I Have a dream - Arthur Kennedy

GHANA AT 50: WHAT NEXT?

(SPEECH DELIVERED TO SOCIETY FOR NATIONAL AFFAIRS BY ARTHUR KOBINA KENNEDY ON 4TH APRIL, 2007)

On Ghana’s future, I have a dream! I have a dream that a quarter century from now there will be a four-lane asphalted road from Accra to Bolga and a train which can cross our country from South to North in a day!

I have a dream that we will have a job for every willing person and educate every child!

I have a dream that we shall have underway the largest reverse migration in Africa’s history that will bring back to our shores, thousands of our citizens abroad and other well-wishers to participate in the Ghanaian miracle!

I have a dream that we shall have the cleanest country in Africa through effective sanitation and public health policies and see historic reductions in the diseases of filth that still claim so many of our citizens!

I have a dream that our nation will be a proud and confident nation, self-reliant, in control of her destiny and on the way to leading the way in an effort from Cairo in the North to Cape Town in the south that will help make this new century, not another American century, not the Chinese century but the first African century!

Our 50th anniversary has led to reflections on where our nation is and where it is going. In this exercise, some have focused only on our failures, others on our successes and some on looking for scapegoats. We have had both success and failure.

On the plus side;

• We led Africa’s decolonization struggle

• We have never had a civil war

• We have transferred power peacefully from one elected government to another.

Despite these achievements, we have not lived up to the lofty expectations of our founding fathers and the international community. Today, we are in the grip of energy problems that can only worsen our unemployment and underdevelopment. Furthermore, countries like Indonesia and Singapore that started off far behind us in the developmental journey have passed us long ago. Today, thousands of our graduates line up in front of Western embassies for the chance to go abroad and pursue opportunities that are lacking here. Diseases that have been in retreat for decades are returning with a vengeance. Our laws, though plentiful are mostly ignored by the public and authorities alike and corruption is as widespread as ever.

My goal today is not to assign blame for how we got here; it is to chart a path and assign responsibility for how we can proceed. I believe our under-development has been caused by three factors;

a- Leadership

b- Military adventurism

c- Too much dependence on foreign nations and institutions.

The military’s disruptive role in our history has thankfully come to an end, although they have played a crucial role in the success so far, in our current democratic journey. The significance of our over-dependence on foreign nations and institutions cannot be over-emphasized. The IMF and the World Bank in particular have been very central in our economic policy-making. They have guided most of our governments. However, here as well as elsewhere, their motives have sometimes been doubted. For example, for most of the nineteen-eighties, the IMF/World Bank were cheer-leaders of the Rawlings administrations. Even while Ghanaians marched in the streets for “Kume Preko” the Rawlings regime continued to receive accolades. Yet with the advent of the Kufuor regime, the same institutions felt that our economy was in dire straits and needed HIPC medicine. Thankfully, two things have happened that have gone a long way to repair the image of the IMF/World Bank; the cancellation of our debts and the willingness of these institutions to be kinder and gentler in their consideration of ordinary people and their problems.

The failures of leadership on our continent and in our country have been so pervasive and persistent that they are now a cliché. Indeed, it is by far the most significant cause of our underdevelopment. Failure of leadership is the only logical explanation for how far we lag countries like Singapore and Korea that have colonial histories like ours and, have resources far less than we have. Corruption, dictatorship, nepotism, incompetence and lawlessness; they are the anthems of our governance! The sad fact is that despite all the cosmetic changes involving the changing from OAU to AU and the introduction of NEPAD, bad leadership on our continent continues. The AU and the international community is standing by helplessly while in Sudan and Zimbabwe, there is a genocide and a brutal dictatorship underway, right under our noses. I urge the Africa Union, through our President and AU Chairman HE President JA Kufuor to stand up and be counted on the side of the weak and the innocent. It is the right thing to do and those victims are also God’s children.

After this review of how we got here, let me proceed to suggest some areas that need our attention in the years ahead if we are to realize my dreams. First though, some caveats.

I hope that we can carry out this conversation in an atmosphere devoid of partisanship, ethnocentrism or insults. I know of no place or time when insults have fed a hungry child, healed a sick person or built a bridge. Here then are my five priorities;

First, carry out a comprehensive reform of our constitution, laws and institutions that will make them more effective in serving the public.

Second, embark aggressively on wealth and job-creation.

Third, invest in our people who are the most critical resource in our development.

Fourth, improve the stewardship of our environment.

Fifth, create a significant attitudinal and cultural shift amongst all Ghanaians.

The reforms that I advocate will reduce corruption, enhance separation of powers and create transparency, to give ordinary citizens more voice in our governance.

They will involve constitutional reforms that will streamline and strengthen all anti-corruption agencies, deepen decentralization through the election of DCE’S by district Assemblies, the direct election of mayors in the 5 largest metropolitan areas, increasing the DACF by 50% to 7.5%, giving the district assemblies more effective control of their resources and personnel and, end the requirement that the President appoint half of his Ministers from Parliament.

Next, we must carry out significant and far-reaching reforms of our land management, acquisition and record-keeping. Our land reform policy must have the following goals:

First, to achieve the consolidation of the over 160 laws currently on the books into at most five laws.

Second, to fulfill the payment of all outstanding compensation owed to traditional authorities/stools for lands acquired by government.

Third, to resolve all outstanding land cases, by employing processes with a strong component of arbitration within 12 months.

Fourth, the establishment of an administrative body that will manage lands on behalf of traditional authorities and speed up the process of land acquisition while respecting the rights of traditional authorities.

Fifth, the abolition of the distribution of land for residential purposes without the designation of space for schools, hospitals, police stations and parks for recreation.

JOB-CREATION

We can never be a middle-income nation when so many of our citizens are unemployed or under-employed. In approaching job-creation, we must accept that for the most part, governments do not create jobs. Therefore, the role of government is to create the enabling conditions for job-creation. While this is valid for the most part, as the experiences of Singapore, Korea and China show, there are key areas of the economy, like energy and water-supply where government must play a strong role.

The enablers of job-creation are:

a- Public works; mainly, roads, energy, storage facilities etc

b- Human resource capacity building

c- Reduction of regulations and waiting time to establish business and simplification of banking procedures and fees.

d- Clarification and enforcement of laws with speedy resolution of disputes by commercial courts and respect for private property.

e- Opening of markets at home and abroad.

Due to time constraints, I will discuss energy under public works and then the application of these guidelines to the agricultural sector. Nobody in this audience needs a reminder that energy is important to our economy and our lives. On crude oil, we are subject to the whims and caprices of the international market but we can look at alternatives, as corn, sugar-cane, swish-grass, jethropha and new and more efficient refineries, as well as the use of tax policies to encourage the right activities. To solve our electricity crisis, we need to consider short and long-term measures. Some of these short-term measures like procuring additional generators are already under implementation or consideration.

However, periodic re-occurrence of this problem suggests that adhocracy is much in vogue among our governing classes. Therefore, I propose the establishment of a commission made of representatives of the energy commission, the energy ministry, academics and Ghanaian expatriates who are experts in the energy field to examine the alternatives available and make recommendations within the next 90 days that will form the basis of our energy policy for the next 25 years. In their work, they should examine all the alternatives for the generation of electricity as well as their relative cost in our circumstances and lay to rest the questions as to which will be best for us. The government must then implement their recommendations as speedily as possible.

On human resources, Tony Blair’s Africa Commission described the lack of qualified personnel in all sectors as one of the significant obstacles to our development. We should emphasize technical and scientific education that produces graduates with skills geared to our developmental needs and include in their training paid attachments/apprenticeships that will help them acclimatize to the professional environment even while in school. This must be coupled with good conditions of service and retention policies so that they can stay and help our development. A nation in which teachers are routinely paid less than most of their recent graduates and politics is the profession with perhaps the best salaries and conditions of service, is in danger of being permanently under-developed. To complement retention, we must aggressively reach out to encourage and recruit Ghanaians abroad for jobs at home, in the short and long term. The application of these guidelines to the agricultural sector will involve the following:

- Construction of good roads and storage facilities and the provision of electricity under public works sector.

- Simplification of land acquisition under easing of regulatory burden

- Provision of credit for purchasing of inputs , land under simplification of banking

- Encouragement of agricultural science graduates to go into farming and the provision agricultural extension workers.

- Encouraging the formation of partnerships will also enhance the capacity of producers.

- The opening of markets abroad by teaming up with other third world nations to press for the removal of subsidies to western farmers will also go a long way towards improving agriculture. Of course, since charity begins at home, we must press the Africa Union and our ECOWAS neighbors to join us in opening markets right here on the continent. The lowering of trade barriers will involve the harmonization of customs regulations, axels and train gauges across the continent. We can begin that today because the imperialists have nothing to do with this.

While on this topic, even though not an Nkrumaist, I urge that we give serious consideration to reviving the farms established through the “Workers brigade” and having private-government partnerships to manage them. There are some of these where the land and other infrastructure like buildings still exist and can be utilized.

INVESTING IN PEOPLE

This has three parts, education, health and anti-poverty spending. On education, there should be universal and compulsory primary education, expanded opportunities for technical and science education and at the tertiary level more involvement by businesses in the Universities. I look forward to the day when businesses will step in to establish endowed chairs in research and the sciences and thus, attract money into our universities to build needed infrastructure, thereby freeing government resources for other things and gaining influence in our Universities.

In the health sector, we should focus on the following:

• Sanitation: the doubling of toilets in schools, universities and places of business, cleaning of gutters, garbage collection and hand-washing done aggressively will give us a reputation for cleanliness and reduce significantly the burden of disease.

• De-worming

• Oral re-hydration

• Medication-impregnated mosquito-nets

• Public education to encourage hand-washing

• Retention of healthcare workers

These measures will significantly reduce the burden of disease and suffering and increase our life-expectancy.

On anti-poverty-spending, I urge that we borrow the “Progresso” model used successfully in Mexico as a model for improving the life of the poor.

STEWARDSHIP OF OUR ENVIRONMENT

Ghana and sub-Saharan Africa are suffering a faster degradation of our environmental resources than any other continent. Amongst the areas of concern are land degradation, desertification, deforestation, loss of arable land, depletion of water and pollution.

We must combat deforestation by requiring logging companies and schools to plant trees. Also, we must improve the proportion of citizens who have access to safe water and sanitation by a fifth in the next decade.

Third, we must plan our cities and towns by clearly identifying spaces for schools, hospitals, police stations and recreational parks. We can never claim to be a modern nation when our residential areas are so haphazard, that they lack basic public amenities and or facilities. How are these proliferating communities going to have these facilities? Where is government when this clear manifestation of lawlessness and backwardness is going on?

Fourth, we must tackle pollution, particularly in our cities. There are too many vehicles on the road that will not meet even the most rudimentary of pollution standards and we must protect our citizens from such environmental hazards by enforcing anti-pollution laws.

ATTITUDINAL AND CULTURAL SHIFT

We have a constitution that is longer than the US constitution. We have “Directive Principles of State Policy” in our constitution that speaks eloquently to our commitment to all our citizens in the areas of education health and opportunity. We have laws that are as comprehensive as those anywhere in the world. We have intellectuals as erudite as those anywhere in the world. Despite all these, things do not work most of the time.

We need to end the attitude of pervasive dependency that afflicted us early in our independence and has grown worse with each passing year. Too often, our leaders look to foreign nations and institutions as the first option in solving our problems while within our borders, we all look to the central government to solve virtually all our local problems. This attitude persists despite clear evidence that no nation has ever begged its way to prosperity.

Let us as a nation and as communities within our nation be self-reliant. Let our citizens start obeying our laws and our government start enforcing them. Let us all be respectful of time; our own as well as that of others because time is money and money affects development.

Let us turn our politics into instruments of service and humility rather than of wealth and privilege.

Let us pick as leaders, men and women, ambitious to DO rather than to BE.

The task of building the country that I dream of is hard, but we can do it. It is said that there was a traveler in the middle-ages who got to a town where three men were working by the roadside. “What are you doing?” he asked the first man. “I am cutting stone” he answered. To the same question, the second man replied “I am building a wall” The third man replied “I am cutting stone to help build a great cathedral!”

We are building a great nation and like that worker, let us keep our eyes on the final picture. Our goal is to build the nation whose example will help make this young century, the first African century!

Together, we can do it. God bless you! God bless Ghana!