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Kenya hasn't developed yet, why do we think it will? Putting it another way, Kenya's development has not been held back by lack of sweatshops but by corrupt go

Kenya hasn't developed yet, why do we think it will? Putting it another way, Kenya's development has not been held back by lack of sweatshops but by corrupt government and misguided go-gooderism.

Bartweiss 9y ago
> by lack of sweatshops but by corrupt government I think this is a false contrast. Stable government and reliable infrastructure are the standard requirements for building factories (sweatshop or otherwise) in a country. So a lack of industrialization is frequently a consequence of bad governance. Notably, corruption itself isn't an issue. China, for instance, has plenty of corrupt and autocratic governance. But it has predictable, tolerable corruption and a basically-stable political structure, however the specifics may change. What's important is that the situation was predictable; everyone was willing to skim a percentage and leave the basic structures of government intact. If investors were worried that the government might take 100% of an investment, or fall completely, the situation would look pretty different.
- pm90 9y ago
  Excellent point. If you look at China, they took a long time to get to a state where they could start developing reliably. Basically after the fall of the Monarchy, there were revolution after revolution, until the Communist takeover. Even after, it took much later, until the rise of Deng Xiaoping, for development to actually take place. By that time, the State had effectively established itself as the Supreme political power (albeit a non-democratic one) which lead to the stability that allowed massive industrialization to take place rapidly, often with assistance from the State.
sekou 9y ago
While growth has slowed in recent years, 6 of the world's 10 fastest growing economies were in sub-Saharan Africa from 2000 to 2010 (https://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/01/daily_chart https://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/01/daily_cha... ). While Kenya isn't included among those countries it has also shown robust growth. It may be that this growth is unfairly geared toward the wealthiest Africans but I think you'd find that the life of the average Kenyan has improved markedly in the last 20 years.
tim333 9y ago
Kenya's GDP's growing at 5.8%/year. In 30 years that would be 5x. All Africa's developing fast at the moment. A lot of it's probably down to modern communications. Africa used to be really cut off. Now they've mostly got cellphones etc.

Kenya hasn't developed yet, why do we think it will? Putting it another way, Kenya's development has not been held back by lack of sweatshops but by corrupt government and misguided go-gooderism.

Bartweiss 9y ago

> by lack of sweatshops but by corrupt government I think this is a false contrast. Stable government and reliable infrastructure are the standard requirements for building factories (sweatshop or otherwise) in a country. So a lack of industrialization is frequently a consequence of bad governance. Notably, corruption itself isn't an issue. China, for instance, has plenty of corrupt and autocratic governance. But it has predictable, tolerable corruption and a basically-stable political structure, however the specifics may change. What's important is that the situation was predictable; everyone was willing to skim a percentage and leave the basic structures of government intact. If investors were worried that the government might take 100% of an investment, or fall completely, the situation would look pretty different.

pm90 9y ago
Excellent point. If you look at China, they took a long time to get to a state where they could start developing reliably. Basically after the fall of the Monarchy, there were revolution after revolution, until the Communist takeover. Even after, it took much later, until the rise of Deng Xiaoping, for development to actually take place. By that time, the State had effectively established itself as the Supreme political power (albeit a non-democratic one) which lead to the stability that allowed massive industrialization to take place rapidly, often with assistance from the State.

sekou 9y ago

While growth has slowed in recent years, 6 of the world's 10 fastest growing economies were in sub-Saharan Africa from 2000 to 2010 (https://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/01/daily_chart https://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/01/daily_cha... ). While Kenya isn't included among those countries it has also shown robust growth. It may be that this growth is unfairly geared toward the wealthiest Africans but I think you'd find that the life of the average Kenyan has improved markedly in the last 20 years.

tim333 9y ago

Kenya's GDP's growing at 5.8%/year. In 30 years that would be 5x. All Africa's developing fast at the moment. A lot of it's probably down to modern communications. Africa used to be really cut off. Now they've mostly got cellphones etc.