10 lessons Nigeria should learn from the success of the Asian tigers

All QuestionsCategory: Secondary School10 lessons Nigeria should learn from the success of the Asian tigers
Jonathan asked 3 years ago

 

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2 Answers
Loveth answered 3 years ago

1. Nigeria’s export policy should focus on areas of comparative advantage or preference e.g. agriculture. Nigeria should increase its production and export of products like cocoa and groundnut to increase her foreign exchange earnings rather than depend solely on crude oil earnings.
2. The Nigerian educational system should be stabilized through policies that will end incessant school closures. It should also be reformed to focus on skill acquisition rather than mere certification.
 3. A financial and banking system that favours savings and encourages business growth should be pursued. Government and private savings should be encouraged to improve future investment which is necessary for development.
4. Proper and effective management of resources should be embraced. Looting of the nation’s resources must be discouraged and corruption addressed with zeal. No sacred cows should be allowed.
5. A great number of domestic manufacturing industries making use of locally sourced materials should be set up. This would reduce the rate of dependence on imported products. Imports should be generally discouraged to promote patronage of locally-made goods and rapid development of local manufacturing companies. This will improve employment and arrest balance of payment problems.
 6. Proper management of the macro-economic environment especially the management of variables like public debts, deficit and exchange rate.
7. Education and Technology: On the overall, one of the major factors as observed in the development stages of the Tigers, was the emergence of the educated class that had a mastery over technology. According to Krugman (1994), the success of the Asian Tigers emphasizes the role of technology in their high growth rates and focuses on the fast technological catch-up in these economies. In this view, these economies have succeeded because they learned or were  educated about the use of technology faster and more efficiently than other regions did. Education in particular is cited as playing a major role in the mastery of technology.
8. Passion and Will-Power: It is argued that East Asian populations especially from the Tigers’ countries have demonstrated rapid learning capabilities and that perhaps best explains why the education of a work force would have easily translated to skilled-labour force for these economies. But learning only comes when there is a will to know. Many of these East Asian countries have had the will-power, the passion, zeal, to advance. In a nutshell, they have been highly inquisitive people. Besides education, small and medium scale entrepreneurs made their own impact through little craftsmanship that advanced to larger entrepreneurial industries. These Asian economies became interested in doing everything that the west did. They were interested in making every manufactured goods made in the west. That is the power of inquisition. The will to develop was there, and it was pragmatically pursued. Nigeria, is a country where the zeal to acquire knowledge is on the decline. A large number of young minds are not interested in acquiring skills on industrial production, and this is evident with the high rate of illiteracy and traditional belief systems. But also a growing trend of zealousness to become artists in diverse forms in the country erodes any passion for scientific revolution. In addition, rewards for performing artists have surged higher than rewards for scientific performance in Nigeria, causing many young minds to rather pursue a dream or career in performing arts than in scientific research. 
9. Factor Accumulation: Factor accumulation as defined by the Economic Glossary is an increase in the quantity of basic factors used to produce goods and services in the economy. An example is labour, or capital, and entrepreneurship. Increases in these “factors of production” allow an economy to increase the production of goods and services and thus in the long-run expansion of the economy’s ability to produce output that is, economic growth. Economic growth however, is made possible not only by expanding the quantity of the economy’s resources, but also by enhancing their quality as we already stated above when we discussed ‘human capital development’ under education and technology. The levels of physical and human capital amongst the four Tiger countries far exceeded other countries at similar levels of development at the end of the 1960s (Harvey, 2002). This afterwards led to a rapid growth in per capital income levels (Chang, 2004). Nigeria is a country of vast land, and has capital too. The country has a sizeable labour force, though not of the quality to be highly productive yet. But quality education and students inquisition as explained above can provide a qualitative labour force. Nigeria also has a middle class of entrepreneurs although with slow expansion due to challenges such as power supply problems, security risk, and inadequate innovative ideas to enhance quality productions. Nigeria must therefore exploit the advantage of her vast lands and improve quality labour while increasing capital investment, but at the same time reducing the challenges for entrepreneurial growth. This will lead to increased productivity in the country in diverse areas, and the country will be able to yield more capital accumulation and increased economic growth.
10. Export and Import Policies: Unknown to many, international trade has been a crucial determinant factor for growth and development for most states within the global system. A crunch of a nation’s overall revenue comes from its export earnings. And thus, the higher your exports, the more expansive your revenue base will be. And this is why countries that sell more expensive products, especially automobiles, electronics, and other technological products make huge revenues from international trade more than those that simply supply cheap raw materials. According to Garran (1998), export policies have been the de facto reason for the rise of these four Asian tiger economies. The approach taken has been different among the four nations. Hong Kong, and Singapore were neoliberal in policies and encouraged free trade, while South Korea and Taiwan adopted policies that had more control on their own export industries. But interestingly, both South Korea and Taiwan introduced export incentives for the traded-goods 16in the export sector to attract buyers in the global market. The governments of Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan also worked to promote specific exporting industries, especially in those sectors most needed to derive massive revenues from international trade. This was viewed as an ‘export-push strategy’. All these policies helped these four nations to achieve trade surplus, and a growth averaging 7.5% each year for three decades and as such they achieved developed country status (Kim, 2005). When a country experiences trade surplus because of its export polices, it experiences an accruement of capital that increases national wealth. Interestingly, all of the tigers in one way or another became some of the leading exporters to the U.S. From the above, it is obvious that the government of these Tigers were so involved in their development. Why can’t the Nigerian government promote export trade for even small industries by giving them incentives? Why can’t the Nigerian government also place incentives on Nigerian exports to increase global attraction? These are avenues that can increase foreign earnings in global trade. The Nigerian government needs to diversify her economy and transcend from a mono-economic system that is oil based. Hence, the country needs a new lease where production of agricultural products and other non-oil products must expand to increase exports on the global market and create widening trade surpluses so as to experience the desired economic transformation.
Source: https://www.slideshare.net/AdesanmiBamidele1/economic-lessons-from-asian-tigers-japan
              https://portal.iuokada.edu.ng/publications/DEVELOPMENTOFTHEASIANTIGERSANDLESSONSFORNIGERIAPrinted(1).-DDt1r3c8UGSiKFIM.pdf

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User AvatarStopLearn Team Staff answered 3 months ago

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