The future of Ghana

It was a usual Saturday night as we were seated at our base just to have fun, talk, and socialize with friends and brothers. This is very common in the township of Tamale during weekends especially when there is a power outage.

As we were having a normal conversation on national policies and other issues, one NPP communicator amongst us proclaimed

Read full article.that this Government (Nana Addo's administration) is doing very well it became a subject for discussion and all the guys were presenting their points, surprisingly a guy who has never contributed on political issues has something to say and he said with compassion in Dagbani “Ghana ka future!” means Ghana has no future and went back to his seat quietly everyone laughed at him they felt he has no knowledge because he had no formal education. Curious I’m, so I asked myself what might influenced his statement, this moment led me to always wonder where Ghana would be in the next 20 to 30 years?

As a young man who has the country at heart and always want to affect policies in many ways, I have been observing and analyzing policies of government and what they are meant to achieve. It is interesting to know that manifestos of presidential candidates over the years have been appealing and attractive however, there seems to be a huge gap between the expectations and the reality of the citizens, what is then the problem? There are so many factors that come to mind when the viability of Ghanaian economy is questioned.

On December 17, 2020, according to the Business and Finance Times, a Ghanaian business newspaper quoting data released by the Ghana Statistical Service says that Ghana is heading towards recession Citing 3.1 percent in the second quarter of 2020 and 1.1 percent in the third quarter of 2020 for the first in 40 years, that the last, in 1983 was occasioned by political instability, famine and other economic unrests.

Someone may ask what a recession is? It is simply a sudden seize of an economy usually last for few months, it is characterized by a decline in demand for goods and service, production, and employment however, a recession when persist for long leads to economic depression. This is where we stand as an economy.

Economist or people with knowledge on macroeconomics would tell you that countries that produce and trade in products they have comparative advantage are better-off. This questions us to know our exports and those products among the exports that we have comparative advantage in producing, because we have not expressed keen interest in that baffles me and this separate industrialized or developed economies from developing economies.

Before discussing the possible solutions for developing economies like our very own Ghanaian economy it is prudent, we analyze the challenges facing them. There are numerous problems or challenges, and these include natural resources and geography, religion, corruption, external debt, war and its aftermath, education and technology etc. but for the purpose of this article we would limit ourselves to education and technology.

Now, almost all of the developing countries do not have or lack appropriate education and technology with that, they do not have highly literate population nor do they have high level of technical skills required to build an industrial society some countries do not have the capacity to train enough scientists and engineers or even make education assessable to its citizens but in the case of my beloved Ghana we have engineers, scientists, architects etc. who can only speak English and the only way you would know their profession is when they start explaining concepts, principles or ethics of their various professions

Nelson Mandela once said Education is the single most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.it is undisputable fact that the future of every generation depends on what they have been thought today and by all indications the future of Ghana is worrying it is not possible to reduce unemployment rate in any way by any policy intervention except a consultative reforms on educational system that is intended to train young people to be independent, result oriented, creative, and above all problem solving by offering special skills required to build an industrial society

Undoubtedly, agriculture is the most organized sector in our economy quite aside the service sector which gains its relevance from the thriving of the agriculture sector.

Agriculture sector review in Ghana on April 10, 2020 stated that as at 2019 33.5% of labor force in Ghana was absorbed by the agriculture sector. Substantial number of farmers in this country are doing subsistence production (farming for consumption only) you can imagine our major agricultural commodities are cocoa, rice, tomatoes, oil palm, maize, yam etc.

Meanwhile, the minister of trade and industry Mr. Alan Kyeremanten reported, when member of parliament for Tamale central Hon. Murtala demanded to know how much Ghana spent on rice importation, that Ghana spent an amount of GHC 6.874 billion on rice importation within three years(2017 to 2020) that is about $1 billion within the same period an amount of GHC 3.993 billion for fish , GHC 1.881 billion for chicken(processed) ,GHC 487 million for meat, GHC 281 million for vegetables and GHC 184 million for poultry.

The above data quoted indicates that we are lost as an economy, excessive importation even on the products we have most of our labor employed it is very clear that we are not self-reliable economy even though we are Ghana beyond aid, the education which is our only hope teaches us on demand and not supply we are always growing in terms of living standard; high taste for quality products. we grow with the world in terms of demand and do so little with supply we have nothing to supply the international market aside raw materials which is given to us by nature what do we have to offer by ourselves?

Over the years the conversion of the polytechnics to technical universities is the only radical action government has ever made to this effect. we must discourage the traditional system of training students for a good course and encourage TVET/competence base system of training where we are molded to serve ourselves. There cannot be industrialization when we do not have the technical skills to establish individual firms.
I believe students deserve an education that has value for money and for them to have the confident that they have made the right choice and investment in their future.