John Mahama’s Framework for National Development: Part 1

National development entails stages and processes that must be carefully followed, strategized and implemented in order to enhance the living standards of the citizenry. National development has a system of framework that must be followed and implemented, rather than engaging in try and error.

Walt Whiteman Rostow is an American economist and one of the greatest thinkers in the 21st Century’s development studies. He developed his theory for national development which assumed that modernisation was characterised by the western world which were able to advance from initial stages of underdevelopment. Using this model, Rostow penned his classic stages of Economic Growth in 1960 and presented five steps through which developing countries can pass to achieve development: traditional society, preconditions to take-off, take-off, drive to maturity and age of high mass consumption. The model asserted that all countries exist somewhere on this linear spectrum, and climb upward through each stage in the development process.

After winning the 2012 general elections, former president John Mahama adopted the Rostow model to develop this country after several decades of haphazard approaches that has led us to nowhere.

The former president resourced the traditional authorities in order to strengthen our society. It was under this era that the chieftaincy institution was given the maximum recognition it deserved. The former president embarked on a massive infrastructural revolution never experienced under the fourth republic. Relating this to the Rostow’s model, the infrastructural revolution was to serve as the country’s “preconditions to take-off”, without which this country will keep moving in a manner that lacks any obvious principle of organisation and direction. The “preconditions to take-off” entails the installation of physical infrastructure, such as roads, schools, hospitals, markets and ports. The former president intelligently and deliberately focused his attention on massively improving the infrastructural conditions in the country.

This ideology of the former president is a novel approach and a new paradigm shift that actualises the Rostow’s model to ensure that Ghana achieves the “preconditions to take-off”.

In national development, the most difficult thing is attaining the “precondition to take-off” status, it leads to “take-off” which lessens the burden on subsequent governments and transforms the standards of living of generations that follows.

Having previously lived in the United Kingdom for close to two decades, I have not seen any government from Tony Blair to Rishi Sunak construct a new hospital, airport, university, secondary or primary school or new stretch of road in the whole period of my stay. Previous governments have ensure that all these infrastructure are available, therefore subsequent governments do not shoulder these burdens, they only embark on maintenances of these infrastructure. That was the “precondition to take-off” that led to “take-off” and consequently propelled the UK to its current state.

Let us imagine a Ghana where the government does not have to build schools, hospitals, airports, markets, construct roads and ask ourselves what would be our standards of living as Ghanaians. Governments would have been able to build social housing, offer workers decent salaries, pay unemployment benefits, housing benefits, child benefits and access to finance to the private sector to expand and employ the youth as witnessed in the advanced economies. This is the Ghana former president John Mahama was building, the Ghana he will build if elected in 2024.

This is the ideology of former president Mahama which was unfortunately truncated by the malicious and fabricated vicious lies of the NPP in the 2016 general elections, leading us to the current predicament. If Ghanaians had understood former president Mahama’s ideology and allowed him to continue his massive infrastructural drive deliberately initiated to take us to the “precondition to take-off” and eventually “take-off” stage of development, Ghana would have seen massive development never witnessed in Sub-Sahara Africa.

In view of this, Ghanaians must vote for the NDC in the 2024 general elections in order to see the implementation of a tried and tested framework that has led to social and economic development in the Western world.

We cannot be doing the same thing and expect different results, therefore we need a new direction that focuses on a specific area of development that is required for a developing country to develop at an appreciable pace i.e. Infrastructural revolution. Former president Mahama is the man with a clear plan, direction and purpose required for a successful Ghana.