WE CAN DO declares Nana Akufo-Addo, as he calls for Ghana to develop ?indigenous capitalists?
Ghana must adopt a ?can do, will do? attitude towards economic growth, the Foreign Minister has said, urging optimism, idealism, patriotism, progress and unity of purpose in Ghana?s development efforts.
?Nations are built by people,? Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo declared to a packed Great Hall at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science in Technology in Kumasi Wednesday night.
Over 2,000 people had crammed the KNUST venue to hear him speak, including Vice Chancellor Kwasi Andam who chaired the event and Pro Vice Chancellor Kwasi Kwako Adarkwa.
Nana Akufo-Addo addressed the crowd for well over 90 minutes, after which there was an energetic question and answer session; the Minister?s message really seemed to have struck a cord with his audience.
?For an epitaph, let us write upon the gravestone of Ghana?s repressive and impoverished past, with absolute confidence in its fulfilment, these words: ?We are determined to succeed. We are on course to revive that can-do, will-do spirit. And, God willing, we shall triumph,?? he said.
The Foreign Minister proposed the concept of what he dubbed ?indigenous capitalism? as the answer to more effective development in our country. ?It is a programme we need to look nowhere beyond our own heritage and our recent progress in order to envision and understand.
?By indigenous capitalism I am talking about the kind of wealth accumulation that ensures no one has to go hungry, that ensures the greatest number of the population actively participates and benefits from economic growth. The kind of capitalism that is protective of the vulnerable, and generous in its calculation of the bottom line.?
Once democracy has been established and taken root, it will quickly flounder if the wealth is not spread, was the basic premise of Nana Akufo-Addo?s proposal. ?There is only one way to ensure effectively the success of multiparty democracy in the midst of poverty: that way is to grant respectfully a cut of the cake to those who traditionally bear the burden of economic development ? but that slice can?t be a handout; it has to be a genuine invitation to a place at the table.?
He said that distributive justice could not be realised if people lived in fear of having their wealth or their portion taken away from them; but stressed that the equipment and resources for Ghana?s effective development and governance lie firmly within Ghana itself.
?We shouldn?t need to hear from Transparency International what is good governance. The very tools of economic empowerment have to be made available to everyone; so no one needs to stand in a public queue for a handout, but is instead entitled to what it takes to take care of his and her own patch.? In a speech that had strong tones of nationalism and self-motivation of the Ghanaian?s capacity to endure and ability to deliver, the Foreign Minister explained further his concept, ?An indigenous capitalist believes in broadening the marketplace; it trusts in our human resource and initiative and develops that initiative. We cheat ourselves if we buy the lie that we need outsiders to teach us regional cooperation and entrepreneurial initiative. Even under the disincentives of colonial administration, our farmers moved this nation from a country that never saw a cocoa pod to the world?s leading exporter of cocoa inside of 22 years. ?
Keeping it inspirational, he continued, ?And yet we listen with folded hands to those who would tell us that Africans lack the power of long term commitment to hard work, that we lack the innate technical ingenuity and entrepreneurial initiatives to build a strong economy. We have spent our population?s strengths for a few hundred years building other great economies, both voluntarily and under relentless duress. It?s time now to build our own, and we need go no further than ourselves as a large family to achieve the greatness to which we aspire.?
The speech was very strong on Nana Akufo-Addo?s own philosophy and that of his party, the New Patriotic Party.
?The Danquah-Busia philosophy defines prosperity broadly and horizontally,? he told his audience, who sat attentively all throughout the 26-page lecture. ?We see good health, universal quality education, vocational skills training which capitalises on local needs and interests, as among the necessary tools of economic empowerment.?
Nana Akufo-Addo found it unacceptable that Ghana gets 5% of the value of gold exports, as reported by UNCTAD last September.
?We need to develop our own particular form of economic empowerment of the Ghanaian,? he told the strong gathering of intellectuals and the nation?s future leaders.
In pushing for Ghana to chart the path of building indigenous capitalists, the MP for Abuakwa South said Ghana?s future paradigm must be charted by marrying the concept of Economic Nationalism (the French call it Economic Patriotism) and Globalisation.
?We are committed to being a fairplay partner of WTO, but that does not stop us from looking after our own, first and foremost.? He cited diverse countries such as the United States, Zimbabwe, Japan, France and Malaysia as examples of how a nation can design economic policies predominantly to suit the growth of indigenous entrepreneurship. ?Economic Patriotism need not be xenophobic,? Nana Akufo-Addo remarked, ?Its strength, however, is determined by the capacity of the local economy to mobilise capital.? The Foreign Minister called for a conscious social effort for Ghana to define its modernity and civilization. ?Ghana is a nation with a rich history and strong sense of identity. Our successful fusion of the traditional and contemporary in many aspects of daily life makes it possible for us to develop our own unique civilization, which will make its own positive contribution to the growth of world civilisation.?
Referring to the role of KNUST to Ghana?s future perspective, Nana Akufo-Addo stated, ?History teaches us that the greatest resource a society can possess is its people,? adding, ?Ghana?s future depends on the accelerated growth of the economy, which is best fed by knowledge, particularly in the fields of science and technology.?
While admitting that the Ministry for Private Sector Development is supporting the transformation of the informal sector, estimated to control at least 80 percent of the work force, he called for a more specific policy devoted to that transformation, aggressively implemented through the decentralised system of government.
Highlighting the threat of a huge informal sector to Ghana?s social and economic development, Nana Akufo-Addo stated that egalitarian societies are not, in fact, built by the state. ?They are built by usually a state-run system that provides a safety net of welfarism. But, fundamentally, that welfare system is provided by the people themselves ? through taxation and national insurance contributions. Thus, when you consider that out of a population of over 20 million, less than one million Ghanaians are SSNIT contributors, then you begin to have a clear picture about the size of the informal sector and how necessary it is to bring that dominant sector of our economy into our ?formal? arrangements. The solution may not be simple, but it requires a clear cut policy implemented upon the political principle of subsidiarity at the district level, where decisions are taken closer to the target.?
It remains to be seen how far this ideology of indigenous capitalism may be pushed in Ghana.
?Indigenous capitalism encourages more and more of our citizens to become active players in the formal economy. Indigenous capitalism believes in transforming the majority of our people into middle-income earners in the shortest possible time.?
He continued, ?An indigenous capitalist does not believe in keeping a pliable, manipulable mass of discontented grass roots supporters, forever perceiving themselves as underdogs and marginalised, whose only integrity lies in the camaraderie of an underclass free to raise a wahala or in the streets because it has nothing to lose. Ghana?s economic development can only survive if it is inclusive.?
Elaborating further on the concept, ?That inclusiveness is an instinctive feature of our own political culture, it is a defining feature of our indigenous leaders. No one needs to show us how to make one yam go around to every plate in the compound. Nor does anyone need to teach us how indigenous capitalism should work for the people. We know how; our ancestors have taught us; they continue to teach us. And what they teach us, no one can take away.? The rush towards the president of KNUST GRASAG for copies of the Cabinet Minister?s lecture was an obvious indication of how well it was received by the audience.
I am very grateful to the executives of Grasag [Graduate Students Association of Ghana] for the opportunity of this platform to share a few thoughts with you about a topic which has to be of direct, central concern to you ? the future of our nation. Next year we will celebrate the anniversary of the golden jubilee of Ghanaian independence and freedom. It is clearly a good moment for us to pause and take stock of what we have done with our freedom, where we are, and look at where we would like to be in another fifty years. This is my modest contribution to this process of review and prophecy, a contribution of a purely personal nature, and not at all official.
When we left behind the Gold Coast 49 years ago, we had a population of six million, living in an economy with a healthy balance of payments surplus of some ?400 million, a GDP of some $2.5 billion, and an average per capita income of $400. Our economy was dependent on the production and export of raw materials, principally cocoa, gold and timber, whose export proceeds accounted for 90% of our foreign receipts. At the time of independence, we had a strong multiparty parliamentary system of government, with a popular ruling party led by the most charismatic of African politicians, Kwame Nkrumah, and a vigorous opposition led by one of the nation?s foremost intellectuals, Kofi Abrefa Busia, supported outside Parliament by Joseph Boakye Danquah, the father of modern Ghanaian nationalism. The prospects for successful governance and rapid development looked excellent.
Forty years later, we had undergone a whole gamut of experiences, mostly unpleasant ? the enactment of the 1958 Preventive Detention Act; the 1964 transformation of the nation into a one-party state; the coup of 1966 that overthrew the 1st Republic and ushered us into a long period of military rule, interrupted only by the short-lived 2nd and 3rd Republics, a period which has hopefully come to an end with the inauguration of the 4th Republic in January 1993. Authoritarian rule, systematic violations of the human rights of our citizenry, arbitrary seizures of properties, misguided economic policies - those were the unfortunate features of poor governance, for so long our unhappy lot.
Side by side with this degeneration in the quality of our governance came inevitably the marked deterioration of a once promising economy. Economic stagnation, fuelling widespread unemployment and a steep decline in real incomes, prompted a massive exodus of our compatriots who, throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s, sought greener pastures outside our shores as our economy failed to provide opportunities for a rapidly expanding population. At the beginning of the 1990s, average per capita income had fallen to $350 in a population of some 20 million persons.
The collapse of world communism in the late 1980s and of its principal component, the Soviet Union, coupled with an increasingly virile pro-democracy movement in the country, compelled the military government of the PNDC, led by Flt-Lt. J.J. Rawlings, to seek an accommodation with the democratic forces in the nation. The result was the 1992 April Referendum which, in effect, led to a massive rejection by our people of the claims of authoritarian or military rule, and proclaimed overwhelming popular support for an unconditional restoration of constitutional rule, founded on the principles of democratic accountability, respect for human rights and the rule of law. The 4th Republic, operating under the liberal democratic ideals of the 1992 Constitution, was duly inaugurated on 7th January 1993.
This reflected a strong national consensus, which cut across the entire national political landscape, right, left, centre, in favour of building our country on the secure foundations of democratic engagement, rather than on the quixotic uncertainties of one-man rule. Three elections have followed the controversial elections of 1992, the one dubbed ?The Stolen Verdict? ? those of 1996, 2000 and 2004, with that of 2000 being perhaps the most historic, since it represented the first time that a change of government in our nation was effected peacefully through the ballot box, demonstrating the deep commitment of the Ghanaian people to free, accountable government. It also heralded the birth of positive change.
RELAYING THE FOUNDATION So, in Ghana today, we are living the era of positive change. Not the kind of change that threatens the very foundation of existence; not the kind that is promised by the gun and killed by the gun; not the kind that is motivated by hatred and intolerance; not the kind that assaults enterprise and frightens away initiative; not the kind that saps our self-confidence and plunges a bayonet through the heart of patriotism. This change is not a coup d??tat, a mutiny, a putsch, a rebellion, an insurgency, an uprising. What is happening in our country today is not a reactionary change, one that turns the clock back. It is a profound transformation, which is deep and effective, because it is led by pragmatic conservatives driven by little more than love for country, deeper understanding of our people and their current circumstances, with a wider and more intimate retrospective of this promising but tortured nation?s history. An opportunity has been afforded to clear-sighted people, who have a broad mental perspective and the right view of what the future holds for this great and blessed nation that we all call home, to help construct the new Ghana.
History teaches us that the greatest resource a society can possess is its people. It is instructive to note that the very continent that condemned great scientific minds like Giodano Bruno and Galileo Galilei on charges of heresy against Holy Scripture was the same continent that led and drove the Industrial Revolution. And the Industrial Revolution was made possible through the adoption of science and technology. Ghana?s future depends on the accelerated growth of the economy, which is best fed by knowledge, particularly in the fields of science and technology. Thus, in the scheme of things, this university, which bears appropriately the name of the founder of our State, is absolutely crucial to designing and defining Ghana?s future perspective.
Gone are the days when the Kalashnikov stifled the growing autonomy of intellectual inquiry. The breakthrough for intellectual freedom was consolidated with the election of John Agyekum Kufuor as President of the Republic in 2001. Now, it is up to you, the intellectuals, the students of reason, arts and sciences, to stress on the build up ? and by that it is meant the accumulation of knowledge and know-how.
In his seminal essay ?Economic Backwardness in Historic Perspective?, written in 1951, Alexander Gerschenkron seeks to answer the question: ?what does it take for a latecomer country to emulate the development of advanced countries?. His answer is that it should not really matter, to come along later. The key, he points out, lies in an ability to leap the gap of knowledge and practice separating the least developed economy from the advanced. Thus, in our case, we must rather view the gap, however huge it may seem, as an incentive. We must send strong magnetic waves between potential and actual: to create a live tension of spurts of exceptional rates of development and growth. Gerschenkron?s view is that the greater the gap the greater the gain for those who leap it. In arguing that it pays to be late, he points out that the latecomer has the advantage of avoiding mistakes committed by its predecessor. This means latecomers can grow faster than their predecessors. But, Mr Chairman, this task is, at least, as much your institution?s responsibility as it is for those of us in the political leadership. Late growth, needless to say, is best based on the most modern and efficient technology. The lessons from the development of the so-called ?Asian Tigers? are there for all of us to see.
DEVELOPMENT IN FREEDOM
Looking back in the last 49 years, it has been quite a national journey ? eventful no doubt. The question, nevertheless, is this: did it have to be this way? We took turns along the way that should have been avoided. To appreciate the Ghanaian journey so far one must compare it to a road travel from Tema to Gambaga. You start it, cruising on the broad but short motorway of optimism and idealism. But even before you hit the Ofankor barrier, the traffic alone is enough to make a good man despair. Along the way, we have lost a lot of time; we have lost several of our good people; we have stopped to change and patch tyres; we have blown radiators and exhaust pipes; indicated left and turned right along the way causing collision; we have lost patience with other road users; we let the blood flow, motivated purely by road rage; we have jumped the lights; ignored road signs; encountered head-on collisions in our haste to avoid insignificant pot-holes; there has been several diversions; we have met several road works; broken down vehicles; we have stopped to pick up the dead and wounded; sometimes we just drove past fearing it was just another ambush by those who robbed our treasured possession ? freedom ? whilst we slept and dreamed of better days ahead. We have commissioned new and beautiful roads that only lasted less than three years. In short, it has been one rough and tough ride, with the malignant hands of reckless drivers pulling the pillion of modest comfort from beneath us.
But we survived, and you know why? ? because all along that tortuous trek we kept strapped on tightly and strongly the seat-belt of faith ? faith in the indomitable creed that what God or Allah has proposed, no hand of iniquity can decompose. We stayed the course because we remained true to that which was Ghanaian almost a millennium ago; that which was Ghanaian almost fifty years ago; that which is Ghanaian today; and that which will remain inherently Ghanaian tomorrow. And, that thing Ghanaian, Mr Chairman, is nothing but our love for freedom.
I would urge this gathering to spare a moment and take a good look around us to see and feel how strongly this air of freedom has been revived. Positive change is on. We are back to the age where optimism, idealism, patriotism, progress and unity of purpose provided the inspiration of our being and pursuit. The transformation has begun. The foundation has been re-laid. A sustainable nationwide reconstruction project is on. But the true drivers of this change must be the people. The days of top to bottom socio-economic transformation experiments are over. Nations are built by the people. Leadership creates the environment and guides the transformation but the real power behind the drive are the people.
The task now, Mr Chairman, is to encourage that collective hands-on approach. The task now is to get the country to ignore the forces of negative resistance. The task now, however, is also to accept that not all of us may wish to spend our Valentine?s Day extending love. Unfortunately but understandably, some of our compatriots, although a minority, largely of known political actors with apparently little significant mass support, may choose the unromantic street of protest, mingling the red day of Valentine with a grim touch of black. That, Mr Chairman, is the diverse beauty of democracy.
As that diversity accepts the legitimacy of peaceful protest and demonstration, so it recognises the authority of a sovereign Parliament, popularly and freely elected, to act in fulfilment of the Constitution of the Republic. There can be no nobler undertaking for a self-respecting legislature, especially when confronted with menaces and threats.
THE VITAL PSYCHOLOGY OF NATIONAL SELF-CONFIDENCE
The trick, nevertheless, is to ensure that we remain steadfastly focused on the big picture ? on what is relevant and constructive ? and not to be unduly distracted by the sideshows of multiparty democracy. Our ability to jump the hurdles of development, to cross the line of prosperity in perpetuity depends on how well as a people we utilise the advantage of nationhood. We must make this development journey a conscious one. In the words of David Landes, a Harvard economist, the advantage of a nation is not simply in the realm of a ruler, not simply a state or political entity; ?But a self-conscious, self-aware unit characterised by common identity and loyalty and by equality of civil status. Nations can reconcile social purpose with individual aspirations and initiatives and enhance performance by their collective synergy. The whole is more than the sum of the parts. Citizens of a nation will respond better to state encouragement and initiatives; conversely, the state will know better what to do and how, in accord with active social forces. Nations can compete.?
And, Ghana today, I dare say, is progressively well-positioned to give the others a good run for their money, but it takes hard work. It takes dedication. It takes making sure that the security of the individual and the state is protected and promoted. It takes an unconditional adherence to the rule of law, starting from the top to the bottom, irrespective of one?s social standing.
SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION IN PERSPECTIVE
Upon his re-election for a second term, President Kufuor set out his agenda for development, focusing on the three key areas of human resource development, good governance and the promotion of the private sector. History has identified this three-pronged approach as the pivot around which our development agenda can be achieved and won. It is refreshing to note that these priority areas have accordingly received the needed impetus to enable a realisation of the goals for which they were set out.
Another concern among Ghanaians is how to provide effectively the constitutional promise of free and compulsory basic education for all. Since the 1960s, we have all been witnesses to how our public education system degenerated into a dysfunctional monopoly. Some students never achieve literacy adequate to write a personal letter, fewer still are numerate enough to record their personal assets and debits. Many schools lack running water, let alone soap and sanitary latrines. They are overcrowded and understaffed. And so, just as in the advanced welfare states, we are gripped in debate about the role of central government in education. Government?s role is primarily to make sure that students who are poor or disabled receive the resources they need, but in a way that demands accountability and performance. The goal is to eliminate bureaucratic waste of resources so that resources would reach their intended targets. Without a clear indication of the net effect of funding for education, much of it just swills around in a top heavy ladder of administration. To correct this tendency, government is decentralising the accountability and the decision making of the Ghana Education Service, to discontinue the loss of revenue in a system that isn?t working well. We must reject the notion that inefficiency of central state operations is the hallmark of African governance.
By locating the source of decision making and budgeting of money, and some measure of the sourcing for basic education funds closer to the point of use, our schools will reflect the priorities of parents and their immediate elected representatives. Local school boards function within the districts as a supervisory wing of the district assemblies, which will achieve the status of decision making and revenue allocation that is now enjoyed by Parliament in the central state apparatus. Ghana is undergoing a decentralisation of political as well as economic power. This is the intendment of the educational reforms that the NPP government is determined to realise; and we can see from the dramatic results of the capitation policy on school enrolment that significant improvements are under way for our educational system. Furthermore, a systematic rehabilitation and construction of school facilities, undertaken largely with HIPC funds these last four years, have begun to address comprehensively the run-down state of so many of our schools.
The same is true in the area of health care. Nobody disputes the fact that there are millions of uninsured individuals today in this country who need health care, and we agree that government has a responsibility to ensure that those who cannot afford to pay are not denied access to health care. The link between a healthy work force and a wealthy nation has been long established. Hence the far-reaching nature of the reform of our healthcare system afforded by the national health insurance scheme, a great piece of social engineering.
Our health care professionals are being provided with incentives so that they can rationalise service to Ghana fully utilising their skills and talents, instead of moving bedpans around in a London home for the aged. What nurses need is some provision for their retirement, to afford a house. Doctors need transport which doesn?t jeopardize their children?s school fees. So government is increasingly introducing loan and mortgage schemes to provide our health workers with those improvements to their standard of living consistent with their deserts for serving the country.
We, as Ghanaians, know the power of community based fellowship and faith based networks to tackle the troubles we face, due to rapid and unplanned urbanisation and desertification of our country sides. The weaknesses that undermine our economic opportunities as a nation can be addressed by reinforcing our traditional community ethos.
In Ghana, emancipation of women concerns gaining access to the material conditions of survival where women?s labour is focussed: availability of potable water, primary health care, adequate nutrition, sanitary shelter, basic education, and the opportunity of access to modes of improved agricultural production. Already the central state is nurturing respect for human rights, gender equity, and decentralisation of decision making to determine the course of the structural adjustment of our economy. We must support the re-emergence of progressive traditional leaders by allowing them the economic leverage to play a more meaningful role in Ghana?s democracy and development. Funds must be generated to and allocated to revive village ethos, traditional leadership and indigenous values. Local experts must be encouraged to mobilise village-to-village campaigns of community health, neighbourhood sanitation, spiritual stewardship, neighbourhood cooperatives in providing home care, feeding and cleaning for the aged and the infirm. Funding must be generated to make the problem of care for orphans a solvable problem. Self-help groups must be encouraged to flourish. In our pursuit of development, we can return to grass-roots Ghanaian ways of governance in community life.
The human values practiced in community life and traditional culture are the heart of what it means to be Ghanaian. Finding a job, treating an addiction, dealing with mental health problems or with getting drugs for chronic illness, building a septic tank, can and should be organised at the local district level, with the chain of command issuing from the bottom up to central government.
BUILDING THE FUTURE ON OUR TRADITIONAL STRENGTHS
Another American economist, Ralph Borsodi, emphasised the need to ground one's life outside large, impersonal, corporate institutions. He said all families should produce two-thirds of needed goods and services within their homes, workshops, and modest gardens. To Dr Borsodi, the truly "free person" was not "merely the man who has the infinitesimal fraction of the political power represented by a [single] vote." Rather, the free man [is] one "so independent" that he can "deal with all men and all institutions, even the state, on terms of equality."
Only the self-sufficient household can support this level of independence. Since Borsodi was speaking to a money-oriented culture, he had to rely on references to money generating and money saving activities to convey how a strong and self-reliant family might figure into the making of a truly free individual. He advised that you grow some of your own basic staple foods and your vegetables, that you make some of your own clothes, generate some of your own expendable income. But, in Ghana, the role of a strong extended family is understood with far greater depth and complexity in its capacity of producing genuinely independent, self-reliant and resourceful individuals, who have in fact survived for generations despite the stifling pressures of a dominant central state bureaucracy, both during and after colonial rule.
It is in the home towns and villages, where peoples? identities and reputations are still forged for life, that the characteristically Ghanaian ability to cope is forged. We learn to make do, to get by, as well as to get ahead, through the help of our extended family and our extended family?s friends.
It is this fierce independence of central state over two hundred years that has built up our informal economy. And I predict it is this same independence and the crucially decentralised power of our social ethos, our traditional political culture that will be the bedrock of an efficiently growing GDP.
A functioning liberal democracy, as aptly put by the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is one that gives opportunity to those who can and protection for those who can?t. But egalitarian societies are not, in fact, built by the state. They are built by usually a state-run system that provides a safety net of welfarism. But, fundamentally, that welfare system is provided by the people themselves ? through taxation and national insurance contributions. Thus, when you consider that out of a population of over 20 million, less than one million Ghanaians are SSNIT contributors, then you begin to have a clear picture about the size of the informal sector and how necessary it is to bring that dominant sector of our economy into our ?formal? arrangements. The solution may not be simple, but it requires a clear cut policy implemented upon the political principle of subsidiarity at the district level, where decisions are taken closer to the target.
There are five major reforms going on simultaneously, and, Mr Chairman, their role in our national development cannot be over-emphasised. These are public sector reform, land reform, education reform, health delivery reform and private sector support reform. But linked to all these is a reformation process that should not be left to happen by chance or as incidental to other reforms, however linked it is to the private sector development plan. This, Mr Chairman, is informal sector reform.
We have to realise the implicit strength and resourcefulness that now manifests itself in the informal sector, a central feature of the typical African economy. If we nurture those very same cultural characteristics that have made it possible for our worst off to suffer and pull through the disappointments and despair that grinding poverty has imposed, then we have a recipe for inclusive capitalism, the sort of productivity that can make an African democracy thrive.
As much as we celebrate individualism and the quest to better oneself as an inherent good, ours is not a society that encourages every man and woman to remain steadfast to goals determined solely for himself or herself as a measure of fortitude and commitment to purpose. In the modern world, when you educate a woman, you may still be educating one person; but, in Ghana, whether you educate a man or a woman, you are as likely as not educating a whole village, at least indirectly. Part of the traditional identity requires that a sense of achievement entails one?s ability to spread that achievement and enhance one?s family name, so there is an automatic distribution of benefits among many extended dependents and associates?this includes one?s elders, nieces and nephews, village kith and home town kin. To fall short on this wealth of expectations, even if its fulfilment is cosmetic or symbolic only, is to lose face, to suffer a loss of self esteem.
As a result, the notion of family in Ghana is part of the landscape that ensures we can, at least in principle, increase wealth without necessarily increasing the divide between rich and poor. That is not true everywhere.
Yet these very strengths seem to be visible only to Ghanaians ourselves. The global arena, full of socio-economic experts peering in on Africa, critiquing and forecasting our potential for good governance and economic progress, cannot see through their expertise what every school child in Ghana learns from mother?s knee.
That is why we have an obligation to lead the way in exhibiting how a capital-accumulating economy can work compassionately. The notion of personal prestige that reflects on our family name is part of who we are, it?s a part of our cultural heritage, our shared understanding of what it means to be a success; for us, material comforts carry an implicit responsibility to assist others?meaning that wide circle of dependents that includes everyone sharing your sense of family?that is a promethean concept in our culture that no modernist can come and teach us.
These definitions and sensibilities that we take for granted, that we sometimes feel embarrassed about are part and parcel of our cultural strength. What we need to prosper as a society that takes care of its own is what we already have, if we could only see it. We need to look no farther than our own heritage of steely perseverance and confidence in life long committed, qualitative leadership to build a stable, sustainable growing economy.
ECONOMIC PATRIOTISM
Gold grossed the biggest export income in Ghana in 2005. Of the $15 billion invested in Africa?s mining sector in 2004, South Africa accounted for 48 % and Ghana 7%. In its 2005 report on "Economic Development in Africa: Rethinking the Role of Foreign Direct Investment", released last September by UNCTAD, it was revealed that Ghana gets 5% of the value of gold exports. Foreign direct investment in Africa increased more than ninefold from the 1980s to 2004 to $18bn annually. "The expectation for FDI to create growth, to create diversification, technology spill over and jobs has not really been fully realised according to expectations," UNCTAD Secretary-General, Supachai Panitchpakdi, told journalists. The clear message to us is that Ghana, like her African neighbours, needs to analyse foreign investment carefully according to costs and benefits and coordinate inflows with domestic needs, and to ensure broad policies designed to attract as much foreign investment as possible into relevant sectors of the national economy.
The current by-words are Economic Nationalism (the French call Economic Patriotism) and Globalisation. Examples of economic nationalism include Japan's use of MITI to "pick winners and losers", Malaysia's imposition of currency controls in the wake of the 1997 currency crisis, China's controlled exchange of the Yuan, Argentina's economic policy of tariffs and devaluation in the wake of the 2001 financial crisis and the United States' use of tariffs to protect domestic steel production. We are committed to being a fairplay partner of WTO, but that does not stop us from looking after our own, first and foremost. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry was the single most powerful agency in the Japanese government after World War II. At the height of its influence in the 1960s, it ran Japan as a centrally-managed, but not centrally planned economy, funding research and directing investment. After helping Japan back on its feet to race pass the rest of the world, in 2001 MITI gave way to METI - Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry. A major objective of this ministry has been to strengthen the country's industrial base. It has empowered Japanese manufacturers and entrepreneurs and managed Japanese trade and industry by providing industries with administrative guidance and other direction, both formal and informal, on modernization, technology, investments in new plants and equipment, and domestic and foreign competition. This is the role that the combined efforts of Ministry of Private Sector Development, and Ministry of Trade & Industry seek to achieve.
In France, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin spoke of "economic patriotism" last year and promised to draw up a list of industries that would be protected from foreign takeovers. Predictably he met with cheers from trade unions and concern from foreign investors. In Zimbabwe, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and many other local banks were instrumental in supporting indigenous tobacco export companies gain foothold in the industry dominated by multinational companies. Economic Patriotism need not be xenophobic. Its strength, however, is determined by the capacity of the local economy to mobilise capital.
We need to develop our own particular form of economic empowerment of the Ghanaian. If we add to these two familiar components of economic progress the uniqueness of Ghanaian commitment to kith and kin, then we can see the makings of a strong democratically driven economy that will even surpass in its distributive justice the so-called Asian Tiger miracles we seek to emulate. But, the task ahead is more than just creating jobs; it is building a competitive economy with a competitive work force, while maintaining and enhancing the very virtues that make us uniquely Ghanaian.
INDIGENOUS CAPITALISM
But, before then I want to propose an outline of the way forward that I call INDIGENOUS CAPITALISM; it is a programme that we need look nowhere beyond our own heritage and our recent progress in order to envision and understand. By indigenous capitalism I am talking about the kind of wealth accumulation that ensures no one has to go hungry, that ensures the greatest number of the population actively participates and benefits from economic growth. The kind of capitalism that is protective of the vulnerable, and generous in its calculation of the bottom line.
I am proposing that in this country we share a great potential to build the kind of indigenous capitalism that consciously expands the frontiers of equal opportunity. We have the cultural resources that make it possible to advance capitalism in a progressive direction. Ghanaians have never let go of their dependence upon the fundamental political power that depends upon people?s confidence in their local Nana or Ya Na, in their Imam or pastor, in his or her relationship to the past and the future. The very rituals of a paramount chief?s burial express a Ghanaian?s sense of purposeful confidence in the making and the sustaining of political leadership that transcends parties, generations, ideologies, doctrines, personalities.
Some advanced economies lack these essentials of political culture that make a co-operative capitalist democracy work. There is only one way to ensure effectively the success of multiparty democracy in the midst of poverty: that way is to grant respectfully a cut of the cake to those who traditionally bear the burden of economic development?but that slice can?t be a handout; it has to be a genuine invitation to a place at the table. Distributive justice cannot be realised if people live in fear that however large or small their portion may be, it could get taken away by capricious power or dissolved through unpredictable external shocks. The requirements of peace, stability, predictability and accountability are the remits of good governance: but every villager in Ghana knows this. We should?nt need to hear from Transparency International what is good governance. The very tools of economic empowerment have to be made available to everyone; so no one needs to stand in a public queue for a handout, but is instead entitled to what it takes to take care of his and her own patch.
The Danquah-Busia philosophy defines prosperity broadly and horizontally. We see good health, universal quality education, vocational skills training which capitalises on local needs and interests, as among the necessary tools of economic empowerment.
An indigenous capitalist believes in broadening the marketplace; it trusts in our human resource and initiative and develops that initiative. We cheat ourselves if we buy the lie that we need outsiders to teach us regional cooperation and entrepreneurial initiative. Even under the disincentives of colonial administration, our farmers moved this nation from a country that never saw a cocoa pod to the world?s leading exporter of cocoa inside of 22 years. One hundred years ago, our cocoa farmers developed a post-harvest method for preventing mould which was immediately adopted in South East Asia, and has been relied upon ever since. When our agriculturalists are introduced to Integrated Pest Management techniques that minimize the farmer?s dependency on imported petroleum based inputs, they immediately adapt and embellish the programme with their own strategies of locally sound crop management.
And if you walk outside this lecture hall, it won?t be long before you see a woman, young or old, carrying a baby on her back, a fifty pound sack of oranges on her head, a forty pound long bench under one arm, and a bag full of accoutrements for outdoor trade under the other, with a toddler or two in tow.
And yet we listen with folded hands to those who would tell us that Africans lack the power of long term commitment to hard work, that we lack the innate technical ingenuity and entrepreneurial initiatives to build a strong economy. We have spent our population?s strengths for a few hundred years building other great economies, both voluntarily and under relentless duress. It?s time now to build our own, and we need go no further than ourselves as a large family to achieve the greatness to which we aspire.
Indigenous capitalism encourages more and more of our citizens to become active players in the formal economy. Indigenous capitalism believes in transforming the majority of our people into middle-income earners in the shortest possible time. It is the conviction that we can expand the middle-class of our society to include the mainstream. An indigenous capitalist does not believe in keeping a pliable, manipulable mass of discontented grass roots supporters, forever perceiving themselves as underdogs and marginalized, whose only integrity lies in the camaraderie of an underclass free to raise a wahala or in the streets because it has nothing to lose. Ghana?s economic development can only survive if it is inclusive. That inclusiveness is an instinctive feature of our own political culture, it is a defining feature of our indigenous leaders. No one needs to show us how to make one yam go around to every plate in the compound. Nor does anyone need to teach us how indigenous capitalism should work for the people. We know how; our ancestors have taught us; they continue to teach us. And what they teach us, no one can take away.
PROPERTY OWNING DEMOCRACY
When J. B. Danquah advanced the concept of a property-owning democracy for Ghana as the bedrock of the United Party?s national vision, he was not advocating luxury for an elite class. He was rather extending the notion of individual ownership to the majority. He was preaching what you might call the democratisation of property - teaching the majority not only to aspire to fulfilment, but granting them access to the ladder of vertical mobility. Hence his insistence that the purpose of governmental action should be to enhance ?the life, liberty and property of each and every citizen?. The idea of a property-owning democracy is a positive one, even where the majority are poor and where land tenure rules have lost some of their coherence, for what we need is a political economy that serves as a strong bridge from the era of turning to big government as the all-purpose problem solver, to an era when people are entrusted with self governance. Unlike elsewhere, in Ghana, the notion of self-governance need not entail selfish governance.
To build a system of equitable social justice, we must exploit positively the crucial ingredients that ensure a sense of personal integrity, community self confidence and self reliance, social cohesion and political culture that radiate out from core family values that we already enjoy as part of our ancient heritage and our recent history.
In ?A Theory of Justice?, the liberal thinker, John Rawls, outlines the main institutions of a property-owning democracy as follows: i) provisions for securing the fair value of the political liberties, ii) provisions for realizing fair equality of opportunity in education and training, iii) a basic level of health-care provided for all. Furthermore, Rawls insists upon two conditions: a) a regime of competitive markets, and b) state intervention both to correct market imperfections (e.g., to supply public goods and to correct negative externalities) and to ensure the background conditions essential to distributive justice.
Property-owning democracy must be an ambition that, as a nation, we must realise for the great majority of the population. Owning property gives you a stake in society, an investment for your old age and an inheritance to pass on to your children. The problem is that there is a major supply problem for people with low to average incomes, and that is the real challenge of national development.
The foundation for economic success of American and Japanese capitalism, land experts tell us, relied on a clear system of property rights which was created before their respective drives for economic development. We cannot in Ghana begin to unleash the full potential of our earthly wealth before sorting out our land tenure system. The work is on, and should be completed with some urgency. The lack of an integrated system of property rights, according to the renowned Peruvian economist, Hernando de Soto, makes it impossible for the poor to leverage their informal ownerships into capital (as collateral for credit). It is this, which de Soto claims, would form the basis for entrepreneurship.
The Progress Party won power in 1969 on five slogans which aptly captures the thinking of the NPP, its successor party: (1) to every Ghanaian?a job (2) to every worker?security; (3) to every family?a nutritious meal and a decent home (4) to every individual?the essential freedoms of speech and _expression, of movement and association, freedom of conscience and of worship; (5) to all Ghanaians?progress. In the words of that far-sighted visionary, Kofi Abrefa Busia, ?there can be no meaningful democracy if the vast majority of the people live in poverty.?
Some of the core beliefs for which our founding fathers fought and died for, in some cases literally at the cost of their lives, are still at issue across the country today: the belief in the right to quality education, the right to good health, the right to security of life, the right to security of property, the right to decent shelter, the right to personal liberty, are non-negotiable entitlements. All these individual rights place upon the state a duty, but not the discretion, to enable each and every citizen to enjoy them.
As rational and accessible as this old dream may be, it comes to us mutated by totalitarianism and perverted by economic mismanagement. We have learned in a few decades how dictatorship can rob a society of the expectation of even the most commonplace entitlements, for instance, that the security forces will be protective rather than extortionist, that hard work will be applauded rather than reviled. We have learned how a catatonic government can cut off society?s oxygen supply of creativity and stifle the public confidence necessary to plan and build its own future.
The early nationalists, John Mensah Sarbah, Joseph Casely Hayford, even Kobina Sekyi, as well as the latter nationalists ? Obetsebi-Lamptey, Akufo-Addo, Ofori Atta, Ako Adjei, Nkrumah and Busia ? all agreed with Danquah that the paramount and overriding concern at all times is the preservation, in his vivid words, of ?our ancient freedom.? Because, according to him, the man whose scholarship gave our nation her name of Ghana, ?love of freedom from foreign control has always been in our blood.? But, that is not to say everything alien that our ancestors initially resisted was bad. We continue to enjoy the spiritual enhancement that Christianity and Islam have given us and the contributions those two major religions have made to our appreciation of tolerance, discipline and freedom from oppression.
That love for freedom from oppression has been with us for centuries and it motivated us to fight and defeat British colonial power. We would do well to remember that we are the heirs of that first flight from oppression to freedom. We should realise that the power of that same love of freedom from foreign control is a critical weapon in our arsenal: at this point in our history not to fight against a foreign aggressor, but to prepare and enable more of our own people to direct and control our own economy and to use that invincible thirst for sovereignty as a launching pad to build up our own economy from the resources across our nation and region.
Ghana is very different now to what it was in 1966, 1972, 1979, 1982, 1992 or even 2002. It is not by accident that money transfers for last year alone were around $4.5 billion. Family members abroad, sending money home, constitutes over 40 percent of our total GDP. It is not by chance that, in 2005, the private sector?s share in the increase in credit was 97.0 percent, up from 63.0 percent recorded during the corresponding period in 2004. It is not accidental that about $7 billion of Ghana?s debt has been written off under President Kufuor watch. It is not purely fortuitous that Ghana was chosen by Canada to launch its groundbreaking Africa-wide matching fund to boost major multinational investments. It is not by chance that Ghana is becoming the destination of choice for tourists. It is not down to sheer luck that the cedi has enjoyed its longest sustained stability against all major currencies under the tenure of the New Patriotic Party. Indeed, due to the ever-improving economic fundamentals in recent years, the real effective exchange rate of the cedi appreciated in the last year by 19.1 percent in trade-weighted terms and by 17.4 percent in foreign exchange. The credit for our strengthening currency belongs to our domestic political maturation; that is why it is overlooked in both the domestic and international media and we are not used to thinking about it. We need to realise and to see our own strengths with our own eyes. That is our key today to winning the fight against any undue check on our liberty and ability to grow that our ancestors bequeathed to us.
GHANA ? BACK TO THE FUTURE IN LEADING AFRICA
Mr. Chairman, it is my firm conviction that this great but traumatised continent of ours can turn to Ghana?s own Republic today to take the leadership role just as we assumed it on March 6, 1957, to cut the path toward substantive economic liberalism, multicultural participatory democracy, commandments by rule of equitable law, efficient, responsible and responsive governance.
You will hear economists in the global arena complain that there can be no sustainable economic development without jobs, and that economic growth alone cannot produce jobs, given the need to negotiate and compete with powerful capitalist monopolies and environments abroad. In the New Patriotic Party?s efforts to secure prosperity to this generation, the investment is focused on people and on jobs. Our own country is leading the continent in the general readjustment to the aftermath of various dictatorships, impractical social and economic experiments and the Cold War. We have reached an age in our growth as a nation where we must all display an uncompromising conformity with the principle, that a display of reason, rather than a threat of force, should be the determining factor in defining our nationhood.
We need to see this for ourselves as Ghanaians, because those who would profit from dominating and controlling us will not concede to the superiority of our people and our government in managing against the economic odds.
We need to do more than see our own potential. We are under an obligation to demonstrate to the world the kind of democracy that others cherish but have lost the opportunity of realising on their own soil. We cannot be complacent for a day. Given events on the global stage, we must lead in this venture of indigenous capitalism.
Africa is approaching a plateau of pragmatic rationalism in the conduct of its affairs, and Ghana is taking the lead again in that progression to a new era of rule by reason. For the continent, this era was launched ceremoniously by the inauguration of the African Union (AU) in succession to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). In current world affairs, the power of reason is manifest in the tenacity and fortitude of a United Nations that is steered quietly by a Ghanaian. The power of reason was exemplified in Liberia by the presidential choice of a mature, no-nonsense economist. In this political epoch of rule by reason, Ghana?s current government enjoys a world wide esteem seldom bragged about, and it was given yet another boost for having contributed to creating the enabling environment which culminated in the election of Africa?s first elected female leader ? President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia.
In these days, when even the humblest contributors to an African ballot box are voting with their heads, a political party that delivers the goods need not fear obliteration by AK47s or the empty threats of a bombastic rabble rouser. If we are on the right road, there is room in the bus for all of us. It is only natural and reasonable that the latecomers are cautious. We have been through a collective hell, and it takes time to recover from hell.
Already the Kufuor administration has sufficiently rearranged our domestic affairs so that confidence has returned, business has revived, and we appear to be entering an era of prosperity which is gradually reaching into every part of the Nation. It takes time, however, to garner the unified front that is necessary if we are to achieve maximum success.
As we look into the future with a view to design, predict and work towards our desired destiny, I suggest that we look at the philosophy of compassionate conservatism but in our own unique way, where we maintain positively the virtues of our customs and traditions; the richness of our multi-lingual, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural oneness, using them as bases to define our civilization and modernity. The conservative approach to modernisation is not to change a people. It is not to impose a foreign attitude, manner or style. It is neither to condemn what we have nor what we are. Indeed, the most important prerequisite for progress is but psychological. It is the psychology of self-worth; the psychology of self-awareness; the psychology of self-belief; the psychology of self-identity. For a denial of the self is certainly not the best route to a state of well-being.
The kind of indigenous capitalism I propose draws inspiration from our version of compassionate conservatism. It refers to the dual convictions that government should have a limited, but not indifferent role in people?s lives, and that we should recognise the role that traditional authorities and others like religious leaders play and, accordingly, incorporate that into the national plan for the future. An indigenous capitalist must see competition in the marketplace as the most effective means of producing social and economic progress. In order to popularise the dividends of capitalism, one must believe in spreading with equity the tax net to redefine access to social and economic opportunities. This is necessary to achieve low taxes, limited government regulation, and the vast potential of free enterprise, accessible to the generality of the population.
The marketplace may be the best way to deliver value. But competition can sometimes be ruthless and irrational. We have seen it in some capitalist playing fields, where the prosperity created by the marketplace has left many citizens outside the arena, where their lack of power to bargain leaves them without any effective political voice. So the freedom of the market must be tempered by the sober responsibility of government to reach out so that those near the bottom rungs of the economic ladder do not fall off. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. In the Danquah-Busia tradition, to function politically as a conservative with a conscience, government has a responsibility to provide the underprivileged with skills and opportunities to create their own wealth. As Prime Minister Busia realised, fairness is essential or we cannot play ball at all.
BUILDING THE FUTURE BY EMPOWERING THE INDIVIDUAL
Disciples of the Danquah-Busia doctrine start from the premise that all individuals can overcome their adversities, that material want and destitution are not inevitable features of the social landscape, as classical liberals tend to assume when they set up institutions of largesse to cater for a perpetual underclass. Secondly, we believe that the best way to help people to do better is through a policy of empowerment, not a doctrine of entitlement. To give an individual the opportunity to contribute and benefit from the marketplace is to provide what is needed to excel. Thirdly, we believe that prosperity must have a purpose?that there is more to life than what is bought and sold in the marketplace. Thus, the taps of wealth must not trickle down, they must be un-choked to flow like the Densu would through the rain forest.
Something every Ghanaian understands can never be learned or realised by the marketplace alone: it is that the least paid worker of the community is a man of substance, economic substance; every member of a group of association is a man of substance; social substance; every subject of the law who despises crime is a man of substance, civic substance; and every member of the community who suffers himself to be educated or trained is a man of substance. Even children and babies in arms are persons of substance, domestic substance. These men and women of substance are insulted gratuitously when they are treated as dependents of the state. We must bring back that empowering hunger that pushed many before us to fill their stomachs with a can-do, must-do bowls of vim. We must bring back the old courage of excellence. We must bring back that old love for community which ensures that we look first within to scratch each others back and fortifies the home front before leaving ourselves vulnerable to the outside world, in an admirable but sometimes misplaced extension of akwaaba.
We must revive that old respect for each other as Ghanaians. That is the core value of patriotism. We must also respect individuals as persons of substance ? a trait exhibited by the principle of fair market economics, which ensures basically that people have more control over their own wealth, on the assumption that they will invest it in what they and their families need. A well-established conservative principle is that Government?s role is not necessarily to invest in individuals or to fulfil their needs, but rather to create incentives that will encourage such investment and fulfilment.
We need to refocus the responsibility of government. The central state bureaucracy should function not as a dragging, but as a driving force. Rather, government should function as a driver for the people in the sense that a chauffeur offers his services to the owner of the car. The people issue instructions where they want to go; the driver?s role is to assist them to get there.
J. B. Danquah told nananom and his fellow countrymen and women in the 1950s how his goals had been fashioned and streamlined after three decades of opposition to colonial rule. He had focussed his vision on three goals: the earliest possible acquisition of independence; the maintenance of administrative efficiency; and a radical development of the people?s progress. It would be no exaggeration to say these goals are as pertinent now in our struggle to achieve economic growth in a globalised economic order as they were in developing a strategy to resolving our problems as the Gold Coast. Danquah was driven by a sense of what is required for a democracy to succeed. His concerns are as vivid today as they were fifty years ago: the right to choose freely; the duty to achieve the best; and the service of each for all and for each.
Government must provide stewardship to the people which is respectful rather than condescending and functioning as a viable partner in global business ventures must be a pursuit whose aim is the growth of Ghana?s economy. Both these responsibilities entail the judicious use of power, but when that power inhibits, subjugates, or frustrates the will of the electorate, then it has perverted its purpose. It needs to be checked and balanced through the voice of the electorate. That is why Danquah said in 1947, when inaugurating the United Gold Coast Convention, UGCC of blessed memory, the first nationalist movement to articulate the demand for national independence and freedom, that the aim of Ghanaian nationalism was to institute a system of government ?whereby those who are in control of government are under the control of those who are governed?.
So, while a government may struggle to fulfil the promises of prosperity in time to quell dissent, it must not fear that dissent. Dissent is healthy - it?s the oil that keeps democratic institutions running well. But, unless everyone has a stake in the fruits of capital accumulation, a free press degenerates into a game park for those whose pens are bought too cheap, and whose aim is too sloppy to be a productive source of innovative ideas. So we are back to the point where all shoulders must be at the wheel, and the way to prevent a gridlock among shoulders, the way to keep the wheel moving, is to make sure there is an opportunity for those with the will, the stamina, the fortitude and the talent to get on board.
Ghana is a nation with a rich history and strong sense of identity. Our successful fusion of the traditional and contemporary in many aspects of daily life makes it possible for us to develop our own unique civilisation, which will make its own positive contribution to the growth of world civilisation.
For an epitaph, let us write upon the gravestone of Ghana?s repressive and impoverished past, with absolute confidence in its fulfilment, these words:
?We are determined to succeed. We are on course to revive that can-do, will-do spirit. And, God willing, we shall triumph.?
Thank you.
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