allAfrica.com: Ghana: Invitation to Re-Colonize - Is the Country for Sale? (1) (Page 1 of 2)

In a report published on Ghanaweb on 14th July 2008 ("NPP has "poverty of vision" - CPP", 14th July 2008)), Dr. Nii Moi Thompson is reported to have lamented about the state of our nation rather elegantly and appositely thus: "...our national football team never entrusted to a Ghanaian, our water is in the hands of the Dutch, our roads are built by the Chinese, Presidential Palace built by Indians, waste by the Belgians, and our Telecom sector is now earmarked for an Anglo-American company." I couldn't agree more since for much of the past week I have been in total despair about the future of our nation. From our roads to Ghana Telecom, there seems to be no end to the constant assumption informed by an ideological reflex that we are incapable of doing anything for ourselves and that the only strategy in town is to mortgage our country's future to 'strategic' foreign investors. Fifty years after independence this is very distressing.

It all started a few weeks ago when I came across an advertisement by an NGO in the Financial Times of London which went along the lines of "a donation by you [the reader] will ensure that a young boy in Accra, Ghana receives an education". The NGO went on to say they've been running educational programmes for the young and destitute in Accra for some time now, whereupon I asked myself : what on earth is going on in my country?

A few weeks later, I saw an advert by the Government of Ghana (GoG) in the classifieds section of the Economist (see http://www.economist.com/classifieds/view_ad.cfm?sitd=7126&sitd_type=T) inviting interested external operators to participate in a 25-year concession to construct a 230km dual carriageway between Accra and Kumasi as part of the Public-Private Partnership scheme. Curiously, according to the advert, "the GoG has commenced design and construction of the dual carriageway between Accra and Apedwa, and between Konongo and Kumasi using funds that it has already secured. However, the design and construction of the middle section of the dual carriageway between Apedwa and Konongo will be the responsibility of the concessionaire." Despite the public investment made thus far, however, "the entire 230km length of the Accra-Kumasi road (including the middle section to be constructed by private operators) will be handed over to the private operators to manage " ; the operator will also be allowed to charge tolls over the entire stretch of road. Phew!

I wondered why we were surrendering not only so-called non-performing assets to foreign-owned operators but have abdicated responsibility for investing in our own future development. During the 25 years of the concession, the poor traders, farmers and local residents of Konongo, Apedwa and Kumasi will pay a toll each time they use the road so that foreign investors, who only funded the middle section of the road, can recover their costs plus a rate of return that must be higher that they can obtain elsewhere for the same level of investment. Why must this be so?

In despair I fired off a note to a few friends with a blithe rhetorical question about what the people of Konongo did 200 years ago. One of the recipients responded with two examples not from 200 years ago, but as recently as the 1920s. He wrote: "when road mileage tripled 1921 - 1930 in the then Gold Coast, the feeder roads were almost wholly constructed by the farmers themselves. Sir Alexander Ransford Slater (Governor from 1928-32) acknowledged the work done by his predecessor Sir Gordon Guggisberg (Governor from 1919-1927). In his address to the Legislative Council on February 17, 1930 Slater said: "except in the most remote parts of Northern and Western Ashanti, almost every village is connected by its own motor road with the main trunk roads, and head carriage is now a rare sight. The village feeder roads have been constructed by the chiefs and people on their own initiative and at their own expense".

The second example was from 1923 when apparently, "the people of Kwahu raised £5000 from their own resources, engaged an Italian contractor to 'blast and link a motor road up the hitherto unconquered Kwahu scarp'. Guggisberg personally drove an American Dodge vehicle up the mountain to present to the chiefs and people of Kwahu assembled at Atibie, in appreciation of their incredible self-help."

What on earth has happened to this spirit of self-help and self-reliance? Do we, a nation of 23 million people with a GDP circa US$15billion, need a foreigner to contribute a part of the US $400m to build the middle part of a dual carriageway from Apedwa to Konongo and in return exact tolls from us for the next 25 years? If we need this road, are we incapable of making this investment ourselves as the resourceful people of Kwahu and Western Ashanti did in the 1920s? What is this obsession with foreign investors building everything from our stadiums to manufacturing national award medals?

Let's be clear: there is nothing wrong with procuring external, even foreign, expertise as the people of Kwahu did by contracting an Italian engineering firm in 1923. But they raised their own money to pay for the service and there is everything wrong with expecting others to invest in and own our future while we become 'renters' of their services. Mattel and Nike may outsource manufacturing to China and India respectively but they are not owned by their Chinese or Indian suppliers. IBM and Oracle may outsource IT development and support to India but their customers, markets and products are not owned by their suppliers. Any attempt therefore justify the government's policy on the grounds of globalization is both incorrect and ignorant. But the government persists.

web allafrica.com	Enter your search terms	Submit search form
OR subscribers use AllAfrica's premium search engine


Use our pull-down menus to find more stories

Today's Most Active Stories