Kenya Should Look East, Not West, For Development Inspiration Says One of the Country’s Largest Newspapers

The Editorial Board of The East African newspaper, a publication of the Nation Media Group, one of Kenya’s largest media companies, published a column on Sunday that will be a disappointment to U.S. and European governments. It blasted Africa’s past half-century engagement with the West and said the continent should look East to China and India for development inspiration:

The simple truth is that Africa should aspire to measure up to its weight in gold and pull itself out of the gutters with a new social contract between the governors and the governed. A starting point could be to own up and reconcile the past to the present. Assigning blame for present failures to the past has become standard rhetoric by African politicians while blissfully repeating past mistakes.