The Star, South Africa

June 09, 2006

Peter Fabricius

 

A new think tank called Trust Africa is to be launched in Senegal, dedicated to developing "locally-grown" solutions to the continent's many challenges, instead of relying on "ready-made solutions from abroad".

Normally this would not attract my attention. It's not an unusual theme. But, having just returned from 10 days in China, it worried me.

Contact is rapidly expanding between South Africa and the rest of Africa on the one hand and China and the rest of Asia on the other.

An Afro-Asian strategic partnership was launched last year, Chinese President Hu Jintao has just visited Africa and the Chinese prime minister is visiting seven African countries, including South Africa, later this month.

In November the China-Africa forum summit will be held in Beijing.

These exchanges are increasingly posing the question: how can SA and Africa learn from China and Asia's rapid economic growth? How can Asia give Africa a lift? The question is being answered in many ways, with a general bias towards Africa's preferred solution, which is preferential treatment towards Africa by Asia.

But the more useful answer to the question may be to stop a moment and observe how China and the rest of east Asia did it. And part of the observation may be: "Do not be too proud to borrow."

That is how China, for instance, started to build its giant economy. It soaked up investment and with it, ideas from the world like an immense sponge and turned the ideas into products cheaper than the originals.

Along the way it learned everything about the technology it was applying and is now producing its own original ideas as well as products.

China was not ashamed to admit, at the start of its economic reforms and opening up to the world in 1978, that it was way behind the West, technologically. So it simply borrowed.

It did not seek " locally-grown solutions" to the immense problem of lifting millions of its people out of poverty.

It simply grabbed "ready-made solutions from abroad".

You can see something similar in the approach towards foreign languages.

I once told an East Asian diplomat that I was interested in learning his language, thinking, rather patronisingly, that he would appreciate this as a gesture of respect for his culture. Instead he seemed a bit put out.

Later I surmised that this was because Asians learn English not as a mark of respect for the English or Americans, but as a means to acquire Western technology and empower themselves in relation to the West.

So I think the East Asian diplomat interpreted my intention to learn his language likewise as a move to increase my relative power over his country.

Similarly, a good Asian diplomat - like any good diplomat - uses his or her posting abroad to learn as much as possible about the host country.

He or she is, figuratively - and of course, sometimes even literally - a spy in the enemy camp. But I have found that many of SA's ambassadors see their sojourns abroad in quite the opposite way, primarily as opportunities to teach their host nations about South Africa.

Both are proper functions for a diplomat, of course, but it is the one a diplomat regards as most important that reveals his or her country's stance towards the world.

Economically, technologically and even politically, Africa finds itself still lagging badly way behind the West and now the East.

That is an unavoidable, historical fact which implies nothing about the continent's inherent ability. The continent's problems are far too urgent to waste time on soul-searching about why this is so or on trying to find original, home-grown solutions.

They demand that Africa seize the best, tried-and-tested ideas wherever it can find them - and apply them.

The originality will come later, as it did in China. Prescribing garlic and African potatoes may relieve the symptoms of a hurt continental pride.

But it won't cure Aids.