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For those of you who do not know of him, Lee Kuan Yew was the leader of Singapore from independence to 1990. He is widely credited as having transformed a third world state into the modern first world country of Singapore. Although admittedly Lee Kuan Yew was a dictator, he was undoubtedly a very competent ruler (he is often called a classic Paternal Autocrat). Singapore is one of the most economically successful nations in the world, but even on other indicators it has high levels of health care, education and low levels of corruption and crime. A Singaporean colleague of mine remembers the early days before independence where race riots and disruptive strikes were very common - both of these are no longer an issue (a remarkable feat given Singapore's very different demographics and that there is no traditional 'Singaporean' identity). I remember reading his memoirs a few years back and the amount of challenges he faced was astounding. I remember being struck by his firm insistence on rooting out corruption (his party all wore white shirts at the swearing in to symbolise a clean and transparent government).

So how do we get such a ruler for Africa? The very sad state of Africa today is a human tragedy. While of course we would all love democracy to be widespread and mature there, my analysis of that continent's history leads me to believe that democracy is probably unattainable at least in the early years of de-colonisation. However that is not to suggest that Africa couldn't succeed with a sufficiently strong enough leader like Singapore had and transform the country into a prosperous, stable and judicious nation as possible.

So the challenge is for us to find such a candidate and such a country with a POD after 1945.
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