GHANA’S FUTURE DEVELOPMENT DEPENDS ON BETTER HARNESSING OF ITS HUMAN RESOURCES USING ICTs, SAYS CTO CEO
Ghana has a great future if it can more effectively harness its total global human resources with the facilitation of information and communication technologies (ICTs), says Dr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, Chief Executive of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO). Dr. Spio-Garbrah was contributing to a discussion on “Ghana: the Next Fifty Years”, at an all-day Conference in London on 7th July in connection with the annual Ghanaian Professional Awards (GPA) event.
According to Dr. Spio-Garbrah, although Ghana is well known for a considerable variety of natural resources, including gold, diamonds, bauxite, manganese, cocoa, timber, rubber and other items, its human resources are a far more valuable resource than all of these. He noted that in recent decades some estimated two million Ghanaians had relocated to various countries around the globe, acquiring in the process unique cutting edge knowledge in a wide range of scientific, technical, financial, business, academic and other professional fields. If Ghana is to join the ranks of rapidly emerging markets in the near future, he argued, the country would need to pay far more attention to the process of identifying these external human capital assets and combine their knowledge with that of the population residing within the country, in order to forge an unbeatable combination in the new competitive global order.
A former Minister of Education and of Communication of Ghana, Dr. Spio-Garbrah, argued that fortunately for Ghana there are now numerous instruments in the world of ICTs that could help the country to “network” this massive national knowledge resource, in order to advance the nation’s development. Through the intervention of telecommunications, the Internet, broadcasting and information technology, the former Ghanaian minister felt that a partnership could be developed between the government, the domestic and foreign private sector, various Ghanaian professional groups including in the diaspora, as well as with international agencies such as the CTO, to provide platforms for such knowledge capture and use. He suggested, for example, the possibility of creating a Global Ghanaian Database which could in turn be linked up with a Global Ghanaian Diasporan Network, to enable various forms of professional knowledge and collaboration to occur, aimed at finding solutions to some of the problems facing the nation and also creating unique products and services.
Dr. Spio-Garbrah informed his audience that as Ghana’s Ambassador to the United States in the mid-90s, he had begun work on such databases by creating the Ghana Development Fund, as an umbrella body to coordinate the activities of Ghanaian professionals in the USA. However, with his departure from that office, there had been no continuity. He stated that earlier, in the 1980s, as a young professional working in New York City, he had worked in leadership positions in some alumni organisations in the USA of Ghanaian schools and universities, again aimed at helping develop networks of Ghanaians in the pre-Internet Age. The CEO of the CTO expressed regret that although Ghana had accomplished a lot over the first 50 years of its nationhood, it had been unable to marshal the fullest potentials of its people due mainly to polarised political differences which were such that at any point in time less than 50 percent of its global human talent were involved in “rowing the boat of national development”. The other 50 percent, which represented people affiliated with parties in opposition at any particular time, he claimed, were consigned to standing by and watching those in power, without being adequately and productively utilised for the achievement of national goals. He gave some examples of his own experiences to illustrate his point.
He indicated that although he had listed for his audience a long list of national development priorities that faced Ghana over its next fifty years, these could be clustered around “Six Pillars” of National Development. Of these six pillars, he felt that four items that focussed on human resource development—agriculture, health, education and housing--could be selected as annual priorities over a government’s four-year period in power. The former minister was of the view that although Ghana and Africa had played only a marginal role (as producers of raw materials) in the Agricultural Revolution last millennium which enabled most advanced countries to feed themselves, and had also lost out in the Industrial Revolution of the 19th and 20th centuries, the country could not afford to also miss out on the Information and Knowledge Revolution of the 21st century, characterised by the roles ICTs were playing in the development process. In order for Ghana not to miss out on this opportunity to use ICTs to “cheetah-pole-vault” (as contrasted with merely “leap-frogging”) its development, Dr. Spio-Garbrah opined that Ghana needed fresh new leadership, which understood fully the challenges of the times and could take better advantage of the nation’s human resources and ICTs. He referred his audience to his personal website www.spio-garbrah.com for those who wanted more information about his ideas.
Also presenting at the all-day conference were the Chairman of the Council of State of Ghana, Prof. Daniel Adzei-Bekoe; the Deputy Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mrs Oboshie Sai-Cofie; a Member of Parliament and former Minister of Finance and of Education, Yaw Osafo-Maafo, and the Ghanaian High Commissioner to the U.K., Annan Akyin Cato. Other presenters included Dr Oheneba Buachie Adjei, a New York-based orthopaedist; and Dr. Nii Adjeidu Amar, a consultant fertility specialist. Other speakers included Alex Banful, CEO of the Social Marketing Foundation; Mr Robert Hurley, a Trade Adviser of the U.K.’s Trade and Investment Office; Norah Odweso, Corporate Relations Director of Diageo; Sandra Teichman, a barrister; Michael Ansah, a Director of Dell Corporation; and Eric Osei, Senior Business Development Manager of the London Development Agency.
In their contributions, Prof Adzei-Bekoe discussed several aspects of Ghana’s past glory and suggested that in examining options for solving the current energy crisis facing the nation, close attention should be paid to the merits of nuclear power. Deputy Minister Oboshie Sai Cofie narrated some of the achievements of Ghana, especially in the last several years, especially in the areas of investment, exports, banking, tourism, agriculture and others, and felt that a lot had been achieved although more could be done. Former Finance Minister Osafo-Maafo recommended that Ghanaians should endeavour to “think outside the box” in looking forward to the next 50 years, and consider developing and promoting Ghana as the “service hub” of West Africa, so that the country could take advantage of its friendliness, its geographic location, and the knowledge and skills of its people, in order to benefit more fully from such sectors as tourism, financial services, transportation, salt production and other value-added processing. For Alex Banful, if Ghana is to succeed in the next 50 years, a major paradigm shift would be needed in various critical aspects of national thinking, culture, attitudes and priorities.
Dr Buachie Adjei made an impressive presentation about a Foundation he has established and a medical centre he had built in Ghana to perform orthopaedic surgery on poor patients, based on fund-raising support from friends, associates and patients mostly from the United States. Nora Odweso of Diageo, Eric Osei and Robert Hurley discussed Ghana’s current investment climate, considered it to be quite attractive but noted and itemised specific deficiencies and some actions that needed to be taken if the country was to gain the most out of its attributes. Audience participation was very robust, with numerous questions and contributions from the floor on subjects ranging from customs clearance procedures in Ghana, the accuracy of statistics on foreign investment in Ghana and the performance and payments arrangements for the NHS.
For further information, visit the CTO website at http://www.cto.int/ or call Toby Davies on +44 208 834 1578 or email at t.davies@cto.int
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About the CTO - The Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) is an international development partnership between Commonwealth and non-Commonwealth governments, business and civil society organisations. It provides the international community with effective means to help bridge the digital divide and achieve social and economic development, by delivering to developing countries unique knowledge-sharing programmes in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the specific areas of telecommunications, IT, broadcasting and the Internet.
