Last week South Sudan announced that it was giving all
immigrant workers a month within which to leave their jobs for the locals.
According to the notice companies and Non-governmental
organisations were directed in the meantime, to advertise all the positions
that were due to fall vacant by the 15th of October.
As we were still trying to wrap our minds around this
announcement the government did a quick about face and said the earlier
communication misrepresented the official position. The new position is only
seeking to take the non-specialised,
menial jobs back from immigrant workers and pass them on to their own citizens.
In the same week our southern neighbour Rwanda, which has
the most liberal immigrant worker policies in the region, had its leader
President Paul Kagame saying,
"The foundation of all our
efforts is good governance, which for us means a relentless focus on delivering
the results that citizens want. Building a competitive, modern economy requires
smart investments in human capital, and productive knowledge. After all, real
wealth is in the head, not in the ground"
Given this perspective it easy to
see why Rwanda sees no contradiction between attracting foreign talent and
delivering results for its citizens. Of course one can expect that even in
Rwanda they will parcel out only the jobs they themselves cannot do. And as
their own citizens understudy their foreign bosses it is realistic to expect
that they will rise to fill even these jobs.
The South Sudanese are within their
rights to do whatever they want with their country. But oftentimes such
sweeping proclamations are political statements made to play to a gallery and
not necessarily good for the long term benefit of the country.
With oil flowing less copiously than
it was two years ago, Juba is under pressure to not only keep the general
population happy but to appease supporters and foes alike.
"Expelling foreign nationals who have been fanning feelings of xenophobia by charging around in four wheel drives, living a lifestyle way out of the reach of most locals and generally seeming to be plucking the ripe fruit from right under their noses, can score some much needed political points...
The quick turnaround only serves to
placate fears temporarily, but one can expect that whenever tensions erupt it
will be a trump card played with disturbing frequency.
After decades of civil war one
cannot blame South Sudan for its incoherence, a product of its lack of institutional
and human capacity. This is all the more reason, like Rwanda whose middle class
was decimated by the genocide, for them to be eager to import the human
resource to fill in the gaping holes in its numbers.
Politicians don’t like free movement
of people because then they cannot exert influence over them. However good
economics suggests that the free movement of people is not only good for trade
but for technology transfer or put more simply the exchange of knowledge for
greater efficiency.
There is a reason for example that
the Eurasia region developed almost in parallel than say Africa where there
were pockets of civilisation in north, west, east and southern Africa but no
real connections between them.
Because of the alignment of Europe
and Asia for east to west, climate was more or less uniform so agricultural
practices could be shared from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The similarities in
their produce meant shortages could be mitigated by surpluses from across the
world using trade if need be, since tastes were similar. Of course other things
were then shared, with each innovation building on the previous and being
pollinated by advances from elsewhere and voila we have the foundations of word
dominance.
Africa aligned from north to south
just could not replicate these benefits and hence its relative backwardness.
The point is, while immigrant labour is an easy political target, hobbling it is often bad economics.
And South Sudan, which is thrice the size of Uganda but with barely a 100 km of tarmac road, is in desperate need of some good economic thinking.
The people in charge in Juba need to
come fast to the realisation that people are what make the difference.
You can choose to use nationality
over competence as a criteria for recruitment and it might for a while keep
your people happy, but it will come around to bite you when your government is
unable “to deliver the results that your citizens want.”
The pressure on government must be
overwhelming but this is where leadership comes into play. Juba needs to pander
less to political expediency and more and more to the bigger picture, the long
term view, if it is to have a chance of lifting the war torn country into the
21st century.
