anyway??

I can’t think of a better mark of greatness than something becoming a staple of popular culture. Timbuktu was rich in gold and salt deposits, with salt being white gold then, the way oil is black gold now. It also had a rich network of easily accessible trading routes, turning it into a cultural mixing pot [21]. It was this wealth that was used to turn Timbuktu into a Mecca of scholarship. This was mainly done by setting up the University of Sankore, which would achieve renown for Islamic studies and other fields like history, rhetoric, law, science, and, most notably, medicine [22]. This would lead to a tidal wave of scholarly works collectively known as the Timbuktu Manuscripts.

While Timbuktu stands out as a center of Islamic learning on the African continent, it was by no means the only one. Another notable center was Mauritania. In 1980, scholars from the University of Tubingen, Germany and the Mauritanian Institute for Scientific Research joined hands to produce a catalogue of Mauritanian manuscripts [23]. It listed 2,239 manuscripts, of which the oldest is by an 11th century author. It covered some hundred libraries and manuscript collections from various regions of Mauritania, as well as a wide range of subjects classified under the following themes: ad ‘iya (invocations), adhkar (litanies), fatawa (legal opinions), fiqh ( jurisprudence), hadith (science of traditions), mawa‘iz (exhortations), nawazil ( juridical affairs), Qur’an, sira (biography of the Prophet), tasawwuf (Sufism), tawhid (theology), usul (sources of law), adab (literature), ‘arud (metrics), bayan (rhetoric), lugha (language), mantiq (logic), nahw (grammar), shi‘r (poetry), political ethics, falak (astronomy / astrology), geography, hisab (mathematics), magic, (tibb) medicine, kimiya (chemistry) and agriculture.

Unfortunately, like its Arab counterpart, the intellectual flowering of Black Muslim Africa would experience decline and it is claimed by some that the reason was the same narrow interpretation of the Quran [24], in addition to the economic decline of centers such as Timbuktu.

In the next post, we will discuss why all this intellectual ferment did not transform Africa in the way that it transformed Europe.

BEFORE YOU GO: Please share this post with as many people and check out my book Why Africa is not rich like America and Europe on Amazon.

References:
1. Wikipedia article on Islamic Golden age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic...
2. Ibid
3. Ibid
4. Wikipedia article on the House of Wisdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_o...
5. Ibid
6. Wikipedia article on Islamic world contributions to Medieval Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic...
7. Wikipedia article on Science in the Medieval Islamic World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science...
8. Wikipedia article on Khwarizmi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Khwa...
9. Stewart, Ian. 2017 Significant Figures: Lives and work of Trailblazing Mathematicians. New York: Basic Books
10. Wikipedia article of the House of Wisdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_o...
11. Ibid
12. Wikipedia article on Al-Jahiz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Jahiz
13. Wikipedia article on the House of Wisdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_o...
14. Wikipedia article on the Banu brothers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban%C5%...
15. Wikipedia article on Science in the Medieval Islamic World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science...
16. Wikipedia article on Islamic Golden Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic...
17. Ibid
18. Wikipedia article on the House of Wisdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_o...
19. Wikipedia article on Sundiata Keita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundiat...
20. Grant, Adam Originals. 2016 Originals: How Non-Conformists change the World London: WH Allen
21. Wikipedia article on Timbuktu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu
22. Ibid
23. Kane, Ousmane Oumar. 2016 Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa Massachusetts: Harvard University Press
24. Diop, Cheik Anta Diop. 1987 Precolonial Black Africa: A Comparative Study of the Political and Social Systems of Europe and Black Africa, from Antiquity to the Formation of Modern States Connecticut: Laurence Hill & Company

The African Slave Who Introduced Inoculation to America and other African Feats

In my last two posts, I did a deep dive into two areas of African scientific achievement, namely Fractal Geometry and Cosmogony. In this post I am going to briefly touch on a variety of areas. There are records of African breakthroughs in Astronomy, Mathematics, Metallurgy, Medicine, and Political Systems (There are other areas of course but this is my focus for now).

For instance, there is the Dogon tribe of Mali. They are an ethnic group indigenous to the central plateau region of Mali. They are known to possess extremely sophisticated knowledge of the field of Astronomy. So sophisticated that some western skeptics claim that they could have only come to possess this knowledge from contact with people of European descent [1].

While contact with westerners as the source of their knowledge cannot be categorically ruled out, these skeptics seem to forget that Dogon is in Mali and that during the time of the Mali Empire, the city of Timbuktu was a centre of great learning in many fields such as literature, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, Islamic jurisprudence and…astronomy. Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to assume contact with Timbuktu as the source of the Dogon’s knowledge, with the knowledge passed down from one Dogon generation to another? They also seem to forget that Africans would have had the same incentive to acquire astronomical knowledge just like every other group that made the transition from the hunter-gatherer way of life to the agricultural way of life because astronomy helped to understand the seasons, which was important in helping to know when planting crops. Given that the bulk of Africa made this transition thousands of years ago like other parts of the world, there seems to me that there was enough time for some groups of Africans to have developed a fruitful astronomical system.

We also made some notable achievements in mathematics. For starters there is the case of the Ishango bones. These are carved bones located in Ishango, modern Democratic Republic Congo that are reputed to be over 9,000 years old [2]. Some archaeologists even give an age as high as 20,000 years. Irrespective of which figure is correct, it is the oldest mathematical artifact [3]. Markings on the bones suggest that it was the basis of a lunar calendar system [4]. The Yorubas of Nigeria also have a few mathematical achievements under their belts. They at some point in their history devised a numeral system, which is considered by mathematicians to be pretty intricate. It is a vigesimal system, that is, unlike the Hindu-Arabic system that is used the world over, which is a base 10 system, the Yoruba one is a base 20 system. It seems the system was inspired by the need to count cowries [5].

Mathematical innovations on the African continent weren’t all serious. Some were strictly for fun. There is a family of African strategy games known as Mancala. Mancala comes from the Arab word for “move” and refers to moving little pawns from one hole to another [6]. Mancala goes by different names in different parts of Africa. In Tanzania it is called “Bao”, In Uganda, “Omweso”, In Nigeria, “Ayo”, in Rwanda and other parts of East Africa “(Igi-)soro” [7]. R.C. Bell, a specialist in board games, classified Mancala in the top 10 of the world’s games. Nokia preprogrammed the related “Bantumi” game on its very popular cellphone model 3310.

Metallurgy is another field where Africa has made its mark. Here the achievements are pretty remarkable. Anthropological studies have revealed that as far back as 2,000 years ago, Africans were able to produce carbon steel in Tanzania. They did this using methods that were up until the 19th century technologically superior to the steel producing methods of Europe [8].

Medicine is yet another field. The surgical removal of cataracts was a routine procedure in the Malian city of Djenne during the time of the Mali empire (Between the 13th and 17th century). At this time too, scholars in Timbuktu were aware of the dangers of tobacco smoking [9]. This is significant. In America, smoking wasn’t linked to lung cancer and other diseases until the late 1940s or early 1950s. I am not saying that scholars in Timbuktu were able to link tobacco smoking to lung cancer but at least they were aware that it was a health problem, a fact that was largely unknown in 1920s America.

It is generally accepted that methods for inoculating people against smallpox existed in Africa, China, Turkey and Iran long before such practices found their way to Europe [10]. Smallpox inoculation was actually introduced to America by a West African slave who was bought and given to a Boston-based, church minister named Cotton Mather in 1706, who named him Onesimus. In 1716, possibly from witnessing several smallpox out-breaks, Onesimus informed Mather that he knew a treatment for smallpox. Onesimus explained to Mather that all one had to do was take a little pus from an infected person and rub it into an open wound and one would be protected. Mather did his research and confirmed that indeed, this was a successful practice in other parts of the world like China and Turkey [11]. Mather began to spread the word but he was met with resistance…sometimes, violent resistance.

In 1721, there was a particular fierce outbreak of smallpox. A doctor named Zabdiel Bolyston decided to try out what Mather had been preaching. In all, he inoculated 242 people including his son. The death rate in the inoculated group was 1 in 40, in the general population, it was 1 in 7 [12]. It would not be till 1796 that Edward Jenner would develop an effective vaccine using cowpox to provoke smallpox immunity. Tragic now that we are the ones on the receiving end as the Covid pandemic abundantly made clear. In a 2016 Boston Magazine survey, Onesimus was declared one of the "Best Bostonians of All Time" [13]. Not bad for an African slave.

Another impressive medical feat was the routine performance of caesarian sections by the Bunyoro of Uganda in the late 19th century. Caesarian sections were relatively rare in Europe at the time [14].

There was political innovation as well. The Oyo Kingdom, in what would today be south-west Nigeria had an elaborate system of check and balances that is rather similar to Montesquieu’s concept of separation of powers. Montesquieu was a French lawyer who lived in the 18th century and was one of the most influential figures in the intellectual movement known as the “The Enlightenment”. I briefly describe the Enlightenment in a previous post. He is widely and rightly regarded as one of the most important political philosophers of all time and his ideas form a crucial part of the intellectual foundation of the modern world. He made his name for articulating the concept of separation of powers in government, which is implemented in many constitutions around the world. His classic book, The Spirit of the Laws, served as the basis on which American founding father and former U.S President James Madison drafted the U.S constitution.

The Alaafin of Oyo, who was basically the executive, had a council of nobles that had judicial powers [15]. The Alaafin’s rule was checked by this council because he had to submit his decisions to it, which is somewhat reminiscent of the relationship between the executive and legislative arms of government in a democracy. It doesn’t stop there, the council itself was also checked by notables of various great families [16] and this system of checks and balances was replicated throughout the kingdom on a smaller scale (You could call it fractal government. If you know, you know). The system enabled the Oyo Kingdom to dominate trade along the river Niger but fell short of uniting all of Yoruba land under one central authority [17]. The Oyo Kingdom reached its peak in 1650, Montesquieu would not be born for another 39 years after that.

In 1725 AD, Fulani settlers in Futa Jallon, which today is in modern Guinea formed a theocratic state whose head was known as the Almamy. They drew up a constitution based on the Quran, which recognized the equality of all Muslims in law and duty [18]. There was also a grand council, which was the Almamy’s principal advisory body, which had the power to relieve an Almamy of his duties if he was mentally or physically incapable of carrying out his job or if he failed to rule in accordance with the Quran or the constitution [19]. I think it is easy to see that this is essentially an Islamic version of the rule of law.

While Ancient Greece is recognized as the birthplace of direct democracy, the Igbos of Eastern Nigeria are known to have developed a tradition of direct democracy of their own. Theirs was characterized by the existence of the council of elders and the village assembly [20]. The council of elders consisted of the heads of family units but any adult male could participate. At the village assembly, the elders presented issues to the people. Everybody had the right to speak and decisions had to be unanimous. This unfortunately caused decision-making to be time consuming but ensured greater individual participation [21].

In my opinion, that peoples from different parts of the world came up with such similar ideas isn’t too surprising. Each and every group on earth is tasked with achieving the same goal…survival. From a similarity of ends, a similarity of means is probably bound to happen from time to time.

Most of the intellectual achievements I have discussed up to this point were home grown. In my next post, I will discuss the African achievements that came about as a result of Arab influence.

BEFORE YOU GO: Please share this post with as many people as possible and check out my book Why Africa is not rich like America and Europe on Amazon.


References:
1. Dogon People Article on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogon_p...
2. Sertima, Ivan et al. 1998 Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers
3. Huylebrouck, Dirk. 2019 Africa and Mathematics: From Colonial Findings Back To The Ishango Rods Switzerland Springer Nature
4. Sertima, Ivan et al. 1998 Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers
5. Ibid
6. Huylebrouck, Dirk. 2019 Africa and Mathematics: From Colonial Findings Back To The Ishango Rods Switzerland Springer Nature
7. Ibid
8. Sertima, Ivan et al. 1998 Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers
9. History of Science and Technology in Africa Article on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...
10. Inoculation Article on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inocula...
11. Blakemore, Erin. Updated Apr 2021 ‘How an Enslaved African Man in Boston Helped Save Generations from Smallpox’ history.com: https://www.history.com/news/smallpox...
12. Ibid
13. Wikipedia Article on Onesimus, the African that Introduced Smallpox Inoculation to Colonial Boston, America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onesimu...
14. Sertima, Ivan et al. 1998 Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers
15. Harris, Joseph E. 1987 Africans and their History Revised Edition. New York: Mentor
16. Ibid
17. Ibid
18. Ibid
19. Ibid
20. Ibid
21. Ibid