What Is Wrong With Us: We Fly Halfway Around The World To Admire Discipline, Then Fly Home To Tolerate Chaos

Why the developing world’s most travelled leaders keep returning from Singapore, London and Tokyo with photographs instead of change

By Ing. Prof. Douglas Boateng, Chartered Director UK | Chartered Engineer UK | Fellow, Institute of Directors UK | Fellow, Ghana Institution of Engineering | Governance, Industrialisation and Supply Chain Strategist | Founder, Boardroom Governance Summit | Founder and Scriber, NyansaKasa (Words of Wisdom)

There is a peculiar ritual familiar across much of the developing world. A political leader, senior official or business executive boards a flight from Accra, Lagos, Nairobi, Johannesburg or Lusaka and lands in Singapore, Dubai, London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Tokyo or Seoul, where the airport runs on time, the immigration process works, the roads are disciplined, the electricity is expected rather than celebrated, and public transport has the interesting habit of actually following its timetable. The delegation attends a conference on development or governance, takes its notes, poses for its photographs, perhaps produces a communiqué, and then flies home. Somehow the lessons remain in the suitcase. That is the uncomfortable question behind this reflection: most developing-world politicians and business leaders travel the world and see the best that developed nations have to offer, so what exactly is stopping them from building something similar at home?

We Can No Longer Claim We Have Not Seen What Works

There was once a time when geography restricted knowledge, when a policymaker in Accra could reasonably know little about how Singapore organised its ports or how the Netherlands managed its water. That excuse has disappeared. African presidents, ministers, mayors, engineers and senior civil servants travel constantly, our universities collaborate internationally, and our diaspora works inside some of the world’s most sophisticated institutions. We already know what functioning systems look like. The question has therefore changed from what should we do to why are we not doing what we already know should be done.

NyansaKasa (Words of Wisdom): there comes a point when lack of knowledge stops being an explanation and lack of implementation begins becoming an indictment.

Singapore Did Not Become Singapore By Admiring Somebody Else

Consider Singapore, a country African leaders frequently cite. The World Bank describes its transformation from a low-income country at independence in 1965 into today’s high-income economy, with growth averaging around seven per cent annually and reaching about nine per cent during its first twenty-five years. Between 1963 and 1975 it received fourteen World Bank loans focused on fundamentals such as water, sewerage, electricity, telecommunications and ports, and by the mid-1980s those loans had been repaid. Today its GDP per capita sits around ninety-eight thousand US dollars and its sanitation coverage is effectively universal. There was no magic wand; Singapore built, maintained, enforced, learned, adjusted and continued, decade after decade. African delegations have visited Singapore for years, and perhaps we have now studied it sufficiently. The next study tour should sometimes be a study return, asking honestly what was learned last time, what was implemented, what changed, and who was held accountable, because otherwise study tours risk becoming little more than development tourism.

Africa’s Problem Is Not That It Has Never Seen Infrastructure

The contrast becomes painful measured against our own deficits. As of 2024, about 560 million people in sub-Saharan Africa still lived without electricity, and the continent retains the world’s largest electricity-access gap, with the World Bank estimating Africa’s infrastructure financing gap at more than a hundred billion dollars annually. Behind every number is ordinary life: a child studying without dependable power, a small manufacturer running a generator, a clinic struggling with reliability, a farmer unable to process produce locally. Infrastructure is not concrete; it is productivity. And many of the decision-makers experiencing these deficits at home have personally experienced infrastructure excellence abroad, so they know precisely the difference.

NyansaKasa (Words of Wisdom): It is difficult to plead ignorance about darkness when you have repeatedly travelled to places where you have seen how the lights were kept on.

We Admire Maintenance Abroad And Neglect It At Home

Perhaps the greatest difference between successful and struggling societies is not what they build but what they maintain. We love commissioning ceremonies, with their ribbons, speeches and cameras, yet maintenance arrives later without any television coverage, so it apparently becomes less exciting. Drains block, streetlights fail, road markings disappear, and eventually somebody proposes an entirely new project rather than repairing the old one. The World Bank stresses that infrastructure quality is deeply connected to governance, to how projects are planned, selected and managed, and this affects both service delivery and public trust.

NyansaKasa (Words of Wisdom): A nation that celebrates construction but neglects maintenance will eventually become very good at commissioning replacements for things it should never have allowed to collapse.

Why Do The Rules Suddenly Work For Us Abroad

There is another contradiction worth naming gently. The same person who discards rubbish carelessly at home discovers environmental consciousness on landing in Singapore, and the driver who treats a red light as a suggestion at home becomes remarkably obedient in London. What changed was not character; it was consequence, enforcement and system design. A society cannot endlessly preach discipline while quietly rewarding indiscipline. The cleanest cities are not clean because their citizens are morally superior, but because waste is collected, rules are enforced, planning is respected and offenders face consequences.

NyansaKasa (Words of Wisdom): When the same citizen behaves differently after crossing a border, perhaps the problem is not only the citizen; examine the system waiting on either side.

We Do Not Need To Copy, We Need To Adapt

None of this means Africa should photocopy Singapore, Germanyor Japan, which would be intellectually lazy given how different our populations, geographies and institutions are. But principles travel even when systems do not: maintenance, planning, professionalism, merit, accountability and long-term thinking can all be adapted to local circumstances without being copied wholesale.

NyansaKasa (Words of Wisdom): Learn globally, think locally, adapt wisely, because a borrowed solution becomes useful only after it learns the language of the problem it has come to solve.

The Real Enemy May Be Short-Termism

Development requires time, yet our politics frequently demands immediacy, with roads needing to be visible before the next election and projects needing to carry somebody’s personal legacy. Singapore’s transformation, South Korea’s industrial rise, Japan’s reconstruction and China’s economic leap all unfolded across decades, not electoral cycles. The challenge is building institutions capable of carrying national priorities across political transitions, so that a new government improves what works, corrects what does not, and does not behave as though national history began on its own inauguration day.

NyansaKasa (Words of Wisdom): A nation cannot travel fifty years into the future if every political cycle insists on returning to kilometre zero.

Our Businesses Are Not Exempt Either

It would be convenient, and dishonest, to blame politicians alone. African executives travel too, visiting world-class factories and studying advanced supply chains, then returning home to tolerate late payments to small suppliers, weak maintenance and governance shortcuts. Standards should not change according to geography. UN Trade and Development estimates that small and medium enterprises account for roughly eighty per cent of employmentacross Africa, which means large businesses carry a developmental responsibility well beyond their own balance sheets, from paying suppliers fairly to developing local capability and investing in people.

We Travel More Easily Across Oceans Than Across Our Own Continent

Nowhere is the contradiction more visible than in African trade itself. We speak constantly about Pan-Africanism, yet intra-African trade remains only around sixteen per cent of the continent’s total exports according to UNCTAD, even though full implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area could support a market worth roughly 3.4 trillion dollars. Agreements cannot drive trucks, and declarations cannot clear customs; what Africa needs now is transport corridors, interoperable payment systems, efficient borders and the political willingness to make the vision real.

What Is Wrong With Us

Perhaps what is wrong with us is that we have become excellent admirers of other people’s discipline. We admire clean streets abroad while tolerating rubbish at home, admire long-term planning while replacing policies with political cycles, and admire meritocratic systems before quietly asking whose person got the job. The developed world is far from perfect, with its own inequality and institutional weaknesses, and Africa should never romanticise it. But where something demonstrably works, pride should not prevent learning, and where we already know what works, endless learning should not become an excuse for avoiding implementation. Perhaps every delegation should be required to produce an implementation note rather than a travel report, answering honestly what was learned, what applies locally, who will implement it, and what happened twelve months later. That is how exposure becomes development rather than décor.

From Admiration To Implementation

Africa does not suffer from a shortage of examples; we have seen Singapore, studied Germany, understood Japan and admired the Netherlands. What we have not yet consistently done is bring those lessons home and defend them long enough to become ordinary. The next frontier is not another journey outward but a journey inward, from seeing to doing, from groundbreaking ceremonies to maintenance, and from election-cycle thinking to generational thinking.

NyansaKasa (Final Reflection): When leaders have repeatedly seen what good looks like, travelled on it, slept in it and enjoyed its benefits, the question is no longer whether they know better, but what prevents all of us from demanding, building and protecting better at home. Nations are not transformed by the number of places their leaders visit; they are transformed by the useful lessons their institutions have the courage and persistence to bring home and turn into everyday reality for their own people.

About the Author

Ing. Professor Douglas K. Boateng is a strategist in governance, industrialisation and supply chains, and serves as a professional chairperson, an international Chartered Director (UK) and a Chartered Engineer (UK). A Pan Africanist and social entrepreneur at heart, he has spent his career working across public institutions, corporate boards and industrial policy, in Africa and beyond, guided by the conviction that strong institutions are built on honest decision at a time. His contributions to industry and academia have been recognised with more than six lifetime achievement awards throughout his career. He is the founder of NyansaKasa (Words of Wisdom), a collection of daily aphorisms he has written and shared since late 2019, distilling decades of experience advising governments, boards and enterprises on governance, accountability and institutional resilience into words meant to challenge and to endure. He convenes the Boardroom Governance Summit, Africa’s largest boardroom focused summit, and writes a widely read weekly opinion column titled “Inconvenient Truth” and “What Is Wrong With Us,” featured on some of the region’s leading digital media platforms. Professor Boateng can be reached via LinkedIn or at info@panavest.com.