Development Planner cautions African governments

Kumasi, April 19, GNA - A Development Planner has cautioned African governments against the exploitation of the current financial crisis in the Western countries as excuses for inactions and development failures. Mr Nyaaba-Aweeba Azongo, Consultant to the National House of Chiefs and the Suame Magazine Development Organisation (SMIDO), said the crisis, which had been labelled as "global" by the Western countries, should rather present an opportunity for African countries to evaluate the efficacy of their Principal-Agency Economic Integration with the West and the corresponding economic prescriptions by the Breton Wood institutions.

He contended that, the "global" labelling of the Western economic crisis smacked, not only of contempt for the rest of the global economic regions but a subtle escape route for massive failure of the existing economic order of which they were the leading protagonists. Reacting to the call by Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom, the Presidential candidate of the CPP in the 2008 general elections, for a stimulus plan for the country in the wake of the financial crisis, Mr Azongo wondered why African countries were drawing themselves into the "global" financial crisis with unnecessary panic measures.

"Why a crisis in the West should signal to us the need for a stimulus plan whilst the embarrassing economic crisis we have lived with in the mist of plenty couldn't wake us up to the need for a stimulus plan", he asked.

Mr Azongo pointed out that the Western financial crisis which had become the centrepiece of economic discourse and constant reference point for all development challenges in recent times could be used by African governments as an excuse for their poor performance. "Against the background of our penchant for seeking excuses for development failures, the "global" tag to the Western financial crisis is likely to become an escape route for welcoming avoidable failures in Ghana and Africa as a whole", he emphasized, and said such a situation should not be allowed to happen.

Mr Azongo said Western economies have been going through cyclical generational crisis since the 1920s, but the "sad thing is that when they are hit by any crisis they have to give it a global outlook and urgency in the process creating panic situations and panic measures for the rest of the world, especially the developing countries". "What is happening to the Western economies is not different from the Asian economic crisis in the 1990s but this was not given a global tagging", he stated, adding that, Africa had been trapped in an endemic economic crisis, but it had remained basically an African phenomenon and is considered as such.

Mr Azongo said the Western crisis was even an opportunity for Africa to realize that spoon-feeding economic relationship in the principal-agency type was the worst form of development integration. He said the form of development in Africa and Ghana in particular which had become the measuring rod as to which leader had been able to bag enough money and projects from the West only exposed the country to the least of Western economic shocks and was unacceptable in the realm of sustainable development.

Mr Azongo called on African countries to desist from being treated as an appendage of Western economies and begin to assert themselves, to demonstrate a capacity to address their own economic problems based on their own economic order. 19 April 09