What a ‘good’ African dictator would do

With many countries up to their necks in debt, and hammered by climate change, there are even reversals in poverty reduction.

In these times, if I were a benevolent dictator and not a thief, and had only $5 billion a year – a far cry from Tanzania’s 18.4 billion budget for the 2023/24 financial year – what would I do with it to make a difference?

I would not build a new airport, an expressway, and other things that look impressive on Instagram.

After jailing all the corrupt and incompetent, I would do a couple of extremely boring things. To name a few; I would first be inspired by a health project in Kenya’s Busia, which provided deworming treatment to hundreds of children and used the data to estimate impacts on economic outcomes up to 20 years later. The children who received two to three additional years of childhood deworming experienced a 14 per cent gain in consumption expenditures and a 13 per cent increase in hourly earnings.

Next, I would ban walking barefoot, as the Rwandans did some years ago. I wouldn’t do this for comfort and such nonsense. It would be strictly business. Not wearing shoes exposes the feet to all sorts of parasites, and fellows get invaded by jiggers and things like hookworms.

There is this chap, Dr. Cedric Spak, an infectious disease specialist at Baylor University Medical Centre in Dallas. Looking at mid-20th century studies in the US, he figured that illnesses that come from bare feet being attacked by parasites leading to iron deficiency and anaemia, and causing stunting, meant children don’t develop properly, “and the most important thing that doesn’t develop is the brain. With their development stunted, they end up having an IQ of 60 to 80. Someone who’s able to hold a reasonable job in the economy has an IQ of 100 to 120”.

I would give fellows like Bata a contract to supply those who can’t afford shoes. If they mess up, the CEO and his executive would be publicly flogged in Uhuru Park (I don’t mean that it would be done in private).

Next, I would send out a fiat, based on the many findings by the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation’s (FAO) discovery going back many years that giving women farmers the same access as men to productive resources such as land and fertilizers, agricultural output in developing countries could increase by as much as 2.5 to 4 per cent. Food issues would be sorted.

Artificial intelligence has turbo-charged scientific advancement, and now we finally have several vaccinations against that African nightmare, malaria.

My next big thing would be to give all children malaria vaccination, and I would deploy the army to help with that. Recent work has shown that if Ghana had 100 per cent malaria vaccination, it would increase its gross domestic product (GDP) over 30 years by $6.93 billion. A report that looked at it said GDP per capita would increase in the first year due to immediate reductions in time lost from work by adults caring for children with malaria.

Then, I would have mass vision testing, and provide all citizens who have eyesight problems with free spectacles. Seven years ago I read this report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) which I kept in a prized archive.

We quote at some length: “The world economy falls short of $227 billion every year from lost productivity among adults who need glasses, according to a joint report from the World Economic Forum, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and EYElliance.

“Providing affordable access to reading glasses alone would boost productivity by up to 34 per cent, and would also help bring down levels of illiteracy, which costs the global economy $1.19 trillion each year”. The World Health Organisation (WHO), have severe vision impairment, with 750,00 Kenyans having severe vision impairment. A lot of reporting says most of them can’t afford treatment or prescription glasses.

It has been said that correcting the vision of school children with prescription would lead not only to better test scores but would “have a bigger impact on academic performance than any other health intervention”!

And, to cap it, I would fund school meals for all children in need. I would not be motivated by mushy humanitarianism but by dollars and sense. According to UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring report that came out last year, school feeding has a high return on investment with every $1 invested returning $20 through human capital to the local economy.

I would have stellar results, and possibly a ka-small budget surplus! Then I would organise an election.