How many African presidents know the existence of Agenda 2063? I will be surprised if there are more than 10 out of the 54 countries. More importantly, I would be surprised how many of the 10 have glanced through the document. More surprising would be the fact that most African ministers of Economic Planning might have heard of but not seen the document.
That is the nature of African governments towards guided economic growth and development. But it is also typically African. In the “Forward” to a 2016 publication of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa entitled, “Planning for Africa’s Development”, it was clearly stated that “the role of planning in transforming the economies of the countries known as the Asian Tigers not merely attests to the utility of development planning but also raises questions about the conditions under which planning does or does not achieve its stated objectives.
” The glaring success of the four Asian Tigers, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan since the late 1960s, in terms of their industrialisation feat, has actually served as the impetus for other developing countries, particularly Africa. However, the focus of concern by countries that wanted to follow in their footsteps was more on the route to development rather than the building blocks or ideological orientation. Hence, in the 1970s, many developing countries focused on export drive and import substitution industrialisation agenda.
The Western world goade.
