Speech Given By Dr. Gabriel A. Ayisi At ....

Ghana’s 55th Independence Anniversary In New York.

Introduction

Good evening, Mr. Chairman, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen; fellow Ghanaians. It gives me great pleasure and honor to be invited to have a conversation with you, regarding the country Ghana, to which we all belong.

Tonight, I want us to reflect on Ghana’s development. I want us to investigate why Ghana, after 54 years of independence, still wallows in poverty, and behaves like a toddler, who is still practicing his or her first steps. In Ghana today, nothing really works: power supply is sporadic, good drinking water is scarce, our roads and hospitals are killing fields, our schools are areas of mis-education and under-education, our streets are full of jobless youth AND THE LIST GOES ON. What can we, as Ghanaians, do to change things around, for us not to want to travel to America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, but to stay in Ghana and feel proud, AND HELP Ghana develop in quantum terms? We need to create the Ghanaian Dream, just like the American Dream. What is the American dream anyway? It is nothing short of having a good job and eventually owning a home, fulfilling the basic necessities of life: provision of food, shelter, and clothing. This is what must inspire us to be patriotic, rather than apathetic. “Urban unemployment threatens Ghana's progress” and “Lack of jobs is the biggest problem Ghana faces today” according to the Country Director of World Bank. Currently, youth unemployment hovers around 25.6%.

Job Creation

We need, as a matter of urgency, to create jobs for the people, but we should not look to the government to do this for us. We have relied on the government all these years to create jobs for the youth, and the result is what we see today—massive unemployment and crime. Nevertheless, while it is not the responsibility of the government to create jobs, it is the government’s responsibility to make sure that an enabling economic and political environment is created to encourage the private sector, which is referred to as the engine of growth, to establish businesses to provide the necessary jobs for the youth. Not only will jobs be created, but they will also lead to increased productivity, propping up the cedi, and making our economy strong resilient, internationally competitive and improvement in the lives of the ordinary Ghanaian. It will also lead to increased incomes and a higher standard of living.

What should the government do to spur job creation? The government can do this by encouraging Ghanaians to set up businesses, aiming at both the local and export markets. This local job creation agenda must be pursued vigorously and religiously, in addition to, attracting Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs). Ghana, currently, has several unemployed high school and university graduates roaming the streets. Nonetheless, If manpower planning is effectively undertaken concurrently with economic planning, jobs would be created for our high school and college graduates, and encourage them to stay in the country to assist in the development processes, instead of traveling to seek employment abroad.

The resulting economic expansion and growth may lead to higher incomes, increased consumption, improved standard of living, improved quality of life, and social equity in the distribution of the national wealth. The ripple effect of investments on economic development created along the way, will lead to further increases in employment, which will result in further increases in income and may, in turn, induce increases in consumption and savings. This will become a cycle in its own regard – obviously, not a vicious one. The induced consumption (consumerism) and savings will lead to more investments through economic and manpower development. There is nothing wrong with consumerism so long as Ghanaians earn decent incomes, while contributing to the country's productivity. This consumerist behavior will feed into the local production and sustained employment and sustain the various businesses established to boost job creation further. Nevertheless, the focused aim of the massive job creation should be as follows:

? To reduce unemployment;

? To increase the country' productivity (producing for both the local and export markets);

? To utilize Ghana's technical, human, and intellectual capital;

? To encourage creativity and entrepreneurship;

? To reduce brain drain;

? To sustain economic growth

To support job creation spearheaded by the private sector, the government of Ghana must do the following:

? Reduce import duty drastically on imported machinery and equipment

? Provide corporate tax incentives and tax breaks for new businesses;

? provide excellent road and waterway network throughout the country;

? Extend railway system to the North;

? Provide uninterrupted flow of electricity and water;

? Develop efficient and effective Judiciary system, devoid of corruption and government interference and influence;

? Develop an effective nationwide security system devoid of corruption and spearheaded by the police and the intelligence body;

? Provide efficient and reliable communication system suited for the 21st century;

? Provide excellent hospitals within an effective and efficient health care system;

? Put in place sound regulatory procedures for the growth of business, to ensure reliable personal and corporate tax revenue collection. Thus, the government's revenue will be greatly boosted by the huge personal and corporate tax revenue that will accrue to the government in the long term, when many businesses establish in the country.

Government/Private Industry/Higher Education Linkages

Furthermore, to achieve greater economic growth, there must be linkages between government, private industry, and higher education. To make the development of our human capital effective, the government of Ghana should compile data on existing manpower shortages, as well as, future manpower needs of government and private industry, and coordinate this information with higher education, so that, higher education can respond, through effective planning and continual adaptation of its curricula to economic development policies and projections. Research has revealed that through dialogue, government and private industry manpower needs in the national economy, can fairly be projected by comparing national employment changes to enrollments by field to identify areas of shortage.

Higher education must become willing participant observers in the economic struggle, instead of the traditional stance of observational reserve and detached analysts. Universities, colleges, and polytechnics, in consultation with private industry and the ministry of labor and industries, can make significant contributions to the economy, by taking government and private industry manpower projections and refine them for national needs, through the creation of “developmentally appropriate curricula.”

Private industry, in turn, can aid higher education by diverting some of its resources, through the offering of financial aid, scholarships, as well as, technological research support to higher education, in its attempts to fill the employment gap. Private Industry should play an active role in providing equipment to universities and colleges, aimed visibly, at updating curricular capacity in response to rapidly changing technology. For Ghana's economy to take off, there must be greater collaboration among government, private industry, and higher education for complex research and development projects in the fields of technology, agriculture, health, the sciences and engineering.

Economic Development

Noticeably, Ghana’s development has not kept pace with the country’s natural growth. For an improvement in the quality of life of the Ghanaian, we need to monitor and closely match the country's natural growth, by concurrently increasing infrastructure to keep pace with our population growth. We will need to build more schools and hospitals as our population grows, we will need to build more and better roads as the number of automobiles in the country increases. Our growth must not stagnate, become static, or truncated. The government must set the stage for an accelerated, meaningful, and sustained development, by making sure that all our developmental infrastructures are in place and of top quality, and futuristic in nature. Fellow Ghanaians, gone should be the days when we built shoddy or substandard roads, weak and insufficient energy structures, despicable health facilities, redundant educational system, unreliable, sporadic, and inferior communication networks, corrupt judicial, and weak political infrastructures, just to mention a few.

As an example, we need to build a complex network of first class roads and inter-regional highways. It is time to link the north of the country to the south by rail, develop a first class water transportation system along the length and breadth of the Volta Lake, all to facilitate the movement of goods and people, and open up the country for massive industrialization and development. Power outages must be a thing of the past. We need to embark on proactive development rather than reactive development - waiting for things to catch us by surprise. We must also ensure constant and adequate supply of water by managing our water resources in an efficient manner for consumption and industrial purposes. Our ICT systems, must be upgraded to match the best around the world, if we are to join the communication and the cyber age, and compete effectively in the global village. Our development efforts will also need the support of a robust banking system. Our health sector must be improved across the board to benefit the citizenry

Ladies and Gentlemen, we talk about slavery and its ill effects on the continent and its development. Fellow Ghanaians, we talk of how our people were enslaved and taken to the Americas and Europe to till their lands, build their roads, their railroads, their ports and contributed immensely to what America and Europe are today – the lands of sugar and honey. The lands where money “grows on trees” because almost anybody who comes to America or goes to Europe makes it financially…simply because there are plenty of jobs here. Oh! How I hate to talk about slavery. I do not want to talk about it at all because it makes me angry and sad. But, do not believe for a second that slavery is a thing of the past. The trans-Atlantic slavery is still here with us today. In the olden days, we were chased, caught, beaten, shackled, put on boats and brought here against our will to till their lands; to work in their factories; to build their railways, their subways, their roads; their shipping harbors, etc. What do we see today? Ladies and Gentlemen. These days we come here willingly and work as “slaves” for them. We even beg them to allow us to come here to work as “slaves”, we willingly pay our way to come here just to be “enslaved”. Ghana and other African countries have become exporters of labor…we train our doctors, and ship them abroad to take care of the sick in the west and leave our own to die miserably; we train our teachers, and ship them abroad to educate the children of the west while our own children become street children; we train our engineers, and ship them abroad to improve upon the technology in the west while we continue to import toothpicks.

As if that is not good enough, the westerners did not only enslave us, but they also looted our resources. Do you think the looting of resources has also stopped? No, not at all, that still goes on as well. This time, they make us bring it to them. Why am I saying this? I am saying this because we inherited a colonial mentality, a mentality we refuse to discard or unwilling to change. We talk of joblessness and poverty, but this is our own making. Every time we ship our resources abroad in their raw form, it is the local jobs that could have been created for the Ghanaian high school graduate we are exporting; it is the jobs that could have been created for the Ghanaian university graduate that we are exporting. Then we wonder, we wonder why we have brain drain. We help create jobs in these western worlds other than our own. We refuse and fail to continue the production process beyond the raw materials stage within the borders of our economy, where these resources come from. Furthermore, we sell our raw materials to them at dirt cheap prices for them to manufacture other durable goods with them, and sell them back to us at more than 1000% the price of our raw materials. It appears, as If, we have signed a binding contract with these western countries to feed their industries with our raw materials, to help create jobs for their youth, only for them to turn around and call us THIRD WORLD. In some cases, some of us turned TRAITORS and betrayed our countries, by staging MILITARY COUPS, sponsored by the westerners to enable them have cheap and unwitting access to our natural resources. I lament for Africa, I lament for Africa because Africa is endowed with lots of natural resources, making it the richest continent on planet earth, but ironically, it is the poorest. It is time for us to ask questions: how did this come about, and who are our leaders, and what have they been doing to reverse the situation?

Our Economic situation

Fellow Ghanaians, four years ago, we celebrated Ghana@50 and spent millions of dollars on such wanton event, while our hospitals remain killing fields, with school children still attending school under trees. What was there to celebrate, may I ask? Celebrating failure? Interesting isn’t it? It is like pampering one’s failed child, it is like not knowing that we are failing. What kind of politician do we have in Ghana today? The politician who will scheme to align his pockets, those of his family, friends and cronies with money stolen from Ghanaians? No, Africa, and for that matter, Ghana, does not need this kind of Politian any longer. What Ghana needs is a selfless, dedicated, patriotic, and a visionary politician. We need politicians who would bring about true changes in the country and the continent. For 54 good years, my fellow Ghanaians, not much has changed in Ghana. In most cases, you see retrogression and abject poverty instead of progression.

Let’s take another look at our road and railway networks in a different perspective. We have a situation where we have failed to maintain the road and rail systems we inherited from our “colonial masters”, much less, construct new ones, despite the fact that the number of cars in the country has increased exponentially. At present, there must be super dual-carriage highways (by-passing minor towns and utilizing tributaries to access them.) linking all major towns and cities in the country. This will not only spur economic activity, but will also reduce the high incidence of automobile accidents (about 10,000 Ghanaians lose their lives on our roads annually). For example, if one is driving from Accra to Sunyani, with no business in Kumasi, that person does not need to drive through Kumasi. Fellow countrymen and women, let us ask why after 54 years of independence, we have not been able to extend our railway system to the North through Sunyani?

Ghana's development efforts must be coherent, concrete, meaningful, and sustainable. Ghanaians need to develop the culture of maintenance for sustainability. New and first class highways must be constructed from the north to the south: one in the western corridor, another in the central corridor, and a third in the eastern corridor, each of which could be accessed from the other at various strategic points. In much the same way, there must be superhighways linking the east to the west at various points: one along the coastal belt, two in the mid-section of the country, and one in uppermost section of the country. All the north-south highways must be accessible at strategically selected points by the east-west routes. Lastly, we must build aesthetically appealing and navigable cities and stop the jungle and lawless development where people build anyhow and anywhere with impunity. Ladies and gentlemen and fellow Ghanaians, let us briefly revisit brain drain and it repercussions on the economy.

Brain drain or flight of intellectual capital

A study commissioned by UNESCO-BREDA on brain drain, or what I refer to as the “flight of intellectual capital”, found that, the most highly trained and the most experienced in areas of dire need in Africa (medicine, engineering, the natural sciences, computer science, etc.) are the ones who tend to leave the universities and the individual countries. Another study by the World Bank shows that African universities are exporting a large percentage of their graduating manpower to the United States. In a given year, the World Bank estimates that 70,000 skilled Africans emigrate to Europe and the United States. The Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, recently declared that, while these 70,000 skilled Africans are fleeing the continent in search of employment and decent wages in developed countries, Africa spends an estimated US4 billion annually, to recruit about 100,000 skilled expatriates, who are paid wages higher than the prevailing rates in Europe, to replace them.

Furthermore, The Prime Minister of Jamaica has observed that during the 1977-80 period, over 8,000 top professionals, comprising about 50% of the country's most highly trained citizens, left the country, primarily for the United States. He estimated that it cost his country about $168.5 million, or $20,000 per head to educate these people. During the same period, he observed that U.S. aid to Jamaica amounted to a total of $116.3 million, a difference of about $52 million in favor of the US economy. Factor in their input to the Development of the US, and the gain skews outrageously in favor of the US to the extreme detriment of Jamaica’s development.

There are other figures to support the fact that the industrialized nations of the world, are getting the benefits of the trained personnel from Third World countries without contributing a dime or contributing very little towards their training: it is on record that each year, about 6,000 Taiwanese come to the United States to study, but only 20% return home. A few years ago, Zambia had 1,600 medical doctors. Today, Zambia has only 400 medical doctors. Kenya retains only 10% of the nurses and doctors trained there.

The burden of these losses is all heavier for the universities and related institutions, since migrant doctors, engineers, and scientists tend to leave their countries during the most productive years of their lives. In many countries, whoever can, is getting out, seeking lush, verdant pastures elsewhere. This constitutes a weakening of the continent, perhaps more serious than all the other factors put together – the wars, famine, diseases, etc. If Africans are to save themselves, those brains, those skills, those proficiencies escaping the continent will be desperately needed. It is however estimated that 300,000 qualified Africans born and bred on the continent are currently working abroad.

Highly trained manpower constitutes the very foundation for national development and sustained economic growth: by training such people and losing them through brain drain, African countries suffer a double loss. Yet, such loss is inevitable in view of the severe and unabating westerncompetition for able, well-educated and highly-trained men and women. Bold steps are therefore, necessary to break this vicious cycle. The above is indicative that, merely increasing educational opportunities without corresponding job creation to match the graduation rate (concurrent economic development) will result in brain drain. What we need to do is stop paying lip service to the problems of unemployment and brain drain and really take concrete steps to stem them, in order to retain the human capital we develop – we need to, and we must retain what we train for our own onward development. The government of Ghana needs to embark on a massive job creation agenda by encouraging the private sector to establish businesses across the length and breadth of the country.

Conclusion

Fellow Ghanaians, I am of the conviction that a successful economy will depend on our education system, which needs to be reformed to make it developmentally appropriate, to support the civil service and private industry, as has been planned for the oil industry at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, where courses are being offered to support the oil industry. Our road and railway networks must be first class, and of international standards to move goods and people and open up the country for massive industrial development. Our homeland security system, must also be top-notch to absorb all internal and external shocks. Our judiciary, must be completely devoid of corruption and government influence. Our ports and harbors, need to be revamped with the 22nd century in mind, and expanded to handle not only Ghana's needs, but also those of our neighboring land-locked countries, like Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, etc. Our investments laws, must be attractive to convince both local and international entrepreneurs to want to invest their capital in Ghana. Least of all, we must encourage entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation in a bid to transform the economy. When all these are in place, it is only natural that the private sector, both local and foreign, will have the confidence in the country and invest heavily in the economy, creating jobs in abundance to absorb our youth, thereby nipping brain drain in the bud and even reversing it.

Fellow Ghanaians, Ghana needs a new breed of politicians. We need thoughtful and youthful politicians, politicians who would have the country at heart. We need to discard the Old Guards, who seem to have lost touch with the modern world, and the new ways of managing a country. Fellow countrymen and women, let us do away with the old ways of doing politics. For, it is foolish and incomprehensible to continue doing things the same way over and over and over again while expecting different results. Things do not change that way. Let’s do away with politics of exclusion, divisiveness, disunity, tribalism, discrimination, thievery, open corruption, embezzlement, collusion, kickbacks, diversion of national resources, non accountability, irresponsibility, arrogance, injustice, bias, neglect, vengeance, vindictiveness, insults, grudge, hatred, innate hostility, bad blood, fear, intimidation, acrimony, cronyism, selfishness, and apathy. Fellow Ghanaians, let us do away with politics of waste (human and material), politics of incompetence, politics of backwardness (substandard execution of projects), politics of deconstruction and destruction (unwarranted cessation of viable projects started by previous governments, politics of unequal regional development, politics of winner takes all, and finally, let us do away with lack of planning and visionless politics.

These are the reasons why, as a people, we must stand up without fear, and demand justice through accountability and responsibility of our elected politicians and every public official. Ladies and Gentlemen, when someone embezzles public funds, you and I, are the ones who actually suffer. We are the ones being deprived of our safety, individual human development, individual economic rights and human rights, as well as our human dignity. Money that should have gone into the building of hospitals, roads, schools, energy, well equipped police force, social services, etc., are finding their way into the pockets of individuals (politicians and public officials). How come politicians, until they were elected into office, who had nothing, suddenly come to own several mansions, multiple vehicles, and fat bank accounts, all within a couple of years in office, while most of our police stations do not have a single vehicle, or communication equipment (police radios/phones) with which to respond to emergencies? Is it not a shame that our politicians, instead of maintaining, equipping, and staffing our hospitals to rival the best anywhere in the world, have neglected them and allowed them to deteriorate, and instead, travel outside the country for medical treatment, even for routine medical checkups, leaving the ordinary Ghanaian at the mercy of few and dilapidated poorly equipped hospitals in Ghana?

Tonight, fellow Ghanaians, we are going to form a new political party to contest the NPP, the NDC, the CPP, the PNC, etc. We will call this party GHANA. The aim of this party will be “GHANA FIRST, everything else second.” Membership will comprise every Ghanaian irrespective of one’s political affiliation. In this party, we must ask ourselves the following question, if I may borrow from Abraham Lincoln: “Ask not what GHANA can do for you, but what you can do for GHANA. What can we, as Ghanaians, do for Ghana to take Ghana from a third and developing country to a first and developed country? That will be every Ghanaians mantra. That will be our party’s mission. Once we have taken Ghana to the pinnacle, we can then expect Ghana to do something for us in return to realize our Ghanaian dreams.

Fellow Ghanaians, let us all chip in to make Ghana the country to be proud of. Let us all chip in to make the impossible POSSIBLE. Let us make Americans and Europeans want to live and settle in Ghana, let us make them beg us for our visas. Let us make Ghana the destination of Paradise.

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Ghanaians, we are going to reinvent governance in Ghana. We need to institute an entrepreneurial government in Ghana: a government that will encourage innovation and promote competition; a government that empowers its citizens by pushing control out of the bureaucracy into the community; a government that will measure performance not on inputs but on outcomes; a government that is driven by its goals and its mission; a government that prevents problems before they emerge; a government that will put its energies in earning money, not simply spending it; a government that will decentralize authority and encourage participatory management. That is the kind of progressive government Ghana needs.

Finally, we should plan beyond when Ghana's oil reserves run out. What type of economy would we want to be in place when the oil is gone? What would be the national economic mainstay when the oil is gone? Let us utilize the billions of oil revenue to revolutionalyze the economy and transform it to the highest possible standard comparable to the best anywhere in the world. Let's plan to make Ghana an OASIS OF DEVELOPMENT IN A DESERT OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT by replacing selfishness with selflessness in our governance and our attitude, by replacing apathy with patriotism, by replacing complacency with a can-do and willing attitude and by replacing a cycle of poverty with a cycle of investments, job creation, individual and national prosperity. Let's keep the peace and stability to further our onward development. Let's work hard to make Ghana the industrial hub of Africa. Let’s do it, because WE CAN.

Thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts with you tonight. May God bless our country, GHANA, our motherland.

Dr. Gabriel A. Ayisi. March 3, 2012.