Lessons for Asia-Africa

The Asian-African Summit has concluded. After a week of rhetoric and evocation of the "Bandung Spirit of 1955", we are now left to ponder what this series of events was all about.

Most Indonesians have some recollection or knowledge of the fabled 1955 Bandung conference. It is an intrinsic part of our national history. A staple in our children's school curriculum. It was the very first assertion of Indonesia's "free and active" foreign policy, and the nation's first contribution to its constitutional duty to advocate anti-colonialism and peaceful international cooperation.

Most of the presentations over the past week have been about a recommitment to the spirit of mutual cooperation. It is true that over the decades the nations of Asia and Africa have diverged in their respective pursuits. The challenges of development and political emancipation demanded more inward looking priorities, with physical proximity being a determinate of mutual cooperation.

Despite the best intentions to remain objective in the rivalry between the superpowers, the tribulations of international pressure cannot help but sway de facto allegiances towards one superpower ally or another. Hence the easy solution has always been to look to a superpower to resolve domestic problems or overcome challenges that originate from beyond national borders.

It was therefore pertinent that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reminded his fellow Asian-African counterparts that solutions to the multitude of challenges faced by individual countries is often found within another country's experience.

The solutions to many of Asia's and Africa's problems are "available among us", he asserted.

Moving away from the often ambitious action plans for overcoming development problems, he provided a simple antidote; "borrow best practices".

Countries of the continents have something in common that no "Western" power could hope to match. Each is more akin to the other in terms of development challenges and the pursuit of national welfare and democratization.

The West has been in a position of dominance for too long to relate to the problems faced by emerging nations in Asia and Africa. By picking and choosing, linking and matching, we can choose from the best practices and experiences that are relatable to conditions within the region.

India is a perfect example of a great democracy and of a nation that has paced its liberalization process without overly straining its domestic economy to the pressures of globalization. Most countries in Asia and Africa can relate to the prevailing social conditions of the sub-continent. It cannot, for example, use the practices and experiences of a country that has been through a 200-year process of industrialization and democratization, such the United States.

Indonesia's own experiences, while not falling under the category of best practices, can also be used as lessons on the pitfalls for an emerging democracy.

Similarly, best practices in countries like South Korea and Singapore can be used as relevant examples of successful economic development and modernization. In less than four decades they have developed into serious, world-class economic players.

The essence of this intra Asian-African exchange was succinctly summed up by Singh. Solutions, he said, "cannot be transplanted from the outside" since any comprehensive resolution of national issues must be intrinsic to those respective states.

During the pomp and pageantry of the recent summit meetings, we can often lose sight of the their purpose. The core intention of the gathering was not a simple reiteration of 50 year-old doctrines, nor was it a show of force of Third World countries.

The purpose was to unite in an effort to better the lives of the peoples of the two continents. The sixty or so Asian and African leaders who gathered in Jakarta and Bandung all brought with them the trust of millions. The leaders' convergence in the pursuit of cooperation should be aimed at ensuring that this sacred trust comes to fruition in the form of social good. This means the provision of basic services such as health and education, respect for freedom of expression and equal opportunity.

Leaders returned home yesterday patting themselves on the back for producing a range of new documents and declarations. They proudly walked in their fathers' footsteps and hogged the headlines for a week. But the hard work is only just beginning. The task is to ensure that these two great continents are no longer identified in terms of their poverty or incidence of oppression.

It will not be us, participants and witnesses to the recently concluded summit, who will judge whether it succeeded. It is our grandchildren who will be the judges of failure, as Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono remarked, "through failure of political nerve".