The difference between rich, successful countries and poor countries was not the lack of intellectual capacity, neither race or skin colour, but the attitude of the people, Swedish manager of MTC, Bengt Strenge says. If the attitude could be changed in poor countries so that its people would honour ethics in all they did, showed responsibility, respect of laws and rules, worked hard and even honoured punctuality, poor countries would thrive, Strenge came straight to the point.

Speaking at the launch of the restructured Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC) on Monday, Strenge, who started MTC Namibia from scratch roughly 10 years ago and grew it to a highly successful company with healthy earnings, said "in poor countries only a minority of people follow these basic principles including love for hard work, will of action and striving to save money and to make investments, where opportunities arose.

"The difference with people of rich countries is the attitude of the people, framed along the years by education and culture. On analysing the behaviour of the people in rich and developed countries, we find that the great majority follow the principles mentioned above in their lives", the Swedish business executive said.

In poor countries, only a minority followed those principles in their daily life, he added.

"We are not poor because we lack natural resources or because nature was cruel to us. We are poor because we lack attitude. We lack the will to comply with and learn these functional principles of rich and developed societies", Strenge noted.

He cited Switzerland and Japan as successful examples. Switzerland did not grow cocoa, but is the world’s best chocolate. Swiss people could only do agriculture 4 months per year, but their dairy products were of top quality. Japan was an island nation, with 80% of the surface consisting of mountains, yet Japan was a "floating factory" and the world’s second largest economy. Japan imports raw materials from the whole world, doing value adding and exported manufactured products.

Poor countries should try to do something about positively changing their people’s attitude towards ethics, integrity, respect for laws and for each other and for work, Strenge recommended.