Russia’s War on Ukraine Has Indeed Added to Ghana’s Economic Woes

As usual, in the recent verbal fisticuffs between the operatives of the Russian Embassy in Ghana and the host country and government, that is, the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana, as Americans are wont to say, “The truth lay somewhere in-between” the two opposing sides to this minor fracas – I hope it was only a minor fracas – regarding the fact of whether the impact of President Vladimir Putin’s imperialist incursion into the much smaller country of The Ukraine had adversely dented the economic health, growth and development of Ghana, which was, like many countries the size of its economy and fragility around the world, already badly battered and or bruised but not altogether comatose in the period immediately leading up to Mr. Putin’s declaration of war, actually a “Military Exercise” on The Ukraine (See “Stop Blaming Ghana’s Economic Woes on Us – Russia to Government” Modernghana.com 4/19/22).

It is, of course, equally true, even as the Twitter Handle on the website of the Ghana-resident Muscovites poignantly observed, the COVID-19 Global Pandemic was already giving Ghana and the Akufo-Addo Government a very bad drubbing or butt-kicking long before what may be aptly termed as “The Moscow Fever” began to seismically lambaste the global community at large. Even America’s President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., has attested to the significant impact of Russia’s massive and highly technological assault on The Ukraine as a major economic blight, or crisis, on the economy of the United States. So, why would the Russians deny that the much more fragile Ghanaian economy would not be adversely savaged or dented by Mr. Putin’s rather capricious flexure of his mighty military muscle at The Ukraine which country, we are reliably informed, either jointly or severally, together with Russia, supplies Ghana with approximately 30 percent of its wheat imports annually?

It is, indeed, equally true, as already noted above, that COVID-19, which former US President Donald John Trump venomously dubbed “The China Virus,” has even more negatively impacted Ghana’s economic health, growth and development. So, maybe, we also need to more frequently and accurately slap the “China Label” on any mention or reference to COVID-19 whose adverse impact on Ghana’s economy can scarcely be gainsaid or deemed to be overhyped. Besides, even long before Beijing either deliberately or inadvertently released the so-called Wuhan Virus, the Chinese Galamsyers were already in the country polluting our pristine waterbodies and forestry resources. We are also reliably informed here that Chinese miners have been doing so to varying degrees of environmental degradation since the first batch of these Chinese miners were introduced into the country in 1897, or thereabouts, by the British colonial government. But, I guess, the Beijing Boys have creditably indemnified themselves, somewhat, and even gotten a pass because they had also learned to sooth the soles of our feet long before unleashing the deadly COVID-19 bite, like a nuclearized school of mice. Perhaps even a brigade or battalion. The latter case sounds more like it.

And they have suavely done so by helping the Akufo-Addo Government construct massive first-class roads and other infrastructural facilities all over the country, as no other major global power has done for us in recent memory. Of course, the Russians also did their decent bit in the late 1950s and the early 1960s, including the construction of the Kwabenya Nuclear Power Plant of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission (GAEC). At any rate, the real problem that we have here is that neither the economy of Ghana nor that of Russia was picture perfect way before the year 2020, when the COVID-19 or Wuhan Virus struck with its apocalyptic vengeance on virtually every corner of the globe. You see, the Moscow Boys may not like to hear this, but the glaringly inescapable fact of the matter is that Ghanaians are too enlightened about the far-reaching nature and/or thrust of the global dimensions of the ecosystem of our modern economic architecture to be either easily hoodwinked or intimidated into pretending to be totally ignorant about the major havoc that Mr. Putin’s War is wreaking, literally, on every corner of the world. International trade, as a whole, has been significantly disrupted, although the NATO Boys would have the rest of the world believe that such major commercial disruption is almost exclusively confined to the petroleum and automobile industry.

Obviously, the latter deliberate attempt to skew the totality of the real picture is primarily because traditionally, the Western-European NATO clansmen and women, that is, the movers-and-shakers of the NATO Tribe, have imperiously tended to “synonymize” or interchangeably identify their peculiar and/or particular needs and interests with those of the majority of the Non-European and Non-Aryan humanity, in much the same way that the First and Second All-Out European Tribal Wars have over the course of time become canonized and cosmopolitanized into World Wars I & II. Now, I have not personally counted the number of times or the frequency with which Ghanaian leaders, in particular, and the Ghanaian press or media, in general, have mischievously attempted to scapegoat the Russian War on The Ukraine as the main cause of the country’s economic woes. Nevertheless, I am strongly inclined to believe that the complaint posted on the Twitter Handle or the website of the Russian Embassy in Ghana is pure exaggeration and therefore does not warrant any major concern or attention.

As well, the Moscow Boys would be grossly mistaken to suppose that their decision to force or bully their Ukrainian neighbors and Slavic relatives into doing their bidding, merely because they both share a long geopolitical history, largely of imperialist domination, is an act that ought to be either automatically condoned or applauded, merely because these Moscow Boys have the firepower or the military might to be able to do just that. These Neighborhood Bullies ought to know by now that might never made right, even when the mighty ones managed to coerce the weaker ones into pretending that sheer military might was synonymous with the righteousness of one’s cause, however glaringly ignoble or decidedly inglorious such cause might be or might have been.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

April 21, 2022

E-mail: [email protected]