Features

Redefining ageing in Sri Lanka

Published

4 weeks ago

2026/08/28

by Prof. M. W. Amarasiri de Silva

I have often pondered the factors that have allowed me to reach the age of 78, a milestone that stands in stark contrast to the shorter lifespans of the generations before me, with my father passing away at 68 and my grandfather at just 49. It is both a humbling and fascinating realisation to know that I am currently the longest-living person in my family’s known lineage, yet this milestone naturally invites a deeper reflection on how best to account for such a distinct disparity. A closer look at our familial history reveals the stark realities of earlier eras: my grandfather passed away in 1931, shortly before my father’s marriage, and my father ultimately succumbed to thrombosis in 1974. Yet here I am, decades later, still going strong at 78. Solving this puzzle of longevity requires looking beyond mere chance to consider the powerful interplay of generational advances in public health, modern cardiovascular medicine, shifting dietary and lifestyle habits, and the gradual reduction of environmental stressors across the decades. How, then, do these converging historical and medical shifts help us truly make sense of such a remarkable generational transformation?

Sri Lanka’s demographic journey

For more than a century, Sri Lanka’s demographic and epidemiological journey have served as a global paradigm for what can be accomplished when a nation prioritises social investment over raw economic output. Long before the term human development index gained currency in international policy circles, our island had already begun laying the groundwork for a public health system that was radically egalitarian in its design and astonishingly effective in its execution. In the decades immediately preceding and following independence, the narrative surrounding Sri Lanka’s medical achievements was anchored in the heroic conquest of acute mortality.

The rapid expansion of a free, state-funded medical network, the aggressive eradication of endemic malaria through widespread spraying and vector management, the introduction of universal childhood immunisations, and the relentless lowering of maternal and infant mortality rates collectively transformed a post-colonial tropical society into an outlier of longevity. When post-independence health planners first measured the life expectancy of the average Sri Lankan citizen in the mid-twentieth century, a newborn child could expect to live barely past fifty years. Today, robust demographic data confirms that average life expectancy in Sri Lanka has surged to nearly seventy-eight years, with women routinely living past seventy-nine—a figure that stands head and shoulders above our South Asian neighbours and rivals the health profiles of many high-income Western nations.

Yet, this extraordinary victory over acute infectious disease and early death has brought Sri Lanka face to face with a second, far more insidious health crisis. The very success of our twentieth-century public health campaigns ensured that millions of citizens survived childhood and mid-life infections, only to age into an environment increasingly characterised by urbanisation, dietary shifts, sedentary occupations, and psycho-social stress. As a direct consequence, the island’s disease burden has undergone a dramatic structural flip. Non-communicable diseases—specifically type 2 diabetes mellitus, essential hypertension, ischemic heart disease, cerebrovascular accidents, chronic kidney disease, and various forms of malignancy—now account for more than eighty percent of all deaths nationwide. For much of the past forty years, our healthcare infrastructure struggled to adapt to this shifting terrain. The legacy system, designed primarily to treat sudden, acute episodes of illness like respiratory infections, dysentery, or acute trauma, applied that same reactive logic to chronic condition management. Patients were conditioned to seek medical intervention only after a physical crisis had manifested—when severe retrosternal chest pain signalled a myocardial infarction, when unmanaged hyperglycaemia caused irreparable blurred vision or peripheral gangrene, or when a sudden ischemic stroke left a family patriarch or matriarch permanently paralysed. That era of reactive, crisis-driven medicine is finally ending, yielding to a quiet but profound revolution in how health is monitored, preserved, and restored.

Age of paradigm shift

We are entering the age of paradigm shift powered by the convergence of early molecular diagnostics, low-cost wearable health technologies, point-of-care digital sensors, minimally invasive surgical techniques, and advanced interventional cardiology. Modern clinical science is moving decisively away from the blunt rescue operations of the past toward a model of continuous, predictive risk management. Rather than waiting for organs to fail or arterial walls to rupture, contemporary medicine seeks to identify biological vulnerabilities at the cellular and metabolic level long before a single outward symptom appears. In doing so, it is not merely adding passive years to the human lifespan; it is fundamentally altering the biological trajectory of human aging in Sri Lanka, preserving physical autonomy, cognitive clarity, and productive vitality well into the twilight years.

To fully grasp the magnitude of this transformation, one must examine the devastating trajectory of type 2 diabetes in South Asia and how new diagnostic and monitoring tools are systematically dismantling its reign. For generations, metabolic disease was understood as an inevitable accompaniment of aging or an unavoidable genetic fate. South Asian populations possess a well-documented genetic predisposition toward central adiposity and insulin resistance at significantly lower body mass index thresholds than their Western counterparts. Historically, diabetes was detected through basic fasting blood sugar tests administered only when a patient presented with classic symptoms such as excessive thirst, frequent urination, or unexplained weight loss. By the time those symptoms emerged, however, subtle metabolic damage had already been accumulating quietly within the body for a decade or more. Microvascular damage to the retina and kidney glomeruli, along with macrovascular stiffening of the coronary and carotid arteries, had already taken root.

Timeline rewritten

Modern diagnostic protocols have completely rewritten this timeline. The widespread clinical adoption of Glycated Haemoglobin testing, alongside advanced assays measuring fasting insulin and homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance, now allows clinicians to spot subtle metabolic dysregulation long before blood glucose levels breach the threshold of clinical diabetes or even standard prediabetes. Doctors can now inform a forty-year-old patient that while their blood sugar appears superficially normal on a standard panel, their pancreas is hyper-secreting insulin to clear that glucose—a clear warning sign that metabolic exhaustion is looming five to ten years down the road.

Even more transformative than early laboratory screening is the rapid miniaturisation and commercialization of personal monitoring technology, most notably Continuous Glucose Monitors. These small, water-resistant sensors, affixed painlessly to the upper arm, utilise microscopic filaments embedded in interstitial fluid to continuously record glucose concentrations twenty-four hours a day. Through wireless telemetry, they stream real-time glycaemic data directly to a user’s smartphone. For the first time in medical history, the invisible dynamics of human metabolism are rendered instantly visible to the individual. A user in Colombo or Kandy wearing a continuous monitor no longer must guess how a heavy lunch of refined white rice, a late-night sweet meat, or a forty-minute brisk walk affects their blood chemistry. They can observe the precise glycaemic spike in real time and watch how physical activity accelerates glucose clearance into muscle tissue.

This immediate biofeedback loop transforms the patient from a passive recipient of quarterly doctor’s orders into an empowered, active manager of their own biology. For individuals in the early prediabetic spectrum, continuous visibility provides the behavioural trigger required to implement targeted dietary modifications, stress management, and exercise routines that can completely arrest or reverse the progression toward overt diabetes. For those already living with diagnosed diabetes, continuous monitoring paired with modern pharmacotherapy—such as SGLT-2 inhibitors and GLP-1 receptor agonists that not only manage glucose but directly protect renal and cardiac tissue—drastically dampens dangerous glycaemic variability. By preventing severe spikes and nocturnal hypoglycaemic crashes, these technologies protect the delicate microvascular bed of the kidneys and eyes, virtually eliminating the tragic secondary complications of blindness and end-stage renal disease that historically plagued aging Sri Lankans.

A parallel revolution

A parallel revolution is unfolding in the management of systemic hypertension, the proverbial silent killer responsible for most stroke deaths and heart failure hospitalizations in our country. Hypertension is notoriously insidious because elevated arterial pressure causes no physical discomfort until catastrophic vascular damage occurs. For decades, the standard method for diagnosing hypertension was an opportunistic blood pressure reading taken with a manual sphygmomanometer during a sporadic visit to a hospital OPD or private dispensary. This method was notoriously fraught with diagnostic error. Patients frequently suffered from white-coat hypertension, where the stress of being in a clinical setting artificially elevated their reading, leading to over-prescription of medication. Conversely, others suffered from masked hypertension, where normal clinic readings concealed dangerously high blood pressure spikes during routine working hours or sleep.

The widespread availability of affordable, clinical-grade digital blood pressure monitors, smart wristbands, and ambulatory blood pressure cuffs has rendered sporadic clinic readings obsolete. Individuals can now capture comprehensive, multi-day home blood pressure profiles that accurately reflect their cardiovascular reality across morning, evening, and resting states. Automated smart wearables can detect subtle arterial stiffness and wave velocity trends, alerting users to early vascular aging long before persistent resting hypertension becomes established.

The clinical payoff of catching mild blood pressure elevations in their earliest phases is immense. Early lifestyle interventions, such as dietary sodium restriction, increased potassium intake through local produce, weight management, and low-dose antihypertensive agents like ACE inhibitors or calcium channel blockers, can easily reset arterial pressure back to optimal ranges. Maintaining arterial elasticity over decades prevents the hypertrophy of the left ventricle of the heart, preserves the delicate filtration barriers of the renal capillaries, and shields the cerebral vasculature from micro-aneurysms. Consequently, the incidence of devastating haemorrhagic strokes and vascular-dementia-induced cognitive decline—conditions that historically stripped elderly Sri Lankans of their dignity and independence—is declining among populations with access to early vascular management.

Interventional advancements

When cardiovascular disease does breach these early preventive barriers, modern surgical and interventional advancements ensure that an acute cardiac event no longer carries the death sentence or permanent disability that it did a generation ago. The field of interventional cardiology has evolved from major open operations toward extraordinarily precise, minimally invasive procedures. Half a century ago, a severe coronary artery blockage required open-heart surgery, complete with a sternotomy, heart-lung bypass machinery, weeks of intensive hospital care, and months of painful recovery. Today, through advanced transradial cardiac catheterization, an interventional cardiologist can enter the arterial system via a tiny puncture in the patient’s wrist under local anaesthesia. Utilising high-resolution fluoroscopic imaging, intra-vascular ultrasound, and fractional flow reserve technology, the cardiologist can navigate directly into the coronary vessels, clear the occluding atherosclerotic plaque, and deploy state-of-the-art drug-eluting stents to restore full myocardial perfusion within hours.

Moreover, surgical innovations have dramatically expanded the upper age limits of who can safely undergo complex structural heart procedures. Historically, an elderly patient in their late seventies or eighties suffering from severe aortic valve stenosis was considered far too frail to survive the trauma of traditional valve replacement surgery. Today, the advent of Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement allows cardiac teams to deliver a fully functional biological valve through a femoral catheter directly into the heart while it continues to beat. Similarly, electrophysiological breakthroughs—including tiny, leadless pacemakers implanted directly into the cardiac chambers and sophisticated implantable cardioverter-defibrillators—continuously monitor cardiac rhythm, firing micro-electrical shocks to instantaneously terminate fatal ventricular arrhythmias without any human intervention. These mechanical and surgical triumphs mean that a cardiac diagnosis in late life no longer signals an irreversible descent into bedridden invalidity. Instead, septuagenarians and octogenarians are routinely restored to functional physical capacity, walking, traveling, and living independently.

The convergence of these preventive diagnostic tools, wearable monitoring gadgets, metabolic therapies, and minimally invasive cardiac surgeries is driving a profound paradigm shift in how we conceptualise the aging process itself. For centuries, biological aging was viewed as an inescapable, uniform process of decay characterised by progressive frailty, multi-organ breakdown, and loss of functional independence. Today, geroscience—the study of the biological mechanisms driving aging—has demonstrated that the physical decline traditionally associated with old age is largely the cumulative result of unmanaged, low-grade chronic pathology. By systematically neutralising chronic hyperglycaemia, hypertension, sub-clinical inflammation, and vascular occlusion early in life, modern medicine is successfully decoupling chronological age from physiological decline.

Conceptual shift

This conceptual shift is best reflected in the growing clinical focus on healthy life expectancy, or health span, as opposed to raw lifespan. Life expectancy merely measures the total number of years an individual lives from birth to death; health span measures the number of those years lived in full physical health, free from chronic disease, functional disability, or severe cognitive impairment. Historically, even as Sri Lanka’s total life expectancy expanded during the late twentieth century, our average health span lagged significantly behind, creating a painful decade-long gap at the end of life spent battling chronic invalidity, reliance on family caregivers, and heavy financial burdens from constant hospitalizations.

By pushing the onset of chronic disease into the extreme final years of life—a phenomenon known in epidemiology as the compression of morbidity—modern health technologies enable citizens to preserve their vitality, cognitive sharpness, and muscular mobility well into their seventies and eighties. Older adults are no longer forced by physical frailty into early social and economic isolation. Instead, they remain active, productive participants in their communities, continuing to teach, write, advise, manage businesses, and contribute their accumulated wisdom to the nation’s social and economic capital. Aging in contemporary Sri Lanka is gradually ceasing to be defined by decline and dependency, evolving instead into a prolonged phase of active, self-directed life.

However, as we celebrate these triumphs of science and engineering, we must confront a critical societal question: how can Sri Lanka ensure that this revolution in longevity is democratised across all segments of our population, rather than remaining an exclusive privilege reserved for the urban affluent? Advanced continuous glucose monitors, high-end smart wearables, drug-eluting stents, and specialized interventional care carry significant financial costs. In a nation currently navigating complex economic recovery and tight fiscal constraints within the public health sector, there is a very real danger that a widening technological divide could create a two-tiered aging experience—where wealthy urban citizens enjoy healthy longevity while low-income and rural populations remain vulnerable to unmanaged chronic disease and premature death.

Bridging the gap

Bridging this gap requires an intentional, forward-looking public health strategy. The Ministry of Health’s ongoing expansion of Healthy Lifestyle Centres across island-wide primary healthcare networks represents an important step in the right direction. These centres must be equipped not merely with basic blood pressure cuffs and weighing scales, but with digital point-of-care diagnostic tools capable of measuring HbA1c, lipid profiles, and renal function markers instantaneously in remote rural clinics. Furthermore, public health policy must leverage our national mobile telecommunications infrastructure to deploy community-level digital health tracking. Telemedicine platforms, automated SMS health reminders, and subsidized digital monitoring devices distributed to high-risk individuals in rural agricultural and industrial districts can democratize preventive care, catching metabolic and cardiovascular risks in tea plantation workers and paddy farmers just as effectively as in Colombo executives.

Ultimately, the story of health in Sri Lanka has always been one of extraordinary resilience and institutional ingenuity. Just as our public health pioneers in the mid-twentieth century proved to the world that a developing nation could eradicate tropical diseases and achieve high life expectancy through free public education and universal healthcare, our contemporary medical system must now demonstrate that preventive longevity can be made accessible to all. The tools to detect disease before it strikes, to monitor bodily health in real time, and to surgically repair failing organs are already in our hands. By integrating these modern technologies into our public health fabric, Sri Lanka can ensure that the gift of long life is matched by the gift of enduring health, productivity, and human dignity for generations to come.

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Features

Defend civic space upon which peace is built

Published

14 hours ago

2026/09/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

by Jehan Perera

International Peace Day was observed on 21 September. It finds Sri Lanka with a genuine achievement to record and a demanding test to meet. The UN’s theme this year was “Invest in Peace: For Everyone, Everywhere, Every Day.” It also honoured the “everyday architects of peace”—people driving local action and building a lasting peace from the ground up. In the 2026 Global Peace Index, Sri Lanka rose 30 places, from 97th to 67th among 163 countries. Over the same period, global peacefulness declined for the twelfth consecutive year to its lowest level since the index began, and South Asia suffered the sharpest regional deterioration. The test is whether the government will protect the civic space in which those architects of peace work.

Sri Lanka’s improvement is real and deserves acknowledgement. In this year’s review, issued a few weeks ago, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights acknowledged progress in the form of action against corruption, arrests and investigations linked to political killings, enforced disappearances and the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks, and continued official denunciation of racism. A ranking, however, records conditions at a particular moment. It does not guarantee that they will last. Sustainable peace will depend on three factors. These are whether the government addresses the unresolved causes of conflict, whether it strengthens accountability for past and present abuses, and whether it protects the civic space in which peace is built from below. On the first two the record is incomplete. On the third, the draft NGO law threatens to weaken the very organisations that press for the other two.

What holds Sri Lanka back from a higher place are the same things that fed the war at home and also feed international conflict that rages elsewhere in the world. These are racism or ethnic nationalism that is narrow-focused, corruption and lawlessness. Equality, accountability and the rule of law are their remedies. The present government has committed itself to these, and is a significant improvement over governments of the recent past. But these pillars are not held up by governments alone. Peace is made in villages, workplaces and university campuses. It is made by families who insist on the truth about their disappeared, by journalists and lawyers who expose abuse, and by community organisations that bring Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese into practical cooperation.

Unfinished Work

The UN High Commissioner’s report to the current Human Rights Council session, covering October 2025 to July 2026, shows how much remains to be done. The Prevention of Terrorism Act is still being applied, producing arbitrary arrests and long detention without charge. The report calls for a moratorium pending repeal and for the release of long-term detainees. Military-occupied land has not been released, memorialisation lacks support, and tensions over land and religious sites persist. The Batticaloa district illustrates how such problems endure. In the past three years, two Presidents, Ranil Wickremesinghe and Anura Kumara Dissanayake, have visited and instructed that the dispute over grazing land in Mailaththamadu and Mathavanai be resolved. It is a dispute between Tamil cattle farmers and outside Sinhala cultivators, and it has not been resolved. When two Presidents issue instructions and nothing changes, the fault lies in the machinery of State. An unresolved dispute does not stand still. It hardens into the next grievance.

Accountability shows the same pattern. The report documents torture and deaths in custody, and surveillance and intimidation of activists, journalists and civil society. Serious cases remain stalled for years, among them the killing of seventeen aid workers of Action Contre la Faim in Muttur two decades ago. Sharper still is the case of the Eastern University refugee camp at Vantharamoolai, where in 1990 the army took away 158 persons in a single day. They were never seen again. The camp’s officer-in-charge, Dr T. Jayasingam, later Vice Chancellor of the university, identified the officers responsible. More than three decades on, those officers have not been questioned. These cases are still remembered because families, survivors and independent witnesses have refused to let them be forgotten. Meanwhile several commissions of inquiry have completed their investigations but nothing further has happened.

What South Africa, Argentina and other post-conflict societies have found indispensable are four pillars of what is called “Transitional Justice” which are truth, accountability, reparations and non-recurrence. In Sri Lanka’s circumstances, truth means credible, independent investigation of what happened to the disappeared, and support for memorialisation. Accountability means prosecuting Muttur, Vantharamoolai and comparable cases, and removing credibly accused persons from senior office. Reparations mean compensation for victims and the return of military-held land. Non-recurrence means repealing the Prevention of Terrorism Act, releasing those held under it in the meantime, and resolving local disputes such as Mailaththamadu before delay hardens them. A country that buries its past does not escape it. The past returns in the next generation.

Civil Society

It is against this background that the draft NGO law is most troubling. The proposed legislation contains sweeping provisions for State oversight and control of civil society organisations. Among these are enforcing a licensing requirement on NGOs, which is to be renewed every three years, and severe penalties for not submitting reports on time, or for spending on emergency flood relief (for instance) when the NGOs mandate is peacebuilding (as an example) with possible sanctions including deregistration and having to shut down. Civil society groups have warned that it would confer excessive discretion over their registration and operations. Officials in Sri Lanka have abused such powers in the past. Additional power without effective checks invites further abuse. Sound regulation would have clear criteria for registration, an independent registrar and a right of appeal to the courts. What cannot be justified is a regime in which registration becomes a licence to be withheld from organisations that scrutinise policy, expose abuses or advocate for the rights of citizens.

Democracy is based on checks and balances. Those who press for accountability are part of those checks. The contradiction is plain. A government that has pledged accountability, equality and the rule of law ought not to be preparing to weaken the very organisations that press for their fulfilment. The organisations most exposed are those working on disappearances, land, memorialisation and reconciliation in the North and East, where the State’s record is weakest and the need for independent witnesses greatest. Silencing them would not remove the grievances they document. It would remove the channel through which those grievances are addressed peacefully. The government appears to be relenting, which is welcome, but a pause is not a withdrawal. The bill should be withdrawn and any replacement drafted in genuine consultation with those it would govern.

Investment in peace as called for by the UN in its International Peace Day theme implies commitment over time, with returns that come slowly. Sri Lanka’s 30-place rise on the Global Peace Index is a first dividend and nothing more. It can be built upon only if the government matches its commitments with action: withdrawing or fundamentally redrafting the NGO law, repealing or suspending the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and bringing Muttur, Vantharamoolai and Mailaththamadu to resolution. A higher place in a global index is not a certificate of success. Sri Lanka’s higher ranking is an encouraging start, but it will endure only if the space in which citizens speak, question and organise is protected. Peace is built from below, and a government that is serious about it will treat civil society as a partner rather than a threat.

Features

Africa is buying: Sri Lanka must start selling

Published

14 hours ago

2026/09/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

A call to Sri Lankan exporters and agencies: Can Sri Lanka compete with China and India in Africa?

By Kana V. Kananathan
Former Ambassador

Sri Lanka has spent decades concentrating its exports on traditional markets in Europe, North America and Asia. Yet across the Indian Ocean lies a rapidly expanding market that remains significantly underdeveloped by Sri Lankan exporters: Africa.

The opportunity is not theoretical. Sri Lanka already exports packaging, textiles, rubber products, pharmaceuticals, paper, machinery and electrical goods to African markets. The question is whether these modest beginnings can be transformed into a serious export strategy—and whether Sri Lanka can compete against the enormous commercial presence of China and India.

The answer is yes—but Sri Lanka must compete differently.

Kenya: Gateway to East Africa

Kenya should be the starting point.

Sri Lanka exported approximately US$32.08 million to Kenya in 2025, while importing US$11.41 million. But US$32 million is tiny compared with the opportunity: Kenya imported more than US$24 billion in 2025. Even a 1% share of that market would represent nearly US$240 million in annual exports.

And the commercial base already exists. Sri Lanka’s 2025 exports to Kenya included approximately US$9.99 million in paper and paperboard products, US$9.73 million in knitted fabrics, US$3.64 million in pharmaceuticals, US$1.24 million in rubber products and US$1.20 million in machinery.

Kenya’s import structure is equally revealing. In the third quarter of 2025, industrial supplies represented 34.4% of imports, machinery and capital equipment 19.2%, food and beverages 9.0%, and consumer goods 7.3%. The opportunity for Sri Lanka, therefore, extends well beyond consumer goods—we can become a supplier to African industry.

But competition is fierce. Asia supplied around 70% of Kenya’s imports in 2025, with imports from China rising 16.5% and those from India 11.3%.

Sri Lanka cannot challenge China and India across every product category. Nor should it try. We must target sectors where quality, specialisation, reliability, technical capability, smaller production runs and flexibility matter more than simply offering the lowest price.

Where Can Sri Lanka Compete?

Packaging is an obvious starting point. Cartons, boxes, bags and labels are already among Sri Lanka’s exports to Kenya. Importantly, some Sri Lankan companies operating in Kenya are themselves importing these products from Sri Lanka. The market already exists; the challenge is to scale it.

As Africa’s food-processing, pharmaceutical, apparel and consumer-goods industries expand, demand for sophisticated packaging will grow with them. Sri Lanka already possesses the manufacturing capability and industry experience to capture a larger share.

Industrial rubber products, tyres, gloves and specialised rubber components offer another opportunity where Sri Lanka has established manufacturing expertise.

The apparel supply chain is equally promising. Rather than competing directly with African garment factories, Sri Lanka can supply fabrics, elastics, labels, packaging and specialised textile inputs.

Some Sri Lankan apparel manufacturing and export companies already established in Kenya, Togo, Ghana and Ethiopia are importing several of these inputs from Sri Lanka. The supply chain, therefore, already exists. The next step is to move beyond supplying Sri Lankan-owned factories and become a competitive input supplier to the wider African apparel industry.

Other sectors deserving systematic market development include pharmaceuticals and medical consumables, processed foods, biscuits and confectionery, coconut products, cinnamon and spices, electrical products and cables, industrial chemicals, ceramics, light engineering, agricultural equipment and food-processing machinery.

Sri Lanka should also look beyond physical goods. IT, fintech, banking technology, engineering, healthcare, hospitality management and professional services largely escape the freight disadvantage confronting merchandise exports.

The Tariff Problem Can Become an Opportunity

Market access cannot be discussed without tariffs.The East African Community applies a Common External Tariff with bands of 0%, 10%, 25% and 35%, while certain sensitive products attract still higher protection. Simply filling containers in Colombo with finished consumer goods will therefore not always be commercially competitive.

But that obstacle points towards a bigger opportunity: manufacture in Africa.

Sri Lankan businesses could export intermediate materials while undertaking final assembly, manufacturing, processing or packaging in Kenya. Packaging companies could establish converting plants; electrical manufacturers could assemble locally; pharmaceutical companies could explore manufacturing or packaging partnerships; and food companies could undertake final processing closer to consumers.

Kenya would then become more than an export destination. It could become Sri Lanka’s manufacturing and distribution gateway into East and Central Africa.

With the East African Community now comprising eight partner states and extending geographically from the Indian Ocean towards the Atlantic, establishing a regional presence is increasingly more important than viewing each African country in isolation.

West Africa Cannot Be Ignored

Sri Lanka simultaneously needs a West African strategy.

Ghana offers potential as an English-speaking commercial gateway and host of the AfCFTA Secretariat. Nigeria, with its enormous population and consumer economy, should be approached as a major market in its own right, despite its greater regulatory, currency and operational complexity.

ECOWAS tariff bands of 0%, 5%, 10%, 20% and 35% again make product selection critical. Sri Lanka should concentrate on products with sufficient differentiation and margins to absorb freight, tariffs and distributor costs.

Pharmaceuticals demonstrate both the opportunity and the challenge. Nigeria imported approximately US$766 million in pharmaceuticals in 2025, with India supplying roughly US$394 million and China US$131 million. Ghana imported approximately US$301 million, with India supplying about US$140 million.

Sri Lanka cannot simply offer another generic product and expect to beat India on price. We must identify specialised products, reliable supply arrangements, partnerships and, where commercially justified, local production or packaging.

Stop Promoting Sectors—Identify Products

Sri Lanka now needs an Africa Export Opportunity Study based on individual products, not broad sectors.

The Export Development Board, Foreign Ministry, chambers and private sector should jointly identify 15–20 priority products. For each product, Sri Lanka should calculate the HS code, African annual import demand, principal suppliers, Chinese and Indian market shares, applicable duties, freight from Colombo, regulatory requirements, distributor margins and final landed price.

That will tell us where Sri Lanka genuinely has a competitive advantage.

The Commercial Test

Before spending resources promoting a product, apply one simple test:

African import demand + Sri Lankan production capability + tariff + freight + distributor margin + regulatory cost = final landed competitiveness against China, India and local African production.

Only products that pass this test should receive concentrated export-promotion resources.

This would move Sri Lanka away from exhibitions, delegations and general discussions towards what ultimately matters: specific products, specific buyers, specific distributors and actual export orders.

Give Our Missions Targets

Commercial diplomacy must become results-driven. The Government should set clear annual trade and investment targets for every Sri Lankan mission in Africa.

Missions should be evaluated not merely on diplomatic activity, but on buyers and distributors identified, business introductions made, investments facilitated, market barriers resolved and measurable exports generated.

In a competitive Africa, our missions must become active economic frontlines not merely diplomatic outposts.

A practical strategy could operate through three commercial gateways: Nairobi for East and Central Africa, Accra for selected West African markets and Lagos for Nigeria.

Sri Lanka’s total exports of goods and services reached approximately US$17.25 billion in 2025. Capturing even a small additional share of Africa’s enormous import market could, therefore, make a meaningful contribution to export earnings, investment and foreign-exchange generation.

Africa Will Not Wait

Sri Lankan exporters must stop looking at Africa as a distant or difficult market and start treating it as a strategic growth market.

We cannot compete with China and India on scale, but we can compete on quality, specialisation, flexibility and reliability. Exporters must identify country-specific opportunities, establish strong local distributors, build partnerships with African businesses and use Sri Lankan companies already operating on the continent as gateways into regional supply chains.

Where freight and tariffs weaken competitiveness, businesses must be prepared to move towards local assembly, joint ventures and manufacturing in Africa. Exporters cannot do it alone. They need aggressive, measurable and results-driven commercial diplomacy from Sri Lanka’s missions.

Africa is buying. Its markets are being captured now. Sri Lanka must stop watching from the sidelines. We must enter, compete, build our presence and secure our share.

(Ambassador Kana Kananathan is a businessman, Diplomat, lobbyist and an expert in African affairs, with over four decades of experience on the African continent. A long-time resident of Africa, he served as Sri Lanka’s envoy to Uganda and Kenya, with concurrent accreditation to 22 African Nations, and was the permanent representative to UN Habitat and UN environmental Programme. Over the years, he has been the Elections Monitor across the continent, working closely with African governments, and built enduring partnerships with African leaders. He also served as Economic and Investments Advisor to former President Professor Alpha Condé of the Republic of Guinea)

Features

Memories and Midnight Magic: Recipe for a perfect 31st Night dance

Published

14 hours ago

2026/09/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

The heart of a great 31st Night dance is memory, and memories come rushing back when those 70s, 80s and 90s golden oldies begin to play — those timeless tunes that make revellers, young and old, rush to the floor and dance the night away.

A perfect 31st Night is not just a party. It is a journey. A journey through time.

The music should flow like a love story. Start slow, start soft. Let couples glide into a waltz for romance. Let the floor come alive with a twist, a rock ‘n’ roll, a jive. Let nostalgia build with beautiful sing-along oldies generally associated with a New Year’s Eve dance.

This is the art that many of our entertainers seem to have forgotten.

The final hour, before midnight, is sacred. It should be collective energy at its peak. The entire crowd, on the dance floor, linking arms, swaying together, singing, at the top of their voices, those sing-along favourites.

Yes, I’m referring to those immortal, nostalgic favourites that unite the world: ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ ‘You Are My Sunshine,’ ‘When The Saints Go Marching In,’ ‘Roll Out The Barrel,’ ‘Celebration,’ ‘She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain,’ ‘Happy Days Are Here Again,’ and so many more.

One wonders if some of our modern entertainers have even heard of these nostalgia anthems that traditionally lead up to the dawning of the New Year! This is not just music; this is ritual.

Then comes THE moment: Lights dim. Music pauses. A hush falls. The countdown begins — 10, 9, 8… — hugs, wishes, tears of joy, and then … ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ Hands crossed, voices united, bidding farewell to the old and welcoming the new. That moment makes or breaks the night.

Here is the truth that many genuine 31st Night revellers feel but hesitate to say — an overdose of baila music at New Year’s Eve events is NOT welcome.

Of course, baila is required. Baila is our Sri Lankan heartbeat! But a 31st Night dance is for everyone.

When it’s ONLY baila, the twist and rock n’ roll lovers, the waltz kings and queens feel left out. And they are the very people who MADE nostalgia! They are the die-hard revellers who have kept the 31st Night spirit alive for decades.

A family mentioned to me that they went along with friends for a 31st Night dance, in the city, to usher in 2026, and were thoroughly disappointed with the setup.

The bands in attendance, they said, failed to generate the excitement generally associated with a 31st Night event.

If given a free hand, the music at certain Colombo venues will be mostly baila, and that is going to disappoint many. Some are already worried that it will be just a baila scene this year, as well.

A memorable 31st Night respects all rhythms … yes, a waltz for romance, a twist and rock n’ roll for that 60s magic, a cha-cha, a slow foxtrot, and then the baila, after the countdown anthem.

That balance is what makes it inclusive, classy, and truly fun-filled.

Organisers, especially in Colombo, should keep this in mind: let it be 70% nostalgia – Western, and 30% baila, with the last hour left for pure baila madness, after the New Year is in!

Organisers must work out the programme for their 31st Night and instruct the entertainers to follow those instructions. The band should not dictate the night; the spirit of nostalgia should.

This New Year, let’s give Colombo what it truly wants — memories, midnight magic, and music for every soul on the floor.

Let’s dance into 2027 with class.