International High-Level Conference on
Building Knowledge Economies for
Job Creation, Increased Competitiveness, and Balanced Development
Tunis, December 1-3, 2009 Closing Statement by Mats Karlsson
Country Director Maghreb
World Bank  Mr. Prime Minister of Tunisia,
Director General of ISESCO,
Honorable Ministers from Tunisia and the Region,
Dear Participants,
and through media to the Public at large, On behalf of the World Bank – and I am sure I can speak for its highest levels as well as the broad team that has supported the preparation of this conference – let me from my heart thank you all, and, first of all, Tunisia. We are extremely honored to have been allowed to be under the High Patronage of His Excellency Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, President of Tunisia, whose visionary, solid and practical opening speech set the tone, set us on course, and set the basis for what we are about to do. To Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi: let me to you personally and through you to all your minister colleagues express my thanks for hosting this event, but more directly for working to realize a vision of growth and decent jobs, on the basis of competition and integration, social equity, sustainability and stability, driven by – knowledge and productivity. And to the People of Tunisia: I don’t mean to make the simple, sometimes patronizing reference of opening and closing speeches, but to express a genuine recognition, and I want to tell you why. I refer to the businessmen and employees of your enterprises, to workers, financiers, to civil society of independent institutions, scientists and journalists. I speak not so much in gratitude as in recognition that these are the expectant people and the real drivers of the change we want to see. Let me turn to you, Director General Abdulaziz Othman Alwaijri, and thank ISESCO for organizing this conference so competently, for your generous support, and for the partnership we have struck that now holds so much promise. Conferences come and go in our working lives, and some are barely memorable, but this one has made me believe in real change. Before I speak to our conclusions, let me speak to something that struck a deep chord in me. It is a slide from one of the many excellent presentations at this conference, which I know will be made available on the web for you all. This one came from Dr Shariffadeen from Malaysia and is called ‘A System View of the Maqasid to Develop a Knowledge Society and Economy’. I think of myself as a modest economist with a sprinkling of awareness of the politics of choice and change, so I’m not sure I should venture into this territory, but this one touched me in a deeper way, perhaps spiritual. I do not trust myself to use the five Islamic terms he presented [din, nafs, aql, mal, nasl], but the whole adds up: It starts, one, with personal change, the realization that we are individuals who can each choose to be driven by knowledge. It, two, takes this insight to the societal level, going beyond the self, seeking the purpose of public responsibility in shared human development. It, three, recognizes our intellectual assets, our rationality, our capacity to reason. It, four, encourages us to use this reason to create wealth, and wealth for all, through equitable approaches to economic growth. And, five, it introduces the perspective of time, recognizes the commitment to posterity and to environmental sustainability. And thus it connects with the first element of personal change, your temporal existence and the long view, and closes the loop through public responsibility to offer a whole that will give peace to the individual – so much needed in these troubled times. To me this ‘Maqasid’ whole is crystal clear. I can’t speak to its spiritual origins or current context, but it is a whole I can identify with as presented, and it has practical meaning. And this is why I made reference to people, in this case the Tunisian people, but it applies everywhere. Mr. Prime Minister, as part of my Vice President’s bilateral visit we engaged with a modern textile company, one of these ‘small and medium sized enterprises’ which are the famous, and true, source of the better and better paid jobs we all seek as the overarching objective. It was a revealing visit – I came away thinking ‘Look no further. This is the Knowledge Economy!’. As the CEO of the firm told us, he could not compete by low costs and wages, but only with quality, time and access to markets, it became evident that knowledge was everything. And as he showed us around the modern building, it became obvious – ‘here is the woman who is the one stop shop for all customers’, ‘here we have the women who come up with our artistic ideas and drafts’, ‘here they try out the first practical versions, keeping costs to a minimum’, and then the shop floor were quality is realized – in the hands of the seamstresses, young hard-working women wanting a wage and a life for themselves and their families. Unless the knowledge economy is realized on the shop floor it will not be real. Competition, integration, productivity was the message. The Knowledge Economy is not something you install. You can’t chuck away your old economy and pick this one from a shelf. It is an organic transformation – a transformation all right, but an organic one. It plays out in old sectors like textiles and agriculture, not just the images of the modern and weightless services. So think of the private sector entrepreneurs, the workers and employees, the students who learn something useful, like fashion. They are the prime drivers of the knowledge economy. And let me add, that there is a tiny driver as well – the infant, the young child. Mr. Prime Minister, please look at the statistics. A child that in his or her earliest 36 months is stimulated by learning, and grows up to more challenging and rewarding tasks will grow up an emotionally secure, intellectually curious, and broad-mindedly creative and contributing child, youth, individual, a member of our community. No statistic convinces me more than the numbers that show that we have to start early, with the unfolding of the child’s mind. When you think like that, you get the balance of the whole. Participants, The World Bank is fully behind the conclusions of our Conference. We are inspired by the Tunis Declaration on Building Knowledge Economies. We commit to follow up with others:
- certainly in collaboration with ISESCO,
- already in a strong partnership with Tunisia, and
- of course with other countries. The country level work will remain our foundation. That is where so much is done. There is so much diversity. We need to be specific. We need to respond to country-led strategies. When that works, it works. But this conference has shown the need for something more. We need the regional and the global. No one can make it alone. We must learn together, in communities of practices or in other options, less or more demanding, for regional cooperation – as one of my colleagues presented earlier. We have contributed to create a Center for Mediterranean Integration, whose purpose is precisely this. We want to support networking among public and independent networks. We are inspired by the perspectives of the Tunis Declaration and are ready to work. In conclusion, let us turn our thoughts to the many people out there, struggling to learn, struggling to apply knowledge to their work, as shop floor workers or businessmen, scientists, journalists and civil society leaders, and to all who would want to create a prosperous, sustainable and integrated world. That’s where the knowledge is. Thank you.
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