Ghana Is Still Building: Our Democracy Must Serve National Development

Ghana’s political parties and citizens need to confront a basic reality that is too often lost in the intensity of our political competition: Ghana is still a developing country. We have not yet built the industrial capacity, infrastructure, technological base, productive employment system and institutional strength associated with highly developed economies, and millions of Ghanaians are still waiting for the opportunities and basic services that development should provide. This reality should influence the way we practise democracy because, in a country that is still building the foundations of national prosperity, political competition must never be allowed to become competition against national development.

Ghana has every reason to value its democratic achievements. We have sustained constitutional rule, held competitive elections and transferred political power peacefully between governments. These are achievements that must be protected. However, democratic maturity must ultimately mean more than the ability to organise elections and change governments. It must also be demonstrated by the way political parties behave when they win power, when they lose power and when their opponents do something that genuinely benefits the country.

Opposition remains indispensable to democracy, and no government should expect silence simply because it claims to be developing the country. Governments must be questioned, public expenditure scrutinised, suspected corruption investigated, poor decisions challenged and better alternatives presented. However, there is a fundamental difference between holding a government accountable and wanting it to fail because its failure may improve another party’s chances of returning to power. When a government introduces a programme that is genuinely improving education, agriculture, industrialisation, infrastructure, healthcare or employment, the sensible national response should be to support what is working, improve what can be improved and correct or replace what has failed. Destroying a useful programme merely because another political party introduced it puts party interest ahead of the national interest.

Ghana simply cannot afford that kind of politics. Countries that have transformed their economies have generally done so through years of sustained investment, institutional development and the accumulation of progress across generations. Governments change, leaders change and policies evolve, but successful development requires the ability to preserve what works and build upon it. China has followed a political path very different from Ghana’s, while countries such as the United States developed through different historical and democratic experiences, so Ghana should not simply copy either model. The broader lesson is more relevant: a nation cannot transform itself if it repeatedly dismantles useful foundations and starts again whenever political power changes hands.

This is where some of the political immaturity in Ghana becomes particularly damaging. We have allowed development itself to become excessively partisan. Governments sometimes present publicly financed projects as though they were gifts from a political party, while opposition parties can feel politically uncomfortable acknowledging successful programmes because giving credit to a government is seen as strengthening an opponent. Yet a road does not become an NDC road or an NPP road simply because one administration constructed it, just as a hospital, factory, railway, school or irrigation system does not belong to the political party under which it was established. These are national assets financed directly or indirectly by the Ghanaian people, and when they succeed, Ghana succeeds.

A more mature political culture would allow a governing party to acknowledge that it inherited a good programme from its predecessor and intends to improve it, just as it would allow an opposition party to acknowledge that a government policy is producing good results and deserves to continue. Neither position should be considered political weakness. On the contrary, the ability to distinguish the national interest from partisan interest is one of the clearest signs of democratic maturity. Ghana will have made significant political progress when acknowledging an opponent’s achievement is regarded as patriotism rather than betrayal.

This also requires a better understanding of what political opposition means. An opposition party should be an alternative government, not an anti-government movement whose purpose is to resist virtually everything the government proposes. Its responsibility is to scrutinise those in power, expose wrongdoing, challenge unlawful or harmful decisions and present credible alternatives while demonstrating that it could govern responsibly if entrusted with power. That responsibility must also include acknowledging good decisions when they occur. In the same way, a government that dismisses every criticism as partisan hostility displays political immaturity because electoral victory does not place any administration beyond scrutiny.

The danger arises when the political interests of either side become more important than the condition of the country. If an opposition party begins to see economic difficulties as politically useful because public suffering may weaken the government, something has gone seriously wrong with the purpose of democratic competition. Equally, if a governing party treats legitimate criticism as an attempt to sabotage the country and expects citizens to applaud everything it does, it has misunderstood the responsibility that comes with political power. Ghana needs greater maturity from both government and opposition because one should not desire national failure in order to inherit political power, while the other should not demand unquestioning loyalty simply because it won an election.

Perhaps the simplest way to understand development is as a national relay race. Each government receives a country that others have governed before it, runs its part of the race and eventually passes the baton to another government. The incoming administration should not return to the starting line merely because it dislikes the runner who handed over the baton. It should preserve what works, correct what does not and add something better before passing the country to the next generation of leadership. When this process continues over twenty, thirty or forty years, progress accumulates and the country moves forward.

Unfortunately, Ghana sometimes behaves as though every new runner must throw away the old baton, return towards the starting line, design another baton, give it a new name and announce an entirely new race. Governments may spend considerable energy changing programmes, slogans and institutional arrangements while projects started by previous administrations remain unfinished or are allowed to deteriorate. The politicians may appear busy, but the nation loses time, money and institutional knowledge that cannot easily be recovered.

This is why Ghana must become bigger than its political parties. The NDC will govern and leave office; the NPP will govern and leave office; other political movements may emerge, govern and eventually leave as well. Ghana, however, remains. Political parties are temporary custodians of the state, and no electoral victory changes that fundamental fact.

There should therefore be a core national development direction capable of surviving changes of government, particularly in areas such as infrastructure, industrialisation, quality education, agricultural transformation, urban planning, science and technology, environmental protection, efficient public institutions and productive employment. Political parties can legitimately disagree over taxation, expenditure, priorities, methods and implementation, but those disagreements should be about the best way to move Ghana forward rather than whether progress initiated by another administration should be allowed to continue.

This is particularly important because Ghana does not have unlimited time. Every young Ghanaian who spends years without productive employment represents human potential that the country is failing to use. Every unfinished road, hospital, school or industrial project abandoned after a change of government represents national resources that could have improved people’s lives. Every successful programme discarded primarily because it carries the identity of a previous administration means knowledge and experience being thrown away, while every electoral cycle spent undoing and recreating what already existed consumes precious years in a country that still has an enormous amount of development work ahead.

More importantly, democracy must begin to have greater meaning in the everyday life of the ordinary Ghanaian. For the unemployed graduate, democracy cannot remain only the right to vote every four years; it should exist alongside an economy capable of creating opportunities for talent and hard work. For the farmer, trader, teacher, nurse, small business owner and ordinary family, democratic government should be reflected in functioning institutions, decent infrastructure, properly managed communities and public services that do not depend on political connections.

When democracy becomes meaningful mainly to political elites who compete for office while ordinary citizens remain economically insecure and dependent on political patronage, we should be prepared to question the quality of that democracy. Political freedom matters enormously, but a citizen who remains permanently dependent on politicians for opportunities may possess political rights without having sufficient economic independence to exercise those rights with confidence. Ghana’s democratic development must therefore go hand in hand with economic development, education, employment and the strengthening of citizens’ ability to determine their own futures.

This is why Ghana needs a democracy capable of doing more than changing governments peacefully. It needs a democracy capable of building a nation continuously across generations, where political competition remains vigorous but national development does not become collateral damage. Governments should be allowed to succeed when their policies work and should be held accountable when they fail. Opposition parties should scrutinise governments relentlessly but fairly, while citizens should be prepared to recognise achievement regardless of which political party produced it and condemn failure regardless of which party they support.

Above all, every incoming government must understand that it has inherited an unfinished national journey, not an empty country waiting to be reinvented. The real political contest should therefore be about who can take Ghana further from the point already reached rather than who can erase the footprints of those who came before.

After more than three decades of the Fourth Republic, Ghana’s democratic maturity should no longer be measured only by whether we can organise another peaceful election. We have already demonstrated that capacity. The harder test is whether democracy can produce political behaviour mature enough to place Ghana above political parties and national development above the struggle for power.

The ultimate political victory should therefore not simply be that the NDC defeated the NPP or that the NPP defeated the NDC. The victory that should matter to every Ghanaian is that, regardless of which party governed, Ghana moved forward and democracy became more meaningful in the everyday lives of its people.

Dr. Isaac Yaw Asiedu
Author: Shifting Mindsets for Sustainable Development in Africa: Political Economy Perspective Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK 2025

https://rethinkingafrica.org