body-container-line-1

The right Antidote to Ghana’s Developmental Challenge: Prayercetamol or Economicamol

Article The right Antidote to Ghanas Developmental Challenge: Prayercetamol or Economicamol
AUG 30, 2022 LISTEN

Since March 6, 1957, Ghana became a politically independent nation but sadly, it continues to be an overly dependent economy, borrowing from foreign and local sources. In terms of economic growth, Ghana only moves in gyration over the past six and half decades.

Lack of Political Will

Ghana lacks a national developmental blueprint hence four-year recycled political party manifestoes become the developmental guidelines which are often not adhered to.

The strategic developmental agenda eludes the political leaders who engage in blame games and reinventing the wheels by neglecting various developmental projects started by their predecessors and starting similar or the same projects. One may cite the abandoned road infrastructural, health facility construction and affordable housing projects as examples. There is lack of the right political will to engage in industrialization that helps the country to develop.

Apart from Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana who equally gained political independence from the British Colonial Government, subsequent political leaders have paid lip service to the country's industrialization needs leading to the importation of even basic needs such as food and toothpicks. Seemingly, some political actors are involved in importation so their personal wealth creation will dwindle or be eliminated if they govern the country towards industrialization.

Donor Budgetary Support

Pitifully, unless the Government of Ghana's annual budgets are supported from donor sources, government machinery will run to a halt. As if the political leaders are oblivious of this reality, they virtually borrow foreign loans and consume them through various corrupt practices. Such loans continue to impoverish the country since most of our natural resources are used as collaterals in their raw forms for years.

Arguably, a country with limited or no exportation tends to earn less foreign exchange, and this has negative cascading effects on the country's sustainable economic growth and stability. Ghana's economic management moves in gyration with a lot of lip service to ideas and blame games among political opponents. With this attitude, even if all nations of the world should give us their wealth, it is certain that we will only consume without maximizing it. This means that our problem is rather attitudinal.

Another factor retrogressing Ghana's economic development is lack of maintenance culture. Very nice edifices and roads may be constructed today, and they become dilapidated in no time because of lack of maintenance. The country believes more in repairs than planned preventive maintenance.

Economicamol or Prayercetamol?

In our view, perhaps the worse of Ghana's woes is the over dependence on God or lesser divine beings for solutions to physical and economic problems. In the face of escalating unemployment rates due to lack of sustainable jobs for most Ghanaians, some resort to assembling at prayer camps and in churches for solutions to the unemployment menace.

Mismanagement of the economy, corruption, lack of industrialization and over dependence on foreign aids with harsh conditionalities are but some of the germane factors that lead to Ghana's gyratory economic development. Our pursuit for economic freedom has become a mirage as a result.

Instead of folding our sleeves in unison and ensuring that we develop our country progressively, the entire country is polarized with petty partisan politics and mere propaganda as well as empty promises just to win the votes of the masses every leap year.

The appropriate solutions to the country's economic problems are known to be physical and not divine yet we continue to pray to God to solve these problems for us. It was to the extent that a whole General Overseer and Archbishop of the Action Chapel International (ACI), Nicholas Duncan-Williams, once prayed for the Ghana Cedi to appreciate against the American Dollar. He prayed in February 2014, “I hold up the Cedi with prayer and I command the Cedi to recover, and I declare the Cedi will not fall; it will not fall any further. I command the Cedi to climb. I command the resurrection of the Cedi. I command and release a miracle over the economy.” It appears the Lord God did not answer this prayer in the affirmative because 8 years after the archbishop said the- Cedi -must- rise prayer. As at last week for example, the Cedi-Dollar exchange rate was GHC10.00 to $1 and the economy is still in a crisis with escalating inflation rates.

The foregoing must be a lesson to all, that it takes industrialization and sound economic management with strong institutions for the American Dollar to be stable over many years and not only prayers without works. Ghana must do so to make the Cedi stable. Suffice to say that the right antidote to Ghana's economic challenge is “economicamol” and not “prayercetamol.” We must engage in gainful economic activities and increase our exportation to make the Cedi's rise sustainable against the American Dollar. Prayer cannot do this for us.

In any case, had it eluded the clergy and the faithful that Bible says in James 2: 17 that faith is dead if it is not accompanied with work or action? It means that even as we believe in God or the divine, we must work and solve some of our problems physically. The same Bible cautions us in 2 Thessalonians 3:10 that he who does not work must not eat. Borrowing rendition from this Biblical verse, we would want to say that a country that is not well managed must not have sustainable economic growth.

Conclusion

We hereby draw the curtain and dare say that until the managers of Ghana's economy are committed to sound economic management principles and practices, Ghana's economic growth will remain a mirage or just follow a gyratory path. It is high time we used strategic, innovative, and home-grown approaches to economic management rather than depending on prayer and foreign assistance in this regard.

Countries such as America, China, Russia and even the United Arab Emirates did not develop with over dependence on foreign aid and prayer. They developed with hard work and sustainable economic management practices at every echelon of the economy. What happened to NDC's “Better Ghana Agenda” and the NPP's “Ghana Beyond Aid” dictum? Accra which was to be the cleanest city in Africa under the current political administration is perhaps the filthiest city in Africa with diseases that emanate from and thrive on poor environmental sanitation. We call on all Ghanaians to blend the prayercetamol with economicamol in every aspect of their daily lives.

Authors

1. Philip Afeti Korto
Health Service Administrator
[email protected]

2. Adelaide Setordji
Health Service Administrator
[email protected]

body-container-line