As the club of G7/G8 recently wound up with a renewed commitment to old strategies to global development, so also is the current G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia winding down the same old path. The international economic/financial institutions (e.g., the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the continental development banks) have for decades not fundamentally changed their operational structures and functional modes of doing business for international global development. To be precise, the gross lack of innovation or the fear of it in the International economic/financial institutions have meant no real gains in the drive for international global development. Despite all proclamations of the G7, G8, and G20, the world has remained largely poor. The only country that has made significant development strides in the last two decades or so is China. But why is China the only true exception?
 
Despite decades of global development investment, the world is still bustling with significant poverty and persistent economic/financial recession. Why is the investment by wealthy nations into global development failing to transform our world into a paradise of riches? One of the main reasons for the persistent failure in tackling global development challenges is that annual development funds, as huge as they may sound, are spread out rather too thinly across to poor and underdeveloped countries in the world. It is an illusion of naivety on the side of the clubs of wealthy nations to think that the poor and underdeveloped countries in the world can be lifted from poverty at the same time. The persistence of poverty in the world today or even the back-slipping of once promising countries into poverty are solid indications that the current strategy to global development is saturated or has long passed its peak efficiency. Pursuing global development using the same obsolete structures and tools to foster global development is pushing the world further into poverty.

Innovative new development strategies

To eradicate poverty and to get all countries into the single prestigious category of developed nations, the world needs Concentrated Development Investment (CDI). It is a unanimous consensus in the world today that China is a true example of an economic/financial miracle. China decisively created the enabling environment for the institutionalization of CDI at a rate never before seen in the world, resulting in the lifting of a significant proportion of its 1.4 billion strong population out of poverty within just a decade or so. If the club of wealthy nations truly means business for global development, then it should learn from China’s development miracle.

In the past decade or so, China attracted over 60 percent of global economic/financial investment. This boosted its production capacity and export volume by even greater percentages, reaping significant wealth from across the globe. The CDI in China brought about rapid infrastructural development, be it in electricity/power, roads, building/housing, health, education or the military. To the extent, China, once a looked-down-upon nation, is now counted among the club of wealthy nations and significant global-player nations. The current anti-graft drive along with investment diversification is even certain to ensure China a much stronger place on the global stage. So what can be done differently by the club of wealthy nations to ensure a true global development?
 
The only feasible roadmap is CDI. By CDI, it means that over 70 percent of all committed funds to global development by the club of wealthy nation is directed to only one country at any given period of time, say one year. The clubs of wealthy nations and other global economic/financial institutions can make a priority list of developing countries based on well-defined criteria for such CDI. For instance, a carefully-recruited international workforce with the requisite knowhow can be set up to guide infrastructural development of any one country qualifying for such global development investment in any given period of time. This could include electricity/power infrastructure, roads infrastructure, building/housing infrastructure, health infrastructure, education infrastructure, etc. Building basic infrastructure of any one country potentially lays the foundation for development by attracting multi-billion international investments. By so doing, the development miracle witnessed in China could be repeated in any given developing country one at a time. This is the truly viable, speedy and efficient path to global development that will lift over 90 percent of the world’s nation states and population out of poverty.

By Alpha P. Conteh