Painting The Surface

The Ghanaian fascination with celebrations is not a new phenomenon. Be it a celebration of new life or old life, Ghanaians make a grand occasion of it. One thing that often accompanies such celebrations is the painting of walls and houses where people will be hosted. These structures are often old and dilapidated, but with a fresh coat of paint, they gain “new” life. For the period of the celebration the cracks and decay and rust in the structure are hidden and forgotten. This same approach is employed in the management of the homeland.

In the area of education, Ghana has failed to address the underlying issues. The country experimented with four years of secondary education rather than three years. Now we are flirting with the idea of a double track secondary education year. Both of these in addition to several minor policies are the fresh coat of paint on a decayed educational system. We have failed to address the fact that we are running the remnants of a colonial educational system. A system that is not designed to ready students for the 21^st century. A system that is measuring skills that do not hold the same weight they did decades ago. A system that neglects to impact skills students will need to embrace and flourish this century and those to come. Yet, we forget all these when we touch up the surface.

In infrastructure, a national approach to street naming and addressing was recently heralded. The problems that prevent a proper address system are poor planning of our towns and cities. Poor planning from lack of affordable housing, lack of regulatory checks and corruption. Yet, to avoid tackling these hard but necessary issues, we attempted to adopt a digital address system. A digital address system built on a well-planned and demarcated country will show us as a truly forward thinking 21^st century country. However, the same digital system employed just to avoid the hard work needed makes us fools. Fools who choose to bury their head in the sand whiles the problems persist

Ghana also has a fresh coat of paint solution to our financial sector. In the past twelve months, several banks have been wound down because of poor management and undercapitalisation. With most of these banks their trajectory gave tell-tale signs of what could be happening behind the scenes. The rate of horizontal growth and reported vertical growth was an anomaly as against existing market forces. Ghanaians need to ask how regulatory failures and corruption led to the current situation. How did so many banks fail to have their systems and structures in place and yet exist for so long? All other efforts are now nought but painting of a dilapidated system. Any helping funds are nothing but bailouts by the Ghanaian people for private enterprise and mismanagement. The core of the issue must be tackled.

A 61 years old country with a youthful population cannot afford to ignore the actual issue and treat just the symptoms. Ghana must with all urgency re-evaluate national programs and projects and ask one key question; are we solving the problem or just hiding/passing it along? The costs of treating the symptoms grows exponentially as the disease continues to manifest in various forms. It is time we stop painting worn down structures and truly rebuild systems to promote national progress. That is the only way to secure our homeland.