Our governments invest political and financial capital in infrastructure. Physical infrastructure is important but, as a development strategy, the most important investment, the highest priority, is human development: quality of life - health, education and skills, potable water,
life expectancy (how long a country’s citizens live on average). The development trajectory should be: 1. Human Development (mainly social infrastructure); 2. Economic Growth (which includes GDP growth and can be helped by physical infrastructure); 3. Structural Transformation
(a shift away from single commodity or natural resource dependency to a diversified economy based on complex, value-added production and services). Failure to proceed in this order is why real development has eluded Nigeria and many other African countries.
If Nigeria had invested in the past several years in health, education reform and skills development for our youth, coupled with access to finance for new businesses through venture capital, what was approved for spending on infrastructure, we would have taken the first steps
toward taking millions out of poverty and into the middle class. All this “infrastructure” we build but people are too poor and unemployed to pay for them without government subsidies, and then the subsidies are removed belatedly and the poor are even more unable to pay, gets
the order of steps wrong....#WhyWeArePoor
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
