How Kenya can engineer economy as Lee Kuan Yew lifted Singapore

Opinion and Analysis

Mourners queue to pay their respects to Singapore’s late former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. AFP PHOTO 

By MICHAEL CHEGE

The development strategy pursued by Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s autocratic leader from 1965 to 1990, who was buried recently may provide some answers on how one could transform a poor unruly place like Kenya into a spic- and-span country like Singapore in just one generation.

Lee Kuan Yew transformed an impoverished third world country to an industrialised nation. In 1965, Singaporeans had an average income of $320 per person, about thrice that of Kenya then.

In 2014, Singapore’s per capita GDP was $56,113—higher than that of the US, Netherlands and France—and 56,000 times higher than Kenya.

Singapore global rankings for lack of corruption, cleanliness, business competitiveness and government efficiency could now put many first world countries to shame.

However, the journey to prosperity started badly. Singapore, largely Chinese in population, was unceremoniously booted out of the Federation of Malaysia (majority Malay in population) for reasons East Africans ought to be familiar with: Malay suspicion and hatreds of a Chinese minority that was richer, dominant in business and the professions, and sometimes haughty.

Overnight, Singapore was without an army, without a hinterland to do business with, facing a cold war from Malaysia and a hot one from Indonesia. All it had was a marshland with slums dependent on a regional port and a British base that was to be wound up.

Lee Kuan Yew said it reminded him of Israel’s isolation and the need, in the circumstances, to reach of out to the rich western economies for investment, markets and skills—but not aid handouts. An attempt to reach out to African markets at the time led nowhere.

Preoccupied with varieties of African socialism, African states did not think much of outward-bound economics, Kenya and Ivory Coast being exceptions somewhat.

But luck was on his side. The country premier’s development policy advisor, the Dutch economist Albert Winsemius who had been seconded to the government by the UNDP, was every bit unlike his contemporaries (some in Africa) who preached the doctrines of five-year State planning, protection of infant industries, and (for some of them) national self-sufficiency.

Mr Winsemius instead recommended targeting foreign markets by establishing light, labour-intensive industries (textiles, toys, trinkets) with foreign investors.

At the time mostly from Hong Kong and Taiwan, then moving into electronic equipment which at the time meant radio, TV, and calculators, mostly by persuading American multinational like General Electric, Hewlett Packard, Texas Instruments to come in. They did come, but with much effort to convince them, moving upwards to oil refining, chemicals, and finance.

In the meantime, Mr Winsemius asked the government to do two things. One was to begin a mass housing programme funded out of pensions to move people out of the slums; the other was to plan for a motorised “green and clean” city, forcefully moving people if need be.

In Kenya by contrast we have since then unashamedly grown Kibera into a tourist attraction and an obligatory stop for top global visitors, and even made movies out of the place.

Second, Mr Winsemius urged the government not to demolish the Stamford Raffles, the colonial founder’s monument, as many African nationalists did, as a sign of commitment to British standards to the investor.

In that, he was preaching to the converted: Raffles Hotel and the Raffles Class in Singapore Airlines today rank with the best and most profitable brands globally.