“MINT” and all that…

One should take these fair-weather, illusory, “just-feel-good-about-yourself-despite-the-obvious”-brand of socioeconomic projections and typologisations (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25548060) with a pinch of salt: the previous day it was called “NEPAD”, yesterday it was “BRICS”, today it is “MINT”, tomorrow it could be “CLICK”, and following day, “ZYBTV” and on and on it goes... Essentially, the brand is a variation on the theme of the cargo-mentality amnesia but this is quite factitious and more pernicious than the prototype (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com.br/2011/03/cargo-cult-mentality-nigeria-and.html).

 One cardinal feature of development/societal transformation never posed in these projections is the internally-operationalising logic of the process. The engine of such an enterprise is anchored within the internal environment of focus. Development couldn’t, really, be anything except it is understood in the context of the internal defining frames and goals of the communitarian or societal space in question: Britain characterises and determines its development; Igboland characterises and determines its development; China characterises and determines its development; Malaysia characterises and determines its development... South Korea characterises and determines its development… the United States characterises and determines its development... Following from this, “outsiders” often recognise that such a societal space of reference is undergoing this historic, phenomenal transformation well after this process has very much steamed ahead. Not before!

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