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THE ART OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Michael Mandeville
&
Peter Palms
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY FOR AFRICA

ENABLE AFRICANS TO MAKE AFRICA GREEN

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY AND ENTREPRENEURIAL CREED FOR AFRICA

"ENABLEMENT"
AN AFRICAN ENTREPRENEURIAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY FOR
JUST SOCIETIES

(Volunteer translators are sought to translate this economic development strategy as well as other economic development material into the native languages of African nations - Interested parties please email Africa@PeterPalms.com
Volunteer translators also sought for "Conversations With God" Book 1 and 2 and 3
By Neale Donald Walsch

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Date February 10, 2006

SEF-U-REP(TM) ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY AND ENTREPRENEURIAL CREED FOR AFRICA

AN AFRICAN ENTREPRENEURIAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY FOR JUST SOCIETIES

"ENABLEMENT"

By Peter Palms

Public economic development specialists at all levels of country economies are attempting to develop programs and plans for expanding employment and tax rolls through the stimulation of new small business start-up activity.

Unfortunately most attempt to accomplish this with flamboyant concepts such as attracting new branches of factories, or development of tax free zones, subsidies and other incentives for start-up or expanding businesses, public construction projects, new business incubators, and other means.

Unfortunately these methods are limited by the unavailability of any real representation of citizenry by those holding power, as well as the unavailability of tax revenues or the disinclination to allocate them to the welfare of citizens, if they were available. Despite occasional flashy successes and a few local success stories, (which turn out to be spin to justify government financed aid programs that largely spend their budgets on creating employment for government employees), the basic reality remains
unchanged for most of the citizens of most African countries. Economic activity seems perpetually unable to absorb large numbers of unemployed, under-employed, and welfare dependents. Most of the African continent lives below the poverty level.

America's past history, the innovative experiment which did by-pass these limitations to economic development, provided the means to develop as many jobs in a Region as desired, barring interference from policy-makers in the form of unwarranted jurisdiction. The essence of this strategy lies not in regulating, planning, or public works subsidies. The essence of this strategy is ENABLING PEOPLE by abolishing regulations.

"Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." -- Abraham Lincoln

THE ESSENCE OF ECONOMIC GROWTH IS TO ENABLE PEOPLE TO CREATE AND PRODUCE

To produce economic growth, enable people!. Creative, hard working people require ENABLEMENT to generate new businesses and industries, as well as the absence of unnecessary regulation. People will support a government , if the government lets them perform the task. Governments support no one. At best they redistribute income that has been created by individuals.

I have invented a new social and political process for individual and small group entrepreneurial pioneering in Africa. We need to get on with providing African people with new free and open ungoverned pathways for economic growth. This new social process should run through all major African institutions, private and public, to achieve the maximum long term effect.

Every African country needs to "create the space" by "opening up space". Every decisive step in the history of American development was the result of deliberate decisions to "open up the space" and to "enable" people to "pioneer". This deliberate incubation of the free enterprise of ordinary people has always worked to produce great results. Many other cultures and mentalities are well suitable to achieving enormous success with this formula which has worked so very well in America where it was developed by Irish Americans, Polish Americans, Russian Americans and African America, whose achievements are beyond question.

In America, first came the Homestead Act. Then came the open immigration policies. Then followed the Railway Land Grants. Then came the agricultural extension services. These were followed by many other acts of "opening up the resources": Tennessee Valley Authority, Bonneville Power Administration, Rural Electrification, Small Business Administration, Federal Housing Authority, and many many others.

That is the source of the American dream, ENABLEMENT, ENABLEMENT, ENABLEMENT. Here is the spark of America's Founding Genius, ENABLEMENT, ENABLEMENT, ENABLEMENT.

This is not nostalgic, not romantic, not greed. It is the simple principle of applying "opportunity" to "The Great Driving Hunger" of millions of people to transcend their inadequate past. In the context of the American experiment in democratic government, this was and is free enterprise, within a socially defined, non-discriminatory, equalitarian framework, at least theoretically.

The American post-depression generations have yet to politically and economically make their peace with this incredible legacy. Many dwell on the negatives of this past: the genocidal expansion policies, the racist exploitation, the imperial phase ( which America has not quite eclipsed), the environmental rapes, and so on.

Yes there were and are negatives. But to proceed into the future, Africa must discover and use the source of the strength of this American experiment: respect and ENABLEMENT of the individual, the "entrepreneurial" every person, who collectively constitute "the unseen hand" of "the wealth of the nations", whose collective drive to transcend the past is the irreplaceable motive force of history. It is the real source of strength of FREE people and the spiritual source of their greatness.

Many of this generation have also written that this growth "opportunity" is gone forever. They would consign themselves to eternal political misery in grubbing over a perennially inadequate economic pie which is constantly shrinking. They would steal their countries resources from its citizens to make themselves rich at the price of creating 99 poor for every one of them, believing in the principle of scarcity. Far too "fashionable" are arguments that resources are too limited, that environmental damage cannot handle rapid reconstruction, that only the super-educated can take advantage of the growth of technology, and that most citizens must look forward to a diminishing quality of life, and a longer life expectancy in increasingly servile jobs, occupied by an insensitive, greedy government official representing the rich and advantaged.

Humbug. These "reasoned arguments" are but the illusion of ignorance. They are the same arguments, the very same arguments which justified the status-bound tyrannies of the European aristocracies. Alignment with these arguments flies in the face of the entire truth of science and betrays the terrible struggle of African and American forebears to bequeath us a world more dignified for each and every individual.

Through technology, African resources are essentially unlimited. For verification of this elementary truth, ask practicing engineers (but skip the arm-chair academicians). For every environmental limitation, there are many alternative manufacturing solutions. And on the basis of the new engineering capabilities which digital, laser and bio-culturing technologies (to name only three) have thrust into our hands, we have the capacity to re-entrepreneurialize all goods and services which have ever been made. Has not the Internet, WWW, E-commerce and B2B global marketing convinced us of this?

In short, there are no arbitrary technical limits to our capacity for
economic growth. True we cannot grow in the same ways as in the past. We must find new ways where the limits of today can be transcended. Finding these ways is, in essence, the "job" of the entrepreneur, or in its highest expression, the "profession" of the entrepreneur ("creator").

The ability to create is directly related to whether our will is in
accordance with the Will of Our Creator, which we ultimately must
inevitably come to recognize as the source of, and identical to, our own will. It requires only the replacement of fear, which does not exist, with love, in order to accomplish this pivot of the mind, to achieve.

The assignment and challenge is to design a coherent, integrated policy, a marketplace, if you will, for removing the barriers, all the barriers, to new venture formation, the principle one being not lack of capital but lack of ENABLEMENT. "Regulations" remain the major social barrier to new business formation, upward mobility, and the creation of new opportunities and investment. "Regulation" leaves many with a less than just and fair share of the resources. Nothing else can be fixed until people are "enabled" to fix it for themselves. No government anywhere can fix it for them.

If God had wanted us to be governed, He would not have given us free-will. We can of course choose to have a government regulate us and procrastinate about taking charge of our lives, but since it was not God's intention that there should be a government without representation, we are doomed to fail at fixing anything as long as we try to maintain such a government.

The importance of "ENABLEMENT" to the future of any economy becomes apparent when we learn that it is difficult for an American or African entrepreneur to secure venture capital. Less than 30% of the population of America can make use of affluent, family based social connections, and there are no land grant frontiers in America, which can be conquered with pioneering sweat, such as can be made available to current-day entrepreneurs. The result in America is a social system which on the one-hand is generating thousands of new technology-oriented venture opportunities each year, most of which are lying on the shelf, and on the other hand is unable to generate enough high paying jobs, leaving 30% of the American population underemployed. Yet because American entrepreneurs enjoy significant freedom from regulation and are "enabled" to create. Per-capita productivity is high.

It is certain that all institutions and most venture capitalists and other speculative investors avoid, like the plague, the formative steps into "lawless start-up gulch", that can be found today when government is subject to undue influence. In addition to normal business risks , the absence of "ENABLEMENT", which requires an absence of regulation, makes the added risk unacceptable.

Entrepreneurs are not assured of action even when he/she has reached the point of clearly demonstrating the basis of economic success. The typical international investor does not discover the absence of "ENABLEMENT" until well after he has begun the many months of work required to investigate the economic viability. This leads to mutual frustration.

It can be read humorously, but its no joke. There are a lot of people walking around with serious emotional and health problems after having been the victim of this lack of "ENABLEMENT"

In short, the "seed" and "start-up" phases are so full of unknowns that it is very difficult to come to reliable investment judgments, both for the investor and the African or American entrepreneurs. The result is that there remains a lot of would-be speculative money in all societies which simply cannot flow into building of a new economy. And there are a large number of entrepreneurs with viable, job-creating enterprises and concepts, who are unable to obtain enough capital to stabilize their venture or bring their concepts into the market.

But this start-up arena is the area with the maximum potential returns, both individually and collectively. A speculative seed or start-up investor can invest and loose a million dollars in nine ideas which all fail, but the tenth may grow into a billion dollar giant in ten to twenty years, giving the investor a hundred to one return (or far greater) on all of its "lost money", while creating several thousand new jobs.

Here then is the economic basis of entrepreneurial development: "ENABLEMENT". Forget "planning" and "training" for jobs. Circumstances are too volatile to predict or understand the economic sea-changes which are under way. Forget branch plants. They provide the first jobs which are laid-off in a recession or after some policy-maker's decision to change a rule or law.

Unleash and nourish entrepreneurial formation of the economy by "enabling" Such a program, with many other features of interest to entrepreneurs, public officials, speculative investors, and major corporations, is the basis of Palms & Company's strategy and rationale. It consists of the idea of "opening up the space" to "enable" people to "pioneer" the post industrial Global Economy economy "OUT OF AFRICA"

If you think you have vision, power, and leadership capability, I challenge you to seriously examine this strategy for local adaptation. I claim it to be the most entrepreneurial approach to the problem of economic development ever created and I claim that its use will create far greater and more personally meaningful results than any other strategy. I claim that this strategy provides the basis of an economic/social revolution of major historical proportions for socially-conscious free enterprise IN AFRICA.

Email: Africa@PeterPalms.com

If you are a European or American manufacturer seeking off-shore manufacturing capability in Africa contact Dr Palms at 1 (425) 828 6774

If you are an African manufacturer seeking access to Global Export Markets click HERE for more information

NGO'S, AFRICAN GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS, OPIC, World Bank, IMF, World Learning, seeking more information about the African SefURep Economic Development Initiative are invited to write to Dr Palms at

Dr.Palms@PeterPalms.com

"In detachment lies the wisdom of uncertainty.
In the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from the known, which is the prison of past conditioning.
And in our willingness to step into the unknown, the field of all
possibilities, we surrender ourselves to the creative mind that
orchestrates the dance of the universe"

Deepak Chopra

"Good fortune is not fortune itself, but its achievement".

F. M. Dostoevskii

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