One of the things South Africans should do is to stop indulging in victimhood. Blaming colonialism, apartheid, and Chinese commercial dominance perpetually will not assist SA to emerge as a winning nation.
An ICT-education foundation is a major insurance policy for national growth, competitiveness and sustainability.
One of the country's leading thinkers, Zakes Mda, even reflected: "Once we were victims. Alas, we internalised victimhood and made it part of our psyche. Somehow we survived. But, even as survivors, we continue to worship at the altar of perpetual victimhood. Self-pity is not pretty at all. Victimhood makes us look so unattractive." Against enormous odds, newly industrialising countries are potent symbols of nation states shunning victimhood and instead pursuing excellence.
In recent times, my analysis of the much-celebrated Asian economic development has pointed to a salient linkage, the ICT-education nexus, underscoring economist Karl Gunnar Myrdal's theory of cumulative causation.While most thinkers attribute the growth and recovery of Asian economies to prudent macroeconomic policy and stability of governments, I posit that the relationship of ICT policy and education has also served to sustain those unusual rates of growth. This is most evident in two Asian countries, South Korea and Vietnam.
South Korea and Vietnam do not have enviable histories, quite the contrary. They have emerged from foreign subjugation, instability, military dictatorships and wars. The Vietnam economy was very sluggish, dominated by agriculture and manufacturing sectors. The 1954-75 Indochina Wars weakened the country, caused many deaths, and resulted in the decimation of the economy. The subsequent 1976-1986 political and economic reforms did not improve the situation significantly. However, inspired by the winning formula of the Asian Tigers, Vietnam then introduced DoiMoi, an ideological and economic reformation programme that was marked by a transformation of hardcore communism to the market economy. The other significant introduction was the rebranding of Vietnam as a major ICT market.
Against all odds
These reforms saw Vietnam defiantly emerge as one of the fastest growing economies today, with consistent annual GDP growth of 7%. The ICT-education nexus assumed centre stage. Vietnam spent considerable resources from the trade markets and foreign direct investments on ICT and education expenditure. These numbers tell a profound story of policy success for a country that was at war with a superpower in the recent past.
Vietnam has more than 25 million Internet users, 80 million phone/mobile subscribers, bandwidth capacity of nearly 40Gbps, 300 ICT universities/colleges and output of between 40 000 and 50 000 ICT graduates per year. As a result, the country specialises in software development, employs only top performers and has 40% lower cost than China and India. This is a testament to the fact that an ICT-education foundation is a major insurance policy for national growth, competitiveness and sustainability.
South Korea also has a fabled trajectory of development. For five centuries, South Korea was ruled by the Choson dynasty until colonised by the Japanese in the early 20th century. At the time, South Korea was considered a poverty-stricken backwater, heavily dependent on agriculture. Profound economic changes were instituted after World War II, by General Park Chu Hee, after the dismantling of Japanese imperial authority. He introduced the much-lauded policy of the developmental state, and attracted foreign capital and technology through incentive schemes. These changes had major consequences; for the first time in years, GDP growth reached a phenomenal 7%, a rate that was consistently exceeded in subsequent years.
South Korea, like Vietnam, profited massively from quality human capital whose seeds were sown by the Japanese imperial administration. In later years, South Korea cemented its human capital investment by between $5 billion and $8 billion on ICT and education. Programme initiatives include 10 400 primary and secondary schools being supplied with free broadband Internet service; training in ICT invested for free in 13 million citizens; $600 million invested to develop ICT specialists; all these resulting in 15 600 Masters/PhD graduates, and 88 500 Bachelor's graduates. ICT and education investments have seen South Korea become a leader in technological creations, as can be seen in the development of Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line and Code Division Multiple Access for mobile communication, among others.
The inference is that ICT-education entente is one of the most important cogs in the machinery of sustainable national economic development. The Vietnamese and South Korean development trajectories indicate that investment in ICT and education reinforce national gains, consolidate growth, and work in a complementary manner to entrench a country on the path of positive change. This is the lesson that decelerating South Africa has to learn, and in the process, eschew victimhood.
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