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Rwanda Aspires to Become the ‘Singapore of Africa’

Mary Kay Magistad — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:50:11 +0000

If you’re a small, landlocked country with few natural resources, and a population that’s mostly poor, rural and crowded, you have to get creative about how to grow. Rwanda’s answer is to leapfrog – to become a regional services center and IT hub, something like the Singapore of Africa.

This is not just an economic quest, it’s an existential one. Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Africa, and about 80 percent of Rwandans live in rural areas and rely on subsistence farming for their survival. Competition for land was one of the factors that drove the genocide in 1994, killing some 800,000 people – about one in ten Rwandans.

Now, about one in ten Rwandans is online, and the numbers are growing fast – just one step in the government’s ambitious plan to turn a place where only 14 percent of the population has access to electricity and 57 percent of Rwandans live below the poverty line, into an African hi-tech and services leader.

“If you want to reach the moon, you aim for the sun,” grins Patrick Nyrishema, who heads the Rwanda Development Board’s department of Information and Communications Technology – or ICT.

“Right now, we have got several areas we consider high priority,” he says. “The first is skills development. The development of Rwanda, the strategy is based on building human capacity. And so, ICT skills, both at the level of professional ICT, as well as IT literacy, for people to be able to take advantage of the technology is very key.”

And while the population is getting educated so it can keep up with Rwanda’s hi-tech aspirations, the government has laid 1,500 miles of fiber optic cable, gotten computers into rural schools through a “one laptop per child” program, and set up an online service so farmers can check crop prices on their cell phones.

Getting Used to Using Technology

Eventually, the government would like more of these farmers to consolidate land, form cooperatives, or move to cities and get trained up for services jobs – taking pressure off the land while learning skills that could earn a higher income. For now, just getting used to using technology – even a cell phone that sends produce prices by text message – is already progress.

Edward Yin, a native of the northeastern Chinese province of Harbin, opened Rwanda’s first cell phone assembly plant in 2007. He aimed to make phones cheap enough that Rwandan villagers could afford them. But since the government has eliminated sales tax on mobile phones and computers, to encourage sales, Yin has changed his strategy, and now imports already assembled phones from China.

“With these kinds of electronics, almost every day, the price goes down,” Yin says. “So if we need to wait to import parts, and assemble them here, we lose money. Better to import directly from China.”

Yin thinks Rwanda has a good chance of succeeding in its vision to become a regional services center. And he says, there’s one thing Rwanda does better than anyone else in the region – good governance. I say the government also has a reputation for being tough on corruption.

“It’s not corrupt. That’s the truth,” Yin says.

“And is that good for business?,” I ask.

He pauses. Smiles. “Difficult to say. Sometimes, maybe corruption can help business, to be frank.”

When a Chinese company got the bid to build a big conference center in Kigali, the Rwandan government put a German manager at the helm, to ensure quality control. Yin says he’s heard some of the Chinese on the project grumble.

“They say not it’s not easy,” he says. “I think it’s too strict. What they are thinking is different. I think it’s the culture.”

But Yin’s friend, Li Jianbo, likes doing business in Rwanda. Li is the general manager of China Road and Bridge Corporation – one of China’s biggest state-owned enterprises – which is building several of Rwanda’s roads.

“When there’s no corruption, businessmen can feel comfortable,” he says. “You know, corruption is a problem for both sides, so no one likes that. Here, it is comfortable for the investor and for the businessman. And the government people are also easy to work. So the investors like to come here.”

Bullish on Rwanda

At a regular Friday happy hour, Chinese managers gather at Yin’s restaurant – which he runs in addition to his cell phone import business. They sit around a huge round table in a red room, knocking back beers, eating Chinese food, and swapping stories about their work weeks. They’re mostly bullish on Rwanda. But they’re part of a fairly small group – -there are only about 1,000 Chinese in Rwanda, a fraction of those in neighboring African countries. Yin says, more Chinese investors might come here, if Rwanda made investing here more attractive.

“Right now Rwanda is very strict,” he says. “Maybe they need more open. If a foreigner came here, like a businessman, what they need is profit. If you cannot get profit, nobody wants to come.”

For instance, Yin says, there’s the 30 percent import tax, and 18 percent VAT. In some African countries, Chinese barely pay windfall profits tax on the minerals they extract.

But Rwanda is carving out a different role for itself – a different kind of relationship with Chinese, and other foreign, investors. So it is deliberately picking and choosing what works best for it, as President Paul Kagame stressed at a recent news conference.

“If you are inviting investment to come to Rwanda, you want investment that will benefit the investor, but will also benefit Rwanda, where the investment is made, “ Kagame said. “How does it benefit Rwandans? It’s the capital that comes in. It’s the technology. It’s employment.”

Clear Vision

Kagame has a clear vision of what he’d like Rwanda to become – a sort of Singapore of East Africa – small, yes, but prosperous, modern and efficient.

Kagame has a little of former Singaporean leader Lee Kwan Yew in him. Like Lee, he’s fiercely intelligent, strong-willed, and not averse to using a little velvet-gloved authoritarianism to get things done, or to silence criticism. Unlike Lee, he’s a former guerilla leader who came to power in the midst of a genocide, and, however imperfectly, has pulled his country back together.

“We need to just get up and face up to these challenges and dignify ourselves by doing it,” he said. For me, it’s a challenging situation, but it’s very exciting. I enjoy these battles very much.”

The battle now is to ensure a better future for Rwanda, with enough economic opportunity that have-nots don’t get tempted to stir old ethnic animosities for their personal gain. So far, it seems to be working.

Corporate Spelling Experiments and Fear of a Chinese-Speaking Planet

Patrick Cox — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 20:39:41 +0000

For our once-a-month-ish gab fest, Carol and I just couldn’t pass this one up.

Sometime, corporations knock it out of the park with their inventions, or re-inventions, of words. Who can argue with Coca-Cola? And it’s not like they’re alone. Shakespeare did it (0r at least he popularized recently invented words). Kanye West does it. Soldiers do it. Prison inmates do it. Schoolkids do it.

But what about that sub-group of word reinvention, the spelling change? This happens most commonly when a word migrates from one language to another (Spanish for soccer/footbal: fútbol; Chinese for sandwich: 三明治 or sānmíngzhì). It can be an act of rebellion against the colonial master (American English spellings). It can be a way of transcribing an accent that may later be co-opted by the speakers of that accent (Lil thang, wassup, etc).

The corporate version of a respelled word is usually überclunky, probably because there is no reason for it to exist other than to satisfy the corporation’s desire to sell a product. The language, and the speakers who sustain the language, have not demanded it. Instead, it has been dreamed up in some boardroom or office. The result: terms like riDQulous and City Sentral .

Fear of a Chinese-Speaking Planet

L’arrivo di Wang (The Arrival of Wang) is an Italian thriller recently shown at the Venice Film Festival. In this scene, a police officer questions a blindfolded Chinese interpreter, who is suspected of colluding with a Chinese-speaking alien. The presumption that the alien has chosen to communicate in Chinese because it — or its masters — have concluded that Chinese is the planet’s most prominent language. The film’s characters can’t decide whether the alien is benign. Has it come to forge some kind of partnership or to colonize the Italians with its language, culture and values?

The arrival of The Arrival of Wang comes at a time when Americans and Europeans are debating whether Westerners will really learn Chinese and even if they do, whether it’s worth it.

Also discussed in this week’s pod:

The expanding reach of English means more varied accents. Here is the source of the accent test that I sprang on Carol. Here are the 100 words that linguist David Crystal has chosen to tell the story of English. And here is an update on previous pod discussion about Arizona’s harsh line on English language teachers who have foreign accents. (Under Federal pressure, Arizona has agreed to stop yanking such teachers out of the classroom and to retraining classes).

For Singapore’s Chinese, a challenge: The country’s former non-nonense leader Lee Kuan Yew says the city-state became an economic power-house because the government made eveyone speak English. While Lee says this should continue, he is also urging Singapore’s Chinese (who make up about 70% of the population) to speak Mandarin at home.

In Japan, English-speaking chatbots guarantee embarrassment-free conversations. Yup, if you don’t care for the constant humiliation of learning a language by trial and (mostly) error, a conversation with a chatbot is for you. And because a chatbot is not human, it will correct your errors without making you feel foolish– but also perhaps without your remembering them quite so well.

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Global Political Cartoons: March 12 – 18, 2011

Carol Hills — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 11:00:41 +0000

The Land of the Rising Sun has become for some The Land of Rising Radiation Levels. The aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami has cartoonists morphing the red disc in Japan’s flag into everything from a radiation hazard symbol to a skull.

Global Political Cartoons: March 5 – 11, 2011

Carol Hills — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 12:00:27 +0000

The massive earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan spawn multiple images of a famous Japanese woodblock print. The tangled role of oil in the world’s response to Libya, and the space shuttle Discovery retires into the arms of another beached phenom.

Global Political Cartoons: February 26 – March 4, 2011

Carol Hills — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 10:00:07 +0000

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has always had a cartoon quality about him but as he defies all calls to step down, his image is morphing from that of a comical and clueless Charlie Sheen to a savage dictator ready to aid and abet a blood-letting against his own people.

New York Times apologizes to Singapore

The World — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 19:37:43 +0000

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The New York Times has apologized and agreed to pay monetary damages to Singapore’s prime minister and his two predecessors for recent commentary that hinted at nepotism. Anchor Marco Werman finds out more.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. The New York Times Company has apologized and paid damages to Singapore’s leaders. This, after Singapore complained about a recent article about political dynasties in the International Herald Tribune, which is part of the Times company. The article pointed out that Singapore’s current Prime Minister is the son of founding father Lee Kwan Yew. The elder Lee also serves as his son’s “minister mentor”. In its apology the Times said it didn’t intend to suggest that Prime Minister Lee had not achieved his position through merit. Attorney Stuart Karle was involved in similar cases when he was a general counsel for the Wall Street Journal. He says it’s not unusual for Singaporean leaders to take legal action over news articles.

STUART KARLE: It is historically quite common. Over the years when he was Prime Minister, Prime Minister Lee, the father, brought a number of lawsuits against various western media.

WERMAN: So how tightly does Singapore control the message about their country? Is this national branding or a form of censorship, do you think?

KARLE: A bit of both. The topics they bring the lawsuits, historically brought the lawsuits on, are pretty specific. There are just certain topics that from the Singapore point of view, if one is going to write on, one has to include certain statements that Singapore believes are critical.

WERMAN: So in this case specifically, what did Singapore not like, specifically the executives?

KARLE: What they challenged, my understanding is, is any inference that the current Prime Minister, who is in fact the son of the original Prime Minister of Singapore, achieved his position as a result of nepotism. And the issue one has, if anyone else reads this article is that no one sees that meaning in what the International Herald Tribune published. Anyone coming to this article and reading it wouldn’t look at it and say “ah, they’re saying this is nepotism.” One would just read it as a statement of fact that these two are related. But for the Singapore eye, what they look for is an inference that you’re trying to accuse the current Prime Minister of arriving at his position solely because of the relationship, not because of his own talent.

WERMAN: Right. Now while this may be common, to bring lawsuits against publications in Singapore, it’s not that common, is it, for a big news company like the New York Times to apologize and pay a fairly large sum of money to foreign heads of state, is it?

KARLE: It’s extremely uncommon for the Times and for every other large publication certainly outside of England and even in England with politicians. But it is not uncommon in Singapore for western publications to be put in precisely this position.

WERMAN: If the New York Times had not agreed to this financial settlement, and not promised to not make the same allegations in the future, what do you think would have happened?

KARLE: I know exactly what; I can predict what would have happened. If, it’s the IHT also, the – -

WERMAN: The International Herald Tribune.

KARLE: Yeah, one of the reasons that’s important is because this comes out of an earlier lawsuit involving the IHT. And so it, to some extent, would be analyzed a little differently because of an agreement that came out of that lawsuit. But what happens is, to my knowledge, Minister Mentor Lee and his son Prime Minister Lee and other members of the Singapore government had never lost a live election brought in the same – - . And so the probability of the IHT winning a defense of a lawsuit based on this article was probably zero. The problem one has is that to publish and distribute in Singapore, one has to – - the daily newspaper has to post essentially a license fee or bond, which is I think a couple hundred thousand dollars. And so even if they fought it, even if they thought the decision was something they shouldn’t respect, as a practical matter they were going to lose that money as a result of a judgment.

WERMAN: Lawyer Stuart Karle, former general counsel for the Wall Street Journal, thanks very much for your time.

KARLE: Thank you.

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Tech Podcast: Germans prepare for RoboCup 2010

The World — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:29:21 +0000

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Sure, there are lots of hard-hitting tech stories we could lead with in this week’s Technology Podcast. But when you have a listener-generated item on kid-sized humanoid robots playing soccer, I think it’s pretty clear how you’re going to kick-off (oooh, sorry) the show. Listener Tam Eastley at the Free University of Berlin told her friend Stefan Otte to email me about FUmanoids, a team at the university that is working on robotic soccer players. Currently ranked second in the world to the Darmstadt Dribblers, FUmanoids are looking ahead to RoboCup 2010 in Singapore. We get Stefan on Skype to chat about how these pint-sized players work in teams to try to score goals, etc. My favorite quote, “People mostly kind-of like to watch the robots fall down.” And based on the video below, there’s plenty of that. However, to give credit where credit is due, think about how far robotics have come in the last five years alone, let alone the last 25 years. I think what the robots are doing in the video is pretty amazing. The goal of RoboCup, by the way, is to field a robotic team that can beat human players by the year 2050.

Here are some other links from the show that may be of interest:

Remember, you can check out our travel podcast, which this week features a cool segment on Google Maps and Russian Railways joint project to create a virtual Trans-Siberian Railway. As I also mentioned, my colleague Rhitu Chatterjee has a podcast segment, and is running a World Science Forum, on the psychology of suicide bombers.

Don’t forget — you can follow WTP on Facebook, and Twitter. Subscribe to the podcast via RSS or iTunes!

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Singapore’s science dreams

The World — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:02:36 +0000

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Singapore is laying the foundation for a future economy based on science. It’s sending its own citizens abroad for a top education, and enticing some the world’s best minds in science to its shores. Reporter Ari Daniel Shapiro has more.

KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark and this is The World. Singapore has long been a fierce economic competitor. The tiny island nation in Southeast Asia has grown wealthy as a center of manufacturing and finance. Now it’s laying the foundation for a future economy based on science. Singapore is harvesting young talent from other Asian countries and it’s buying first-class education from American and European universities. This might be a good strategy for Singapore, but for the young scientists forming this new workforce, the situation is a bit more complicated. Ari Daniel Shapiro traveled to Singapore and brings us this story.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Lee Yun Hom Ching [ph] grew up in Eastern China. She loved science as a girl and she decided to major in biology in college. She did well. Three months into her freshman year a foreign delegation showed up.

LEE YUN HOM CHING: The Ministry of Education in Singapore went to my local university and recruited about 30 plus students.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Lee Yun was one of them.

LEE YUN HOM CHING: They provide us with a scholarship, basically asking us to come to Singapore.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Lee Yun got a full scholarship to complete her undergraduate degree in Singapore. She then got another scholarship to do her PhD here. Now she’s working in a lab in Singapore’s vast Biopolis research complex. Biopolis is a collection of nine buildings linked by zigzagging glass walkways. The labs are clean, stocked with state-of-the-art equipment. It’s a first-rate operation and Singapore needs first-rate talent to staff it. Since 2001 Singapore has been scouting for the best science students across Asia, like Lee Yun, and luring them here. It’s part of a national initiative called A-Star or the Agency for Science, Technology and Research. A-Star’s goal is to catapult Singapore to the forefront of scientific research. And A-Star isn’t just attracting foreign talent to Singapore; it’s also sending Singaporeans overseas to study at top Western universities.

HO HUN KIT: It’s probably the most exciting phase of my life.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Ho Hun Kit [ph] received an A-Star scholarship to do and his PhD at the University of Washington in Seattle. He felt a certain patriotic pride, going abroad to hone his skills and then coming home to benefit Singapore.

HO HUN KIT: Life sciences is the next big thing for Singapore. Being a small country with limited resources, limited space we have to invest in industries that doesn’t take up so much space. Things that are human capital intensive.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Experts say this plan is smart for Singapore. Christian Kettles [ph] is with the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School.

CHRISTIAN KETTLES: They really only can succeed as a very small society if they’re very heavily integrated in the global science community. And that’s exactly where this program fits in. Attracting other people, leveraging the human resources that they have internally, but really bringing them in touch with foreign universities rather than kind of creating a little bubble in Singapore and trying to do it all on their own.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: And yet, for this plan to work the students Singapore trains have to stay in Singapore. The government doesn’t want to cultivate young scientists only to lose them to other countries. So the scholars are required to work in Singapore for up to six years after graduating. For Singaporean, Ho Hun Kit, returning home after his studies in Seattle was no big deal.

HO HUN KIT: My roots are still here, and I would — as a Singaporean I would also like to contribute to the country.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: But for Li Hun Hom Ching, the Chinese student recruited to Singapore, the sacrifice was far greater. In exchange for her PhD scholarship, she had to forfeit her Chinese citizenship and become Singaporean.

LEE YUN HOM CHING: I can still clearly remember the day that I went to the Chinese Embassy and surrendered my passport. I have some struggling in my heart, because it’s my home country. It’s like my parents.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Some Singaporeans criticize the scholarship program, saying it puts too many demands on its students, forcing them to work long hours and to live a cloistered life. In fact, some speculate the pressure may have contributed to two recent scandals. In one, an A-Star scholar committed suicide; he jumped from the ninth floor of a building after a young woman rejected him. In the second, a female scholar studying for a PhD in Sweden was arrested for public nudity in Singapore. She was caught streaking during Chinese New Year. One disgruntled student told me that the A-Star program asks a lot of its scholars, but doesn’t provide much support for those who speak out or think differently. I contacted the A-Star program on several occasions to talk about its scholarships, but officials declined to be interviewed. Still, many young scientists say their involvement with Singapore’s scholarship program has been worthwhile. Even Li Yun Hom Ching says she’s grateful for the educational and financial support she’s received, despite having to forfeit her Chinese citizenship.

LEE YUN HOM CHING: Some of my friends were saying that you are forfeiting your nationality for something material. Right, but I will say that if you were in my position you would do the same.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: And a lot of young people are doing the same; it’s been eight years since Singapore’s scholarship program began and it’s having no problem filling its slots. 145 new scholarships were awarded just last month. For The World, I’m Ari Daniel Shapiro, Singapore.

Linguists trash English word count, speaking Uighur in Bermuda, and steady lah! The delights of Singlish

Patrick Cox — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:21:38 +0000

A nice linguistic fight to start with this week: a Texas organization called The Global Language Monitor is claiming that the English language has just gained its millionth word. President and chief world analyst Paul J.J. Payack has dubbed this the Million Word March. This generated a lot of headlines (“English acquires its millionth word”) but beyond that, Payack could not have been happy with the response to his declaration. Linguists and commentators called it among other thing, silly, misleading a publicity stunt and “the biggest load of chicken droppings I’ve heard in a long time.” Nice.

Next up is Singlish, a hybrid tongue that Singaporeans speak among themselves, much to the consternation of their famously fussy government. Singlish is a reflection of Singapore’s history of colonization and immigration: it mixes English with Malay, Hokkien Chinese and a smattering of Tamil. It’s spoken in homes, restaurants and increasingly on TV. Officials worry that Singaporeans’ English skills will slip. But the government’s efforts to curb Singlish have so far failed miserably. We have a Singlish double hit: first, a report from Singapore, then a conversation with the editors of a recently updated Singlish dictionary.

Finally, as the US military releases some Chinese Uighurs from Guantanamo, we take a look at the Uighur language and culture. Four Gitmo Uighurs have been resettled in Bermuda. More may be sent to Palau. In each case, they’ll probably be the first Uighur speakers to set foot on those islands.

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