Danyansah Urged African Leaders To Wake Up From Slumber

The Chief Executive Officer of Danywise Estate and Construction, Mr Frank Aboagye Danyansah, has called on African political leaders to “wake up from their slumber” in order to bring practical development in order to create good living conditions for their people.

He expressed concern about lack of willingness to tackle the issue of corruption and called for the urgent need for the leaders of the continent to deal with the menace since it has become a bane for development.

“Failure of leadership in Africa is the cause of our problems, leaders engage in corruption because they do not have any agenda for their constituency or country,” he added.

In a message to congratulate Africans on the AU Day, Mr Frank Aboagye Danyansah observed with grief that managers of African economies have failed to introduce robust policies and programmes that would open education opportunities for vast majority of illiterates wallowing in severe poverty.

Leaders of the region have also been accused of nurturing ethnic politics and allowing few wealthy and educated individuals to monopolise the political system in many parts of the continent.

He described elections in certain countries as “a show of ethnic strength” – which ethnic group is mightier than the other, who comes from which region, and that determines who becomes president of the day.’”

The CEO noted that some leaders at many times mislead the people in their countries and make them believe that “everything is going on well.

“But the fact is that our economies are only growing on paper, the living conditions of many of our fellow citizens are deplorable, job opportunities are not expanding, laws are not being enforced, and private sector businesses are being killed, largely due to bad policies,” he noted.

“Leaders should have the ability to identify experts in various fields and make use of their professionalism and knack to drive the continent’s agenda.”

“In Ghana it is all about political parties with numbers and not great ideas. People just vote on party lines and not competency. Very sad indeed.”

He continued: “The Bankrupt politicians will always go back and say we are the majority and it is our time to eat. People vote in Ghana for “Feel good effect”. For example, I voted for him/her because he/she is from my home town.”

Political parties are vehicles to push the common agenda of the people in areas of education, health, infrastructure, agriculture et cetera but most African countries do not do well in those sectors.

“Education is the solution, in a country where 65 per cent of the people are illiterates it is a tall hurdle to jump over,” Danyansah said.

“We need to wake up from that primitive thoughts and realise in the 21^st century that we need men and women who can competently lead regardless of ethnicity, race or party.”

He called for an end to the “winner takes all syndrome” in the political systems of countries in the continent which he said “has stagnated Africa’s growth.”

Africa is the world’s richest continent when it comes to natural resources according to reports. It has 50 per cent of the world’s gold, most of the world’s diamonds and chromium, 90 per cent of the cobalt, 40 per cent of the world’s potential hydroelectric power, 65 per cent of the manganese, millions of acres of untilled farmland, as well as other natural resources.

Despite its natural wealth, Africa is said to be home to the world’s most impoverished and abused people, but African leaders are quick to blame the legacy of colonialism, others accuse its neo-colonial dimension, and some others pose culture, climate and bio-geographic factors as the explanation to their unending woes.

Columnist SapporGodsway Yaw wrote in 2005 that it is not so much the wicked effects of colonialism or neo-colonialism or a regime of artificial borders that keep Ghana and Africa in general, poor.

He said: “it is true that colonialism did not bestow much to Africa but the African leadership could not retain, let alone increase, the little that it inherited.”

“In fact, corrupt leaders destroyed it. The inherited infrastructure – roads, bridges, schools, universities, hospitals, telephones, and even the civil service machinery – are now in shambles.”

In Ghana, where the colonial roads are spotted with deep potholes, officials insist that it is the vehicle owners who must obtain road-worthiness certificates for their vehicles and not the roads that must be made vehicle worthy.

This shows how the African leadership leaves the colonial legacies to shamble. Is it inadequate aid that keeps Ghana poor?

Between 1985 and 1996 total aid flows to Ghana increased threefold from $150.7 million to $450.8 million in 1995.

Since the 1960s, more than $400 billion in Western aid and credits have been pumped into Africa with negligible results.

“African leaders have made the theory of African dependency persistent. It is up to current leaders to stop playing the blame game and focus not only on the external factors but also on the internal factors that cause the woes of the continent when they try to solve these problems,” Yaw said.