Ghana As A Middle Income Country: Are We There Yet?

As we will be celebrating our 54th anniversary of political independence as a

nation next year, it is worthwhile to take stock of where we are as a nation after

journeying for 53 years on our quest for socio economic development and uplifting

our people from poverty. It's been well documented that at independence in 1957,

Ghana was better off than the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Malaysia etc among

others, but where do we stand now as a nation vis-a-vis these other nations?

It is disheartening to note that Ghana, once the beacon of hope in Africa,

a country so blessed with many natural resources cannot meet it's basic

needs after half a century of political independence. Over 40% of its

citizens survive on less than a dollar a day, have no access to clean

drinking water, uninterrupted electricity, basic health services, and

formal education. What went wrong? Where did the promise and the dream go?

Yet any pragmatic discussion on the country's economic situation

degenerates into bickering partisanship, name calling, insults, heated

tribal arguments that fail to identify the problems let alone address them.

No wonder we are stagnating in our development efforts and even going

backwards in some respects. I would like to draw readers attention to a

very well written and well analysed article written by my dear friend B.K.

Obeng- Diawuo, titled: Ghana: The Burden of Underdevelopment" Which you

might not have read. So I am reproducing the original article here. Credit

is due him. He does a good job of analysing the concept of development as

applied to our collective effort as a nation. Please read on:

Sometimes, I even wonder if we aren't going back instead of forward. I

grew up at Asamankese in the Eastern Region. When I take a look back at

the township, in terms of social development, I do not find any changes

that have occurred in the last forty years that I have known this

beautiful town. The first and only public water pipes that were laid for

the town were provided by the Progress Party government of Dr. Kofi Busia

in 1970. Around the same time, the Asamankese-Suhum road was constructed

under Busia's Rural Development Programme. Ever since then no more pipe

stands have been added to the already existing ones; in fact, the few that

were erected have long since ceased to function and have not been serviced

since. No new roads have been added to the ones that were constructed in

the early 1970s by the Busia government.

This is regardless of the fact that the number of vehicles on our roads

have increased by over 1,000% since those roads were built. No new School

buildings have been added to the already existing ones. The same buildings

that served as classrooms and offices for the Asamankese-Anum Presby

School, where I received my Public School education, have not seen any

major renovations. The same old dwarf walls remain to this day. In some

parts of the town, erosion has undercut several structures, so much so that

what used to be a favourite haunt of children have become decrepit death

traps that people stay away from. Yet the township has increased in size

far beyond what used to be its boundaries in the 1970s. I have only used

Asamankese as a microcosmic picture of what may be happening elsewhere in

Ghana. I am sure that many other towns in Ghana have undergone similar

structural damage, infrastructural decadence and ecological atrophy.

Some people look at the number and sizes of private buildings that have

sprung up across the country since say, 1970, and the number of cars that

ply our roads today as opposed to what the number was in the same period,

and conclude that Ghana is 'developing'. I call this 'Growth without

Development'. These optimists are often too quick to point out that if you

go to Accra or Kumasi and see the cars that some people are driving, you

wouldn't believe it. They argue that the Developed World must stop calling

us Third World because we drive the same cars that they drive and live the

same affluent lifestyles that they live. Yes, right!

My answer to these arguments is this: majority of the people in Ghana do not

live in Accra, Kumasi, etc. and even in Kumasi, Accra, etc, less than 0.1%

of the people drive those cars. Whenever you notice one porsh car passes by,

because your attention is riveted on that car for the next five, or even

ten, minutes, you do not notice that ten junkyard tro-tro buses and /or

taxis will pass by before another similarly porsh car zooms by. The

'tro-tros' and taxis that limp by in between the porsh cars, carry the bulk

of the people who live in the cities - the average person, those who

constitute the other 99.9% of the population and for whom ever riding in

such cars remains, for now, only a mirage.

I remember very well that when we were in the Secondary School, at least half of

our teacher population owned cars on a hire-purchase arrangement. My Headmaster and

his wife had two cars between them. Today, a Headmaster would be extremely lucky to

have a car. As for the other teachers on the staff, they have long since stopped

having those dreams. The same could be said about Education Officers and other

office workers, including Civil Servants. If forty years ago, this class of workers

could own cars, but cannot even begin to talk about it now, what does it mean? If

this is not a sign that we are going down instead of up, what does it point to? And

yet people talk in such glowing terms about how our economy is improving and how

Ghana is developing because a few people are driving $50,000 vehicles and putting

up pleasant dwellings.

In fact the average person does not even live in Kumasi, Accra or Takoradi.

How many of such cities do we have in Ghana? The average person lives in

places like Aburi, Akropong, Asankragwa, Enchi, Goaso, Sankore, Bogoso,

Ayanfuri, Ateiku, Huni-Valley (these are places I have lived before, so am

familiar with life there) etc. And how many of these cars and buildings do we

see in these towns? What percentage of the people living in these towns have

access to the basic necessities of life$B!D(B..good healthcare, good drinking

water, uninterrupted electricity, accessible roads, etc

It is fine that people drive such sleek automobiles in Ghana, because it

graces their egos and make them feel really good; but that is not a true

indicator of the fact that we are not a Third World country. The true

indicator comes when that $50,000 cross country vehicle overturns somewhere

between Obuasi and Akim Oda (one of the worst roads I have ever travelled), or

veers off the Goaso-Sankore road. Suddenly, there is an emergency on our

hands. Several people are unconscious and some are losing blood quickly. You

pull out your cell phone to call, and all lines are busy. You may never reach

the police because they do not even have a telephone. But let's say you

finally reach the New Edubiase or Goaso police, you are most likely to be told

that there is no vehicle at the station because the District Police Chief has

travelled to Kumasi, or Sunyani in the only official vehicle. So you resort to

self help, which is what we rely on for many things in Ghana. You literally b

eg the commercial vehicles that pass by, and a kind driver finally stops to empty

his "Watonkyene" of its passengers and offers to transport the victims to the

'nearby hospital'. This phrase 'nearby hospital' always fascinates me. Sometimes it

is three hours' drive away on a dusty or pot holed filled road.

The accident victims are, by now, in a hopeless situation because no first aid

care is being administered on the way to the hospital. What is even worse, the

fact that they were scooped out of the wreck by untrained,

on-the-spur-of-the-moment road-side good Samaritans turned paramedics who did

not give any thought to the correct way of handling accident victims, has even

pushed these hapless victims much closer to the point where they are almost

beyond any help. Now, you finally arrive at the Assin Foso Government Hospital

only to discover that the only doctor on duty has already left. It takes about

three hours to get him to come back.

ragically, all of this has taken a total of about five hours! Five hours in an

emergency like this one is too long a time to be toying with the lives of accident

victims. By now most of the critically injured victims - those who need oxygen, or

those who had been bleeding from major arteries are too far gone to be redeemed.

Many are dead, and the luckier ones are comatose - and may never regain

consciousness, because they have suffered massive brain damage. A few others have

had their spinal cords severed at the base of their necks and at other delicate

spots because of their handling by untrained persons.

Unfortunately, this is what many Ghanaians go through every day - whether they

are driving state-of the-art cross country vehicles or glistening salon cars; or

whether they are brandishing the latest models of NOKIA or MOTOROLA cell phones.

Many people die untimely deaths because what is considered basic services in

other lands are without our reach in Ghana. And this is regardless of whether you

drive a Jaguar or you steal a ride on a Goaso-Berekum 'kosan' 'watonkyene'.

In other words, the concept of Development is not neccesarily about sleek

automobiles, cell phones, computers, etc. Development includes among many other

things, how speedily certain essential amenities and social services could be

provided for, or accessed by, the people of a given country. A country's level of

development also manifests in times of emergencies when swift action is needed to

cope with situations that are spiraling out of control.

The physical tools that are considered status symbols in Ghana, or that are seen

as the paraphernalia of the elite, such as sleek cars, high-rise buildings,

overhead roads, cell phones, computers, microwave ovens, rice cookers, etc. are

merely what I call the accessories of a country's level of development. They are

not the real indicators of whether or not a country is developed. In other more

developed lands, these things are not used to assess the level of development

because they are basic to life. The foundations of a country's level of

development go much deeper than these superficial indices. Much of the time, the

real indicators of Development are intangible factors that we do not see as we

go about our normal routines - until something critical happens.

Consider this hypothetical case. A person may be living on Welfare in any of the

Developed countries of the world. She may be living in a run-down apartment in a

slum area of the city. She may not have a car; maybe not even a telephone. But at

7am when people are leaving their homes to go to work, her child is suddenly taken

ill. She asks her neighbour to call the emergency number for her, and you'll bet

that within 15 minutes, or even less time than that, an ambulance may be whisking

her child to the nearest hospital. In her country it is really the nearest

hospital. The early morning rush hour traffic would not get in their way, because

this is an emergency vehicle hurtling down a city road on an emergency lane. And

even before they get to the hospital, treatment of her child may have already

begun.

The woman may not have any medical insurance, but that problem would not prevent

her child from receiving critical care at the time that she needs it most. She

would not have to put forward any down payment before her child is given the

essential care she needs and deserves.

If a similar thing happened to a family in Ghana at 7am, there obviously may

not be any ambulance to her rescue. But that family drives a $50,000 cross

country vehicle or a Jaguar. So fine, they haul the dying child into the car

and roll out of their drive way at East Legon. The struggle then begins to

fight the early morning infamous Tetteh Quarshie Circle and 37 jams because

this is not an emergency vehicle. I am nervous because this little girl's life

is slipping away in the early morning notorious Accra traffic, and no one seems

to care because again, this is not an emergency vehicle. In fact, on the

contrary, the 'tro-tros' and taxis and the 'mmobrowas' are fuming with anger

because they mistakenly think that this wealthy family is trying to bully them

out of the way.

So, quite often, out of spite, the 'mmobrowa' would get in their way to frustrate

them. I wonder if this critically sick child will ever make it to the 'nearest

hospital'. Don't make any mistakes. This is a filthy rich family who could fly

their child out of the country and pay for her treatment without sweat. This is a

very wealthy family who may even have tens of millions of cedis loaded onto their

car ready to pay for the best treatment that any Accra doctor would offer their

dying child. Let's say their daughter was pulled out of the bottom of their

swimming pool. When a person is unconscious under such circumstances and she needs

oxygen to her brain to avert brain damage, she has only minutes to receive the care

she requires or she would become permanently brain-damaged and later die. The

traffic is so heavy that even before the family gets to the Airport intersection,

their child breathes her last.

So on the one hand a working class woman on welfare receives timely and quality

treatment to save her child from imminent death. On the other hand, an affluent

family in Ghana watches on as their child's life slips away because of in-built

weaknesses in the system that her country runs. It seems obvious on a casual look

that the wealthy Ghanaian family enjoys a higher standard of living than the

American, British or Japanese woman in our hypothetical story. But it might be a

little simplistic to come to this hasty conclusion without analysing what goes

into making a country a Developed entity. What constitutes a high standard of

life? Is it seen only in pleasant physical structures and contraptions, or in

intangible attributes as well? I don't want to dwell too much on the subject of

'standard of life' because it is a highly controversial one. Suffice it to say

that, I only want to stir up debate in your minds about what really constitutes a

higher standard of life using th

e above hypothetical story as a tool of analysis. Recently we were told we have

achieved a middle income status as a country. Really? Do the realities on the

ground support this new status? I ask: Are we there yet?

The point I am making here is that, it is not enough to be wealthy in a Third

World country and assume that all is well and will continue to be well. There

are times when your wealth may be useless in your hands to save you from

certain situations. That is what our elders call, SIKAMUMU (literally, money

that cannot speak, but idiomatically it means useless wealth). On the other

hand, it does not always require money or status to receive some of the more

important services in the more advanced societies of the world.

I would not gain anything by proving that Ghana is a not a middle income

country. In fact it would only make me sadder. So, I am not out to gloat over

our level of underdevelopment. I believe, though, that we would be better off

to know quite clearly where we stand when it comes to the roll call of

development. This would jolt us into action, because we need to take drastic

measures to prevent a further slide down the hole we are in right now. Since

independence we have allowed our infrastructure to deteriorate, the road

network hasn$B!G(Bt expanded, we haven$B!G(Bt added a single kilometer of railway whilst

the one we inherited has completely gone out of use. The results is everything

moves by road in Ghana causing traffic congestion and traffic accidents with

its human and material loss.

Sometimes we wonder why we aren$B!G(Bt able to attract foreign direct investment. We may

have political stability and the right policies in place but if infrastructure

remains abysmal as it is now it will be hard if not impossible to attract foreign

direct investment.

Our governments, past and present, do not seem to feel this sense of urgency.

Successive governments have failed our country! There are certain basic services

or social amenities and infrastructures that are needed to deal with

emergencies, especially those that border on life and death. We thought that

twenty years of a populist "revolution" would provide us with a certain level of

development that would form a basis for pulling Ghana out of this present

predicament. A "revolution" is usually a form of government that adopts a

far-reaching economic and social measures whose consequences would benefit its

people for many years to come. I cannot believe that for about twenty years,

Ghana went through a "revolution" and couldn't even address basic national

issues bordering on quality of life such as how to deal with emergencies.

B.K. Oben Diawuo, Bardstown, Kentucky. US.

Yes, he did a cogent analysis of the concepts of development and underdevelopment

as they apply to our current situation in Ghana. I think it is a brilliant analysis

that deserves commendation from all. Are we moving forward or backwards or maybe we

are just marking time 53 years after independence.

Ben Ofosu-Appiah, Tokyo, Japan. The author is a public policy expert, senior social

and political analyst and policy strategist based in Tokyo, Japan. He welcomes your

comments. do4luv27@hotmail.com