“Ghana is a typical example of the world’s worst-managed economies: It’s a country that shouldn’t be poor, but it is. The West African nation’s gross domestic product per capita fell 9% last year to $621, ranking it 154th out of 184 countries tracked by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), below resource-impoverished Haiti. With a $3 billion trade deficit last year and $4.9 billion in external debt, Ghana is struggling to pay its bills even as it sits on some of the world’s biggest reserves of gold and bauxite, as well as considerable amounts of offshore oil, which is being developed by Anadarko Petroleum and others....”(Ghanaweb - Wednesday, 9 June 2010).
This is the sobering snap-shot of the state of affairs of Ghana today - 53 years after being the first African country south of the Sahara to gain independence. Do we still have to be boastful of that accolade when the report says that we are below Haiti - a resource-poor country that is perennially devastated by natural disasters?
The report is a serious indictment on all the people who have held political power in Ghana since 6th March 1957. The harshest indictment however is reserved for the late I K Acheampong and Jerry John Rawlings whose disastrous combined 27 years rule actually destroyed the social fabric and the economy of Ghana. These were people whose educational and professional training could never have remotely made them candidates for any national leadership – but shot themselves into power, thinking that with guns and bullying, Ghana would become like any of the developed countries we know. What is most distressing is that the person who ruled Ghana longest and therefore on whose shoulder much of the blame for the sordid picture painted by the IMF should be placed, Rawlings - is still arrogantly parading himself as the best leader Ghana has ever had. As a paranoid and megalomaniac he still foolishly believes that other than him, no person is fit to rule Ghana. The down-trodden citizens of Ghana including the woman in front of the shack whose picture accompanied the IMF report should march to him to demand real accountability – and ask why they should be worse off than Haitians.
Much has been written about why we are still poor in spite of the fact that we sit on “massive” gold and bauxite reserves and now have billions of barrels of oil under our sea. This article will reinforce some of the reasons that have already been expounded in the past. I will as also try to provide some suggestions on how we can break off the chain of poverty.
The first major cause of our deplorable state of affairs is simply that we have, since independence, been unfortunate to be ruled by mediocre leaders. Some of these leaders had very little understanding of how to run a government - because of their very poor educational standards. Acheampong, attended only a commercial school to learn, in those days, book-keeping, typing, short-hand and perhaps commerce. Rawlings who has ruled Ghana the longest time, another self-imposed leader, even failed his GCE “O” levels at Achimota College. Who in his right senses could have given these two men managerial positions in his enterprise? Military training which they received is not geared towards the management of a modern economy – it’s about how to defeat the enemy in the battlefield. Who therefore doubts that the malaise, poverty and despondency we see around today in Ghana is not the result of the disastrous intervention in our national affairs by these two men?
Not even Kwame Nkrumah, a highly educated man could provide the vision and strategic leadership the country required to transform Ghana into a world-class country at the time we gained independence. By saying so, I am bench-marking him against the likes of Mahathir Mohamed of Malaysia, Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore and the two leaders of South Korea (Park Chung-Hee and later Chun Doo-Hwan). His management of Ghana’s economy was not up to scratch by any standard. The socialist policy he adopted was a complete failure. How could he have transformed Ghana’s economy into a world-class economy when he appointed misfits - half-educated and illiterate men and women to strategic positions in his government? This is where the problems of Ghana started.
I will excuse Prof K A Busia and Dr Hilla Limann’s brief rules which were abruptly interrupted by military opportunists.
Kufour came to meet a run-down economy at the beginning of 2001. For example 9,000 cedis was exchanged for $1, interest rate was above 40% etc. He did quite well to stabilize it but unfortunately he could not bring about the transformation Ghana required to put us on the path to become an industrial and economically viable country. At the time he was leaving office the fundamentals of our economy had not changed - the country was still exporting raw cocoa and timber logs, farmers were using cutlasses to make farms, we were still importing rice from Thailand and biscuits from Sri Lanka; the bucket latrine system was what the majority of Ghanaians living especially in the big towns and cities used; clean piped water was still a dream for majority of Ghanaians; the educational system was churning out illiterates and half-literates from the JSS and SSS system into non-existent job market. Certainly he had the opportunity to set the pace for a complete transformation of the Ghanaian economy during his eight-year rule but sadly he lost focus, especially during his second term.
And Atta Mills? From the little we have seen about him, 18 months after assuming office, certainly he not the strategic and visionary leader Ghanaians were yearning for after Kufour. He seems to have been so much overwhelmed by the gargantuan problems facing Ghanaians that he is still confused as to where to start and where to end. It is certain that by the time he leaves the scene, the squalor we saw in the photo accompanying the IMF report will still be there, if not worse. Under Atta Mills Ghanaians must not hope that their lots will be bettered in any way – even if the oil money starts flowing into the economy.
If Ghanaians are looking for answers as to why their standard of living today is below that of Haiti, they must not look far – our leaders since independence have been mediocre or at best, inept especially the military adventurists.
The second major cause, a direct consequence of our mediocre leaders, lies in the poor development of our human capital - as a nation - since independence. Countries like Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, India and Brazil (my model 20th Century countries) are thousands of years ahead of us in terms of economic development because they placed serious emphasis on developing their human capital to meet their national needs. Through sound and relevant educational systems they produced the right people to power their economies and so Korea for example has home-grown world class companies like Samsung, Kia, Hyundai etc that are producing world-class electronic goods and vehicles for world consumption. India’s motor manufacturing companies like Tata and Mahindra are making good inroads into the world market. Brazil leads the world in the bio-fuel technology. The economies of these countries are growing in leaps and bounds because their educational systems are producing the right calibre of personnel required by their industries and society at large.
The countries mentioned above and indeed all economically advanced countries have shown that no country can attain economic greatness if its population remains largely illiterate or semi-literate and the emphasis in its primary and secondary education is to produce people with the ability to read and write, and at the universities, to produce graduates with degrees in the humanities.
I stand to be corrected but I dare say that since independence in 1957, no conscious effort has been made at national level by any government to link the needs of commerce, industry and technology with our educational system – from kindergarten to university. We have not been able to produce the cadre of professionals and scientists the country requires to propel the economy to greater heights. The few top mathematicians and scientists we produce leave the country or end up in the classroom - not in the research and development laboratories of companies.
Ghana, rather sadly, for nearly twenty-seven years had the misfortune of being ruled by small-minded military opportunists - Acheampong and Rawlings. Because of their own poor educational backgrounds they saw academic achievement as source of irritation or threat to their regimes. Acheampong, for the best part of his six and a half years rule, was at war with university students especially when opposition to his union government idea gathered momentum. Rawlings found it fit to close our Universities for more than one academic year, disrupting the universities’ programmes and admission of new students.
I must also mention the fact that during the regimes of both Acheampong and Rawlings many fine minds the country could have utilized in its development were hounded out into exile. These Ghanaians who fled from the country – medical doctors, physicists, bio-chemists, engineers, computer scientists, accountants etc are now helping the economies of their adopted countries – the US, Canada, UK, Germany, Australia, South Africa etc to advance further whilst Ghana retrogresses.
The third major cause of our poverty is the fact that since the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah, there has never been any serious national planning – to determine the future needs of the country and how to achieve them. I will still link this factor to the mediocre leadership Ghana has had in the past. The evidence of this is the fact that very little has changed in the country since independence - we have the same road network (still narrow and pot-holed). There are no proper sewerage and drainage systems in our cities and towns. We have the same colonial railway lines which have all now decayed. Our state buildings including hospitals, schools, courts, ministries etc are in serious state of disrepair. Our educational system is dysfunctional. Our population growth is one of the highest in the world. We have an unacceptably high infant and maternal mortality rate. Our energy supply is erratic etc. These are all evidence that the country never planned in the past.
The 1992 Constitution of Ghana calls for the establishment of a National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) (Section 86). Can the NDPC (if it has been established) put into the public domain, the national plan it has developed since the Constitution came into effect? The public has an interest in knowing what plans have been developed for Ghana say for the future. How has the NDPC been monitoring and evaluating the performance of those charged with the execution of the plans? I will not be surprised if after one and a half years in power the current government of Prof Mills has not yet developed a national plan - just as his predecessors, perhaps, failed to do. And let me state emphatically that parties’ manifestos are not plans but mere policy outlines. A plan consists of goals or objectives to be achieved, what will be achieved, what the measures of achievement are (indicators), the resources required to achieve them and how achievement or non-achievement will be monitored and measured.
Yes it’s true that Ghana has enormous resources - some yet to be tapped, including the oil reserves but the key to our transformation from our current state of hopelessness to prosperity does not lie with politicking, deception or short-term planning but the nation looking beyond twenty five from now and asking: Will we have enough energy to power our industries, offices and homes? Will our roads and railways be adequate and in good condition to move people and goods? Will our colleges and universities be able to produce the right calibre of people to man all the various aspects of our 21st Century economy? Will our population growth be sustainable? Will our cities be able to cope with large influx of people? These are some of the issues that should be occupying our minds now and which should be incorporated into our national development plan.
Had such serious and hard thinking exercise been done in the early 80’s and a national development plan drawn up and executed with determination, Ghana would be a different country by now. We would not be bench-marked against Haiti but perhaps against Malaysia, South Korea or Singapore – countries that have per capita income of more than $15,000.
The fourth major cause of our misery is simply that as a nation, we seem not to know the priorities on which to spend our scarce resources. It’s mind-boggling that a small country like Ghana, with over 60% of its citizens living below the poverty line, could once have close to 90 ministers and deputy ministers in government. What do our many ministers, and deputy ministers do? Prof Mills promised Ghanaians that he will have a lean government but he now has more than 70 ministers and deputy ministers. Think about the resources this battalion of politicians consume monthly and you will understand why Ghana is poor. Was it worth it that in the midst of the hopelessness we see all around us, the country could spend $50 million or so to celebrate our 50th independence anniversary?
The last major cause of our poverty is the unattractiveness of Ghana as an investment destination. Whoever says Ghana is attractive to investors is living in a fool’s paradise. We may be able to attract some mining and oil companies but we cannot attract world-class companies like Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Samsung, Daimler Benz, Hitachi, and Sony etc to establish manufacturing plants in Ghana. The reasons are not far-fetched:
1. Our environment especially Accra, the capital city is a major deterrence. The city looks clumsy with buildings put up everywhere – apparently with no planning. And who wants to come and live in filth and die from malaria? Again who wants to live in a city where it will take you four hours or more to travel from one part of it to the other due to traffic congestion?
2. We do not have the critical mass of qualified people in Ghana who can be employed by the companies named above should they decide to establish plants in Ghana. Few people in Ghana are graduating in Information, Communication and Technology (ICT). Our pathetic JSS/SSS system and universities are not producing the scientists and mathematicians we require for our national economic and technological development.
3. The endemic culture of bribe-taking that has permeated the entire Ghanaian society is a big disincentive to the growth of business and foreign investment - the catalyst for economic growth. Now no public service in Ghana is rendered for free. Everywhere employees expect to be given something for services they render. People who come into the country to do genuine business find such practice unacceptable and nauseating.
4. Many of our laws are archaic and do not provide the right legislative environment to attract big foreign businesses. An example is our Companies Act of 1963 and company registration procedure. They urgently need reform.
How do we get our economy out from the woods and climb above Haiti?
Ghana requires a visionary, bold, intelligent, educated and disciplined leader. Those who are aspiring to be elected as president must examine themselves and their conscience thoroughly to see if they meet the standards of leadership qualities set by people like Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore or Mahathir Mohammed of Malaysia or Chun Doo Hwan of South Korea. I have chosen these people as my bench-mark leaders because they started from the scratch the same time Ghana won its independence from the British.
We do not now need a president who is going to fan the rivalry between the NPP and the NDC or a president who is going to spend all his/her energy pursuing his/her political enemies and getting them thrown into prison. The problems facing Ghana are enormous and we require a level-headed, disciplined and visionary leader to put us on the right track. The era of small-minded and mediocre leaders has ended.
The electorate must reject any aspiring leader who will be exploiting their predicament by making wild and impossible promises just for votes. Ghana has had enough of those “promises” leaders including the liberating, redeeming and revolutionary military adventurists. The aspiring leaders must come out with plans and strategies on how within the four or eight-year mandate, they can make us overtake Haiti in the short-term and equal Singapore in the long-term. Ghanaians must then look at how feasible and realistic the plans are and vote for the leader who they trust has the qualities to execute the plans. The politics of criticism and promises should end with Prof Atta Mills.
I propose that in the final year of the present government, that is 2012, the NDPC must convene a national planning conference to draw up a sixteen-year national strategic developmental plan for the next four successive governments. The Commission may invite experts including those outside the country to participate in the conference. The blue-print national development plan developed, covering every aspect of our society and economy will then become the national manifesto for all the political parties. After all, all the political parties in Ghana have a common understanding of the fundamental problems facing the country. In their campaign, they will have to convince Ghanaians about the strategies they will employ to achieve the goals and objectives of the first four years of the plan.
The key to transforming the economy of is for Ghanaians to elect a visionary, disciplined and well-educated leader. Fortunately we have such people both - inside and outside Ghana. The next leader of Ghana must not be afraid to call in some our best brains that are leading and managing complex organizations in other countries to help. The problems facing Ghana are not unsurmountable. With the right leader, we shall soon count ourselves among the best countries in the world.
PK BOATENG
The writer is a fellow of both the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators. He is a consultant on corporate strategy and public finance management. Personal comments on the article can be sent to him via his e-mail address: pkboateng@gmail.com
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