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.

Flashback to 1999

It's striking to consider how much has changed in nine years. In the wake of the financial meltdown, Alan Greenspan's reputation has taken a beating, Robert Rubin's reputation is starting to take one too, and Larry Summers -- three years after losing his job as Harvard president following some politically incorrect speculations about standard deviations -- is on his way back to Washington, to head the incoming Obama Administration's Council of Economic Advisers.

In his profile of Robert Rubin in the Financial Times last year ("Man in the News: Robert Rubin"), John Gapper noted that a framed copy of this Time Magazine cover adorned a wall in Rubin's office at Citigroup.

On Being a Recovering Political Junkie

My father got me a subscription to Time Magazine when I was in elementary school, and that was the beginning of the addiction. The op/ed page was always my favorite part of the newspaper, whether that paper was our local Bergen Record, the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal. In recent years, RealClearPolitics, which aggregates opinion pieces from various newspapers, magazines and websites, became a favorite website of mine. I spent a lot of time reading editorials and op/ed columns, occasionally commenting on them, and engaging in vigorous debates with those who held different points of view. I enjoyed these debates, but most of the time I was simply frustrated, reading ideologues trade volleys on issues while (for the most part) avoiding the seemingly obvious (at least to me), pragmatic compromises.

Recently, I had two epiphanies I should have had a long time ago:

1. As much as I enjoyed a good argument or debate, this wasn't a profitable use of my time.
   
2. Instead of being frustrated by policies I disagreed with, I could find ways to profit from them through investing.

Since then, although I still glance at the op/ed pages of the WSJ and the NY Times, both of which I subscribe to (the NY Times just on weekends), I avoid political websites and blogs. Occasionally, when politics comes up on an investing website, I'll enter the fray, but otherwise, I've gone cold turkey. Good riddance. This has freed up time to research investment ideas, pursue business opportunities and otherwise make better use of my time. I still vote, of course, and have my own opinions, and I'd be happy to engage in good-natured debate others over drinks, next time the opportunity presents itself, but mostly avoiding politics has freed up a lot of my mental energy that I can put to better use elsewhere.