Amazing Africa, Where Is Your Spirit Of Common Good Gone,

By Pierre Jules Zing Tsala

In 1952, Nelson Mandela said: " In the meantime, people's living conditions, already extremely difficult, are worsening and becoming unsustainable. People's purchasing power is steadily declining, and the cost of living is soaring. Now the bread is lighter than it was two months ago. The cost of milk, meat and vegetables are beyond the resources of the average family and many of our people cannot afford them. People are too poor to feed their families and children. They cannot get dressed, housed and cured. They are denied the right to security, and when they are paid unemployment, sickness or old-age benefits, the amount is too low to survive. Due to the lack of appropriate medical facilities, our people are devastated by terrible diseases such as tuberculosis, STDs, pellagra, the infant mortality rate is very high."

This statement by Mandela sounds like it was said by an African opposition leader of 2017. This exactly what many African countries face, plus AIDS, with few exceptions.

That being so, how could that situation be 60 years after Sub-Saharan countries independence, given the GDP growth rates that have been achieved there for several years?

This is a continent of lack of trust, institutional voids, foreign interferences, and most crucially these are countries whereby the spirit of common good vanished years ago. One cannot expect long-term investment in an untrustworthy environment.
Whereas a lack of spirit of common good commands predominance of non-ethical behaviors like corruption, electoral cheating, tribalism, foreign powers domination and poor environmental records. These are for us, the major causes for underdevelopment.

This book starts with an uncompromising diagnostic and finishes with very innovative solutions. The book also describes detailed examples of very successful country strategies, describing the brilliant journey towards development of nations that were often at worse situations than Africa 60 years ago.

The author has based is diagnostic and solutions on a deep practical knowledge of Africa, and its economics and social dynamic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pierre Jules Zing Tsala
• Release date: Aug 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781370321650

Pierre Jules Zing Tsala

I am a Senior Adviser, Speaker, Author, Lecturer, who assist Decision Makers in Strategic Performance Improvement, Leadership, Ethics, and Intercultural Issues. The clients are leaders of international groups like Orange, Lafarge, ZAIN, Celtel, SGBC, Ecobank, Verlinde, African governments, etc. MBA from Cranfield School of Management in the UK; Diverse PostGrad from Institut de Haute Finance in Paris, or Institut d'Administration des Entreprises in Rennes- Brittany. ) I’ve lectured Management control at Rouen Business School France and Project management at EDC Paris Business School.

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AMAZING AFRICA, WHERE IS YOUR SPIRIT

OF COMMON GOOD GONE?

Pierre-Jules ZING TSALA

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Pierre-Jules Zing-Tsala at Smashwords

© 2019 by Pierre-Jules Zing-Tsala

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

How difficult it is to live with a spouse, a parent, a friend, a colleague, who has embarked on a difficult project like writing a book. Thii is a three years investment on research, discussions, conferences, in addition to my usual professional activities.

All this was only possible because of the unfailing support of Nathalie, my spouse, and the children. A special thought for Sarah and Noemie who where constantly under my bad mood and my impatience pressure.

My special thanks go to you my brother and friend Martial for your encouragement, your suggestions and the proofreading of the manuscript. I am particulary very grateful to my brother Honoré, who educated me on the realities of international trade and the workings of multilateral institutions.

I would also like to say thank you to all the persons I have discussed or debated with, often with passion and determination. I have a grateful thought for my opponents, my clients in EMEA countries, Africa politicians, my teams of consultants, and my lecturers in economics and ethics.

Finally, I would have liked to offer a copy of this book to a man who shaped me deeply, who loved to read and debate all subjects, and who, despite his age, was very open to change and modernity.

Unfortunately, Dad, you passed away at the beginning of 2018, you were ninety-four years old.

INTRODUCTION

Sub-Saharan African immigration to the West and Asia constitutes the 56th African State. A country whose population I would estimate at almost 25 million today - 7.5 million in 2004¹- i.e. more populated than Senegal, Mali, Benin, CAR, Botswana, Gabon or the Republic of Congo, and many other sovereign states on the continent. Regrettably, many Africans no longer see a future for themselves in Africa. High rates of economic growth follow one another. The investors from the West and Asia are flocking because experts ensure that Africa is the new business area to invest in. They promise even more spectacular and sustainable GDP growth rates. However, the people's lives are hardly improving. The talents are flying to new heavens. The peoples are willing to die in the desert or in the Mediterranean Sea.

Thirty years ago, there were more Cameroonian and Beninese doctors in the Paris region than in both countries². The Malian immigration in the West also contributed more than 10% to the GNP of this country in 2015.³

Migrant remittances to Cameroon, Cape Verde, Niger and Togo averaged over a 50% increase from 1980 to 1999, and over 100 per cent to Ghana, Lesotho and Nigeria. The Lesotho economy receives the equivalent of 30 to 40 per cent of its GDP from foreign workers. Remittances in Eritrea account for 194% of the value of exports and 19% of GDP. During the 1990s, remittances accounted for 80 per cent of Botswana's current account⁴ deficit. Botswana has fortunately emerged from this dependence.

This tendency is unlikely to change if one refers to huge population movements in recent years.

In 1952, Nelson Mandela said:

" In the meantime, people's living conditions, already extremely difficult, are worsening and becoming unsustainable. People's purchasing power is steadily declining, and the cost of living is soaring. Now the bread is lighter than it was two months ago. The cost of milk, meat and vegetables are beyond the resources of the average family and many of our people cannot afford them. People are too poor to feed their families and children. They cannot get dressed, housed and cured. They are denied the right to security, and when they are paid unemployment, sickness or old-age benefits, the amount is too low to survive. Due to the lack of appropriate medical facilities, our people are devastated by terrible diseases such as tuberculosis, STDs, pellagra⁵, the infant mortality rate is very high."⁶

This statement by Mandela sounds like it was said by an African opposition leader of 2017. This exactly what many African countries face, plus AIDS, with few exceptions.

That being so, how could that situation be 60 years after Sub-Saharan countries independence, given the GDP growth rates that have been achieved there for several years? This cannot be possible considering that Ghana, Senegal, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon had a GDP per capita in 1960 that was greater than South Korea's, for Cote d'Ivoire equal to South Korea's, or that Cameroon, Nigeria, Madagascar, Niger and Nigeria's GDP per capita was double that of Botswana.

The Singapore GDP per capita was $428, which was not far from that of Senegal, Zimbabwe, Zambia or Gabon in 1960.

However, by 2016 the Singapore GDP per capita had grown to $52,961⁷, South Korea's to $27,739⁸ and Botswana's to $6,788⁹ in actual dollars. Whereas for all the countries in sub-Saharan Africa that I have cited, it remained basically unchanged, with the exception of Gabon, which peaked at $7,200 after reaching $10,000 in 2011.

Nigeria’s GDP, despite the immensity of the country’s wealth rose to only $2,200 in 2016, most other Sub-Saharan countries only reached a GDP per capita of less than $1,500 in 2016. This is catastrophic compared to the countries of South East Asia, also mostly former Western colonies and formerly underdeveloped countries.

How is that possible? The trivial response is to say that there are endemic corruption and lack of democracy in these countries. This is what leading experts think of it.

There are 4 types of leading experts. First, the people who following two safaris in Africa, self-proclaim themselves as African experts and skim through the media with their ethnic-centred analyses: they would say that Africa is the continent of exacerbated tribalism (true in many respects), with generalized corruption (there are counter-examples), with dictatorial regimes (not ever true), with generalized incompetence (not ever true).

Second, the Africans who have left Africa for a very long time and return occasionally form the second group of leading experts. Originating from a continent you generally left at the age of about 20 and return to no more than 15 days a year does not make you an expert on Africa despite your likely intimate knowledge of certain aspects.

Third, all professional economists, including those who work for big institutions such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund (IMF). They can only grasp reality through their ideological beliefs, with a few exceptions. The same goes for professional economists analysing and prescribing on Africa. Jeffrey Sachs once wrote in 2000 that, despite the presence of the IMF and the World Bank in Africa for decades, these institutions had missed the point.¹⁰In other words, this has not changed the faith of Africa.

There are ideological dogmas in economics even if some people pretend to uncover this each morning.

You probably heard about the market all-power, The omnipotence of the market; do you know what the Greeks and the French, for example, are not prepared to accept?

I can still remember one economics course a number of decades ago at the Institut de Haute Finance in Paris. I had the privilege of benefiting from the expertise and knowledge of two distinguished economists. One was to be a very influential economic minister in a socialist government and the other was to become the CEO of a large French company.

The first explained the risks or benefits of some economic issues to us, the next day the other said unequivocally that he would talk to us about the same issues as a right-wing guy, making it clear that the vision presented to us by his colleague was a left-wing vision that of course he did not share.

The fourth group is formed by people who are specialists in social and natural disasters, NGOs and disaster relief provider.

They seem to see things only through the prism of urgency and additional financial means. For example, when there is an epidemic in Africa, private and public donors are asked to mobilize to finance the care of affected populations. Yet in a case such as the recent Ebola epidemic in West Africa, mobile technologies made it possible, for example, to follow the path to the nearest proximity, for those who had been in contact with the carriers. It was a fantastic opportunity that technology offered to track the virus journey by identifying in advance potentially affected areas and likely future outbreaks of the disease. The technology made it possible to facilitate prevention and to better delineate the probable areas of contagion. Telephone operators were willing to provide data. But we will never know who turned them down on the grounds of customers’ privacy.

Humanitarian workers do admirable work and often risk their lives. But their analyses of the causes of these disasters remain classic: endemic corruption, weakness of civil society, and lack of democracy. And the solutions suggested are almost always the same, more financial aid to civil society.

If we were to rely on all the so-called experts, sub-Saharan Africa's situation could be summarised as such: collections of tribes that have always fought and will continue to fight each other, led by kleptocrats¹¹ who ensure their survival by institutionalising corruption. The Africans are totally unable to develop their own solutions and continent under these conditions, and this justifies the permanent presence of Western experts at their bedside.

We regularly witness reports of anti-corruption campaigns in China or corruption offences in Turkey, Italy, France, South Korea, Greece, South Africa (the only developed country on the African continent by Western standards), Spain, Russia and many other countries.

We also know that Singapore or China have not always been examples of democracy or freedom of thought, although Singapore is very far from China on the scale of liberties. Yet these nations are indisputable examples of economic and social success with real and visible effects on people's lives.

The South Korean economic miracle took place under two military dictatorships that succeeded a corrupted and ineffective democracy.

Two long time dictators, General Franco and President Salazar ruled Spain, and Portugal years ago. Nevertheless, they have been able to lay the foundations for development that are certainly not perfect, but enough not to turn them into third world countries.

All this to say that the lack of democracy and corruption are by no means enough to prevent the economic and social development of a country. These are not even necessary conditions, as we have seen in South East Asia.

I would not like to dwell on the classic causes of underdevelopment put forward by the experts. I would rather like to highlight two main causes rarely cited by these specialists, two original diseases, two very long-term diseases that require deep and intensive care. That is on the one hand, the total lack of any idea of the common good in the DNA of most leaders and also curiously of African peoples. On the other hand, the total absence of trust in relationships between individuals, between populations, between individuals and institutions and between the different institutions themselves. Odds are all of these people don't have the common good and trust genes, whether they’re genetic or not.

African leaders hide behind the establishment of numerous democratic institutions in their countries to create an illusion. Indeed, Western specialists say that the presence of such institutions guarantees good governance and the common good, especially since the members of these institutions are democratically elected through totally transparent and opposable governance processes.

A country's ability to achieve these standards would underpin its credibility and respectability before Western governments, international NGOs and multilateral organisations.

That, Governance of Institutions, only would promote development by giving a voice to civil society, which, would thus play an active role in defining priorities and making the needs of the most vulnerable people known. This Governance of Institutions, called Democratic Governance by the Westerners would thus allow monies and energies to be channelled into tasks such as poverty eradication, environmental protection or the promotion of gender equality.

Let us take the case of Mauritius, whose successful economic and social development is a genuine case study in Africa. Jeffrey Sachs wrote that it only took two things for Mauritius to enter development: deciding to export textiles and establishing a free zone in 1971. He added that good governance and western-style economic reforms do not guarantee economic growth.

So, what does this word governance really mean? In the last fifteen years or so, the word has become, as a friend of mine put it, a buzzword for so-called experts who have no solution at all to the problems that concretely arise in African countries, i.e. recurrent poverty and the abyssal growth of inequalities?

Governance was defined as both the form of the political system and the process by which authority is exercised in the management of economic or social resources¹²,or the ability of Governments to design, formulate and implement policies, and in general to assume their governmental functions.¹³

However, when they use the word governance, Westerners more likely refer to this definition given by the Brandt Commission on Global governance, and then taken up by Eric Lease on behalf of the European Commission: Governance is the sum of the ways and means through which individuals and institutions, public or private, manage their common affairs. It is a continuous process through which the various interests in conflict can be mediated and a cooperative action carried out. This includes formal institutions and regimes responsible for implementing the decisions, as well as the arrangements that the people or institutions have accepted or perceive as being in their interest.¹⁴ Had South Korea or Singapore waited to put all of these formal institutions in place, these countries would still be undoubtedly underdeveloped. Now that the economic take-off has taken place, people have naturally pushed for more democracy and respect for individual liberties.

For their part, African countries are literally succumbing to a governance system devoted to all but economic and social development, since their governance of institutions does nothing to serve the common good. For me, therefore, there is a lack of governance based on the prerequisite of a solid ethical framework discussed and accepted by the majority. Such consensus engenders a common good culture in a trust-based society.

First, we must define the common good: "a resource for all that no one can appropriate for strictly private usage¹⁵. Such a clearly defined and identified common good will facilitate the emergence of a culture of trust in a society. For trust is the foundation of investment, that I have defined as the trade-off of a sure profit for the hope of a future payoff.¹⁶ Without trust there can be no hope in the future, therefore no investment. And, I believe investment is an essential lever for creating economic and social development.

While democracy also contributes to economic and social development, the multiple national conferences that have taken place in African countries over the past twenty years definitely do not contribute anything. In my opinion, these conferences have always been nothing but well-orchestrated diversions, not so naively as that, and inspired by certain so-called experts.

I would like to demonstrate in this book that corruption and the lack of Western-style democracy are not enough to prevent the economic and social development of a nation that is conducted under a common good governance. The lack of democracy and the existence of corruption could hamper development, but I do not see them to be the gravediggers. South Korea and Singapore have developed under single-party political regimes. China and Turkey are developing rapidly despite uncontested corruption and lack of democratic opposition.

On the other hand, I would like to defend the idea that the culture of the common good and trust that follows are the central pillars of economic, political, social and cultural development that can lead to a significant reduction in inequality and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.

The common good builds a practical mindset acknowledging that the general interest must be the compass for all actions of governing elites and peoples. While it is trust, that triggers investment. Jean-Paul Bailly, the former Group President and CEO of La Poste and Chairman of the French Trust Observatory, once said: Trust is vital for the development of each individual, each company and the entire society. Without self-confidence, confidence in the other, confidence in the future, there can be no success.

Trust, not the ukases¹⁷ of multilateral institutions, is what drives human, financial, organizational, civic, social and political investment. To use technocratic language, I will speak of investments in physical, human or social capital. I believe that economic and social development is achieved through a combination of returns on investment in each of these different areas.

Filled with this conviction, I propose to define the development of a country as: the sum of returns on investments in the human, social, educational, institutional, economic and political fields, returns that contribute to the reduction of various forms of inequality in people’s life, monetary and living conditions, potentiality, worship, culture, ethics. These investments are only possible when a climate of real trust is established within the society. The returns on investments will be more or less quick depending on the time taken to set up and change root a culture of the common good in the whole country.¹⁸

Such a definition has the merit, in my opinion, of clearly stating the areas in which development policies must produce results, and the lever points on which to base themselves. There is also the advantage of permanently emancipating from GDP growth as the main objective in development policies.

This book is organized in five parts.

The first introductory part will look at why, after sixty years of independence, development economics has not produced the expected results in sub-Saharan Africa.

I would remind you that development economics is a discipline which, after the Second World War, aimed to apply classical economic theories and methods of analysis that supported Western development to Third World poverty problems. Development economics has since evolved. I do not intend to describe in detail the main evolutions but instead to highlight the underlying ideologies and the key results, so as to more clearly mark the distinction between development as seen by development specialists and development as I will talk about it in this book. I will notably introduce Maslow's analysis of the hierarchy of human needs to show the need to find new paths to prosperity in sub-Saharan Africa.

The second part will look in more detail at the different stakeholders' responsibilities for development success or failure. It is usual to blame either exclusively Africans or neo-colonialism as the cause of sub-Saharan Africa's lag compared to other continents. I believe that the situation is a bit more complex as many players have impacted and continue to impact strongly on the African continent's economic fate, both for better and for worse. I used the MACTOR methodology¹⁹to gain an understanding of the strategy of these players. The result is astonishing.

Thirdly, I will present four very successful examples of the development of countries that belonged to the Third World during the 60’s, using the combined criteria of the human development index (HDI) and gross domestic product per capita (GDP/inhabitant). Together I hope we will draw practical lessons from the development choices of Singapore, South Korea, Mauritius and Botswana, notably on the relevance of the dominant political, economic and social theories applied to their cases. I will present the choices made by each of the four countries over five decades (between 1960 and 2016), their effects and the long-term logic that emerges from these choices. This will help me to point out major patterns in what makes development policies a success or not.

I would like to conclude these first three parts with what I have termed theoretical and ideological diversions and the precedence of special interests over the common good.

The fourth part of this book, nourished by the four examples, develops the central thesis of this work, which is that development in sub-Saharan African countries today primarily depends on a virtuous chain made up of the common good - confidence - investment. This is what I referred to as the three steps of the development staircase. I will develop this idea as opposed to something I have called the governance of institutions. In other words, the illusion that setting up a parliament, a senate, a supreme court or any other institution enabling a parliamentary democracy to operate in the West is sufficient or a precondition for the economic and social development of African nations. There is a pressing need to get out of the governance of institutions.

From my experience in industrial economics, I have learned that human organizations are more likely to succeed when they are driven beyond technical, financial or technological levers, by values shared by all members of these organizations. I have also retained that these values constitute fuel that drives growth, profits and prosperity. At the State level, this would mean sharing values that are jointly defined, delineated, ethically acceptable and structured around the common good value. It is the generalisation of these values that creates the necessary trust for all kinds of investment.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, this will not be easy, especially since the intrusion of new technologies has more than elsewhere balkanized people by creating a certain sense of personal truth, a truth that everyone possesses. Not surprisingly, the vision, ways and means to bring out the common good of a country will vary from one individual to another in sub-Saharan Africa. This should not, however, prevent defining what makes up a common set of values and what makes the inhabitants form a community that shares a common heritage and a common future.

Nor will it be easy because of the total failure to prioritise economic and social objectives in sub-Saharan Africa. This has led to very damaging misunderstandings, and lack of experts’ and market economy's credibility.

From reforms to reforms aimed at the development of market economies designed to boost economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa, it appears that the shift towards market societies instead, has been smooth but solid.

The successful construction of this development staircase will require sub-Saharan African countries to understand the dangers to their cohesion and their existence within current forms and borders of a too fast transition to market societies.

The fifth part of this book will look at some of the major changes in the African countries' environment in recent and future years, and how these changes are impacting today or will impact tomorrow on these countries' development trajectory. Indeed, the global political, economic, social, technological and regulatory environment is changing at a considerable pace and this requires, it seems to me, adapting the development software of African countries.

Based on this environmental analysis, I will suggest a paradigm shift that will require redefining development goals beyond GDP growth and drivers that are not just accountancy or ideology. I would like to suggest new forms of organization, not necessarily based on the prevailing models, but which take into account these new development goals. It seems to me vital to put together strategies that take account of societal, spiritual, geopolitical, technological, technical changes and developments, and the preservation of all stakeholders involved in Africa's development' interests. I will close with an issue that is essential to the success of all these changes, namely the control of intergenerational conflicts for power control.

One thing seems to me unavoidable in any case, and that is the emergence of governances to promote the economic and social development of nations, based on a spirit of the common good and radically different from the one we have known or promoted so far, namely the governance of institutions .

The governance of institutions looks for me like what Amartya Sen called, transcendental institutionalism²⁰. The whole of sub-Saharan Africa should at last take the still high stairs of development, for the stakes are high. I believe that prosperity and lasting peace between the South and the North are at stake here.

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¹ OECD

² Le destin des immigrés - Olivier Todd

³ UNCTAD

⁴ The World Bank

⁵ Skin disease

⁶ No easy walk to freedom - Nelson Mandela

⁷ World Bank. GDP/HBT in current $

⁸ World Bank. GDP/HBT in current $

⁹ World Bank. GDP/HBT in current $

¹⁰ The end of Poverty - Jeffrey Sachs

¹¹ Kleptomaniac autocrat

¹² Webster's New Universal Dictionary

¹³ Governance, between innovation and powerlessness - Jacques Theys

¹⁴ Governance, between innovation and powerlessness - Jacques Theys

¹⁵ The Ethics of the common good in Africa, Xavier Dijon and Marcus Ndongmo

¹⁶ Of the author. Conference in Paris in 2016

¹⁷ All the policies dictated by the strongest

¹⁸ Conference by the author- Paris March 2016

¹⁹ From anticipation to action, Michel Godet, Dunod 1993

²⁰ The idea of Justice Amartya Sen

CHAPTER 1: 60 YEARS, STILL UNDER-DEVELOPPED, POOR, AND INEGALITARIAN

Natura non facit saltus¹, said the German philosopher Leibniz in the 17th century. This probably, and unconsciously, inhabited the inventors of development economics, who saw this discipline only as an application of the rich countries’ economic systems to poor countries.

For the early development economists , the lack of development was simply a delay that would be easily caught up by applying to poor countries the same development revenues as those of the rich countries of the time. In practical terms, it would simply be enough to emulate the countries considered developed. As such, development was the equivalent of American-style progress and modernization: industrializing, promoting GDP growth and wealth accumulation with a State reduced to the role of regulator. Forty years later in the year 2000, will the World Bank experts not declare that growth is good for the poor. Unfortunately, anyone who is familiar with real sub-Saharan Africa knows that these people are unquestionably poorer today than they were thirty years ago, despite remarkable GDP growth rates.

Other development indicators had been and continue to be proposed by many multilateral institutions. For example, UNDP, which defines development more broadly than advocates of GDP orthodoxy, proposes measuring development by a synthetic indicator, the Human Development Index (HDI).

In any case, I think that these indicators are today only thermometers used to measure the countries’ economic temperature, without being able to say whether these countries are really sick or in good health. No thermometer has ever lowered the temperature unfortunately, nor cured a disease. I believe that the main disease,