Black Nations Can Succeed, Too -Akufo-Addo

Foreign Minister, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has lamented the situation where black people across the world can hardly point to a "single black country" and "say to the world, and more importantly to ourselves, that this is an example of an African success story."

He says, with the exception of countries such as Botswana and South Africa, which have incidentally benefited tremendously from the input of non-blacks, there is hardly a nation across the globe, that black people can say without qualification "was built by our ideas and sweat."

Saturday, speaking to a large audience at the Nyankpala Campus of the University of Development Studies, Northern Region, a charged Nana Akufo-Addo told the auditorium repeatedly, "That can't be right! That can't be right! That just can’t be right!"

He said, “Black people could not have been fated to be perpetually doomed by world standards as a failed people.”

He, however, urged the young people of Ghana to pick up the challenge and support their leaders to change that negative situation and perception of the black world.

“Ghana, I believe, is destined to become the first black nation to break away to set the trend for the African success story.”

Though, ambitious, he motivated his audience by saying Ghana has what it takes to break the underdevelopment jinx.

“But, what does it take to be that one black nation, built by a black population to become a black nation of success? For a start, the fundamentals have to be right. Macro-economic stability is one requirement. Political stability is another. Peace and security is another. But, beyond all that, the one major fundamental provision that towers above all, is education.” He said, with Ghana just about to turn fifty, the CPP hibernating and the NDC becoming “fatally discredited,” and with a level of consciousness never before witnessed, “We are now, my friends, at the beginning of history.” The New Patriotic Party, Nana Akufo-Addo said, is on course to empower communities and individuals in Ghana.

“The beginning of this history is about people, power, freedom, discipline, law and order and responsibility.

“On top of all this, must be added conspicuously and boldly the can-do spirit. That spirit that can raise our level of enterprise to greater heights. Our mothers keep it hiding in the kitchen, our uncles and aunts keep it under wraps in the informal sector, but we need to bring that can do spirit, that self-determination and perseverant strength into the front and centre of our institutions and protect it, nurture it, support reward and build upon it,” he said.

In his speech, “Cultivating a Culture of Enterprise,” the NPP presidential hopeful warned his audience what would be at stake in the 2008 general elections: “Under President John Agyekum Kufuor we have seen huge progress in democracy and development - in line with the motto of the New Patriotic Party: Development in Freedom. It would therefore be a great setback for this nation and its future, to bring back the conductors for the orchestra of the growing underclass and of dependency culture, the National Democratic Congress, to be the eminence grise when the next scene of this nation’s next development theatre begins after 2008.”

The Minister, who is also the MP for Abuakwa South, said that Ghanaians must accept that, “we are not going to reverse the trend towards the globalisation of the international system. Neither it is desirable that we attempt it even if it was not futile.”

He admitted, that the nation has been for many generations way behind the global economic race. “But, are we just going to sit on our cracking walls, as we watch the beautiful vehicles of globalisation zoom to and fro on its highways? Are we just going to allow a Region with enormous potential such as the Northern Region, wait and see what the national and supranational economic structures will provide for its future framework of expectations, opportunities and constraints?

“No. Local economic decision-making and local economic activity must be pushed at the forefront of Ghana’s role in globalisation.”

He said the links among local economic policy, national and international policies were manifest in the Millennium Challenge Account.

“This Region is, of course, a major beneficiary of the $547 million. The decision to invest the money largely in agriculture is for a very good reason. It is because Government believes this country has exploited just a fraction of its agricultural potential.”

Still on the potential of the North, Nana Akufo-Addo, said, “Driving around this Region, one is struck by the long stretches of flat, arable lands. The kind of landscape that countries like Zimbabwe, South Africa, France, Holland and others use remarkably well for mechanized large scale commercial farming. “Just add irrigation. So, we wonder, how come this Region is considered to be poor and its people live an abject life? The answer to that may be more complex than one sees. But, there are certain basic things that must be looked at.”