Once a model, Ghana seeks footing

ACCRA, Ghana -- Nearly 50 years after Ghana led a wave of African nations to independence from colonial rule, this quiet West African country is not the success that Kwame Nkrumah, its charismatic first leader, had hoped.

Rather than being an established industrial power, it still imports most everything, even cans of the tropical fruit so plentiful here. No major highways have been built since the 1960s. Power and water are unreliable, corruption and inequality are growing, and the unemployment rate is low -- just 5 percent -- only because selling chewing gum at traffic lights counts as a job.

"If Nkrumah was alive, he would get angry and say, `Is this my Ghana?'" said Kofi Tetteh, a 50-something fisherman in Prampram, a dusty village outside Accra where buying a lottery ticket is seen as the only real chance at improving life. "This is not his vision. He wanted things to go better than this."

But by many measures, Ghana is doing well, or at least much better than its neighbors.......READ FULL ARTICLE

ACCRA, Ghana -- Nearly 50 years after Ghana led a wave of African nations to independence from colonial rule, this quiet West African country is not the success that Kwame Nkrumah, its charismatic first leader, had hoped.

Rather than being an established industrial power, it still imports most everything, even cans of the tropical fruit so plentiful here. No major highways have been built since the 1960s. Power and water are unreliable, corruption and inequality are growing, and the unemployment rate is low -- just 5 percent -- only because selling chewing gum at traffic lights counts as a job.

"If Nkrumah was alive, he would get angry and say, `Is this my Ghana?'" said Kofi Tetteh, a 50-something fisherman in Prampram, a dusty village outside Accra where buying a lottery ticket is seen as the only real chance at improving life. "This is not his vision. He wanted things to go better than this."

But by many measures, Ghana is doing well, or at least much better than its neighbors.......READ FULL ARTICLE