LETTERS

THIS MONTH'S PRIZE LETTER

New development models

We must learn self-confidence

Thank you for the two brilliant editorials Africa needs a new model and Harnessing our wounded pride (African Business March and April issues respectively). It reinforces the fact that what is required,

Your choice of China, India and Malaysia as role models is excellent. These countries have managed to break through seemingly insurmountable barriers. Progress was made through leaders who knew what was required and worked to achieve it with independent minds despite the external pressures.

Africa, so far, has blindly followed popular models developed by external sources. We have left it to others to think for us. For example, most African leaders blindly chase foreign investment with the chorus that it creates jobs. That is not always the case, such organisations often only employ local labour on a short term basis and exports all profits back to the originating country. Therefore, investors who only produce for local consumption without substituting import items eventually make us poorer.

In many of the country-specific examples you cite, exports have been a cornerstone of economic resurgence. However, even though many imported goods can be produced locally, Africa's manufacturing sector remains woefully inadequate and Africa's import bill very high.

Food sufficiency is also paramount. China, India and Malaysia have all achieved this. But, for Africa, cheap imports have led to a fall in local production. Additionally, foreign foods that are often nutritionally lacking are given a glamorous image promoting among Africans a taste for foreign products.

Crucially, we cannot develop when expensively trained manpower leaves in droves looking for greener pastures. The so-called brain drain has affected all of Africa's major social and economic sectors such as health and education as well as engineering, management, scientific research. So severe has this brain drain become that institutions such as schools and hospitals find it difficult to function through a lack of qualified staff.

Of course, the brain drain phenomena also affects India and China, but to a lesser extent. Indeed there are signs of a reverse brain drain beginning to occur in these countries. Additionally, the actions of the Indian and Chinese governments do not accelerate an exodus the same way they do in Africa.

Both Africa and its leaders place too much emphasis on what comes from abroad and a greater readiness to accept what can be sourced from overseas over what can be obtained locally.

Many Africans decide to leave the continent because they are bypassed in favour of external experts sometimes clearly less qualified. Furthermore, many externally trained indigenes that return to Africa leave again after a short while out of a frustration that their skills are passed over by local institutions and companies.

Add to this sorry state of affairs the fact that local entrepreneurs leave because they cannot access capital; or others leave because the remuneration and benefits offered to foreign workers are much higher than that provided to indigenous professionals, and we arrive at the conclusion that Africans still face innumerable obstacles in meeting their full potential.

We must indeed learn to have more confidence in ourselves, our people our traditions and our capabilities.

I have noticed how the search for solutions to these problems is a constant topic of African Business editorials. I agree that through developing a positive image for Africa we can not only provide a more realistic impression of our continent for the world but also enhance our own perceptions and increase our belief in our own skills and capabilities.

I strongly believe that the key to Africa's renaissance lies with Africans themselves starting to wake up and respecting their own innate abilities.

Daniel A Allan

Accra, Ghana

Glorious Africa

Why I love the continent

I returned from South Africa last week and was fortunate enough to find your magazine in the rack of the Emirates flight on which I was travelling. I have not encountered your publication before. I shall not, intentionally, miss any further issues.

I found your editorial Africa needs new models inspiring. I have been visiting South Africa regularly over the last 14 years - I am a white, middle-aged Brit - and have found myself struggling with the concept of Africa being 'poor'. Your argument in relation to this has, in a few paragraphs, admirably expressed that which I have struggled to rationalise in my own mind for so long.

Sir, you have unblocked me! I thank you, purposefully avoiding a rather unsavoury analogy!!!

To me, Africa is an extraordinary place. I am fairly well travelled and when my wife and I decided to visit Africa for the first time in the early '90s we were not prepared for its impact upon us. As we boarded the aircraft to return to the UK, we realised that, for the first time ever, there was not one part of us that had any wish to leave to go "home".

We arrived back in the UK feeling as though we had been sent into exile. "OK", I said to my wife, "we'll go for a month next year and get the place right out of our systems".

Well, over a decade on, that statement looks more and more ridiculous. Arriving is like coming home, leaving always becomes that little bit more difficult. To me, Africa is like a virus. If it bites and infects you and you have no 'afro-antibodies', that is it. You will never get it out of your system and you will never want to. It is where my heart lives.

Jeff Watts

Lingfield, UK

African tourism

The other side of the coin

I read your special report Boom time for African tourism (African Business March 2006) with great interest - but also, I have to admit, with considerable dismay. For in an otherwise wide-ranging feature article, the downside of Africa's tourism industry was barely mentioned.

Although your contributor Neil Ford states that it is difficult to ascertain whether tourism has a positive or negative impact on a country, he seems to view the fluctuations in tourist numbers "according to changes in fashion and political or security crises" to be the major problem. In fact, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

It is frequently stated that tourism is the fastest growing economic sector in the world and that tourism can be a massive boom to the developing world; providing employment, stimulating cross-cultural understanding and, when all is said and done, earning valuable foreign exchange earnings for the host countries' national economies. The truth is somewhat at odds with this rosy view.

In many cases, tourism spells an unwelcome and highly destabalising influence on African communities and economies. For example, the tourist dollar frequently encourages criminal activities as 'wealthy foreigners' are seen as easy targets.

But even if a potential crime wave could be contained, there is little evidence that tourism is economically beneficial. More often than not, tourism enterprises such as hotels and tour companies are owned by companies in the West, and tourists pay for their hotels in their home countries where profits are made and kept externally. Furthermore, with the dearth of quality African airlines serving international routes, tourists usually travel to Africa on foreign-owned and operated aircraft.

I could continue by citing the disproportionate impact that tourism has on local resources such as water and energy, how markets are distorted and local people are priced out of everything from housing to foodstuffs, or even the disastrous effects tourists have on the environment.

Personally, I do not believe that the problems I have listed above are insoluble. Rather, they require Africa's governments to rethink their tourism strategies and impose some sort of constraint on tourism developments and the foreign companies working in Africa's tourism sector. Finally, it is also true that a lot could be achieved if the foreign tourist was better educated as to how to behave in Africa. They must be helped to understand that Africa is not just an exotic playground existing solely for their benefit. It is our precious home.

Albert R K Musanda

Zanzibar, Tanzania

African Business

More focus on business people please!

Of all the magazines on the newsstand, African Business is the business magazine I turn to, to learn about economic developments on the continent. However, I believe your magazine requires more focus on that which is driving and accelerating the rapid economic development of many nations today - in other words, more focus on the profiles of our continent's creators of wealth.

Just as business magazines from many other regions of the world inspire their readership by projecting the images of selected business people and how their activities are transforming the economies of their countries - I believe African Business should profile the continent's leading entrepreneurs to inspire those that truly wish to make a difference to Africa.

Africa has a fine crop of emerging business-people that would inspire others towards building Africa's economies. I would assume that these business people would be more than willing to allow their profiles to be published in your esteemed magazine, and might even allow a glimpse into their private and personal lives for your readers.

"No nation can develop without an army of entrepreneurs, indigenous and talented" is a popular saying. Your magazine, I humbly suggest, should be part of a recruitment campaign for that army!

Stephen E K Loh

Accra, Ghana

They say that great minds think alike, Mr Loh! I hope you enjoy our cover story this month, profiling half a dozen of Africa's greatest business minds and their ideas regarding management. The editor.

Banking blitz

The reform agenda

I was delighted to read about the success of Professor Charles Soludo's reform (Will bank reforms trigger golden era? African Business, March 2006). It gives me real hope to learn that Nigeria's financial sector is finally receiving the attention it has badly needed for so many years.

Many Nigerians, like myself, became so disillusioned and frustrated by the situation in our homeland that we opted to leave family and friends to make our homes elsewhere. I have lived in what might be termed selfimposed exile for nearly 18 years and started my own family here in Dublin. But not a day goes by without me thinking of my country. My dream is to one day return to the land of my birth.

All I can say is through Professor Soludo's extraordinary efforts, that happy day may be sooner than I ever imagined.

Ola Chukude Towry-Coker

Dublin, Eire