Taking Africa into the twenty-first century

The first lesson is that Africa can overcome the inertia of under-development and step out of the poverty trap just as the oldest industrialized nations emerged from the pre-'industrial age, feudalism and widespread poverty; in the same way as Japan, Germany, Italy and France rose from the ruins of World War II, or South Korea from the ruins of the Korean War; and, more recently, in the same way as China and countries of South-East Asia launched themselves on the course of rapid economic transformation and growth. Africa, too, can achieve food security and sufficiency as India has done in less than three decades.