This week’s cover story from The African Executive magazine offers a perceptive chunk of philosophising on the right to development.
The unlikely source is Gunter Nooke, Angela Merkel’s G8 representative for Africa. More unlikely still is his willingness to ask the rather undiplomatic question: “do the African countries actually have the desire or the capacity to copy western countries or the Asian tigers?”
He arrives at that point via an excellent analysis of the tensions between “land grabbing” foreign investment and the rights of small farmers. Retreating into diplomatic mode, Nooke concedes: “we can offer no answer.”
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this post was first published by OneWorld UK