"If information and knowledge are central to democracy, they are the conditions for development"
About this Quote
Kofi Annan’s line is deceptively calm, the kind of diplomatic sentence that carries a quiet ultimatum. By yoking democracy and development to the same raw material - information and knowledge - he collapses a familiar policy split: politics over here, economics over there. Annan’s intent is to treat literacy, a free press, transparent institutions, and access to data not as “nice to have” rights-talk, but as infrastructure as real as roads and power grids. The subtext is pointed: without an informed public, “democracy” becomes ritual, and without credible knowledge systems, “development” becomes theater.
The phrasing does heavy lifting. “Central to democracy” sounds like civic virtue; “conditions for development” sounds like prerequisite science. He shifts from moral language to operational language, signaling to governments, donors, and multilaterals that ignorance is not merely tragic, it’s strategically disabling. Development fails when citizens can’t scrutinize budgets, when farmers can’t access price information, when health systems can’t track outbreaks, when corruption thrives in darkness. Information is the oxygen that lets accountability burn.
Context matters: Annan’s career sits at the intersection of post-Cold War democratization, globalization, and the UN’s push toward measurable targets (from the Millennium Development Goals onward). In that era, “development” increasingly meant metrics, governance, and capacity - not just aid flows. Read that way, the quote is a warning against technocratic shortcuts and authoritarian “growth” narratives: progress that can’t be questioned, audited, or understood by the public is brittle, and usually captured by the powerful.
The phrasing does heavy lifting. “Central to democracy” sounds like civic virtue; “conditions for development” sounds like prerequisite science. He shifts from moral language to operational language, signaling to governments, donors, and multilaterals that ignorance is not merely tragic, it’s strategically disabling. Development fails when citizens can’t scrutinize budgets, when farmers can’t access price information, when health systems can’t track outbreaks, when corruption thrives in darkness. Information is the oxygen that lets accountability burn.
Context matters: Annan’s career sits at the intersection of post-Cold War democratization, globalization, and the UN’s push toward measurable targets (from the Millennium Development Goals onward). In that era, “development” increasingly meant metrics, governance, and capacity - not just aid flows. Read that way, the quote is a warning against technocratic shortcuts and authoritarian “growth” narratives: progress that can’t be questioned, audited, or understood by the public is brittle, and usually captured by the powerful.
Quote Details
| Topic | Knowledge |
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