Friends in developed, developing, and underdeveloped nations,
As the world gets stuck in this COVID19 pandemic, it is possible like i stressed earlier about the possibility of a Global Economic recession, any nation that cares about prospering beyond just post-pandemic survival, must do a number of things, but i have thought about the following and i want to share with you;
a). Internal efforts to boost local investment and enterprise development. This is because entrepreneurship and investment will still remain a key intervention to national growth and recovery.
b). Focus of fairly equitable distribution of income and national resources, for balanced regional growth and development. This will minimise internal conflicts that usually arise out of income inequality and resource distribution. Talk about harmony among the people, and what this says about the rate of development.
c). Strategic actions/interventions to reduce poverty levels or even allergic poverty among the majority of the population. I am saying this well opining that “poverty is largely the state of the mind, and can be alleviated by massive attitude and behavioral chance among the people”. And am sure most people agree with me on this.
d). Move to empower the population to afford an improved standard and cost of living by the citizens. Whether the pandemic takes longer than expected, the social amenities already in place, those in process of development, and those in plan, must still be taken into consideration by the people. Life music still get interesting and all these cost money. Once the people are empowered, it is a tripartite benefits stream. The people live happy lives, the providers earn money, and the state earns tax revenue.
e). Purpose to restore the general welfare of the citizens by ensuring more sustainable interventions to build and strengthen the education, health, and social sector systems, for better life and society.
f). State regulatory efforts like law and order, security, the judiciary, legislature, tax administration, among others, must become more Citizen Responsive and devoid of the usual politicking, and survival schemes by opportunists. So these can serve their intended legislative purposes.
g). Sanity must be restored and better practices must be employed by other non-state development actors including civil society, the private sector, religious institutions, among others.
h). We must also rethink, replan, and resource for the country’s human resources through more thoughts training, reshuffling our training related policies, rethinking employment, and ultimately the remuneration of workers. We must rethink the nature of our National Social Security Schemes to have providing for such emergencies as this COVID 19 pandemic, among others.
I am saying these, i know that nation could have done a few of them and would not be so hit by the pandemic, but nonetheless, for my country and a few other developing African countries, these can save us after this pandemic.
I will share a few more thoughts in one of my books, on how nations can rebuild after this global threat to development because COVID19 is already threatening the global economy and the national economies have not been spared either.
Thank you for reading these fresh ideas straight from Kigarama.
The writer is a public opinion enthusiast, Business Consultant, Philanthropist, public speaker and C.EO. of Brookings Institute. akyokwijuka@gmail.com
