Let’s say you’re just a random African dude and you’ve been elected the President
of an African country that recently gained independence from Great Britain.
Your country is the third most poorest in the world. You have only 12 miles of paved
roads, you have only one hundred high school graduates in a country of half a million,
disease is rampant, there’s been a drought for two years, and you even rely on your previous
colonizer to make sure your government doesn’t instantly run out of money.
You’d really like to make this better, and other countries in the region have made real
progress in helping their citizens before, but they’ve come at the expense of human
rights, the rule of law, democracy, and general freedom. You’d really like to make sure
your population can have both a good standard of living while also having social and political
rights. Here’s how you’d go about doing that.
Firstly, What Resources Do You Have? You should first take stock of what your country
can offer. What have you got? Cattle farming
Vast wilderness Mineral deposits but with no tools to get
them Anything else?
That’s it? Seriously? [sigh] This is going to be harder than I thought.
Okay, so the mines. You take out a big fat loan from the International
Monetary Fund and use it to finally get the tools to crack at your vast mining deposits.
With that, you can export it to the western world and use the money to pay off your loan
as well as keep your government running smoothly.
Wait wait wait, running the government? Everyone is uneducated and unskilled. Who will run
the country? Ah, right, well, the-uh British! Yes! Those
who were part of the colonial administration can continue working here until a large enough
pool of qualified locals develops. No problem! So with the mining rigs up and running, you
can sell the minerals to the rest of the world, becoming an export-focused economy. You would
personally negotiate a trade deal with the European Economic Community so you can start
importing and exporting goods freely. The revenue from these trades you use to invest
in health and education. With a public/private ownership model of mining corporations, 50%
of your government revenue comes from the mining industry and this allows you to keep
taxes low and even raise more money than you need to spend. That means bountiful dividends
to the public and heavy investment from foreign companies. It also means you can ditch the
South African rand and set up your own central bank to use your own currency. By now, you
have the fastest growing economy in the world. That means subsidies to farmers, vaccinations
against diseases, universal education, universal healthcare, airports, contraception, telephones,
technology, slippers. At the same time, civil rights and the rule of law are still being
protected.
Because you’re still using the 1966 constitution drawn up by the British, it means you still
have to respect the rule of law, and that means free and fair elections. So in 1969,
Botswana held it’s second presidential election since independence. Unsurprisingly, you’re
re-elected with nearly 70% of the vote, and again in 1974, with an even higher percentage
of the vote. Again, in a completely legitimate election. For context, the last time a Western
Leader was elected in a fair election with over 70% of the vote was in. That’s how
good you are.
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows however, as all around your country, you are surrounded
by the racist regimes of Rhodesia and Apartheid South Africa. They don’t like the fact you,
a black man, are -shockingly- running a country, and get this, doing it well. Also your wife
is white, big no no for racists. Until now, you didn’t even need an army,
relying mostly on border police to maintain peace around the edge of your country. But
now Rhodesian and South African-backed terror groups are targeting you and commencing operations
in your borders, so you form the Botswana Defense Force in 1977 to keep them at bay.
You also play a role in founding the Southern African Development Community, as a way for
the wider Southern African community to reduce their reliance on South Africa and Rhodesia.
In 2019, this region had a nominal GDP slightly bigger than Switzerland.
In 1979, you are elected a fourth time, with 75% of the votes. Unfortunately, you die in
office only a few months later and your vice President takes over. But he’s just as popular
as you, and to this day your party has consistently been re-elected every election. Since you
became President, there has not been a single military coup, major rebellion, or civil unrest
because you made sure civil liberties and the welfare state were protected. With a proper
education system, 90% of your citizens are able to get an education up to aged 13 at
the very least. In the past 20 years, Infant mortality is down 16%, tuberculosis is down
76%, STDs are down by two thirds, malnutrition is down by a quarter.
In just thirteen years, the wealth of your citizens increased ten thousand percent.
Not bad, in relation to some of the other countries in the area.
Today, your country ranks the lowest in Africa for corruption and instability, and even has
accumulated over $7 billion in foreign currency reserves. Over 270,000 tourists visit yearly,
despite the 2014 ban on poaching and game hunting. In 2019, the government scrapped
a law making same-sex relationships illegal, one of the first in Africa to do so.
That’s not to say your country is now a utopia though; nepotism, unemployment, over-reliance
on mining, erosion of free speech, as well as a huge AIDS crisis have been plaguing your
country in recent times, but with an educated and open-minded population, you should be
confident that these are all problems that can be overcome.
So, in answer to the question “How do you make a country rich from nothing”
1. Work creatively with your natural resources. 2. Be practical instead of ideological.
3. Uphold civil liberties and the rule of law.