Way to Go, Ghana!

I have social media accounts. But as a habit, I don’t have any significant presence on any of the major, global social media platforms. It is a cautionary attitude that I cultivated earlier on, when social media platforms were widely alleged to be used by prying employers to track down and punish employees found not be docile conformists or sing the institutional or corporate tune. So, the announcement that Twitter had decided to establish its Africa Headquarters in Modern Gold Coast would ordinarily not have come as any big deal to me (See “Twitter Choice of Ghana for Africa Operations Excellent – Akufo-Addo” Modernghana.com 4/12/21).

But in this particular instance, this announcement comes as more of a big deal for me than not, for some of the same reasons cited by the executive operatives of the San Francisco, California-based, company for choosing to physically locate its Africa operations in Akufo-Addo’s Ghana and not in any of the other 54, or so, countries on the proverbial primeval continent. Among Twitter’s critical reasons is the enviable fact that Ghana, more than any other of her sister countries in Africa, staunchly “supports free speech” and is a jealous “champion of democracy, online freedom and the Open Internet of which [Ghana] is also [a major] advocate.”

By extension, I am also elated by the fact that this landmark development comes on the corporate watch of the neoliberal market-oriented Danquah-Busia-Dombo-inspired government of the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party (NPP), rather than the payola prone kleptocratic rag-tag establishment of the faux-socialist John “European Airbus Payola” Dramani Mahama. I am also quite certain that the Twitter People in the Golden State of California conducted quite a heck of a lot of meticulous and extensive research before arriving at this landmark investment decision of locating their Continental African Headquarters in Kwame Nkrumah and Aggrey-of-Africa’s home country.

One, however, hopes that in view of the massive congestion of Ghana’s capital, that Twitter’s Africa Headquarters could be located in the relatively airier and more spacy inland cultural metropolis of Kumasi, the Asante Regional Capital, for only one striking example, or even the Bono Regional capital of Sunyani, with, of course, a satellite office in Accra. We need to spread the goodies. Anyway, on the whole, I am more interested in what Twitter has to offer Ghana’s job market, an area of dire need in which the company has categorically stated that it intends to significantly invest. But, of course, whether such investment projection ultimately redounds to the great benefit of the country and the West-African Subregion at large, will also depend on the level and degree of preparation made towards the same by the Akufo-Addo Administration and other governments that succeed the latter in the offing, in particular a Mahamudu Bawumia government.

You see, we need ideological continuity here in order to take our country to the next level of development, which clearly cannot happen under the aegis of a government that only believes in looting and sharing the resources of the country among the topmost echelon membership of its political machine. The unmistakable reference here, of course, is the Jerry John Rawlings-fangled and John Dramani Mahama-chaperoned National Democratic Congress. The Human-Butchering Revolution has been over for more than a generation now; it is, therefore, time now to launch the industrial and technological revolution which, presently, the most uniquely qualified political establishment to undertake the cranial-intensive venture is, no doubt, the heavily technocratic leadership of the New Patriotic Party.

We need to also significantly bear in mind that in arriving at the historic decision to establish Twitter’s Africa Headquarters in Ghana, the California-based firm also took cognizance of the fact that under the progressive leadership of President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Ghana was selected as the Secretariat of the African Continental Free-Trade Area, which makes the medieval and the erstwhile colony of the Gold Coast the proverbial lodestar of global African development and prosperity. Already, global automobile industrial giants like Volkswagen, Fiat and Nissan have established a significant manufacturing presence in Ghana, coupled with the country’s own increasingly robust private local initiative in this sector. Which is also why for a critical mass of observers of Fourth Republican Ghanaian political landscape, the tenure of President Akufo-Addo may also be aptly described as the Golden Age of Modern Ghana’s socioeconomic and technological development.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

April 13, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]