04/10/2020
Opinion
Economic growth and development are definitely not the same concepts. Concepts are derived from objective, realistic and objective community life experiences. My point of departure in this discussion is to underscore the importance of mindsets and development. Like the proverbial chicken and the yoke, does the focus on economic growth translate to national and economic development and national development as a whole? At this juncture of our political and economic development, it’s important to begin to interrogate ourselves, if we have the mindsets that economic development could stand upon, or on the other hand, does our mindsets permits the kind of development we are anticipating without a critical evaluation of these mindsets? While economic growth and economic development simultaneously can spark off national development, I’m not convinced that the mindsets of investors attract mindsets that is less of compassion, empathy and trust. Additionally, ethics of business, individual mindsets or community mindsets must attract one another, in ways that tourism and investments can be evaluated, assessed and independent decision and judgement made whether or not to engage your community and invest in it. Tourism and investment decisions are products of rational thinking and involves choices. All over the world tourism is known to boost economic growth and development, however they are not in isolation of human capital development and planning. Tourists and investors are prone to stable, trusting and peaceful communities. It is therefore no a surprise that investors and tourists are more likely to spend time to conduct research on where to invest there time and money. Similarly, tourists would rationally make the choice of engaging in trusting communities as opposed to taking the risk of engaging in dangerous communities.
The aforementioned assertion is a fundamentally mindsets issues, and thus cognitive issues. The concept of development overtime have been skewed narrowly to mean economic growth. Unfortunately, human capital that can’t be quantified in monetary terms are often excluded from this definition and the problem is that, it does not help us in truly determining what we mean or need to develop. For instance, there are tonnes of human capital in Nigeria that have not been turned into development, and as such not fully developed. How can we harness these non monetary human capital for development? Tourists and investors to this country should know us for our humanity; genuine love and affection, trust, empathy, compassion, selflessness, respect, dignity, hard-work, resilience, family, brotherly and sisterly-ness, community sense, honesty, dedication etc. All of these are fundamentally related to mindsets, our perceptions of ourselves and of others. Tourists and investors look at these things when making rational decisions. Fundamentally too, capital is unlikely to reside in communities that is less compassionate and unpredictable, no wonder violent communities are avoided for more stabled and peaceful ones.
My point here is this, while development is conceived primarily as economic growth, we seemed to have ignored our human potentials and our human values and rich human capital and have compartmentalized it differently from economic development. We have compromised our humanity as capital for investors and tourism, and must begin to reassess the capital and rebuild them. Development, holistically encompasses economic development which implies how economic growth is utilized to improve human life and wellbeing. How has economic growth scaled up our development in ways that advances our potentials vice versa? Truly, but unfortunately, our history is replete with history of economic growth that have not benefited our people realistically. The consequence of decades of economic growth with out development have led to pervasive and chronic lack of infrastructure, the frustration have led to traumatic experiences and consequently our resilience. Incidentally, living under stressful conditions reduces individual and community resilience.
But all hope is not lost, we can revive our human potentials, community values, by reinventing and rethinking development that’s consistent with our goal of development by integration the development of human capital and economic growth. This requires leadership, training and the will to implement insights from trainings. Definition or conceptualization of development that leaves out human capital potential is incomplete and inadequate in addressing our current situation. What this does is that it provide opportunity for organizational leaders and manages to take to human potential and capital seriously.
To conclude this discussion, and going back to the chicken and yoke metaphor, it’s insufficient to see economic growth solely as the basis of development. Human mindset as a function of community value play significant part of development as a whole and it’s a mistake to attempt to increase growth in monetary terms at the expense of human capital and values. An integrated approach is proposed, where human mindsets is consciously developed through leadership and organization program design. I believe integration of these disjointed pieces will encourage overtime and will help in a change of mindsets and help in the rethink and shift perceptions that can support investment and tourism in our communities.
Dr. Rashid Raji