Accelerating Economic Development in Eritrea Through Information Law
30.05.2014
A proposal for accelerating economic development in Eritrea through the
development of advanced information law - using Iceland as a case study
Eritrea, like Iceland, is a geographically constrained nation. For Iceland,
failed banking policies, volcanic eruptions amidst a land of fire and ice
and limited resources have brought acute attention to the fundamental
sources of wealth creation in a global economy. Eritrea, given its own
history, shares this common understanding of local instability. A difficult
path to freedom, compounded by border aggression and limited resources has
meant a hard road forward. The tendency of governing bodies in similar
circumstances is to evolve a reactionary policy of governance and wealth
creation: to protect, to securitize the geological and physical wealth of
the nation and to develop an overarching methodology of wealth creation
through the re-distribution of natural resources within the global market.
It should come as no surprise that the general perception of purpose of
government is, first and foremost, to protect and defend. At the same time,
however, the desire to protect must be balanced within the dynamics of the
broader global community: what Eritrea might need from it and what Eritrea
can offer it in the way of goods and services.
One of the most intriguing, intangible and yet critically important services
that a nation can offer other nations is its legal constructs - and the way
in which those constructs can serve as incentives for economic activity. To
cite perhaps the most obvious examples, Switzerland's wealth is largely
derived from the predictability of an intangible construct: its banking
laws. It is those laws, and the way in which those laws are constructed
(with respects to other countries) that gives Switzerland a competitive
advantage when a potential client decides where to put their money.
Although nations generally think of laws as being internal agents for
construction of state, the fact is that in a global world laws also serve as
incentives of behaviours, as shapers of markets and as creators of value
precisely because of their differences. As markets evolve the intricate
relationship between laws and wealth creation is constantly tested and
re-tested. In that process, gaps are uncovered and opportunities are often
created for the creation of new laws.
Amongst the best examples of this in the Middle East has been the
development of foreign property ownership laws in Dubai, in the United Arab
Emirates. On the one hand, laws permitting foreign ownership contributed
significantly to the rise of Dubai's residential real estate market. On the
other hand, poorly written and relatively vague laws related to mortgages
and property defaults caused a number of investors to flee the market at the
first sign of instability. In both cases, laws in flux had a significant
impact on the behaviour of markets.
While a number of countries have focused on wealth creation through highly
specialized variances in laws related to banking, finance, property
ownership and taxation, Iceland stands out as an example that may be of
great relevance in Eritrea's own economic growth and evolution.
In the wake of a number of problems that have plagued Iceland over the past
4 years, the government recently decided to go forward with the full
implementation of IMMI - the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative. IMMI is, in
short, the first attempt by a country to create a system of information law
written explicitly for an electronic and global information age. Promising
to offer a degree of information protection and freedom that not even
citizens of the United States enjoy, Iceland is hoping to capitalize on this
development of a social architecture of information that will be a
foundation for many countries for years to come. Birgitta Jonsdottir, the
chief sponsor in parliament of the IMMI proposal said: "Iceland will become
the inverse of a tax haven; by offering journalists and publishers some of
the most powerful protections for free speech and investigative journalism
in the world. Tax havens aim is to make everything opaque. Our aim is to
make everything transparent.".
The IMMI website identifies the following objectives of the program:
* the Icelandic Prize for Freedom of Expression
* Protection from "libel tourism" and other extrajudicial abuses
* Protection of intermediaries (internet service providers)
* Statute of limitations on publishing liabilities
* Virtual limited liability companies
* Whistle-blower protections
* Source protection
* Source-journalist communications protection
* Limiting prior restraint
* Process protections
* Ultra-modern Freedom of Information Act
While, at first glance, it seem unwise for a government to openly protect a
degree of transparency that may, at certain times, even go beyond the
boundaries of the 'wiki-leaks' incident, it is also promises to create new
paths to wealth creation. The hope in Iceland is that corporations involved
in electronic information, in all its forms, will prefer to situate
themselves in Iceland because they will have a measure of legal security in
their business currently unavailable elsewhere. Iceland, in a sense, is
making a bet: that the security offered electronic information organizations
and businesses will result in more wealth and stability for the average
Icelander than the potential damage that such free movement of information
may cause.
For Eritrea, following in the footsteps of Iceland may be a way to leapfrog
many of the growth problems that countries in the region have encountered.
The standard development model, in short, goes sort of like this: invest in
physical capability to extract your natural resource wealth. The global
market will buy that wealth and that revenue can then be used to develop a
comprehensive state infrastructure. The problem with this model is two-fold:
first of all, it is not very efficient. Even if Eritreans look across the
Red Sea at Saudi Arabia's wealth - what is wealth in numbers comes at a
price of tremendous inefficiency. To put this in real terms: Saudi Arabia
has a population and geographic size similar to the state of Texas, but its
GDP is only equivalent to that of Massachusetts. For all of its petroleum
wealth, Saudi Arabia only produces 30% of the value that Texas produces.
Second of all, this model falls short of a fundamental premise of wealth
creation: that wealth creation is primarily a function of society,
perception and mind. IE, wealth - as in the capacity to transform the world
around us to promote our own prosperity - derives first and foremost from
the methods by which we coordinate our common work and the methods by which
we perceive ourselves within a broader state.
Practically, developing an model of information law that is comparable to
that of Iceland may offer Eritrea the opportunity to leapfrog its economic
development. There are a number of reasons for this specific model: a
general gap in such laws in the MENA (Middle East - North Africa) region, a
location in close proximity to several wealthy markets that have very poor
information laws and a general location at the cross-roads of two powerful
emerging markets: Africa and the Middle East. The kind of relative freedom
of information that Al-Jazeera enjoys, for example, is heavily wanting in
the region. There is an acute need for a local country to serve as a haven
of free information. While, on the one hand, this may not necessarily be to
the liking of some of Ertirea's neighbours where information is largely seen
as a tightly controlled commodity, it will certainly leapfrog Eritrea's
status within OECD countries and will allow it to serve as a regional model
of development.
Although it may seem vague at first, the relationship between information
and wealth is critical to understand: wealth as we perceive it today is
different than the perception of wealth 100 years ago. Back then, wealth was
primarily about the possession of physical things: of land, of buildings, of
gold, of works of art, etc...To be wealthy meant to have. Today, this has
changed. Wealth is now about what we can manipulate and do: how fast we can
fly, where we have been, what we can experience, the level of service we can
enjoy in a peculiar hotel, etc...All of this new wealth has emerged because
of a tremendous explosion in literacy and information transfer. As ideas
spread they build on each other, making each successive generation of
inventions, innovations, technologies, etc... easier and easier to create.
Nowhere has this, to use of the words of John Stuart Mill "clearer
perception and livelier impression of truth" been more rapid and more
powerful in its capability to create new wealth than in those places where
there has been the most consistent opportunity "to create that impression of
truth through its collision with error".
Eritrea is a young nation. It has a unique chance, in its first generation
of leadership, to forge a path that will set an example for the region.
Advancing economic development through advanced information legislation may
be a step in that direction.