The growth rate in free economies across the world is a lesson for a country like Nigeria. When the government keeps intervening in the economy, the market is constantly blamed for any crisis that may later ensue. In actual fact, the reason for market failure should be attributed to government intervention and consequent economic distortions. Government subsidies are one such distortion. Government subsidies are a disincentive to public enterprises. Subsidies have made them less efficient and innovative, and have made them an avenue for enriching government cronies and lackeys. They have destroyed competition, which, in turn, is largely responsible for the inability of local industries to compete in the quickly globalizing world.

The Centre for Independent Studies had a recent visit from three leading liberals: Manuel Ayau, the President emeritus of the private Universidad Francisco Marroqu'n and an experienced business leader from Guatemala; Barun Mitra, the founding Director of the Liberty Institute, a free-market think tank in New Delhi; and James Shikwati, the founder and Director of Kenya\'s Inter-Region Economic Network in Nairobi. They spoke with Wolfgang Kasper, Senior Fellow at the Centre, about aid, poverty, the law and trade.

Our fragile democracy will not hold long if people are the uninformed and misinformed. Only liberalised media will create the competition necessary to ensure that people get accurate information. Most important of all, the new government must limit its role in economic activity and allow Kenyans to choose freely what they would rather do to create wealth.

When liberal economists speak of ëthe market', they usually refer to national and international markets, with widely dispersed property rights. But this world was only brought into existence through state-sponsored violenceóthe enclosure laws in 19th century England which destroyed the village commons; the settlement of new lands, in North America and Australia, which overturned the traditional rights of native peoples; the gradual encroachment of national markets on local governance and community-based institutions right around the world.