Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Quote for 1st June 2011
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Harnessing the Potential of Ghana: The Role of Ghanaians Abroad
Remarks delivered by Dr Samuel Laryea to the Cambridge University Ghanaian Society in commemoration of the 54th Anniversary of Ghana’s Independence Day
5th March 2011 Cambridge, UK
Introduction
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen.
Let me begin by saying that it is a great honour to be here today to address you. I would like to say thank you to the Cambridge University Ghanaian Society and to Moses Agaawena and his leadership team in particular for inviting me to this special event that you have organized to commemorate the 54th Anniversary of Ghana‟s Independence Day. Well done and can I say that you deserve a round of applause.
Today many of us take independence for granted. But things were not easy in those days of colonial rule. Our people were oppressed by foreigners in their own country. And things are still not easy in the current times. Although we gained independence 54 years ago, we are still not truly free yet. We lag behind badly in terms of economic development. So there is a next stage of independence that we must attain to become truly free as a people. That next stage of independence is “economic” independence.
That is why I believe that you have chosen the right theme for this occasion. To be able to improve the quality of life of our people, we need to harness all of our potential. We need to harness the potential that is based at home and we also need to harness the potential that is based abroad. And so I would be speaking on the theme: “Harnessing the potential of Ghana” with reference to the role of Ghanaians abroad.
There are three main areas I will cover in connection with the topic: The Ghanaian population in the Diaspora; The past, present and future situation in Ghana; and Role of the Ghanaian population abroad.
Ghanaians in the Diaspora
A lot has happened in Africa in the past 600 years in connection with Africa‟s relations with the rest of the world. The first Europeans arrived on the shores of Africa in 1450.
Between that time and 1850, that is, for a period of 400 years, more than 12 million Africans were shipped abroad as slaves. These people were made to labour on plantations, mines, construction sites and in private homes as servants.
It has been 160 years now since the mass purchasing and shipment of Africans to destinations around the world was abolished. What you find these days, particularly since the early 1980s, is a situation where many Ghanaians leave to countries abroad in search of greener pastures. This emigration of our people is what has created a Diaspora of about four million Ghanaians abroad. In fact, people like Kwame Nkrumah left Ghana in 1935 to go and get an education abroad before returning in 1947.
Today there are about four million Ghanaians living abroad and the bulk of this population is concentrated in Europe and North America. These days you also find Ghanaians emigrating to countries in the Middle East, Asia and Australia. Altogether, these Ghanaians comprise of people who are unskilled, semi-skilled, and skilled. Then you also have a large population of Ghanaian students studying in various institutions around the world. Some of the people who leave Ghana to go and study abroad fail to return back home. This situation has often led to a severe siphoning of some of our most brilliant human resources. Some people refer to this phenomenon as “Brain drain”. If you consider Ghana‟s current population of 24.3 million, then it means that about 17 per cent of Ghana‟s population is based abroad. Most researchers have actually said that up to 20 per cent of Ghana‟s population is based overseas.
We know clearly that the potential of every nation resides in its people and in its natural resources. It is people who do things; it is people who make things happen. So now that we have almost a fifth of Ghana‟s population based overseas, how can we harness their contribution to the national and African development agenda?
Ghana
Let me turn my attention to talk about the past, current and future situation in Ghana.
Independence and big aspirations in 1957
As a country, we started with big aspirations in 1957. Here are some of the declarations and promises we made to ourselves and the world on the eve of independence: “We have awakened. We shall no more go back to sleep anymore. Today, from now on, there is a new African in the world. That new African is ready to fight his own battles and show that, after all, the black man is capable of managing his own affairs.” “We are prepared to build it [Ghana] up and make it a nation that will be respected by every other nation in the world.”
“We know we are going to have difficult beginnings but … we can prove to the world that when the African is given a chance he can show to the world that he is somebody.” “… from now on – today – we must change our attitudes, our minds, we must realize that from now on, we are no more a colonial but a free and independent people.” “We are going to demonstrate to the world, to the other nations, young as we are that we are prepared to lay our own foundation… we are going to see that we create our own African personality and identity. It is the only way that we can show the world that we are ready for own battles.”
Extracts from Kwame Nkrumah’s Eve of Independence Speech, Old Polo Grounds, Accra, 5-6 March 1957, Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joBjzivBKz4&feature=related
How much of this promise have we delivered in our 54 years of existence?
Current environment
Ghana‟s current position in relation to other countries in the world is far less than the potential we have. Ghana is currently ranked 130/169 countries in the world in terms of Human Development. This reflects Low human development, i.e. 77 per cent of nations in the world are ahead of Ghana when it comes to education, life expectancy, and per capita Gross National Income (UN Human Development Report 2010); Life expectancy in Ghana is 57 years for men and 59 years for women (UN 2010); Our Gross National Income (GNI) per capita is US $700 (World Bank, 2009). We rely on a small annual budget of 10.8 billion dollars for 24.3 million people. And around 60 per cent of this money often has to come from donor countries; In terms of education, UNESCO recognizes 9000 universities around the world. The University of Ghana, Legon ranks around 6000 and KNUST, Kumasi is 6500; and What all of these statistics mean is that 40 per cent of our people in Ghana live below the national poverty line (according to the Human Poverty Index).
I don‟t think these statistics represent where most of us want Ghana to be as a country. So clearly we have to improve. To have a better future, we would need to put our country to work. We have great potential as a people and we can certainly do far better on these statistics like we are able to do in a few other areas.
When it comes to international football, for example, Ghana competes very well. We are currently ranked as the 15th best nation in the world when it comes to football (FIFA Rankings for February 2011). This is an excellent achievement when you consider the fact that there are 203 FIFA nations in the world. We had two successful FIFA World Cups in Germany 2006 and South Africa 2010. As we know, football has become a very powerful way to harness and demonstrate the potential of a country. So here we owe the Black Stars a lot of gratitude for projecting a positive image of Ghana and Africa on the world stage. With the right mental and physical attitude, I believe we could have
gone on to win the World Cup in South Africa. We also owe the Black Satellites a lot of gratitude for beating Brazil in Egypt 2009 to become the reigning World Under-20 champions. Why can‟t we replicate this same potential when it comes to other areas like economic development, education, healthcare, energy and jobs for our people?
There is no doubt that things are improving gradually. But the improvements are not happening fast enough to meet the aspirations of our people.
Growth rates in Sub-Saharan Africa have been appreciable in recent years, comparable to Asia, hovering around 6 per cent, a result of high commodity prices, a favorable global environment – and also of improved economic management, investment climate, private flows and governance. Although the global financial crises of the past three years has eroded some of the gains and continue to threaten these gains, most African countries have weathered the storm of the worst financial crisis since the great depression of the 1930s.
In Ghana, initial hiccups following the transition in 2008 and drying up of capital from global financial markets brought increasing pressure on the exchange rate, increased the fiscal deficit and temporarily threw the economy out of gear. Recent data suggests a normalized situation, with commodity prices back in their highs.
There is currently excitement among young Ghanaians both abroad and at home because of the emerging oil market. On Dec 15 2010, Ghana officially became an oil-exporting nation. The antecedents to this, however, started much earlier, culminating in the discovery of crude oil in commercial quantities off Cape Three point in July 2007. It is estimated that Ghana will become the seventh largest oil producer in Africa, with initial deposits of around 3 billion barrels. About 60,000 barrels of oil will be exported per day from 2010, 120,000 barrels a day in 2011, fetching the country $836 million annually and over $20 billion over the production period 2012-2030.
The oil find has thus raised expectations and hopes of a „Better Ghana‟ where jobs would be created and the state of the economy improved for all and sundry. However, this depends on whether Ghana is able to avoid the natural resource curse typified by bad management and corruption, exchange rate appreciation and crowding out of private investments. It is thus not surprising that the oil discovery has led to such heightened expectations of the next oil giant in Africa with all the attendant benefits that come with oil revenues.
Future aspirations
Ghana is 54 years old now. What kind of Ghana@100 would we like to see, and how can we get there from our current position? In response to this question, I prefer to describe the kind of aspirations we should hold for the future in plain and simple
language rather than in any other form like economic statistics. It is simpler that way and simple language is what the ordinary man in the street understands.
For me, it is better to express quality of life in simple terms that the ordinary can understand. I remember once when Former President Jerry Rawlings was asked about his ideology during the revolution days, he told a group of journalists that he was never particularly keen on ideology. He said:
“Don't ask me what my ideology or economic programme is. I don't know any law and I don't understand economics, but I know it when my stomach is empty.”
The ordinary man in the street understands things in terms of their feelings. And many of us are ordinary men so it is always best to express things for us in simple and plain language that we can understand. Economic statistics clearly have their purpose. However, I always find it hard to accept the usefulness of economic statistics when our leaders point to them as evidence of progress but you go on the ground and people are suffering to have the meals they need to keep healthy, people can‟t find jobs, people don‟t have access to good health care, and can‟t afford a decent place of accommodation.
In that respect, I outline seven aspirations that I would rather use to define and measure the quality of life of our people in Ghana and Africa. That is where we should be by the time of Ghana@100 (i.e. 2057) and each of us must play a role in helping us to get there:
1. Everyone should be able to find enough food to eat everyday;
2. Most people should be able to afford a decent place of accommodation;
3. Most people should be able to find a job that pays enough money to help them support themselves and their families;
4. Everyone should be able to have access to quality healthcare;
5. We should have a good system of Government in place which responds to the needs and aspirations of our people;
6. We should have adequate infrastructure to support quality of life and economic activity;
7. We should live in peace with ourselves and all countries in the world.
Are these aspirations too difficult for us to attain in the next 50 years? We can do it!
From present to future
So what do we need to do in order to get out of our current situation of low human development and poverty? There is not an easy or single answer to this question.
But we have to believe that it is possible to move from the present poor condition to a prosperous future. It is important to believe because nothing is possible without faith.
Fidel Castro once said:
“I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.”
I often tell friends that there are two roads ahead of us in terms of moving from the present into the future. Either we believe that we can improve our present condition and then go ahead to do it. Or we lose hope and give up because it is too hard. The option in the latter case would be to surrender and then probably write to one of the rich nations in the world and request to become a colony again! But that would be irresponsible considering the enormous potential we have; it would be betraying the independence that our forefathers fought so hard to achieve for us; and failing to live up to expectations that they set out for us. They have done their bit and departed. The calling of our time is to put in the hard work, sacrifice, vision and courage necessary to build a better Ghana and Africa for future generations. We clearly have great potential as a people and that potential is what we need to harness and exploit to do it. Let me therefore proceed to talk about some of the things we need to do as a people. Here, my message is to Ghanaians in particular and Africans in general.
Among other things, there are six things we particularly need to do right now in order to drive Ghana forward into a better future or “Better Ghana” as some people prefer to express it:
1. We need to change our mindsets and attitudes;
2. We need strong and capable leadership;
3. We need to give opportunity to young people to drive the nation forward;
4. We need to understand where and why others have failed;
5. We need to accelerate our development; and
6. We need a political and economic unionification of the countries in Africa.
I will expand on only three of these points because of time.
Changing our mindsets and attitudes
The main hindrance to the progress of the nation is the mindset of the Ghanaian African. That is the first area where we need to change. Changing the mindset for Ghanaians to believe and be confident in themselves; value their unique potentials; and attributes and have a conviction that the development and progress of the nation lies squarely on our shoulders, and not any external entity.
We need what my friend Paul Alagidede, who is an economist and one of the leading Pan-African brains of our time, describes as “The Ghanaian Mental Revolution” analogous to Kwame Nkrumah's idea of the “African personality”. So first, sow the seeds of awareness of the full force of the energies in the national psyche and all other issues of development will follow as sure as night follows day!
Those of you present here in this meeting today who are Ghanaians and for that matter Africans are a good vehicle for carrying this mental revolution out. You have been exposed to high standards of life and you appreciate the organized way in which education, industry, commerce, and science and technology has played a role in edging the developed nations of the world like the UK through the industrial age to the information age. And deep inside your hearts, I know that you yearn for the day when Ghana will become an orderly, well organized, prosperous and properly administered country. With the education and international exposure you have now, your role is to bring the change that our people in Ghana and Africa are yearning for. That is one of the roles of the Ghanaian African abroad.
I feel personally that our nation deserves better than it is getting currently from those elected to rule and my main concern is on the mind set mainly because we appear to lose the battle there and nowhere else. If you elect a president today and he‟s on the plane tomorrow to some Western capitals holding cup in hand begging for alms then there is a problem with the ability of that person to put into the populace the idea of believing in oneself, which I think is crucial for national development. If you have a continent that believe not in doing things their own way and always wanting to be playing second fiddle, then there are questions regarding our confidence levels and state of mind. If you have leaders who will not put the right things in place (i.e energy, food, roads, security etc) and encourage the people to respond by investing in their own country but rather interested in globetrotting looking for foreign investors, who will not come anyway because they are not fools, then we have a monumental crises in our hands. If you have a whole nation whose budget depends on external funding, and if you have more than 70 per cent of your university graduates queuing 12-18 hrs a day in Western embassies to get visas and leave the country at the least opportunity, then there is something wrong somewhere, and I cannot attribute it to anything else than the state of our mind. I am saying this because, Ghana, and Africa for that matter has all it takes, resources wise to be what it wants to become. As Bob Marley reminded us, we need to emancipate ourselves from “mental slavery”. So believing in the “African Personality” as Kwame Nkrumah puts it is the way out.
I don‟t have enough training in psychology to understand the mechanics of the mindset well, but the little I have seen and know concerning our people and by constantly interacting and reading the mood of the nation convinces me that, if we can move
ahead from where we are stuck now, we must jettison all inferiority and mediocrity and pursue our vision with oneness of purpose and utmost belief that we are capable.
Understanding where and why others have failed
We should not assume that current African leaders are completely useless or lack the ambition to transform and develop their countries. We need to investigate the causes of why many of them have failed. Many of them had their education abroad and possessed a clear determination to develop their countries when they get a chance in government. Why have they not been able to change things in the way that they had expected? We need to find the answer to this question as we march forward. If we simply assume that we are smarter than the past and current leaders, or if we simply assume that they are stupid, then we might be making a mistake. Leadership is hard and we need to understand how others have failed to plan how we can succeed. Those of you here in Cambridge University are clever people. One of the things you can do as African students in the Diaspora is to investigate the question of where and why many African leaders have failed and give us the answers. We need to understand why we are stuck where we are to help get a clearer understanding of how to move forward.
Political and economic unionification of African states
From a personal point of view, I do not see any sustainable way out for Ghana and other countries in Africa when it comes to developing a globally competitive economy unless we take the path of political and economic integration. The African Union agenda should be placed firmly on the table again and all of us must do our best to support it and to make it succeed. The political and economic integration of states in Africa is clearly the way forward for the future. Others have done it. Why can‟t we also do it? Those of us from the developing nations of the world are fortunate in the sense that most of the things we need to do to develop have been done by others. There is a United States of America (USA) which comprises of 50 states. There is a European Union (EU) which comprises of 27 member states. Then there is China with 1.3 billion people. The countries in South East Asia and Australia have been talking about forming a political and economic union like the EU because they recognize that as the only viable way forward in a modern competitive world. What is Africa doing as all of this goes on? With all the clever people we‟ve got, is it to hard for the 57 countries in Africa to determine what we need to do in order to develop and become players rather than spectators in the modern world? Other regions of the world have shown us the way. Much of what we need to do now, quite apart from developing our own homegrown solutions, is to adapt the development models of successful regions to our situation back home. Here again, those of you here in the Ghanaian Diaspora who have been exposed to the benefits of integration can play a major role in bringing this about.
How can Ghanaians abroad contribute?
Ghana is currently faced with a situation where we have a country with 20 per cent of its people based abroad and the remaining 80 per cent of the people are based at home in Ghana. So how can we harness the contribution of the four million or so Ghanaians who are based abroad, especially when it comes to our highly skilled professionals?
Identify the people
First of all, we need to begin by knowing who they are, where they are based, and what skills they have got (or not). That is the starting point for harnessing the potential that is based abroad. That is the basic premise upon which we need to operate.
Use the example of football and sports
There is one area where Ghana, and most African countries, does very well with the harnessing of skills based abroad. In fact, we do far better in that area than in all of the other areas combined. That area is football and sports. When you look at the Ghana World Cup Teams in 2006 and 2010 you will find that out of the 46 players we presented for both tournaments, about 90 per cent of the team was harnessed from the skills we have based abroad. And we became very successful at both World Cups (Foot drain! Our domestic league is uncompetitive because all the talents are based abroad).
What does that tell us? First, it tells us that we function best when we harness the potential of our people based both at home (80%) and abroad (20%). Second, the reason we are able to harness the potential of our footballers based abroad is because we know who they are, where they are based, and the skills they have got. So that premise is clearly important. The third point is about the lessons we can learn from the way we harness the skills of our footballers based abroad. It is a simple point: To be able to harness the skills of other highly skilled professional based abroad, we need to create for them conditions similar to the one we create for our “foreign-based” footballers to attract them to come and play for the Black Stars and other national teams.
It is not simply a matter of patriotism these days as people like Michael Essien & co might explain to you. If we would pay significant sums of money to bring Ghanaian footballers in the Diaspora to come and play for the national teams, why shouldn‟t we do same for other highly skilled professionals? Motivation is the key.
Closing remarks
So in conclusion I would say that we can apply the lessons from the way that we are able to harness the skills of our sportsmen based abroad. We can harness the talents of many of our four million Ghanaian compatriots in the Diaspora. There is a significant
population of Ghanaian students, recent graduates, and workers based abroad. Many of these people are clever people who can help our national economy and development. We need to think and find the appropriate ways to harness their potential and skills so that they can help us to get to where we need to be by the time of Ghana @ 100.
For many of us who would be fortunate to be around in 46 years‟ time, I hope that we would inhabit a Ghana@100 which possesses the seven futures I described earlier:
Everyone in Ghana@100 should be able to find enough food to eat everyday; Most people should be able to afford a decent place of accommodation; Most people should be able to find a job that pays enough money to help them support themselves and their families; Everyone should be able to have access to quality healthcare; We should have a good system of Government in place which responds to the needs and the aspirations of our people; We should have adequate infrastructure to support quality of life and economic activity; We should live in peace with ourselves and all countries in the world.
These high aspirations are huge but achievable. They lie squarely on the shoulders of all Ghanaians and Africans for that matter. No one else will come and build our nation and continent for us. It is our responsibility and we must accept it. We must stop begging and looking to other people for meagre and unsustainable donations. We must look first within ourselves for help because we have got great potential as a people.
To achieve the Ghana@100 aspirations here would entail a lot of hard work from all and harnessing the potential of Ghana. The Ghanaian community in the Diaspora has a major role to play in all of this. I thank you for your attention and I must end by expressing my gratitude again to the Cambridge University Ghanaian Society for organizing this event and to Moses Agaawena and his leadership team for inviting me.
Thank you and all the best.
Samuel Laryea
05 March 2011
Email: salaryea@yahoo.com
5th March 2011 Cambridge, UK
Introduction
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen.
Let me begin by saying that it is a great honour to be here today to address you. I would like to say thank you to the Cambridge University Ghanaian Society and to Moses Agaawena and his leadership team in particular for inviting me to this special event that you have organized to commemorate the 54th Anniversary of Ghana‟s Independence Day. Well done and can I say that you deserve a round of applause.
Today many of us take independence for granted. But things were not easy in those days of colonial rule. Our people were oppressed by foreigners in their own country. And things are still not easy in the current times. Although we gained independence 54 years ago, we are still not truly free yet. We lag behind badly in terms of economic development. So there is a next stage of independence that we must attain to become truly free as a people. That next stage of independence is “economic” independence.
That is why I believe that you have chosen the right theme for this occasion. To be able to improve the quality of life of our people, we need to harness all of our potential. We need to harness the potential that is based at home and we also need to harness the potential that is based abroad. And so I would be speaking on the theme: “Harnessing the potential of Ghana” with reference to the role of Ghanaians abroad.
There are three main areas I will cover in connection with the topic: The Ghanaian population in the Diaspora; The past, present and future situation in Ghana; and Role of the Ghanaian population abroad.
Ghanaians in the Diaspora
A lot has happened in Africa in the past 600 years in connection with Africa‟s relations with the rest of the world. The first Europeans arrived on the shores of Africa in 1450.
Between that time and 1850, that is, for a period of 400 years, more than 12 million Africans were shipped abroad as slaves. These people were made to labour on plantations, mines, construction sites and in private homes as servants.
It has been 160 years now since the mass purchasing and shipment of Africans to destinations around the world was abolished. What you find these days, particularly since the early 1980s, is a situation where many Ghanaians leave to countries abroad in search of greener pastures. This emigration of our people is what has created a Diaspora of about four million Ghanaians abroad. In fact, people like Kwame Nkrumah left Ghana in 1935 to go and get an education abroad before returning in 1947.
Today there are about four million Ghanaians living abroad and the bulk of this population is concentrated in Europe and North America. These days you also find Ghanaians emigrating to countries in the Middle East, Asia and Australia. Altogether, these Ghanaians comprise of people who are unskilled, semi-skilled, and skilled. Then you also have a large population of Ghanaian students studying in various institutions around the world. Some of the people who leave Ghana to go and study abroad fail to return back home. This situation has often led to a severe siphoning of some of our most brilliant human resources. Some people refer to this phenomenon as “Brain drain”. If you consider Ghana‟s current population of 24.3 million, then it means that about 17 per cent of Ghana‟s population is based abroad. Most researchers have actually said that up to 20 per cent of Ghana‟s population is based overseas.
We know clearly that the potential of every nation resides in its people and in its natural resources. It is people who do things; it is people who make things happen. So now that we have almost a fifth of Ghana‟s population based overseas, how can we harness their contribution to the national and African development agenda?
Ghana
Let me turn my attention to talk about the past, current and future situation in Ghana.
Independence and big aspirations in 1957
As a country, we started with big aspirations in 1957. Here are some of the declarations and promises we made to ourselves and the world on the eve of independence: “We have awakened. We shall no more go back to sleep anymore. Today, from now on, there is a new African in the world. That new African is ready to fight his own battles and show that, after all, the black man is capable of managing his own affairs.” “We are prepared to build it [Ghana] up and make it a nation that will be respected by every other nation in the world.”
“We know we are going to have difficult beginnings but … we can prove to the world that when the African is given a chance he can show to the world that he is somebody.” “… from now on – today – we must change our attitudes, our minds, we must realize that from now on, we are no more a colonial but a free and independent people.” “We are going to demonstrate to the world, to the other nations, young as we are that we are prepared to lay our own foundation… we are going to see that we create our own African personality and identity. It is the only way that we can show the world that we are ready for own battles.”
Extracts from Kwame Nkrumah’s Eve of Independence Speech, Old Polo Grounds, Accra, 5-6 March 1957, Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joBjzivBKz4&feature=related
How much of this promise have we delivered in our 54 years of existence?
Current environment
Ghana‟s current position in relation to other countries in the world is far less than the potential we have. Ghana is currently ranked 130/169 countries in the world in terms of Human Development. This reflects Low human development, i.e. 77 per cent of nations in the world are ahead of Ghana when it comes to education, life expectancy, and per capita Gross National Income (UN Human Development Report 2010); Life expectancy in Ghana is 57 years for men and 59 years for women (UN 2010); Our Gross National Income (GNI) per capita is US $700 (World Bank, 2009). We rely on a small annual budget of 10.8 billion dollars for 24.3 million people. And around 60 per cent of this money often has to come from donor countries; In terms of education, UNESCO recognizes 9000 universities around the world. The University of Ghana, Legon ranks around 6000 and KNUST, Kumasi is 6500; and What all of these statistics mean is that 40 per cent of our people in Ghana live below the national poverty line (according to the Human Poverty Index).
I don‟t think these statistics represent where most of us want Ghana to be as a country. So clearly we have to improve. To have a better future, we would need to put our country to work. We have great potential as a people and we can certainly do far better on these statistics like we are able to do in a few other areas.
When it comes to international football, for example, Ghana competes very well. We are currently ranked as the 15th best nation in the world when it comes to football (FIFA Rankings for February 2011). This is an excellent achievement when you consider the fact that there are 203 FIFA nations in the world. We had two successful FIFA World Cups in Germany 2006 and South Africa 2010. As we know, football has become a very powerful way to harness and demonstrate the potential of a country. So here we owe the Black Stars a lot of gratitude for projecting a positive image of Ghana and Africa on the world stage. With the right mental and physical attitude, I believe we could have
gone on to win the World Cup in South Africa. We also owe the Black Satellites a lot of gratitude for beating Brazil in Egypt 2009 to become the reigning World Under-20 champions. Why can‟t we replicate this same potential when it comes to other areas like economic development, education, healthcare, energy and jobs for our people?
There is no doubt that things are improving gradually. But the improvements are not happening fast enough to meet the aspirations of our people.
Growth rates in Sub-Saharan Africa have been appreciable in recent years, comparable to Asia, hovering around 6 per cent, a result of high commodity prices, a favorable global environment – and also of improved economic management, investment climate, private flows and governance. Although the global financial crises of the past three years has eroded some of the gains and continue to threaten these gains, most African countries have weathered the storm of the worst financial crisis since the great depression of the 1930s.
In Ghana, initial hiccups following the transition in 2008 and drying up of capital from global financial markets brought increasing pressure on the exchange rate, increased the fiscal deficit and temporarily threw the economy out of gear. Recent data suggests a normalized situation, with commodity prices back in their highs.
There is currently excitement among young Ghanaians both abroad and at home because of the emerging oil market. On Dec 15 2010, Ghana officially became an oil-exporting nation. The antecedents to this, however, started much earlier, culminating in the discovery of crude oil in commercial quantities off Cape Three point in July 2007. It is estimated that Ghana will become the seventh largest oil producer in Africa, with initial deposits of around 3 billion barrels. About 60,000 barrels of oil will be exported per day from 2010, 120,000 barrels a day in 2011, fetching the country $836 million annually and over $20 billion over the production period 2012-2030.
The oil find has thus raised expectations and hopes of a „Better Ghana‟ where jobs would be created and the state of the economy improved for all and sundry. However, this depends on whether Ghana is able to avoid the natural resource curse typified by bad management and corruption, exchange rate appreciation and crowding out of private investments. It is thus not surprising that the oil discovery has led to such heightened expectations of the next oil giant in Africa with all the attendant benefits that come with oil revenues.
Future aspirations
Ghana is 54 years old now. What kind of Ghana@100 would we like to see, and how can we get there from our current position? In response to this question, I prefer to describe the kind of aspirations we should hold for the future in plain and simple
language rather than in any other form like economic statistics. It is simpler that way and simple language is what the ordinary man in the street understands.
For me, it is better to express quality of life in simple terms that the ordinary can understand. I remember once when Former President Jerry Rawlings was asked about his ideology during the revolution days, he told a group of journalists that he was never particularly keen on ideology. He said:
“Don't ask me what my ideology or economic programme is. I don't know any law and I don't understand economics, but I know it when my stomach is empty.”
The ordinary man in the street understands things in terms of their feelings. And many of us are ordinary men so it is always best to express things for us in simple and plain language that we can understand. Economic statistics clearly have their purpose. However, I always find it hard to accept the usefulness of economic statistics when our leaders point to them as evidence of progress but you go on the ground and people are suffering to have the meals they need to keep healthy, people can‟t find jobs, people don‟t have access to good health care, and can‟t afford a decent place of accommodation.
In that respect, I outline seven aspirations that I would rather use to define and measure the quality of life of our people in Ghana and Africa. That is where we should be by the time of Ghana@100 (i.e. 2057) and each of us must play a role in helping us to get there:
1. Everyone should be able to find enough food to eat everyday;
2. Most people should be able to afford a decent place of accommodation;
3. Most people should be able to find a job that pays enough money to help them support themselves and their families;
4. Everyone should be able to have access to quality healthcare;
5. We should have a good system of Government in place which responds to the needs and aspirations of our people;
6. We should have adequate infrastructure to support quality of life and economic activity;
7. We should live in peace with ourselves and all countries in the world.
Are these aspirations too difficult for us to attain in the next 50 years? We can do it!
From present to future
So what do we need to do in order to get out of our current situation of low human development and poverty? There is not an easy or single answer to this question.
But we have to believe that it is possible to move from the present poor condition to a prosperous future. It is important to believe because nothing is possible without faith.
Fidel Castro once said:
“I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.”
I often tell friends that there are two roads ahead of us in terms of moving from the present into the future. Either we believe that we can improve our present condition and then go ahead to do it. Or we lose hope and give up because it is too hard. The option in the latter case would be to surrender and then probably write to one of the rich nations in the world and request to become a colony again! But that would be irresponsible considering the enormous potential we have; it would be betraying the independence that our forefathers fought so hard to achieve for us; and failing to live up to expectations that they set out for us. They have done their bit and departed. The calling of our time is to put in the hard work, sacrifice, vision and courage necessary to build a better Ghana and Africa for future generations. We clearly have great potential as a people and that potential is what we need to harness and exploit to do it. Let me therefore proceed to talk about some of the things we need to do as a people. Here, my message is to Ghanaians in particular and Africans in general.
Among other things, there are six things we particularly need to do right now in order to drive Ghana forward into a better future or “Better Ghana” as some people prefer to express it:
1. We need to change our mindsets and attitudes;
2. We need strong and capable leadership;
3. We need to give opportunity to young people to drive the nation forward;
4. We need to understand where and why others have failed;
5. We need to accelerate our development; and
6. We need a political and economic unionification of the countries in Africa.
I will expand on only three of these points because of time.
Changing our mindsets and attitudes
The main hindrance to the progress of the nation is the mindset of the Ghanaian African. That is the first area where we need to change. Changing the mindset for Ghanaians to believe and be confident in themselves; value their unique potentials; and attributes and have a conviction that the development and progress of the nation lies squarely on our shoulders, and not any external entity.
We need what my friend Paul Alagidede, who is an economist and one of the leading Pan-African brains of our time, describes as “The Ghanaian Mental Revolution” analogous to Kwame Nkrumah's idea of the “African personality”. So first, sow the seeds of awareness of the full force of the energies in the national psyche and all other issues of development will follow as sure as night follows day!
Those of you present here in this meeting today who are Ghanaians and for that matter Africans are a good vehicle for carrying this mental revolution out. You have been exposed to high standards of life and you appreciate the organized way in which education, industry, commerce, and science and technology has played a role in edging the developed nations of the world like the UK through the industrial age to the information age. And deep inside your hearts, I know that you yearn for the day when Ghana will become an orderly, well organized, prosperous and properly administered country. With the education and international exposure you have now, your role is to bring the change that our people in Ghana and Africa are yearning for. That is one of the roles of the Ghanaian African abroad.
I feel personally that our nation deserves better than it is getting currently from those elected to rule and my main concern is on the mind set mainly because we appear to lose the battle there and nowhere else. If you elect a president today and he‟s on the plane tomorrow to some Western capitals holding cup in hand begging for alms then there is a problem with the ability of that person to put into the populace the idea of believing in oneself, which I think is crucial for national development. If you have a continent that believe not in doing things their own way and always wanting to be playing second fiddle, then there are questions regarding our confidence levels and state of mind. If you have leaders who will not put the right things in place (i.e energy, food, roads, security etc) and encourage the people to respond by investing in their own country but rather interested in globetrotting looking for foreign investors, who will not come anyway because they are not fools, then we have a monumental crises in our hands. If you have a whole nation whose budget depends on external funding, and if you have more than 70 per cent of your university graduates queuing 12-18 hrs a day in Western embassies to get visas and leave the country at the least opportunity, then there is something wrong somewhere, and I cannot attribute it to anything else than the state of our mind. I am saying this because, Ghana, and Africa for that matter has all it takes, resources wise to be what it wants to become. As Bob Marley reminded us, we need to emancipate ourselves from “mental slavery”. So believing in the “African Personality” as Kwame Nkrumah puts it is the way out.
I don‟t have enough training in psychology to understand the mechanics of the mindset well, but the little I have seen and know concerning our people and by constantly interacting and reading the mood of the nation convinces me that, if we can move
ahead from where we are stuck now, we must jettison all inferiority and mediocrity and pursue our vision with oneness of purpose and utmost belief that we are capable.
Understanding where and why others have failed
We should not assume that current African leaders are completely useless or lack the ambition to transform and develop their countries. We need to investigate the causes of why many of them have failed. Many of them had their education abroad and possessed a clear determination to develop their countries when they get a chance in government. Why have they not been able to change things in the way that they had expected? We need to find the answer to this question as we march forward. If we simply assume that we are smarter than the past and current leaders, or if we simply assume that they are stupid, then we might be making a mistake. Leadership is hard and we need to understand how others have failed to plan how we can succeed. Those of you here in Cambridge University are clever people. One of the things you can do as African students in the Diaspora is to investigate the question of where and why many African leaders have failed and give us the answers. We need to understand why we are stuck where we are to help get a clearer understanding of how to move forward.
Political and economic unionification of African states
From a personal point of view, I do not see any sustainable way out for Ghana and other countries in Africa when it comes to developing a globally competitive economy unless we take the path of political and economic integration. The African Union agenda should be placed firmly on the table again and all of us must do our best to support it and to make it succeed. The political and economic integration of states in Africa is clearly the way forward for the future. Others have done it. Why can‟t we also do it? Those of us from the developing nations of the world are fortunate in the sense that most of the things we need to do to develop have been done by others. There is a United States of America (USA) which comprises of 50 states. There is a European Union (EU) which comprises of 27 member states. Then there is China with 1.3 billion people. The countries in South East Asia and Australia have been talking about forming a political and economic union like the EU because they recognize that as the only viable way forward in a modern competitive world. What is Africa doing as all of this goes on? With all the clever people we‟ve got, is it to hard for the 57 countries in Africa to determine what we need to do in order to develop and become players rather than spectators in the modern world? Other regions of the world have shown us the way. Much of what we need to do now, quite apart from developing our own homegrown solutions, is to adapt the development models of successful regions to our situation back home. Here again, those of you here in the Ghanaian Diaspora who have been exposed to the benefits of integration can play a major role in bringing this about.
How can Ghanaians abroad contribute?
Ghana is currently faced with a situation where we have a country with 20 per cent of its people based abroad and the remaining 80 per cent of the people are based at home in Ghana. So how can we harness the contribution of the four million or so Ghanaians who are based abroad, especially when it comes to our highly skilled professionals?
Identify the people
First of all, we need to begin by knowing who they are, where they are based, and what skills they have got (or not). That is the starting point for harnessing the potential that is based abroad. That is the basic premise upon which we need to operate.
Use the example of football and sports
There is one area where Ghana, and most African countries, does very well with the harnessing of skills based abroad. In fact, we do far better in that area than in all of the other areas combined. That area is football and sports. When you look at the Ghana World Cup Teams in 2006 and 2010 you will find that out of the 46 players we presented for both tournaments, about 90 per cent of the team was harnessed from the skills we have based abroad. And we became very successful at both World Cups (Foot drain! Our domestic league is uncompetitive because all the talents are based abroad).
What does that tell us? First, it tells us that we function best when we harness the potential of our people based both at home (80%) and abroad (20%). Second, the reason we are able to harness the potential of our footballers based abroad is because we know who they are, where they are based, and the skills they have got. So that premise is clearly important. The third point is about the lessons we can learn from the way we harness the skills of our footballers based abroad. It is a simple point: To be able to harness the skills of other highly skilled professional based abroad, we need to create for them conditions similar to the one we create for our “foreign-based” footballers to attract them to come and play for the Black Stars and other national teams.
It is not simply a matter of patriotism these days as people like Michael Essien & co might explain to you. If we would pay significant sums of money to bring Ghanaian footballers in the Diaspora to come and play for the national teams, why shouldn‟t we do same for other highly skilled professionals? Motivation is the key.
Closing remarks
So in conclusion I would say that we can apply the lessons from the way that we are able to harness the skills of our sportsmen based abroad. We can harness the talents of many of our four million Ghanaian compatriots in the Diaspora. There is a significant
population of Ghanaian students, recent graduates, and workers based abroad. Many of these people are clever people who can help our national economy and development. We need to think and find the appropriate ways to harness their potential and skills so that they can help us to get to where we need to be by the time of Ghana @ 100.
For many of us who would be fortunate to be around in 46 years‟ time, I hope that we would inhabit a Ghana@100 which possesses the seven futures I described earlier:
Everyone in Ghana@100 should be able to find enough food to eat everyday; Most people should be able to afford a decent place of accommodation; Most people should be able to find a job that pays enough money to help them support themselves and their families; Everyone should be able to have access to quality healthcare; We should have a good system of Government in place which responds to the needs and the aspirations of our people; We should have adequate infrastructure to support quality of life and economic activity; We should live in peace with ourselves and all countries in the world.
These high aspirations are huge but achievable. They lie squarely on the shoulders of all Ghanaians and Africans for that matter. No one else will come and build our nation and continent for us. It is our responsibility and we must accept it. We must stop begging and looking to other people for meagre and unsustainable donations. We must look first within ourselves for help because we have got great potential as a people.
To achieve the Ghana@100 aspirations here would entail a lot of hard work from all and harnessing the potential of Ghana. The Ghanaian community in the Diaspora has a major role to play in all of this. I thank you for your attention and I must end by expressing my gratitude again to the Cambridge University Ghanaian Society for organizing this event and to Moses Agaawena and his leadership team for inviting me.
Thank you and all the best.
Samuel Laryea
05 March 2011
Email: salaryea@yahoo.com
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