We either do nothing or the wrong thing - President Kagame on Africa's challenges
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Transcript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 I do have a question, which is I feel like the last 20 years,
00:18 we've been having this discussion.
00:19 And we know what the answer is or what needs to be done.
00:23 But we don't get it done.
00:24 So my peers will still talk about the what versus the how.
00:28 And I wonder if 20 years from now,
00:31 I'll be sitting there having exactly the same conversation.
00:34 So I'd love to hear from some of you, what is the how?
00:37 What can we learn from Rwanda from other experiences,
00:39 but more about the how to get this done in Africa
00:42 than more than the what?
00:43 Thank you.
00:45 Is it possible to answer that question
00:46 before we go to the audience?
00:54 Acha, before you answer how, you have to answer what.
01:02 And I'm not even sure that you have answered the what.
01:06 So let me give an example.
01:08 So when I talk about the energy transition, which
01:11 would depend a lot on a number of minerals,
01:15 maybe there are three or four, I think.
01:17 And are you certain that countries owning those minerals
01:22 are not going to make the mistake which countries exporting
01:25 oil and gas have not made?
01:28 I'm not sure about that.
01:30 So if I want to say, this is how we do something,
01:34 but what are you doing in the first place?
01:37 So how do I put this to you?
01:40 Every single country in Africa--
01:43 I visited all of them except one--
01:45 has a strategy, 30-year strategy, 40-year strategy.
01:51 You're right.
01:51 What they fail is on implementation.
01:54 But often, it is because the what itself has not
01:56 been well thought out.
01:59 So it is important to answer how,
02:01 but you must also answer what are you going to do.
02:05 I'm not certain that many countries,
02:07 the what has been answered.
02:10 Just an example.
02:12 I'll be very short, please.
02:14 We all know, like my own country,
02:18 that we're entering this stage three of the transition
02:21 on the demographic cycle.
02:24 We're entering that phase where the size of the labor force
02:29 will probably begin to be bigger and bigger,
02:32 and the number of children and elderly people getting fewer.
02:35 They're called demographic dividend, the economists.
02:39 What is the one thing you have to do?
02:41 You have to invest in capabilities.
02:44 People say education.
02:47 Capabilities so that, in fact, that labor force is capable,
02:50 has the knowledge to be able to be usefully employed.
02:55 But what I've been doing in Africa,
02:57 we've been targeting numbers.
02:59 How many numbers are in school?
03:01 How many children are completing school?
03:04 But now we need to talk about learning outcomes.
03:08 What are they learning?
03:10 What are they coming out with?
03:12 That is the what question, because the what which
03:14 was answered was, let us have more children in school.
03:18 And as in Mali, you look at children coming out
03:21 of secondary school, they're hardly literate.
03:24 The what was not answered.
03:27 The what was not the numbers as inputs.
03:30 The what was, what are they going to learn?
03:32 The learning outcomes.
03:34 And I believe it is such an issue for almost
03:37 every African country.
03:39 So we have to ask the question, what are we going to do?
03:43 Here in Rwanda, the census showed that--
03:47 I hope I'm right--
03:49 78% of the population, I think, are under 35.
03:53 I hope I'm right.
03:55 About 38% are under 15.
03:58 So we are at that point where we can actually
04:00 answer that question, i.e., what kind of capabilities
04:04 are we going to generate in that generation?
04:06 That is a what.
04:08 Once we have answered the what, we can decide how.
04:12 What do we do to make sure that the children come out
04:14 with capabilities?
04:15 But if the what, which has been answered
04:18 in many African countries, is get as many kids to school
04:21 as possible, that is the beginning to a problem.
04:25 Now, I'm not saying that there are no implementation issues.
04:27 Oh, tons of them.
04:29 Tons of them.
04:30 Implementation is a problem.
04:32 But it's important we answer the right question.
04:34 So I've been--
04:35 Thank you.
04:36 No, that's--
04:36 I apologize.
04:36 I apologize.
04:37 --makes sense.
04:38 And Boris, as well, he did mention some of the issues
04:41 we have.
04:42 We have been discussing this and--
04:44 [SIREN]
04:47 Excuse me.
04:48 Maybe it is causing the disruption.
04:53 I'm sorry about that.
04:55 I just wanted to ask for the floor to say something.
05:00 And that is to do with what Acha asked
05:09 and what Kabiruka answered.
05:11 I'm not sure something was not lost in between.
05:19 Maybe it's me who did not pick it correctly.
05:31 Even the what and the how actually, in theory,
05:38 have been answered.
05:41 Or at least people know.
05:44 And that's what we get from these discussions every time,
05:48 whether it is here, or Davos, or Addis, or Singapore,
05:55 or New York, or wherever.
05:59 We've been places, all of us.
06:03 And we've been in search of what is it
06:07 that we can do in Africa to put the transformation journey
06:17 on track as we wish to.
06:19 So actually, the problem which Donald talked about,
06:26 also, is that implementation.
06:32 It's actually the main issue.
06:36 You said that you are not saying that there
06:39 are no implementation issues.
06:45 Actually, this is the problem.
06:50 Forget about the how or the what.
06:55 The how and the what have been answered by you,
06:59 even now, sitting there in the panel.
07:02 They have been answered before, several times, for years.
07:13 When it comes to doing things, we either do nothing
07:19 or do the wrong things.
07:20 That's the implementation.
07:26 So at first, I thought that's what Achaliki was alluding to.
07:34 So how many conferences, how many experts, how many times,
07:44 do we have to discuss what and how?
07:47 Because we've discussed that for years, for long,
07:53 for many times.
07:56 But the question is, when do we get
07:58 to do what we have even agreed is what is needed to be done?
08:03 It's implementation.
08:05 I rest my case.
08:06 [APPLAUSE]
08:09 Thank you, Excellency.
08:14 Yes, Dr. Sebastian.
08:17 Clementine, the moderator, is putting me
08:20 in a difficult situation to try to respond to that.
08:26 I'm Cameroonian, so I believe in conspiracy theories.
08:29 So you have something against me.
08:31 I would still dare say that I'm on the side of Dr. Kaberuka
08:40 on this one, simply because, yes, we've seen solutions.
08:48 We've heard ideas at conferences.
08:52 But many times, we also have wrong ideas in the books.
08:57 And we implement the wrong ideas.
09:01 So I still think that in some questions,
09:04 the what is still relevant.
09:07 What should we do?
09:08 What should we not do?
09:10 I see in many African countries--
09:12 I was very happy among many nice jobs that I had.
09:18 One of the most meaningful was to be chief economist,
09:21 vice president of the African Development Bank,
09:23 because it was, for me, really the opportunity
09:26 to serve the continent.
09:30 I had bigger jobs before that.
09:32 But that one was, so far to me, the most meaningful.
09:35 And I could tell you, Mr. President,
09:37 that I had interaction with a lot of ministers,
09:40 and prime ministers, and presidents,
09:42 who believe in the wrong ideas.
09:44 So I think that the what, in some situations,
09:48 is still relevant.
09:50 Now, there is a former professor of mine,
09:53 who's also my colleague now in Boston, called Michael Porter.
09:59 I've written something in what I call the implementation gap,
10:02 this question.
10:04 And he told me, well, he's an expert on strategy.
10:09 And he says that if you have a good strategy
10:13 and the wrong implementation, it means
10:16 that you had the wrong strategy to begin with,
10:18 and you didn't know that.
10:20 I said, please explain that again.
10:22 He said, no, a good strategy should
10:25 have implementation, strategy, and constraint embedded in it.
10:30 That you cannot have a good strategy
10:33 and the wrong implementation.
10:34 So you need to think about all of them at the same time.
10:38 So I just wanted to mention that.
10:41 Now, quickly, the solution, I think,
10:47 is to train and build capabilities.
10:52 And I very much like, again, what Dr. Kabiruka said,
10:55 which is not just education.
10:57 It's the relevant type of education,
11:00 which reflects the needs of the economy, of the society,
11:05 at a given moment.
11:09 It also means training leaders, but not only leaders,
11:13 but also training managers.
11:15 They're not the same thing.
11:16 You sometimes have leaders who have the vision.
11:19 Then you need to have behind them, or below them,
11:22 or around them, a large group of managers
11:25 who actually run things on time and have to learn
11:28 how to deliver things on time.
11:30 Not all managers are leaders, are visionary.
11:33 So I think that when we are reflecting about our institutions
11:40 to train people, whether they're university, school,
11:43 primary schools, or vocational school,
11:45 we need to have these ideas in mind,
11:47 to really have different type of skills that will be needed.
11:52 Thank you.
11:53 [APPLAUSE]
11:56 I still have an issue.
12:00 Because not only have these things been discussed,
12:08 the what and the how, we also not only
12:17 have experience of places where this gap has been bridged.
12:30 We have references to make in different parts of the world
12:36 how things have happened.
12:39 So that means the what, to an extent, has been answered.
12:46 Because we're asking the what of two kinds.
12:52 What do we have to do ourselves, Rwanda, the continent?
12:58 And then there is the what that has been answered
13:06 in other places by other people to get to where they are
13:10 that we want to be.
13:14 So of course, countries have different contexts.
13:21 But this does not preclude the point I'm trying to make.
13:27 Then you learn from the experience of other places
13:31 who have answered the what in their context.
13:37 That brings you closer to understand
13:41 the what in your context.
13:44 And therefore, do it.
13:46 Therefore, what I'm saying, and really what I thought
13:52 Acha was also referring to, whether it is answering
13:58 the what or the how cannot remain in perpetuity
14:08 as a question being asked without coming
14:13 to a closure of saying my what to my problem, my how,
14:21 to deal with the problem is this one.
14:24 Because I have learned from other experiences,
14:27 even of different contexts.
14:29 But I have been hearing.
14:34 I have learned from my own experience as to what and how.
14:43 You know, we have even gone to the extent,
14:46 precisely something you covered as well here on the panel.
14:52 We have even gone to the extent where we are now
14:57 being told from outside as to what and how.
15:07 And the people just go for that.
15:10 Because somebody has told you the various circumstances
15:15 you have explained very well.
15:18 So we have to sit back and people walk to our countries,
15:24 but they come by air or by ship.
15:33 Or they did that long ago.
15:36 But they tell people, you must do this.
15:40 You need to do this.
15:42 And in fact, tie that to the money or the means
15:48 they are giving you to be able to do that.
15:52 And people have shifted their minds
15:56 from what they actually know that should be done,
15:59 that we have discussed and debated,
16:03 to what they are being told they must do.
16:06 Because they need that money that comes with it
16:11 to implement it.
16:12 So there is something lacking on our side
16:16 in terms of ownership of ideas, or even learning
16:23 to do what we have already learned that works elsewhere.
16:31 This is why I had to push back a little bit.
16:34 [APPLAUSE]
16:37 Yes.
16:39 Thank you, Excellency, Dr. Lopez and Boris.
16:41 You have requested the floor, and then Dr. Lopez.
16:45 Boris.
16:46 No.
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20:22 I wanted to react to the president's remarks
20:28 by mentioning that there was a famous Japanese economist,
20:34 Nakamura, that was the first to try to interpret the success
20:40 of Japan's transformation as an industrial nation.
20:45 And he developed this theory of the flying geese,
20:48 which the economists study a lot.
20:52 And the flying geese is basically based on the metaphor
20:55 of the geese flying in a V formation.
20:59 And the way they do that is because they have a leader,
21:04 a very clear leader, and the others try to basically navigate
21:10 the difficulties of the wind, taking into account
21:13 the leader's direction.
21:15 But the leader, because it's in front,
21:18 gets a bit more difficulties after a while,
21:23 because it's more exposed.
21:25 And eventually, one of the others can replace the leader.
21:29 But you cannot replace the leader if you don't learn
21:32 from the leader.
21:34 And this is very much applicable to transformation.
21:38 So you have to do different from the ones who precede you.
21:44 But you have also to take into account the ones
21:46 that preceded you.
21:48 Historically, our transformation is very much influenced
21:52 by the group of countries that have succeeded
21:57 in that transformation more recently.
21:59 And those are the Asian, Southeast Asian countries
22:02 and China.
22:04 And because 30 years ago, we are at the same levels
22:07 of GDP per capita, and now, you know,
22:10 the distance is quite considerable.
22:13 So if you take that lesson into account,
22:18 "Acha, I don't think the issue is about the how and the what,
22:22 but rather, you know, how do you make sure that you learn
22:26 from those who precede you and you have the capacity
22:29 to actually instill some novel dimensions?"
22:34 And this requires leadership.
22:36 We go back to the same discussion.
22:38 And leadership, you know, I wrote a book some years back
22:42 that was titled "Ownership, Leadership, and Transformation."
22:46 And it was to try to demonstrate that you cannot transform
22:50 if you don't have those two ingredients,
22:52 the leadership and the ownership.
22:54 And the ownership is very much a reaction at that time
22:58 to the fact that all of the sudden,
23:01 the international organizations, the bilateral donors
23:05 were descending on Africa to say, "Now, you need to do ownership."
23:11 They were telling us to do ownership,
23:13 but they defined what ownership was.
23:17 So it was quite an amazing paradox.
23:20 So the donors are telling you that you should exercise ownership,
23:25 but they are telling you what ownership is.
23:28 So it's like, you know, to just make an anecdote of it,
23:32 I don't want to insult Celestine that was in one of those organizations.
23:39 It was about, you know, this is the policy,
23:43 and if you implement it right, you have exercised ownership.
23:48 But we tell you what the policy is.
23:51 So what is this?
23:54 So, you know, if we talk about implementation,
23:57 we can fall into this trap.
24:00 And I always remember, and I like to mention it all the time,
24:05 an evaluation done by the IMF Evaluation Department in 2001
24:11 about the structural adjustment programs.
24:14 It was a comprehensive program evaluation.
24:18 And the evaluators--and this is coming from the IMF,
24:22 it's not coming from radicals like me--
24:26 were saying that, in fact,
24:29 the programs of structural adjustment had failed.
24:33 And they attributed that failure to a number of elements.
24:38 I remember some, just to share with you.
24:41 Cognitive bias on the part of the IMF staff.
24:46 Group thinking.
24:50 There was one more interesting finding.
24:53 They said that the data was only used
24:57 if it confirmed already established policy.
25:03 You know, in my books, that is called dishonesty.
25:07 And it was like that,
25:09 coming from the IMF Evaluation Department.
25:12 So this ownership
25:17 has been transformed into sort of a myth.
25:21 But in fact, what we have to address
25:24 is very much the way you put it, Boubacar.
25:29 It's to address this capacity to be independent.
25:33 And that's basically the secret of implementation,
25:38 is being independent.
25:40 Being courageous and being capable of confronting
25:43 some of these difficulties.
25:45 But obviously you cannot do it without addressing
25:48 the shortcomings of human life,
25:50 such as corruption and other unethical practices
25:54 that are always lingering around.
25:57 And that you will have to have the capacity
26:00 to actually stay focused and have this determination.
26:06 Determination is really the word.
26:08 Because a lot of confrontation
26:11 is going to be in front of us.
26:14 But it is the determination that is going to make a difference.
26:17 And that goes all the way to the way we look into the economy.
26:21 Because competitive advantages, like you were saying,
26:25 is based also in interpretation that is dynamic.
26:30 Because a lot of our competitive advantages
26:33 are in being capable of being independent.
26:36 Like the South Koreans decided to have a shipping industry.
26:40 And at the time everybody said, "That's a white elephant.
26:43 "We're not going to give you money for anything in that sector.
26:48 "Because you don't have iron ore,
26:51 "you have zero skills on shipping,
26:54 "you don't have any infrastructure to do shipbuilding,
26:58 "you are not really competitive enough
27:01 "in relation to the economies in your neighbourhood."
27:04 And they went on with the list.
27:06 And you don't have money, you don't have capital.
27:09 But they decided that they were going to invest in shipping.
27:13 They started and failed.
27:16 Thank you.
27:18 For one decade they failed.
27:21 And they failed the second decade.
27:23 Today they are the second largest shipping industry in the world.
27:27 Thank you.
27:29 I'm going to take more of your time.
27:34 Since I missed the morning session,
27:37 I'm trying to compensate.
27:40 The ownership still comes back to...
27:47 The ownership of what?
27:50 The ownership of how?
27:54 Theorists come to that.
27:58 But let me tell you just a simple story.
28:02 We have all kinds of stories in our traditions and so on and so forth.
28:10 Even animals learn.
28:15 There is a story here in Rwanda about the leopard.
28:22 The leopard went for the kill of the animals.
28:32 The herdsmen, the women in Rwanda.
28:36 So it tried to kill a calf.
28:42 And people heard noises and went and saved the calf.
28:51 So they went back to the house and they were celebrating the calf survived.
28:59 And they started talking to each other.
29:02 And the leopard was still nearby, behind the hut, listening.
29:08 And the people inside the hut were saying,
29:13 "You know, if this leopard had gone for the neck,
29:18 we wouldn't be having our calf."
29:24 So from that time, the leopard went for the neck.
29:29 And every time it goes for the kill, it gets its kill.
29:37 So how can we be there listening to what makes the kill and we don't do it?
29:51 That's the summary of it anyway.
29:54 So thank you.
29:56 Thank you, Your Excellency.
29:58 I would like to ask Dr. Donald to kind of summarize and close out this session for us.
30:04 Give us some of your thoughts on the final position on this.
30:09 Because it's a hot debate.
30:10 How do we go about it?
30:12 That's a big job for me.
30:15 I'm not sure I'm the right person to do that.
30:18 But let me say this.
30:21 I fear now that because of the weakening of our economies during the COVID period,
30:32 because of this synchronized crisis which has happened around the world, around us,
30:37 our economies have become so weakened, so weakened.
30:42 That, for example, a country in West Africa, please no names,
30:47 which was the first one to go to the IMF and begin general economic reforms,
30:53 is back to the IMF today.
30:56 Please, no names.
30:57 Why?
30:59 A combination of domestic indiscipline, macroeconomic indiscipline,
31:05 and these external shocks.
31:07 As a result, they have lost what I call political space,
31:14 fiscal space, policy space.
31:17 The decisions they're now implementing are not their decisions.
31:21 Why?
31:23 Because during the days when things were very good,
31:28 they did all the wrong things.
31:29 They ticked all the wrong boxes.
31:31 Massive borrowing, for example.
31:33 Massive spending.
31:35 Huge levels of the deficit.
31:37 Without building the resilience for when the days would be difficult.
31:41 I can think now of about 14 countries in Africa who are in that phase.
31:45 So the first thing I think our message we're passing here is that
31:50 restoring that degree of economic independence begins by economic discipline.
31:56 When you lose that discipline, you lose that ability to implement your own policies.
32:02 This is what Carlos is saying.
32:03 Number two, you have to exercise that discipline with a lot of equity, social equity.
32:10 What is bringing many of our countries down is that
32:13 in terms of getting things done, a lot of inequities are implemented.
32:20 So you have sections of society who feel frustrated, so they check out.
32:26 You can see that in the whole of the Sahelian belt.
32:29 So I think the message which I'm hearing from here is that
32:33 we are at such a point in Africa's transformation journey
32:38 where we need to restore, first of all, our equal place as a partner
32:45 in the global economy, able to make our own choices.
32:48 It does mean we're equally wealthy, but we have the same voice.
32:51 That's number one.
32:53 Number two, again, this is what Celestin was saying and our colleague here.
32:58 The opportunity is now in the supply chains globally.
33:03 Because what has happened during COVID, it's no longer about
33:07 can I rely on vaccines and food and medicine from one country?
33:12 It's no longer about where is the cheapest place to produce.
33:15 It is where is the most reliable place to produce.
33:18 And so when a country like Rwanda begins to manufacture vaccines
33:22 and maybe other medicines very soon, create an ecosystem,
33:26 you are taking advantage of what has been a crisis in the global supply chains
33:32 to actually make it an opportunity.
33:34 That decision has been made.
33:36 I think number three, which I think is equally important,
33:40 is that because of the uncertainties which I was mentioning around us nowadays
33:46 and because of the weakness in international cooperation,
33:49 Africa has to exercise its own agency.
33:52 And here, Mr. President, I want to say, I think maybe agreeing with you here,
34:00 I think the reform of the African Union
34:03 and the inability of our continental organizations to function effectively
34:09 is a very big break on what we are trying to do.
34:12 We have got islands of excellency, like Africa's Center for Disease Control,
34:17 for example, at Tisantil recently, which was an island of excellence.
34:22 But we need to get African institutions to function.
34:27 Because without them, we shall be acting individually,
34:30 and that is suboptimal.
34:32 Now, to my friend, Achar,
34:35 I've seen many countries with plans done by McKinsey.
34:39 They usually pay a million dollars for that.
34:43 I think you need to do what Celeste has been saying, please.
34:47 Always attach an implementation schedule to it and timelines
34:52 so that you can come late and assess what has been done.
34:56 But I think we are giving a message of hope among the young people
35:03 that if Rwanda began from such a difficult position,
35:07 and is where it is today, it has not resolved all the problems,
35:11 but it's possible for all the African countries to exercise their own agency,
35:16 even in a very difficult global environment like we are facing now.
35:20 So, thank you.
35:22 (upbeat music)