Tony Blair weighs Ghana’s growth potential against its challenges

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has re-echoed the many challenges facing Ghana’s development drive but said the people must have confidence as the country commands enormous goodwill to develop its huge potential. He said what the country needed was to exploit that golden opportunity to take the right decisions in order to bring in more investors and improve living conditions of the people.

Mr Blair was interacting with reporters in Accra on Tuesday after a closed door meeting with officials of Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) who invited him to speak on the topic: “Governance and Development in Africa.”

“Right now in Ghana, it got big challenges to show, challenges around the power sector, challenges around agriculture, education and industrialisation, but there is enormous amount of goodwill and internationally towards Ghana today.

“The Ghanaian people are respected people, this country has huge potential, it got resources to develop and explore,” Mr Blair added.

He said the global benevolence towards Ghana set the nation on the right path to take good decisions and to improve upon the lives of its people.

“The Ghanaian people should feel confident about their country and right now is the moment,” he said, adding that the country had the potential to develop rapidly despite string of structural challenges facing it.

The Former British Premier stressed that giving the country’s vast resources “there is a genuine opportunity to take correct decisions.”

He also said lessons of good governance around the world abound for Ghana to take cue from and adopt its values in order to succeed in its quest for faster growth and industrialisation.

“For example, if you are trying to bring in investment, you need a minimum bureaucracy, you need transparency, you need to make sure you fight things like corruption, you need to make sure you are developing infrastructures so that businesses can come in,” he said.

He also said African countries needed to knock down trade barriers with the West and remove tariffs and non-tariffs between its neighbours.

“There is so much to be done in terms of trade in parts of Africa,” he said in response to questions posed by reporters.

Responding to another question on age limit to African leaders, the Ex-British Prime Minister said: “I think you [Africans] should elect the best person, whether younger or older, I don’t favour age limit, I favour the right of the people to decide on the basis of who is the best person.”