Newsweek - USA (2019-10-11)

NEWSWEEK.COM 15

“Many Sierra

Leoneans I talked to

would take that

deal: prosperity for

democracy.”

CASE STUDY Is Singapore,

and its legendary late premier

Lee Kuan Yew, a model for Sierra

Leone’s economic revival?

Ebola are still being felt today, a gen-

eration later. Amputees limp along

on crutches made of sticks. Literacy

is below its prewar level because

1,270 schools were destroyed and 67

percent of children were forced to

leave school. Cities and larger towns

swelled as the population fled the

countryside. Once the war was done,

many people remained, straining

already insufficient infrastructure.

Business left. Records were lost. There

is still no mail service. The economy is

barely kept afloat by aid, increasingly

provided by China, a common trend

in Africa. (Which is perhaps why the

Trump administration shelved plans

to close OPIC, the agency that facili-

tates private investment in developing

markets.) And those are just the visible

effects. Ten thousand children became

soldiers. A U.S. diplomat said the coun-

try is suffering from “national PTSD.”

The details may vary, but much of

Africa is in a similar state. Sixty-eight

percent of African countries are in

the bottom quartile of GDP per cap-

ita. Only one sub-Saharan nation

makes it into the top quartile, Equato-

rial Guinea, and that’s just barely. No

sub-Saharan African nation makes

it into the top tier of the U.N. HDI.

African nations dominate the bottom,

with 32 of the 48 slots. The best coun-

try in sub-Saharan Africa, Botswana,

is seven slots below the Dominican

Republic and over 50 places below

Iran. The Fragile States Index rates

only one country on the entire con-

tinent as “stable.” 

Some insist it’s not as bad as the

numbers indicate. Paul Collier, a

world-renowned international

development expert at Oxford, told

me there are bright spots: Botswana.

Ethiopia. Ghana. Rwanda. You can add

South Africa to the list, too. The U.N.

claims the Millennium Project (and

its successor) have been successes.

same time as Sierra Leone. Corrup-

tion is endemic in Singapore’s part

of the world. It doesn’t have many

Scandinavians. So why did Singapore

succeed and Sierra Leone fail?

There are differences. Singapore is

on a major trade route. It embraced

capitalism well before most develop-

ing nations, which gave it a head start

over Africa. The world was a different

place then, e.g., outsourcing was just

starting. And Singapore had Lee Kuan

Yew. Singapore’s first prime minister,

Lee was arguably one of the greatest

leaders of the 20th century. He was

also, in the words of Glenn Hubbard,

former dean of the Columbia Busi-

ness School, “sui generis,” or unique.

sierra leone provides a compelling

case for each of the three theories:

Bad Africans; bad Europeans; or bad

luck. Take your pick. The democ-

racy installed by the British proved

fragile and was torn apart by ethnic

rivalries. Siaka Stevens became presi-

dent in 1971. Sierra Leoneans call his

time in office “the 17-year plague of

locusts.” He abolished democracy

and institutionalized graft on a scale

rarely seen even in Africa—kickbacks,

embezzlement, and most of all, steal-

ing diamonds. The country is lucky

to be rich in mineral resources, but

unlucky that those include diamonds,

which are absurdly easy to steal and

transport. A briefcase of high-qual-

ity diamonds is worth $125 million,

about the same as a tanker of crude

oil. Stevens became one of the richest

men on the continent. 

In 1991, forces under the command

of a former political prisoner, Foday

Sankoh, crossed the Liberian border,

starting the civil war. Unemployed

young men flocked to Sankoh for the

promise of a paycheck. The war was

an 11-year smash and grab. Even the

good guys looted and stole. Locals

called soldiers “so-bels,” soldiers by

day who posed as rebels at night to

commit rape and robbery. Nigerian

soldiers were there as part of the Eco-

nomic Community of West African

States Monitoring Group, or ECO-

MOG. Locals said the acronym stood

for “Every Car or Moving Object Gone.”

Atrocities were committed by all sides.

Rape and murder. Cannibalism. Muti-

lation. And after the war came Ebola.

Many of the effects of the war and

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