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Last year in Tanzania I interviewed leading economist Jeffrey Sachs about aid to Africa. He was quite dismissive of my suggestion that South Korea was a good example of how a country can come from behind and make it without succumbing to all the problems that have plagued African countries (a suggestion incidentally which I got from former World Bank official Robert Calderisi’s book ‘The Trouble With Africa’). The phrase Jeffrey used was “cliche”. You can see the interview here.

However, in this week’s Spiegel magazine, Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda sees things my way:

SPIEGEL: Do any countries serve as role models for you on the path to becoming a modern state?

Kagame: There are things I admire, for example, about South Korea or Singapore. I admire their history, their development and how intensively they have invested in their people and in technology. It was not so long ago that they were at the same level of development as we are. Today, they are far ahead of us.

Thank you Paul.

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