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By KENNEDY CHESOLI
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You have heard it said that at Independence, Kenya was at the same level as South Korea and that it was in the intervening years sure-footed Koreans advanced as Kenyans , Africans, spectacularly failed.
President Mwai Kibaki and former United States President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Keroche Breweries and Standard Media Group CEO Sam Shollei Even in his 2006 reading, "An honest government and a hopeful future", at the University of Nairobi, then-Senator Obama told a packed auditorium that "as Kenya was gaining its independence, its gross national product was not very different from that of South Korea. Today, South Korea's economy is 40 times larger than Kenya's. "
He repeated it in 2009, in Ghana, on the first presidential visit to Africa.
President Kibaki in the United States of America in the United States of America in the United States of America.
Baringo last year, Raila reportedly said "when we were attaining independence, Kenya's economy was at the same time. level of that of South Korea "goal" 54 years later, South Korea's economy is 45 times bigger than that of Kenya ".
He would make similar claims in his reading at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
It is inconceivable that a marginalized and highly illiterate nation emerging from a 70-year abusive colonial rule could be compared to South Korea, whose modern history dates to at least 1919.
Before 1963, Korea was a rapidly industrializing nation that alre ady had some 10 presidents. It was estimated that in 1963, there were 8.9 million Kenyans compared to 27.3 million Koreans. Our GDP was a tiny 17 percent that of Korea's.
The Kenya-Korea output ratio is comparable to the 2017 Kenya-Denmark one. Our real per capita income of $ 537.95 (Sh54,000) was about half of Korea's.
A Korean baby born in 1963 is expected to be a Kenyan one by seven years.
A study shows there were 19 institutions of higher learning with more than 8,000 students in Korea in 1945.
The number of teachers increased from 20,000 in 1945 to 79,000 in 1965 and universal primary education achieved in the early '60s.
In 1963, there were a 150 secondary schools in Kenya with 28,764 students.
Africa's slow (or lack of) economic progress is a "major mystery" to economists.
But that Europe, Latin America and Asia have progressed in Africa stagnated is not surprising.
Most people wrongly believe that the resource-wealthy Africa has been held back by the government
The youngest continent is yet to fully resolve its teething problems. South Sudan and Eritrea just arrived.
Corruption has become a convenient excuse for copping out. Kenyans think that with "good" leaders, we would be at South Korea 's level
Considering Korea and Kenya as' age – mates' is akin to comparing South Sudan to Niger.
It is prudent to compare Korea to Japan, China and Singapore though. Korea was well primed for takeoff.
It had made considerable economic and political progress, such as the US-led land reforms.
It's a cycle of leadership that has been given to leaders of the past, who is generous and predictable economic, financial and technical support from the US and hitherto colonial masters Japan.
Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan both had strong domestic and external support in pursuing protectionism, heavy-handed interventionist and planned economic development.
Western countries have strenuously resisted by African countries to adopt such an eccentric development blueprint.
A South Korean think tank has calculated that the US offered about $ 60 billion in grants and loans to South Korea between 1946 and 1978.
Compare that to Africa's $ 68.9. Korea also got Japanese economic cooperation funds and sizable colonial reparations.
Rather than getting consumed and dispirited by corruption and mismanagement, Africans must work hard.
Even then, if only America and its allies could be generous, supportive and patient with the Koreans!
Mr Chesoli is a New York-based economist and global policy expert. [email protected]
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