Happy Birthday Botswana– what lessons for Namibia?
Last Friday Botswana turned 50 and celebrated its independence from
Britain with a justifiable and giant party throughout the country. Botswana,
Namibia’s closest neighbor, at least economically and politically has much to
teach the rest of Africa and we have much to learn from both the positive and
negative experiences of that country. The country is hyped as the
least corrupt country in Africa and based on observation of countries in the
region, this may well be the case but it does not mean that Botswana does not
have a gradually worsening corruption problem. Botswana has much to be proud of
from its record as a country in what was at independence in 1966, in a
turbulent and war torn region.
Botswana went from being amongst the world’s poorest countries at
independence with a GDP/capita amongst the lowest in the world ( about
$70/capita in the late 1960’s) to an upper middle income country with a
GDP/capita in 2015 of USD7,080. The cynics quip that if any country of two
million people had 20 million carats of diamonds to export every year for 30
years they would also be rich.It is true that Botswana was blessed by nature. It not only found the huge Orapa diamond mine
in 1967 but this was followed by the fabulously rich Jwaneng mine, much touted
as the richest piece of real estate on
earth. This was in 1972 and is today the richest mine on earth where 10c of
operating costs will earn. Botswana is uniquely blessed with not one but two of
the richest mines in the world.
But the diamonds themselves are not enough to explain the huge rates
of economic growth experienced by Botswana since independence. Would any other country have managed that
much diamond wealth as well as Botswana had? One need merely compare other very resource
rich countries in Africa and the record has been very poor. In oil rich Nigeria 40 years of
huge oil exports has resulted in a country where the vast majority of
the people live below the poverty and
are getting poorer. It is estimated that almost 100 million people living on
less than a $1 a day, despite economic growth, statistics have shown. The Nigerian
National Bureau of Statistics said 60.9% of Nigerians in 2010 were living in
"absolute poverty" - this figure had risen from 54.7% in 2004. Poverty
rates in other very resource rich countries like Angola and DRC remain much
higher than in Botswana.
What makes Botswana truly unique is the quality of the early
political elite which remained wedded to ideas of good government, peace, economic
stability and the development of its population. Where Botswana was truly
blessed was not in its diamonds but that it had one of Africa’s true giants as
its founding father of the nation. Sir SeretseKhama was a towering figure committed
to high standards of good government not found in other parts of Africa. There
was no Mobutu, Mugabe or Dos Santos family which used and exploited the
nation’s wealth for their personal benefit and that of their supporters. Sir
SertseKhama, while certainly no angel, was a far superior political leader to
almost all his African contemporaries. Huge amounts of diamond revenue were
invested in developing infrastructure, educating the population and providing
good health. Botswana had an exemplary record for public health. Moreover, while Botswana is far from any understanding
of a Jeffersonian democracy and never was, there was always political
stability. The army stayed in the barracks and over 50 years there has been no
illegal transfer of power. Importantly there was one dominant ethnic group, the
Batswana which make up 80% of the population.
But recently not all has gone Botswana’s way. The last decade has seen
economic growth rates stagnate as well as the complete failure of government to
escape from total diamond dependence. Indeed it can be argued that Sir
SeretseKhama’s job was the easy part of its history. He took the nation’s
diamond wealth and invested heavily in the human and physical infrastructure
that was needed for transformation from an impoverished to a rich country. It
was what followed, the period from the founding father’s death in 1979 to 2000
under the leadership of his deputy SirKetumileMasire
that was a watershed in the nation’s history. During this time, President Masireintroduced
the Financial Assistance Policy (FAP) which tried in vain to diversify the
economy away from its total diamond dependence by providing massive subsidies
to new industries in much the same way as Namibia did with Ramatex. As long as
the subsidies continued, the industry continued to operate and provide jobs,but
when the government finally abandoned the policy in 2000 under the leadership
of Festus Mogae, predictably the subsidized industries collapsed one after
another. Unfortunately Festus Mogae and his successor, SertseKhama Ian Khama,
son of the founding father, had no idea of how to replace the FAP and how to
put Botswana on a path to industrial development. They replaced the FAP with a
policy of providing small hand-outs to local business which was equally
ineffective. They neither had the will nor the vision of leaders such as Rwanda’s
Paul Kagame or Ethiopia’s late Prime Minister Meles to impose the discipline needed
to achieve real international competitiveness.
But as Batswana wakes this week with a giant case of ‘bableass’ (hangover) from the party
they have just had, a future of jobless economic growth lies ahead of them.
Students graduating from the University of Botswana, like their Namibian
counterparts are facing prospects of ever longer periods of joblessness and
many wonder why their governments bothered investing in their future. The old
growth model that was the basis of the prosperity of Botswana and Namibia where
the government had the revenue from the diamond mines to continue to employ
legions of university graduates has come to an end. If they are unable to get
real growth and diversification in the private sector the stability that was
their foundation of the current prosperity will evaporate as was the case the
with Tunisia.
The key lesson, if there is one is that peace, order and good
government are vital to prosperity but they are certainly not enough. The road
to transformation must be defined by each country and needs to be defined by
the people and those who lead. The key is to recognize that the government can
no longer be the main provider of jobs and prosperity in future as it was in
the past. But the aggressive policies pursued with such vigor in Ethiopia and
Rwanda and needed to make Botswana and by extension Namibia competitive
economies are not being pursued by government. It is politically easier to
address short term issues with small band aids of money but only sound policy
aimed at ensuring that investors want to invest in the country and create a
dynamic private sector will get results. That involves government actually
listening to the views of the private sector and taking them on board when
formulating policy. This is less and less the case in both Botswana and
Namibia.
No comments:
Post a Comment