Abandoning Nkrumah's 7-year development plan for 1D1F, Nkoko Nkitinkiti, Big Push, others not sustainable — Prof. Frimpong-Boateng:

Former Environment, Science and Technology Minister, Prof. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, has advocated a long-term national development plan that can be implemented consistently by successive governments regardless of political changes.

He said Ghana’s development agenda lacked a clear and enduring direction, arguing that successive administrations had introduced various initiatives without ensuring their long-term sustainability.

Prof. Frimpong-Boateng cited programmes such as One-District-One-Factory (1D1F), One-Village-One-Dam (1V1D), Nkoko Nkitinkiti and Big Push as examples of initiatives that, in his view, could not provide the country with a lasting development framework.

Speaking to Bernard Avle on Channel One TV’s The Point of View on Wednesday, September 16, he said Ghana needed a comprehensive national plan that would remain in force even when political parties changed hands.

“I don’t see any clear picture being laid out by the politicians,” he said.

He recalled that Ghana had previously adopted the Seven-Year Development Plan under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah but subsequently abandoned it for a series of different programmes.

“For example, we abandoned Kwame Nkrumah’s Seven-Year Development Plan. We abandoned it and now replace it with One-District-One-Factory, One-Village-One-Dam, Nkoko Nkitinkiti, and Big Push and all that. These are not sustainable things.”

According to him, the country must develop a long-term framework that every government would be expected to uphold rather than replacing development policies whenever there was a change in administration.

“There must be a solid plan that we can all follow, long-term, something that the government, even your own party, will maintain. But some of them, even the next government from the same party, will be rejected,” he said.

Prof. Frimpong-Boateng said Ghana had spent years delaying important decisions about the direction of its development.

“We are at a roundabout. We are dancing around, driving around a roundabout for years. We’ve gone past the crossroads. We’ve come to a point where we have to decide whether to go to the left or to the right, or maybe forward,” he said.