guest column:Mills Soko THE remarkable economic transformation of Asia in recent decades has attracted global attention. It has ignited scholarly and policy debates about the region’s development models and strategies. African policymakers have not been immune to the worldwide fascination with the “Asian miracle”. African leaders and officials have these past few years undertaken a constant stream of study visits to countries such as China, Singapore, South Korea and Vietnam. What lessons can African countries glean from Asia’s successes and failures? And how can they emulate those successes and avoid the mistakes made by their Asian peers? These are the two key questions the book The Asian Aspiration – Why and How Africa Should Emulate Asia seeks to answer. Co-authored by Greg Mills, Olusegun Obasanjo, Hailemariam Desalegn and Emily van der Merwe, the book is divided into two parts. The first part showcases the “growth stories” of 10 East Asian and South-East Asian countries. They are Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, China and Vietnam. It analyses the developmental paths of these countries, pointing out what they did well to power their rise as well as their policy missteps. The second section discusses five lessons for success from Asia and illuminates these with comparative examples from both Asia and Africa. The book notes the differences between Asia and Africa, and the importance of differentiation. But it concludes by asking what Lee Kuan Yew might have done had he found himself at the helm of Africa. Lee was the formidable statesman who presided over the change in Singapore’s fortunes from 1959 to 1990. Not a miracle, but deliberate steps The book identifies some parallels between Africa and East Asia. These include a colonial heritage, a complex make-up of ethnic groups as well as human and institutional under-development. The book also draws attention to differences between the two. These are rooted in how the political economy of Africa evolved after independence. This was typified by clientelism, the management of elite access and preferences in exchange for support, leading to “rent-seeking” — the creation of wealth not by investment, but by the connections of organised groups. In contrast, the East Asian development tale has been defined by the unity of purpose among leaders in several countries. It has also been characterised by the deliberate use of institutional and constitutional means to broaden opportunities beyond a tiny elite. This does not suggest that these countries were insulated from or spared the ills of poor governance. The experiences of Indonesia and the Philippines, for example, demonstrate the baleful influence of corruption, cronyism, fragile institutions and populism on governance. The authors emphasise the importance of differentiating between — and within — the East Asian countries, based on factors such as language, religion, economic wealth, governance systems and urban-rural divides. They argue, using 10 case studies, that t