When
Bechuanaland
became free in 1966, this small country to the north of South Africa bordering
Zimbabwe, Namibia, Zambia, and Angola, had over half a million people, only 12
kilometers of paved road, 22 University graduates, and a 100 high-school
graduates. More than half the country was in the Kalahari Desert, and economic
forecasts were very dim. It was just another African country without much
prospect for any progress or development. Bechuanaland, however, soon became Botswana, and
proved world economists and forecasters totally wrong.
Botswana
is landlocked, but in spite of these seemingly impossible odds, it has so far
“performed not only well, but also better than any country in the
world... It had a
PPP-adjusted per-capita income of $5,796 in 1998, almost four times the average
for Africa, and from 1965 to 1998, its economy grew at an annual rate of 7.7%.”
(1) The population too, has tripled to over 1.6 million since
independence.
Why
has Botswana done so well? Diamonds make up 40% of its export, and 70 – 80% of
its foreign exchange. These have helped in the rapid growth, but for many other
African countries such as oil in Nigeria, diamonds in Angola, radioactive
minerals in Zaire (Congo), gold in Sierra Leone… etc., , natural resources have
been a curse, due to civil wars or intense infighting for their control.
Botswana, however, has never had a civil war or infighting to control these
diamonds or their revenues.
Analysts
agree it is the stable political system and institutions of public and private
property that enabled Botswana to achieve so well. How did this come about? That takes us to the farsighted
leadership of the first President, Seretse Khama and his successor Quett
Masire, who created genuine democracy, not only through “fair and free
elections”, but also through passing and implementing policies and laws of effective
property rights, and fully enfranchising the common people.
These policies are “…effective
property rights for a large segment of society, both against state
expropriation and predation by private agents, and by creating relative
political stability
to ensure the continuity
of these Property Rights …and with effective constraints on rulers and
political elites to control arbitrary and extractive behavior.” (2) Ethiopia lags far behind here and has much to
learn from Botswana.
When
large segments of the population get such legal protections, they “buy into the
system” and see themselves as partners in the political structure because they
have something to lose if the system fails. But when political and economic
power is concentrated in the hands of a few elites, the population knows deep
at heart that it has been cheated and disenfranchised. The “one man one vote”
is then seen as mere ritual repeated every five years, or so, without substance
or benefit. Full property rights could give genuine democracy a chance of
taking root in Ethiopia.
More to come…
G. E. Gorfu
1)
http://web.mit.edu/sjohnson/www/attach/Botswanafinal1%20Sept%201%202001.pdf
2) Harvey and Lewis (1990), Good (1992) and Leith
(2000), or Colclough and McCarthy (1980)
Quotes have been slightly paraphrased; emphasis in italics and the underline are mine.