It's disappointing Ghana is not making much progress — Former Minister of Foreign Affairs

A former Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Rawlings' regime, Dr. Obed Asamoah has described the current state of Ghana as disappointing.

Speaking to Joy News, on March 21, he stated that in the 65 years of independence, Ghana had still not made much progress.

According to him, the country in Kwame Nkrumah’s time was producing and manufacturing basic items like milk, corned beef and television sets but same cannot be said of today.

“I must say that it is quite disappointing. We haven’t made much progress particularly if you look back to Nkrumah’s time when we were making progress on several fronts. I remember at that time we could buy television sets made in Ghana.

“You could buy fridges made in Ghana and in those days even till now believe in some of these provisions like corned beef and milk and Kwame Nkrumah started producing corned beef. We were also producing milk and things of that nature,” he told Joy News in the interview.

He indicated that Nkrumah at the time believed in empowering local manufacturing and adding value to raw materials.

Quoting an example from a personal experience, he stated that, “I had some problem with my borehole and with the borehole you have to have some filters so that when you pump the water you have some filters that will filter the water.

“There was a problem with the filter system and they went looking round and there is no such thing manufactured in Ghana. This is a simple thing how come we cannot manufacture this in Ghana?

“They have to import it and I was surprised because this is simple. These are the kind of things the Chinese produce in a matter of minutes.”

He indicated that Ghana has failed in developing the technique of production and only now heavily relying on imported items.