An African Perspective on Economic Development

From an op/ed in Friday's Financial Times by Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda ("Africa has to find its own road to prosperity"):

[A]s I tell our people, nobody owes Rwandans anything. Why should anyone in Rwanda feel comfortable that taxpayers in other countries are contributing money for our well­being or development? Rwanda is a nation with high goals and a sense of purpose. We are attempting to increase our gross domestic product by seven times over a generation, which increases per capita incomes fourfold. This will create the basis for further innovation and foster trust, civic-mindedness and tolerance, strengthening our society.

[...]

Entrepreneurship is the surest way for a nation to meet these goals. Government activities should focus on supporting entrepreneurship not just to meet these new goals, but because it unlocks people’s minds, fosters innovation and enables people to exercise their talents. If people are shielded from the forces of competition, it is like saying they are disabled.

Entrepreneurship gives people the feeling that they are valued and have meaning, that they are as capable, as competent and as gifted as anyone else.

The rest of Mr. Kagame's column is worth reading. In it, he refers to the ideas of an economist we've mentioned here before, Dambisa Moyo.

A quick check of Wikipedia suggests that Kagame had a long, eventful (and somewhat controversial) military career before entering politics. This year, Kagame was included in Time Magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people. His entry was authored by the mega church pastor Rick Warren, who wrote (in part),

Kagame's leadership has a number of uncommon characteristics. One is his willingness to listen to and learn from those who oppose him. When journalist Stephen Kinzer was writing a biography of Kagame, the President gave him a list of his critics and suggested that Kinzer could discover what he was really like by interviewing them. Only a humble yet confident leader would do that. Then there is Kagame's zero tolerance for corruption. Rwanda is one of the few countries where I've never been asked for a bribe. Any government worker caught engaging in corruption is publicly exposed and dealt with. That is a model for the entire country — and the rest of the world too.

The photo above, of President Kagame shaking hands with President Bush in the White House in 2006, is from Wikipedia.

A Few Thoughts on the Inauguration

- The way that Barack Obama and George W. Bush have interacted with each other since Election Day has been gracious and classy. The Inauguration was no exception, with President Obama thanking former President Bush for his service, and the men embracing twice (after President Obama's address, pictured above, and as the Obamas accompanied the Bushes to the Marine helicopter for the Bushes' flight to Andrews Air Force Base).

- Obama's rhetoric about "responsibility", "tough decisions", and "shared sacrifice" was a noteworthy. One wonders to what policies Obama was alluding. Cost-saving reforms of entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security? A long shot, perhaps, but it's hard to imagine a President coming into office with more political capital or goodwill. Perhaps Obama will choose to spend some of that on entitlement reform. Reforms that restrain the growth of the government's unfunded entitlement liabilities -- even reforms not scheduled to take effect for several years -- could help assuage the bond market's concerns and maintain the demand for U.S Treasury securities (the supply of which will of course expand over the next few years, as we finance trillion dollar+ deficits).

- Another awful inaugural poem. This was the fourth time an inauguration has featured an inaugural poem, and Elizabeth Alexander delivered the third clunker in a row with her "Praise Song for the Day". As a nation, we are now 1-for-4 on inaugural poems, by my estimation. The only good one was the first, The Gift Outright¹, by Robert Frost, recited at JFK's inauguration in 1961:

The Gift Outright

The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

¹Frost had actually written another poem for the occasion, but in the sunlight of inauguration day wasn't able to read his text. So he recited his poem The Gift Outright from memory.