Placing value in and unlocking value from Ghanaian Citizens Part III

Every Ghanaian child is born with some value locked within him or her. We, collectively as the state and as society, are duty bound to realize the intrinsic value in every Ghanaian. We can do this by providing basic quality health infrastructure and care as well as basic quality education for each child. In our peculiar Ghanaian situation, basic school feeding has entered this picture and is a welcome addition. Once we realize the value of each individual in society, our actions, behavior and obligations will automatically reflect that fact.

The attitude and behavior of our bureaucrats, technocrats and politicians reflect the value that society in general and they in particular, place on Ghanaians. Time and again, in the area of education, they have demonstrated the difference in value that they subconsciously place on their progeny and on those of others. One will rarely see the progeny of officialdom attending the educational institutions that they prescribe for the populace in general. The progeny of officialdom attend the well-endowed and often private educational institutions whilst the rest of the public is left to make do with the oft less endowed and resourced state system.

Once a  child is born into our society and onto our soil, we the Ghanaian society, and by extension the state, has a duty to nurture and groom this child until a point where the child matures and value can begin to be unlocked from, or flow from, him or her. One of the first tasks the government has to perform, is that of recording the details relating to the birth of the child. These details should be captured by the health authorities who should have interacted with the pregnant mother and who should be involved with the birth process, or in situations where this is not possible, just after birth. Basically as soon as a child is born, there must be a comprehensive and biometric record of the child. And it must be constantly updated by the Educational and Health authorities as this child progresses through life.

Every  Ghanaian must be within a certain proximity to a health institution, in terms of distance and time. It has never failed to amaze me, how in the United Kingdom, ambulance services are within a certain distance and time of each British citizen. In situations where traffic might pose a problem, paramedics on motorcycles will weave through traffic to administer first aid to the injured until an ambulance makes it way to the scene.

In critical situations, helicopters exist to fly to the injured and whisk them to the hospital. From a Ghanaian perspective, where taxis are accepted as the means of transporting the injured to the hospital, and where ambulances are accepted as being the transport of choice for dead bodies to funerals and the graveyard, it seems like overkill, but from another perspective, this is the value that the British system places on each individual. Basically the British system places enough value on each individual to warrant the sort of expenditure it spends on ambulances, motorcycles and helicopters. We in Ghana have a similar duty to place a similar value on our citizenry and start structuring our society towards protecting citizenry with the above mentioned value.

To wrap up this discourse on the intrinsic value within Ghanaian citizens, from the top echelons of power all the way to the bottom, there must be a re-orientation of the collective mindset, laws and procedures of government from the status quo. We must treat every Ghanaian child and citizen as we would treat our own children or family members. It is not a waste of resources but an investment in the future of our country.

Placing value in and unlocking value from Ghanaian Citizens Part II

Two weeks ago, I was summoned to Breman Asikuma, to attend the 9^th Speech and Prize Giving day of Ave Maria School. As I sat through the ceremony and watched the kids execute their choreographed moves, I wondered how many of the girls would end up as maids in the leafy suburbs of Asikuma and how many of the boys would end up hawking goods on the streets or in the markets of Accra.

Parents bring their children into the world with so much hope for their future but our system gradually erodes that hope and replaces it with a defeated acceptance of the fact that their children did not break through the glass ceiling that exists here in Ghana. And the irony of that simply cannot escape me. To think that in our own beloved Ghana, a glass ceiling exists for a disadvantaged majority of our citizenry.

Even more ironic is the fact that the process of emigrating abroad, presents  a Ghanaian with a higher probability of succeeding in life and at best, breaking through the glass ceiling out there, or breaking through the glass ceiling back at home, at worst. Most Ghanaians will be in a position to recount a story, where a friend or relative, struggling to make ends meet here in Ghana, experiences a dramatic positive change in circumstances where lifestyle has been transformed beyond recognition.

So the million dollar question is, how do we place value in and on every Ghanaian? Simplistic as it sounds, we have to treat each Ghanaian the same way we treat children of Royalty or the President.

The process of placing value on the Ghanaian begins well before he or she is born. The appropriate Health infrastructure must be in place. Expectant mothers in the cities or towns should have access to Health Institutions. Ante-Natal medical examinations and classes should be made mandatory for every expectant mother and should be free on the National Health Service. Free because it is an investment in the individual that the government is making not a waste of scarce national resources.  Records should be kept for each mother and baby during the ante-natal period and these should be closely monitored by nurses and then further up the ladder, Doctors. Basically if anything is noticed that is not right, corrective action must be taken to ensure that the child emerges into this world with the best care and in good health. Advances in medicine means that most situations can be addressed.

For expectant mothers in the rural areas, medical staff can be equipped with the vehicles, motorcycles, boats and where applicable, aircraft to be able to reach out to the expectant mothers out in the inaccessible villages. It sounds preposterous initially but this is precisely the point I am making. If the daughter of the President found herself unwell and pregnant in an inaccessible village somewhere in the Afram Plains, It wouldn’t sound preposterous to employ the Airforce to retrieve her. It would be the right thing to do. This is because of the value we, as a society place on the daughter of the President.

Just as we would pull all stops to get the daughter of the President, out of that remote village in the Afram Plains and into the best possible medical care, we must place a similar value on each and every expectant Ghanaian woman. The moment we configure our collective mindset accordingly to accept that each Ghanaian mother has a value akin to that of a President’s daughter, we will be well on the way to the future development of our country

To be Continued . . . .

Placing value in and unlocking value from Ghanaian Citizens

No matter the circumstances into which every Ghanaian is born, he or she is born with greatness locked within him or her. It takes divine intervention and a sequence of events and circumstances to unlock the greatness from an individual. And anytime greatness is unlocked from an individual, our nation Ghana benefits.

Anytime I drive around my dear country Ghana, I look into the faces of the individuals I come across and wonder what greatness is locked within them. And I reflect on how far down the development path Ghana would have come, if we had been able to unlock even 10% of the greatness locked within Ghanaians.

Arguably one of the most influential Ghanaians ever born, Kwame Nkrumah started out as just another Ghanaian village kid. He was born in Nkroful, an obscure corner of Ghana. I use the word obscure because in the scheme of things in Ghana right now, Nkroful simply does not feature. There are so many people and kids in places like Nkroful, scattered throughout Ghana, who are living from hand to mouth, but each with potential nation changing greatness locked within them.

The thrust of this article basically is that the British colonialists assumed that each native ( as they referred to us ) had some value. Thus the system and framework they put in place, was geared towards unlocking  the value in each individual and allowing it to develop within the individual. This value or greatness as I call it, eventually had a positive multiplier effect  on the nation, especially when the individual became an adult.

The system put in place by the British, unlocked the potential and value in Kwame Nkrumah and enabled him to become the top student in his class. Kwame now baptized as Francis, was made a Pupil Teacher. In 1926, an Educationist Reverend A.G Fraser, impressed with Kwame Francis, recommended that he should go for further studies at the Accra Government Training College.  In 1928, Kwame Francis moved, to Prince of Wales College now Achimota School. Eventually he found his way to Lincoln University in the US and the rest is history.

Today, a century and millennium succeeding Nkrumah’s, does our Ghanaian system place an intrinsic value, on each and every Ghanaian. I don’t think so. I ask myself, how easy would it be, for any kid from Nkroful or my beloved Breman Asikuma, to make it through our educational system and eventually develop his or herself to the point where he or she can contribute to our country’s development?

If Kwame Nkrumah had been born in our times, there is a 80% probability that he would have ended up selling dog chains and Wrigley’s Chewing gum at a traffic light in Accra.  We would have been clamouring for them to be swept off the streets and back to the hinterland.

I have always wondered why so many Ghanaians don’t make it in Ghana but succeed the moment they leave our shores. Surely there must be something about Ghana that prevents them from realizing their full potential. Or conversely something about “abroad” that realizes the value in the individual and brings out the best in them. We have Ghanaians in the UN, NASA,Wall Street and the Square Mile to name a few. It is temptingly simplistic to assume that the more favourable economic circumstances prevailing  out there is the reason for their success.

But this is not the case. I will attempt to explain why next week.

Private Enterprise and Development in Ghana

I never dreamt that this day would come. I, Kobina Obu, sitting in Breman Asikuma, typing an article on my Blackberry and mailing it to my editor in time to meet a deadline. Wonders will never cease.

Yes, this article you read, was conceived, composed and emailed from deep within the forests of Breman Asikuma. The Breman Asikuma which until November 1996, did not even have electricity.

This weekend, my wife and I, were summoned to attend the 9th Speech and Prize giving day of the Ave Maria school in Breman Asikuma. Oh my commanding wife, in her capacity as an illustrious daughter of the town, was billed to deliver a keynote speech. So you can imagine the panic I felt, when at Gomoa Potsin, half way into the journey, I received a text message from my editor giving me up to 6pm, to submit my article. I had left my trusty laptop back in Accra. The only tools I had to meet that deadline were my Blackberry phone and the MTN service in Breman Asikuma. Private enterprise, with the able assistance of technology, had inadvertently, come to my rescue.

I can't help but recall the supposedly good old days, when the government tried to be omnipotent and omniscient, by being all things business, to all its citizens. Ghana Telecom, the sole provider of all Telecom services, struggled to provide the semblance of a telephony service, even to the capital city. My beloved Breman Asikuma, never had a fixed line service. Spacefon, now MTN, was the first provider of telephony services to this distinguished town of old.

Today, any Bremanese, with his brain and technology, can create value or knowledge, publish it and participate fully in the decentralized global economy. I could just as easily, have been submitting this article to the New York Times, the Washington Post or the Financial Times. From the forested depths of Breman Asikuma. We have come a long way.

This is why I have grudgingly come to the conclusion that, the goverment must gradually disengage itself from business and from providing services to its citizens for profit. Instead, the goverment should focus on creating the environment and framework within which private enterprise can take root and flourish, providing much needed services to the people of Ghana.

Grudgingly because, once upon a time, I was a proponent of the goverment being in business and providing much needed services to the people. But that will be the subject of or fodder for a debate or argument on the merits or otherwise of government involvement in business.

Just like my favorite pastime cooking, the development of a nation has a recipe and ingredients. One of the essential ingredients of development is private enterprise. Private enterprise is basically the God given ability to create value and provide services, usually locked and hidden away within individuals or groups of individuals. The government of Ghana, took the bold step of opening the Telecom sector to all qualified entrants in the 90's. Those of us, avowed Nkrumaists, watched with apprehension as supposed newbies and "greedy capitalists" set up shop and started providing services. Today we benefit from and see the long term benefits of these bold initiatives.

It used to be anathema to think about private companies building roads and charging us for their use. I hated to imagine the day when private companies would build, own and operate hospitals instead of the government. Now I look forward to the day when all this will become reality.

It is now drizzling lightly in Breman Asikuma. I have completed and reviewed my article. I will press a button and in less than 5 minutes, Patrick will receive my article and breathe a sigh of relief. That sigh of relief would trigger a series of bureaucratic processes which would ultimately culminate in a cheque.

I, Kobina Obu, would have created value.  From the forested depths of Breman Asikuma.

Long live private enterprise. Long live Ghana.

The Global Debt Discussion and Lessons for Ghana

One gray rainy evening in Breman Asikuma, I switched on the Akasanoma radio I inherited many years ago and tuned into this station broadcasting from Adabraka, managed by that dude from Ajumako.

The newscaster talked about the incredulous fight between the ruling Democrats and Republicans in the US. It reminded me so much about the fight’s we had right here in Ogyakrom between our parliamentarians. Here in Ghana, we tended to make statements to the effect that what happened here in Ghana would not happen in the United States or the United Kingdom. So wrong we are.

What were the Democrats and Republicans arguing about? America’s expenditure had been projected to exceed its income. America hitherto had solved the problem by borrowing money.  America now needed to borrow more to plug the fiscal hole in its budget. Just like Ghana.The Democrats favored borrowing more, the Republicans favored cost cutting to reduce or eliminate the hole in the budget. That was the fight.

Koo Krampah, my childhood pal and cocoa farmer, sitting right by me, asked what defaulting meant. I told him simply that to default meant that America owed some people and that it would not be able to pay them when the time came to pay them their money. “You mean Obama is going to do what Acheampong did some time back?” “Yen tua?” The irony of that hit me then. Funny how life imitates fiction.

It has become the norm in Ghana (and apparently globally) to run a budget deficit annually. In effect countries like Ghana and America, were mortgaging future income to satisfy present needs. And irrespective of how sanguine economists projections were, there would come a time, when the state of a countries economy would not permit the country to honor its debt obligations. And if a country like America could default, then surely so could Ghana .America would get away with a default but Ghana would not escaped unscathed.

The expected Oil income and HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Country Initiative) have lulled our politicians into a false sense of security. It is tempting for them to think that in the future, income from oil could be leveraged to help settle our debt obligations. But a fact of life is that, as a countries incomes rises, so does its expenditure and its obligations.

Another bad case of indebtedness, Greece, also teetered recently on the verge of a default. But it was bailed out to the tune of $110 billion. We in Ghana should never dream of being bailed out by even 10% of that amount, should it ever come to that. And the restrictions and conditions that would accompany such a bailout could trigger unthinkable consequences in this country of ours.

Our Politicians should jettison fancy economic models and projections and return to good old common sense to reduce or eliminate our budget and secure the future of our country. In every budget with a deficit, there are areas of expenditure that can be eliminated. The government of Ghana is definitely not the most efficient and cost conscious of governments.

Acquisition of Government vehicles and consequent expenditure on fuel is one area that can be examined and sacrifices made to bring us closer to a balanced budget. Allowances and expenditure like free phone calls and travel abroad can also be pruned to help balance our budget.

I could go on and on but what would the point be? It would be naïve and utopian to think that those in government would sacrifice the comforts of their existence to ensure the future of their and our children.

We in Breman Asikuma can only live in hope