Babacar Ndiaye lecture: Is this the Afro-Asian century?

The fundamental factors that have fuelled the rise of China will also propel Africa forward in the 21st century, predicts former Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani. Below a summary of his speech at this year’s Ndiaye Babacar lecture

Four years ago, Afreximbank launched the Babacar Ndiaye lecture in honour of the late president of the African Development Bank under whose leadership Afreximbank was formed. The lecture, which takes place on the sidelines of the World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings, has become a platform for frontier thinking around issues of development.

The choice of speaker for this year’s lecture under the theme “Africa and the remaking of the new world order” was prescient. The keynote speaker, Professor Kishore Mahbubani, a global thinker and veteran diplomat from Singapore who served as that country’s permanent representative at the UN for over a decade, and also as president of the Security Council, is intimately familiar with Western diplomacy and has witnessed first-hand the rise of Asia.

Mahbubani, a regular on US networks, has long been predicting China’s inexorable rise and the shift of economic power from West to East. However, as Mahbubani stated in a press conference following the lecture, the West’s demise is not inevitable, but the model needs a radical rethink.

In a thought-provoking lecture, he said China’s rise should not come as a surprise: for the best part of 18 centuries, the largest economies in the world were Asian. It is only in recent history that Western civilisation has imposed its cultural, military and economic might. In many respects, China is claiming back its crown.

“From the year one to 1820, China and India were the two largest economies of the world. It is only in the last 200 years that Europe took off, followed by the United States,” he remarked.

He put the rise of China, and to a larger extent Asia, down to numbers: demographics matter. And Asia’s success has largely been its ability to harness that demographic bulge through education and training. “Asia today has the world’s largest pool of brains and they are being used productively.”

To put things into perspective, figures from 2018 estimate that there were 568,000 science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) graduates coming through the education system in the USA. In China, this number was 4.7m. In 1980 only 1.1% of Chinese had attained a higher degree qualification; by 2018 that was 50.8%.

China has been able to move effectively – and deliberately - up the value chain. It has managed to use the size of its market as a driver for technology transfer. The AfCFTA offers Africa a similar leverage. Not only will the considerable size of this market offer economies of scale as well as consumption-led growth, it can become a tool for negotiation and technological transfer that will help the continent moves up the global value chain ladder.

Furthermore, as much as commodities currently play an outsize role in many African economies, this natural endowment should not be discounted nor dismissed. Natural resources have played a fundamental role in both the West and China’s industrial development. There is nothing wrong in anchoring Africa’s growth and industrialisation in the productive use of its natural resources. And the commoditybased industrialisation model which has been debated for decades can be harnessed under the AfCFTA as corporations take advantage of competitiveness and productivity gains associated with economies of scale under the single market.

Mahbubani says that one feature of China’s growth has been the productivity gains. These were the result of strategic and deliberate policies from a leadership committed to a long-term

vision and culture of excellence to expand the growth of a better educated brain pool to drive economic transformation and dramatically improve the living standards.

The rise in populism in the West is often attributed to a rise in inequality where the wages of the working class have not changed in real terms. Mahbubani noted that “in contrast to the plight of the bottom 50% in the United States today, the bottom 50% in China have had their best 40 years of socio-economic advancement in 4,000 years of Chinese history.” As a result, he said, trust in government and trust in the system is high.

He attributed China’s growth, and to some extent that of the Asian tigers, to three key fundamentals: meritocracy, pragmatism and honesty. These factors have helped turn opportunity and potential into economic growth and rapid development, he argues.

Mahbubani predicted that the second half of the 21st century will be the Afro-Asian century, especially with the African population projected to double in the coming decades. The meritocracy, pragmatism and honesty that helped achieve the successful transition in China will play the same role in the process of African Renaissance and the return of the continent to the global centre stage.

Meritocracy is centred around education and building a system where the most capable are rewarded. He likened America to a plutocracy where the system is skewed towards the 1% who can influence policy through intense lobbying, which exacerbates inequalities and diminishes social mobility.

China’s rise can also be attributed to the pragmatic approach it espoused under Deng Xiaoping who famously said “it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, if it catches mice, it’s a good cat”. As a result, China moved away from a closed and centrally planned system to an economy influenced by free market theories.

The pragmatism that drove Singapore’s rise was to seek best practice from around the world and copy it. Such pragmatism, which emphasises the adoption of development models and solutions with a proven track record, enabled China, by 2014, to overtake the US as the largest economy in the world in purchasing power parity terms.

Honesty is about making sure you have a system free of corruption. He remarked that undue corporate influence can be just as damaging as traditional corruption, which has arguably been the single most important impediment to development over the years. Mahbubani exhorted future generations of Africans to aspire to be as honest as Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.

The lecture included performances by a number of artists including the poet Dike Chukwumerije, who gave a rousing rendition of African history, highlighting the contribution of Africa to the world and paying homage to the systematically organised civilisations of Africa’s past. He invited Africans to treasure and preserve their history. “In our African souls we carry always our ability to rise,” he said in his closing statement.

As if going full circle, Dr Hippolyte Fofack, chief economist of Afreximbank, observed that “the rise of Africa in the second half of the 21st century will take the world back to the beginning of history,” stressing the role played by Africa as the cradle of civilisation.

Mahbubani put the rise of China, and to a larger extent Asia, down to numbers: demographics matter. And Asia’s success has largely been its ability to harness that demographic bulge through education and training