Monthly Archives: January 2021

The curse of mineral riches

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Do mineral riches matter at all for economic development? No, otherwise mineral deficient countries like Singapore would be begging nations.


On the other hand, many mineral-endowed countries seem cursed to a perpetual state of underdevelopment or continually playing catch-up. Mineral riches also seemingly create lazy thinking, a thinking that fails to take cognisance of global market conditions and responding timely to changes coming over the horizon. It also engenders a thinking that depends solely on a fortuitous piece of natural luck that put a nation on top of mineral abundance.


Economic development is about making the smart choices that will propel the nation along a sustainable growth trajectory. It is also about harnessing comparative advantages, and where none seem to exist, smartly ‘creating’ these. 


Doubtless, mineral endowments offer a comparative advantage in a world that craves and depends on these. But this comparative advantage has to be exploited with smart strategies that are adaptable to changing global conditions. For if there is one lesson from modern economic history, it is that global conditions are always changing. This comparative advantage may not always be the same through the ages, so it is important to discern when it is time to change direction and harness or create new advantages. And mineral endowments are not forever…

Crying over the spilt milk of changing global conditions that mean your minerals may no longer be as valuable as they were yesterday is a sign of lack of forward planning, as are empty barns in times of drought.

Smart decisions

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Smart decision making is about knowing that you cannot remain still, knowing that the country has to keep moving forward, adapting to changing internal and external dynamics. It is also about developing a culture of smart execution, and not just having supposedly great paper strategies. For without smart execution, you have nothing.


Execution is not just about taking decisive action, it is also about taking timely action. Unresponsive 5-year plans, or rigid priorities that are set once and cannot be revisited even when conditions change, are a recipe for disaster. Continuous consultation, perpetual and timid postponement of action, are enemies of progress.


In these turbulent times it is sometimes necessary to turn on a tickey. Smart leadership is having the confidence to execute this without skipping a heart beat.


Smart decision making is also about making tough choices. It is about creating the conditions where your citizens know and accept that to have a prosperous future, they have to accept and endure the pain of today, the pain of transition from one phase in their forward motion to the next.

Easy choices are easy to make, and they make for transient happiness and satisfaction, but they mean harder and more painful decisions later. The time for hard choices is now.

Let them eat cake

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Many leaders, even democratically elected ones and former revolutionaries, tend to take their people for granted. They demonstrate an insensitivity to their feelings and plight.

Nelson Mandela and Franklin Roosevelt possessed a rare ability to bring their people along with them, even as they embarked on difficult political projects in their nations’ histories.

Leaders would do well to emulate these iconic individuals.

It is really an intellectual game

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Development is really, ultimately, an intellectual game. 

The standard prerequisites for development are well known, but the power of intellect is hardly ever mentioned, if at all.

The fact that intellectual capital, intellectual wealth, trumps everything.

The intellect of a people to choose and elect the right leaders.

The intellect of the leaders to choose and doggedly follow the right policies.

The intellect to realise and understand that, ultimately, intellect trumps everything.

The intellect to realise that lack of natural endowments/resources does not doom you to failure, that there are many paths to development, that in fact, in a perverse but virtuous way, lack of endowments may actually be a blessing because it frees the intellect to think creatively, to innovate, not to depend on ‘natural capital’, but to depend on abundant, perpetual intellectual capital. Or, conversely, that abundant natural resources are not a prerequisite, nor do they ensure, development and that, perversely, if unaccompanied by intellectual power may actually be a ‘curse’ for they tend to lull the mind and promote lazy thinking.

Give me a resource rich country, and I’ll give you a country with none but is at the top of all human and economic development indices.

All that is required is to free the intellect and shun lazy thinking like the plague.