The Asian Aspiration: Why and How Africa Should Emulate Asia (2020), written by two Brenthurst Foundation employees (Greg Mills and Emily Van Der Merwe) and two former African leaders (Olusegun Obasanjo and Hailemariam Desalegn). The bulk of the book is 10 chapters presenting country case studies from Asia (including: Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, China, and Vietnam). The book then turns to the lessons these countries offer for Africa. The ideas are generic enough not to disagree with: create jobs, learn from others and innovate, critical role of leadership and administrative capacity, build human capital via education, improve agricultural productivity, provide basic infrastructure, enable FDI. It is somewhat unclear the target audience of this book, if it was African policy makers one would have thought that making this book Open Access would have been important. If it is to the development studies academic sphere (as other recent Hurst publications, the book is more of a survey and synthesis than a new contribution per se). It also seems that part of this book is previously published material. Some notes:
"Japan's historical example shows how a focus on education can carry a country through different stages of industrialisation and make it resilient." (p. 37)
"Throughout interviews with the politicians, planners and doers (an unusually inseparable bunch in Singapore's case) of the 1960s, a number of issues came up time and time again. These can be summarised as leadership, execution and compromise. Overall, Singapore's continuous transformation and development speak of the importance of matching deeds with words and of careful planning. Its success illustrates the necessity of rooting actions in the population's principal needs..." (p. 72-73)
12 Lessons from Singapore are summarized as: unity of purpose, make the difficult trade-offs, change the patter of the colonial economy, build institutions, integrate don't isolate, catalyse don't capture, manage labour relations, work with comparative advantages, don't be a cheap date (use aid well, but don't rely on it), do some things differently. (with details on pages 289-295)
