By joseph diescho
SINCE independence almost twenty-five years ago when Namibia became a state, our country has witnessed significant change and stability that the continent has not known as many Afrikan countries had little room to plan their own development outside of the context of the Cold War which used Afrika as a kicking ball between the East and the West. The Government of a free Namibia has acquitted itself beyond expectations to bring the country and her people where we are today – with a bold Vision 2030 and National Development Plans 1 through 4.
Namibia is exponentially becoming a Developmental State. A Developmental State, or ‘hard state’, or ‘capable state’, or ‘progressive state’ are terms used by international economists and political scientists to refer to development scenarios of state-led macroeconomic planning. The first examples studied were the experiences in East and Southeast Asia in the late twentieth century. The process of planning that these nations followed were described as state development capitalism wherein the state had more control over the development of the economy. The government exercised more direct and indirect intervention to drive the economy. The terminology of a developmental state is often used to distinguish it from less successful states which are called ‘predatory state’, ‘weak state’, or ‘failed state’, a category under which most Afrikan political systems fall.
The first person to give a serious conceptual framework of a developmental state was Chalmers Johnson who in 1982 defined it as a state that was focused on economic development and that took necessary policy measures to accomplish that objective. He posited that Japan’s economic success, for instance, was a consequence of the far-sighted intervention measures of government bureaucrats, particularly the policymakers and implementers in the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. Johnson argued: ‘In states that were late to industrialize, the state itself led the industrialization drive, that is, it took on developmental functions.’
In all fairness, the real foundations for a developmental state are whose goal is a development paradigm and framework wherein its citizens have equal opportunity to be empowered socially, economically, politically and intellectually. The Namibian Government has done most of the things a developmental state is expected to do by guiding economic development and using the country’s resources to work towards meeting the needs of the people. Namibia, as a state tried to balance economic growth and social development by using state resources, state influence and state power to attack poverty and expand economic opportunities throughout the thirteen plus one regions.
States in all countries have a role in shaping the direction, structure and output of their economies by using various instruments and policies in regulating their industries and trade, redistributing incomes and assets, using fiscal and monetary policies and directing state ownership of key industries.
A developmental state, in contradistinction with other states, is reluctant to leave economic development and the necessary process of redistribution of resources to the whims of the free market. This is primarily because it is too conscious of its fiduciary responsibility to the voters, whereas the private sector does not have to account to the citizens as the elected government does.
In Namibia, the Government has in many ways committed to building a state that is ready to guide national economic development as it continues to mobilize available resources of society, and direct them toward the realization of common goals as articulated in National Development Plans 1 through 4, where the needs of the previously disadvantaged, the poor and social priorities like education, health care, housing and a social safety net are at the top of the national agenda. There are hardly any successful companies in Namibia that do not depend on the Government to survive.
Commitments of a developmental state include directing and supporting national economic development through building a strong and professional public service, creating an investor friendly environment, supporting small business development, using state-owned enterprises effectively and driving strategic investment initiatives in ways that support the general agenda of narrowing the gap between the wealthy and the poor, and by taking care of the needy and the vulnerable – the aged, the sick and the young. Importantly, a developmental state also plays a role in keeping its economy competitive by keeping abreast with leading edge trends in international development of knowledge, technology, research and innovation. Then the state, once it has developed and crafted its vision to create a society that coheres around its core values, proceeds to mobilize social, economic and political forces that in turn assist the state in galvanizing productive forces to ensure the pursuit of stated goals and objectives.
There is consensus amongst scholars that successful developmental states are those that are able to advance their economies much faster than regulatory states (such as the United States where the private sector is seen and treated as the engine of development, whereas the state only uses regulations to manage economic activities. A clear illustration of a developmental state is the difference of the rates of economic development between Japan as a developmental state and the United States of America as a regulatory state. It took Japan 10 years to double its economy whereas it took the USA 50 years to do the same.
A Developmental State is characterized by the following:
• The Government puts strong emphasis on technical education;
• Schools place high premium on the development of numeracy and computer skills;
• The civil service is revamped and professionalized to go after stated goals;
• Government is populated with bureaucratic layers that are well educated people and have sufficient tools of analysis so that they can take leadership initiatives, based on a sound scientific basis, at every level of decision-making nodes within the government structure;
• Government has the ability and capacity to distribute and allocate resources and in so doing invest optimally in critical areas that lay the foundation for industrialization;
• Government focuses on the National Question, in brief, the wellbeing of the nation as a whole (Namibianness) and not on political party or ethnic loyalties;
• Government places sufficient emphasis on market share over profit;
• Government is strong in protecting the country’s embryonic domestic industries and focusing on aggressive acquisition of foreign technology;
• Government is deliberate in deploying the nation’s most talented youth and students strategically to institutions of learning abroad with sufficient incentives to bring them to plough back into their economies the learnings and skills they acquire;
• Government utilizes its foreign missions to execute strategic agendas for purposes of development back home;
• Government has tactics to encourage and reward foreign companies that invest in building productive capacity such as manufacturing plants with the aim that the local industrial sector will in time be able to learn vital success factors from these companies;
• Government constantly builds a harmonious social-industrial compact wherein all strategic stakeholders participate in order to construct an organic tri-partite alliance between the state, the industry and labour that is in turn critical to sustainable productivity, industrial expansion and job security;
• Government is clear about what and how to borrow intelligently (not copy) from other countries’ experiences and adapt such lessons to own national characteristics, conditions and circumstances;
• Government stewards the population and resources with a belief that the state will attain legitimacy through efficient and effective quality service delivery to citizens rather than through the ballot alone.
In the context of Namibia’s Vision 2030 President-Elect Hage Geingob has been emphatic on the need to build an economy towards industrialization, a key goal of which is to create a country that produces goods and services with high value addition. For instance, instead of exporting Namibia’s mineral resources unprocessed, citizens are employed to beneficiate these products and manufacture other useful goods and in the process add economic value to the final products. This is important because the process by which countries add aggregate economic value to the goods and services they offer is the converse of the level of the industrialization stage of the country’s economy.
What needs to happen? For Namibia to stay on the trajectory of building a strong and robust developmental state, more and deliberate focus ought to be placed upon the following factors:
• Build an education system that is able to increase the knowledge content in the fields of numeracy, mathematics, science and computer skills throughout the nation;
• Incentivize vocational training efforts and people taking up vocations instead of everyone wanting to follow an academic or corporate career;
• Strengthen safety and security of citizens and visitors and take a hard stand against all criminal activity in the country, and,
• Appoint people on merit and competency, not political party or tribal allegiance, to carry out tasks in the interest of the nation in the short, medium and long terms.
As the country expands its output in the agricultural sector, particularly in rural areas, it ought to create local industrial centres where some of these agricultural products can be canned and preserved and utilized, and also strengthen co-operative strategies across the land so that small businesses can be integrated into the value chain between agricultural production and international markets.
In the scheme of things, the leadership ought to refocus its attention on economic growth, which can only come if more and more people become numerate and literate to think differently about where they are and their roles in their own communities. The need for some kind of social engineering cannot be overemphasized, beginning with a relook at the education system which is responsible for shaping the minds of the youth to whom the future belongs. In order to achieve this, Namibia must reconsider the efficacies upon which our current primary and secondary education are predicated.
Then there is a critical need to improve the subsidy funding formula to universities and vocational training centres so that education and training towards trades is sufficiently funded and incentivized to facilitate the pace of a knowledge-based economy with a groping pool of employment creators in the country in the medium and long terms. It goes without saying that it would serve the country well if we were to internationalize more our post-secondary education system so that students are exposed to different and diverse ways of learning, thinking, and doing things.
In order to move rapidly in this direction, the Government is not only expected to take the lead in the strategic definition of a common national agenda, but also to mobilize all of society to take part in its implementation and to direct society’s resources towards the shared dreams. In this regard, the state has the responsibility to unite the public and private sectors, industry, labour and civil society in a partnership to steer the development programmes in tandem with one another. It is also crucial that the state stewards this process by establishing clear, measurable and time-bound targets for common goals and put in place transparent mechanisms for implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
To all intents and purposes, Namibia is on the right track. The fundamentals are in place and the recent elections can only strengthen us all to move in unison towards our stated goals and become the model nation in Afrika. Namibia is fast becoming a country of choice for citizens of other Afrikan countries who want to live in dignity and without fear, and make a contribution to Afrika; a recent World Economic Forum described Namibia in 2013 to will be the most competitive economy in the SADC region in 2017; Namibia has the fastest growing tourist industry in Afrika, thus surpassing Kenya at the moment; Namibia has the youngest aeroplane fleet which is more fuel efficient and requiring less maintenance in the continent; not to mention the fact that Namibia is the most peaceful and most stable country in Afrika today, in spite of the fact that we are sandwiched between two powerful economies, both of which are unstable.