Globalization and Issues for Achieving the SDGs in Africa Discussed at TICAD7 Partner Event Featuring Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz

On Aug. 27, 2019, TICAD7 Partner Event: Globalization and Achieving the SDGs in Africa, Discussion with Professor Joseph Stiglitz, a seminar jointly organized by Meiji University, the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD) based at Columbia University, and JICA Research Institute (JICA-RI), was held at Meiji University.

In the keynote, Stiglitz discussed the need of new ways of thinking for development and economic growth in Africa from various angles. For instance, as “labor-replacing” technological innovations like AI, cryptocurrency and SNS have progressed, export-led manufacturing models that brought economic growth in East Asia in the past would not work in the same way in Africa today. Moreover, he said that labor-augmenting innovation and learning (learning to enhance the capacities of producers) are required to lessen the gap between developed nations and developing nations, and are the sources of economic development in Africa. Furthermore, as in the Stockholm Statement of 2016, he said that GDP growth itself is not the objective in the first place and success should not be measured exclusively by economic benchmarks like GDP. He emphasized rather that we need to focus on the “quality of growth” contributing to human capital, social capital and knowledge capital.

In the panel discussion that followed, Hafez Ghanem, vice president of the World Bank for Africa, and Professor Akbar Noman at Columbia University were welcomed as panelists. Go Shimada, associate professor of the School of Information and Communication, Meiji University, who is also a visiting scholar at JICA-RI, served as the moderator.

Noman stressed the need for industrial policies in a broad sense, covering environmental and employment-related issues, to ensure high quality growth. For instance, he mentioned that the development of climate-change-mitigating technologies has the potential to cause a technological leapfrog in Africa. Based on the lessons from leading cases around the world, he expressed his hopes in learning, industrial, and technology (LIT) policies bringing about a kind of structural transformation needed for generating sustainable growth.

Professor Takehiko Daikoku, dean of the School of Information and Communication, Meiji University gave closing remarks to wrap up this seminar that has provided an invaluable opportunity to have discussions with leading experts like Stiglitz here in Japan.