The Future of Global Growth: Prof Jeffrey Sachs on Geopolitics and Fragmentation

by GIBS Business School [11-20-2025].

(RAD: This is a remarkable lecture by Prof Jeffrey Sachs that really highlights key reasons how Japan, Taiwan, China & the Asian Tigers grew their economies so fast. India is now implementing these strategies. Africa can learn a lot from China about how to do this. It requires a combination 'state craft' & businesses. Pay attention to how China uses their 5-Year Plans to guide every segment of their society that also significantly improves the life of the citizens. Having a highly educated society is key. Prof Sachs ties all of this together, starting with Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations". Take the 35 minutes to listen to Prof Sachs explain the major world changes happening now & then take this information to improve your own life. — RAD)

Key points by Amarynth [11-22-2025]

In a compelling lecture at GIBS, world-renowned economist Professor Jeffrey Sachs unpacked one of the most important geopolitical dynamics of our time: the rebalancing of global economic power from the North Atlantic to Asia - and the implications for Africa’s development trajectory.

Drawing on history, economics, and global strategy, Prof Sachs offered a clear, evidence-based narrative:

The 2015 Council on Foreign Relations report explicitly framed preventing China’s rise as essential to preserving US primacy.
Adam Smith’s 1776 insights on trade foreshadowed today’s global realignment — a shift the West now struggles to accept.
Asia’s growth is a structured continuum: Japan’s modernisation (1868) → the Asian Tigers → China’s reforms (1978) → India’s liberalisation (1991) → and today’s rapid advances in Central Asia and the Gulf.
China has accelerated this trajectory, adapting lessons from Japan and Singapore to build one of the world’s most technologically advanced economies in just four decades.

Prof Sachs also emphasised a critical point for Africa: globalisation isn’t collapsing - it is reorganising. With Africa projected to hold 25% of the world’s population by 2050 and up to 40% by 2100, the continent has a historic opportunity to shape the next era of global growth. Achieving sustained 8–10% annual growth, however, will require deep investment in education, digital infrastructure, and institutional capability.

This session was not simply a geopolitical conversation - it was a strategic masterclass that connected 1776, 1945, 1978, and 2025 in a powerful through-line. For leaders, policymakers, and anyone invested in Africa’s future, it is essential viewing.

Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China [4-2015] by Ashley J. Tellis and Robert D. Blackwill (Referenced by Prof Jeffrey Sachs in above video)

The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937-1945 [9-10-2013] by Rana Mitter (Author)

The epic, untold story of China’s devastating eight-year war of resistance against Japan

For decades, a major piece of World War II history has gone virtually unwritten. The war began in China, two years before Hitler invaded Poland, and China eventually became the fourth great ally, partner to the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain. Yet its drama of invasion, resistance, slaughter, and political intrigue remains little known in the West.

Rana Mitter focuses his gripping narrative on three towering leaders: Chiang Kai-shek, the politically gifted but tragically flawed head of China’s Nationalist government; Mao Zedong, the Communists’ fiery ideological stalwart, seen here at the beginning of his epochal career; and the lesser-known Wang Jingwei, who collaborated with the Japanese to form a puppet state in occupied China. Drawing on Chinese archives that have only been unsealed in the past ten years, he brings to vivid new life such characters as Chiang’s American chief of staff, the unforgettable “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, and such horrific events as the Rape of Nanking and the bombing of China’s wartime capital, Chongqing. Throughout, Forgotten Ally shows how the Chinese people played an essential role in the wider war effort, at great political and personal sacrifice.

Forgotten Ally rewrites the entire history of World War II. Yet it also offers surprising insights into contemporary China. No twentieth-century event was as crucial in shaping China’s worldview, and no one can understand China, and its relationship with America today, without this definitive work.

Book Review – Richard Overy: Blood and Ruins: The Great Imperial War, 1931-1945 [4-5-2022]

Russia exposes Japan’s sinister WWII plot for mass executions in China [9-4-2025]

China’s forgotten World War: The West has much to learn [9-1-2025]