THIS past week President Dr. Irfaan Ali grew in stature in my eyes. I have a higher level of admiration for him for the way he handled himself during the BBC Hard Talk programme that was seen around the globe.
He was crisp, appropriate, and insightful and pointed in his response. He is fearless, apt to learn and is giving a good account of himself on the international stage.

I was discussing the interview with my wife and she said she did not like that at points he came over as angry and argumentative. I defended him fiercely.
I felt he had a right to display indignation to the fact that Stephen Sackur’s line of questions suggested that we turn off the fossil fuel wells and pursue a path of development without oil, in the name of saving the environment, a marque policy pursuit of the world’s most developed nations.

I do not need to regurgitate Dr. Ali’s answers. His words need no further clarity. If you missed the interview, it’s all over YouTube and other social media platforms, go take a look, in fact, it is somewhat viral. That said, I would like to dig in a bit on the conceptualisation of the indignant response from the president.

Allow me to quickly hark back to the period of the cold war which was essentially a war of political and economic ideology. The West saw political and economic developmental trajectory in binary terms, you are either for or against a particular ideology.

Some nations took clear cut sides, but many others questioned why they cannot borrow positive attributes from both of the dominant prevailing ideologies. Thus, the Non-Aligned Movement was born. The Western ideology was reinforced via the Bretton Woods Monetary system which was pursued by a group of countries under the moniker Allied Nations.

That system ended to benefit the USA and its own economic and foreign policy, giving birth to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which took greater prominence during the period of the thawing of the cold war, sometime around 1984 to 1991.
Elements of Bretton Woods, which ensured that the US dollar was the dominant currency of world commerce, helped to impoverish many countries whose politico-economic system were not created in the image of the West.

Even many non-aligned countries subscribed to the Structural Adjustment Programmes of the IMF due to crushing economic downturn. This meant that the West dictated the path to development for great many nations in every corner of the world. This path to development often included many unsuitable economic prescriptions tailor made in the developed West and enforced as “a conditionality” in the Third World.

Ha-Joon Chang a South Korean economist in his 2003 path breaking book was forthright, if not indignant, that the same policies that brought economic success to First World nations including state intervention and control, are the very ones developed countries have pressured their developing counterparts to avoid in the name of political and economic freedom.

Chang was adamant that developing countries do not need to photocopy the development policies, institutions and political systems of the West in order to pursue prosperity. He argued that the West is actually stifling Third World economic prospects by “Kicking Away the Ladder” of development.

In that Hard Talk interview, Dr. Ali’s indignation was justified, his passion could be felt. Nobody in England, America or anywhere else in the developed world should lecture us on how to exploit our national patrimony for the economic prosperity of our people when their own record is sordid.

In fact, we have already demonstrated that we are ten times more responsible, because we are keeping our forest standing with the world’s lowest levels of deforestation coupled with the implementation of other carbon negative initiatives to offset any pollutions from hydrocarbon exploitation.

I am happy we have leaders who understand that our ladder is being kicked and nudged to try to derail our climb and are prepared to fiercely protect our path to prosperity. We must! We can! We will!