What the Motherland should... and shouldn't... learn from Singapore


Drawing lessons for Africa: Example from the Singapore story from African Leadership Network on Vimeo.
The brainchild of African Leadership Academy founder Fred Swaniker, the ALN conference features a pan-African array of energetic leaders in a TED-style speakers' forum.
Participants expand their social networks, allowing them to build the continent intellectually, culturally, economically, and politically with a range of allies they would otherwise never meet. The ALN provides a context in which the continent is not ignored, and is not a target for contempt disguised as compassion.
Instead, at the ALN, Africa is at the centre of participants' existence, success, and future.
The African Leadership Network convenes its conferences regularly regionally and in a major international event. According to its website, the ALN measures its results, publishing hard data annually on "the number of new companies that have been fostered by the network, the number of jobs that ALN collaborations have created for the continent, [and] the amount of investment that members have managed to mobilize across Africa because of relationships they established through ALN."
Speaker Francis Daniels discusses what the Singapore success story has to teach the continent's new leaders. I couldn't disagree more with Francis Daniels on numerous points in his presentation, especially on the alleged need to suppress minimum wages, the alleged legitimacy of a repressive state to achieve economic growth for the owning class, and the alleged illegitimacy of reparations from the Maafa, the largest and most horrific human trafficking in global history.
Nevertheless, Daniels challenges listeners to rethink their assumptions about how countries can achieve economic growth. When we engage in lively and intelligent debate, we begin walking the path to achieving almost anything.
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Published on September 12, 2011 09:10
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