What happened to the brand Ghana office?

It was during the late President Atta Mills’ tenure of office that Ghanaians were told that Ghana needed to be branded in order to become a global competitor in attracting foreign investors. This brilliant concept appears to be in coma after the demise of President Mills. Will it be appropriate to suggest that the Mahama led administration does not see the relevance of this office? The recurrence of the neglect of state institutions and agencies dovetails into the recent surprise cry from Dr Tony Aidoo that sought to draw the President’s attention to the blatant neglect of his Monitoring and Evaluation office which was created during the Atta Mills’ era.
Since the inception of this Brand Ghana concept, never have I seen or heard on a renowned global media platform where Ghana is being advertised. Even on our local media landscape, hardly is there any intensive advertisement to showcase places of interest to Ghanaians. Clearly, this office has been starved of the needed financial and logistical resources needed to open up Ghana to the rest of the world.
Perhaps, President Mahama and his cabinet have decided to take a different approach to better brand Ghana. And how are they doing it? Could the recent pose in front of a CNN logo be his first step in this regard? The most worrying aspect of this Brand Ghana fiasco is the apparent waste of public funds in setting up an office that seems not to function effectively as expected. This unfortunate incident is typical of how present and paste governments haste in pumping money into initiatives that do not benefit the country in any way.
For instance, ex-President Kuffour’s Presidential Special Initiatives were timely but for some strange reasons they all fizzled out. Those initiatives on cassava and textile were prudent steps to help farmers to have ready markets for their produce but as it has been the bane of most policies, the sustainability of these initiatives becomes a debacle. The ministry that was created for the beautification of the capital by the erstwhile Kuffour administration to a large extent was relevant relative to the filth and drabness that characterised the capital city. Nobody knows what that ministry evolved into. When the ministry was launched, the questions I asked were, what was the primary aim of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly? Was this move a duplication of functions?
Personally, the Brand Ghana initiative seems to fail from two fronts. The first hinges on the dearth of commitment on the part of government to push through this bold and good initiative. The second part has to do with the fact that our policy makers hardly put in the necessary steps in place to sustain such initiatives. In other words, due to poor planning, we have lost most of our best initiatives to promote the growth of Ghana and one of such is the Brand Ghana initiative. On CNN, BBC and other media spaces, you see some countries like India, Dubai, Malaysia, Indonesia and even Kenya portraying to the world why they are the best destinations for business and leisure. Richard Quest of CNN does best on his Business Traveller programme dubbed, Quest Means Business.
Is it not ironical that we want to brand a country that is engulfed with unstable power supply? Accra itself has its own big challenge of filth. The stench around the drain close to Kwame Nkrumah circle and the VIP bus terminal is nauseatingly overwhelming. The least said about the slums that are gradually germinating in Accra the better. The beauty and glory of Accra have been left to rot. On most of the major streets in Accra, illegally erected kiosks, hawkers and mentally derailed persons compete with pedestrians for space. In the midst of these quagmires, how then can Ghana be positively branded?
The quest to brand Ghana is not limited to the capital city. The initiative encapsulates the entirety of Ghana. The much trumpeted Garden City of West Africa which is Kumasi, is now a pale shadow of its past glory. From Tech. Junction to Kejetia, the street is strewn with juvenile hawkers. The rivers and streams that watered the vegetation of Kumasi are heavily polluted through the activities of illegal gold miners and waste from households. Illegal chainsaw activities boom unchecked. The other regional capitals have their own challenges but the efforts being put place to develop these regions are lethargic.
It still remains a matter of logic and common sense that no investor will gladly invest in a country where sanity is a challenge and corruption is endemic. It does not matter the strength, the efficacy or the broadness of the brand space, if corruption persists without control, Ghana’s branding remains a mist. And that is what it appears to be the case. When one takes a cursory look at the level of corruption in public offices and even the delight of some government officials to deprive the country of its wealth, it is apparent that there is little Brand Ghana Office can do to effectively sell Ghana to the rest of the world. Our leaders have simply failed to lay the basics needed to put the country on a high pedestal.
Ghana can develop if we move beyond the usual rhetoric of tagging ourselves as the gateway to Africa by collective putting our shoulders to the wheel in reducing corruption and financial waste in the public sector. Otherwise, our efforts to build a vibrant Ghana will only remain in coma just as the Brand Ghana Office seems to be.
SOURCE: OKOFO-DARTEY SAMUEL
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