Kenyatta & Nkrumah United?

What do you get when you couple Jomo Kenyatta with Kwame Nkrumah?

You get a leading Malaysian developmental theorist

who led me to this somewhat dated but still useful blueprint for African development. In case you are not inclined to wade through all 31+ pages of that document, I will quote the key findings from it here:

-> Empower competent technocratic policymakers to manage macroeconomic and development policies with strong political support.
-> Create a climate in which all ethnic groups, especially entrepreneurially talented minorities, can participate in development with low risk.
-> Design strategies that build on existing comparative advantage in agriculture and laborintensive industry while investing in education that will create a more skilled workforce for a gradual transition to new industrial and service exports.
-> Adhere strictly to sound macroeconomic policies including a realistic and flexible exchange rate, small budget deficits or preferably small surpluses and appropriately tight monetary policies; currency convertibility is a credible guarantor of these policies.
-> Keep labor markets flexible, so that market forces determine wages and employers are free to hire and dismiss with a minimum of government regulation.
-> Reform financial markets, permitting market forces to determine credit allocations and interest rates and, along with currency convertibility, creating a welcoming climate for foreign investors.
-> Undertake trade reforms that will open economies increasingly to world markets; while the vestiges of protection remain in place, create mechanisms by which export producers can obtain inputs at world prices, free of duties and free from import controls.

In short, do the basic things right and good things will follow. The most interesting takeaway for me from Michael Roemer's document is his optimistic belief that Africa can still make it. Yup, my sentiments exactly. As he puts it, Korea and Taiwan were once considered to be dead-enders!