Features
Industrialisation and AfCFTA; panacea to Ghana’s economic woes
I have been following expositions by Ghana’s Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen about his vision to industrialise Ghana through the NPP’s One District One Factory (1D1F) policy as well as his role in drawing up and seeing to the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) project.
I always tell myself that if this was back in 2008/09 when I was doing my Masters in International Affairs, the knowledge I have learnt from Mr Alan Kyerematen would have given me an ‘A’ without learning many theories in International Trade & Development as well as International Economics. I could have passed the two courses without hustle.
The AfCFTA is the largest trading block since the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was formed. By World Bank estimates, the AfCFTA is expected to increase intra-African trade from its current 13 per cent about 51 per cent in the next 10 years, serving about 1.2 billion Africans, and injecting billions of dollars annually into Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Currently, China remains Africa’s biggest trading partner. In 2019, trade between Africa and China amounted to US$192 billion whilst China’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Africa was US$2.7 billion. The disparity in trade volumes between Africa and China is heavily tilted in favour of China.
Whilst China imports raw materials from Africa, it exports finished goods to the continent resulting in a huge trade deficit in favour of China. China is only one of Africa’s trading partners. The US, Europe, and India are among others.
The only solution to the problem of Africa taking raw materials outside and importing finished products is for it to industrialise.
There is no single economic powerhouse in the world which does not use exports of finished goods as the bedrock of its economy. US, Japan, Germany as well as the Asian Tigers; Taiwan, Korea and others are all export-led economies and none of them export raw materials.
There is certainty that Africa is the continent of the future. Investors in the wide world are looking for the next destination for their investments and Africa offers them a huge opportunity for untapped human and material resources.
Luckily for Ghana, the AfCFTA Secretariat through the ingenuity of Mr Kyerematen is in Accra. With its democratic values and peaceful nature, Ghana could attract investors.
What is needed is the leadership which can assure the investor communities both local and foreign of value for their money. This is because direct investment is not a charity job that we must beg for. It is an assurance given to those with the wherewithal to invest that their investments will not go down the drain.
The World Bank has reported that Ghana’s economy can expand by 0.5 per cent for the next 10 years through the AfCFTA, hence, Ghana needs to implement the rest of the AfCFTA protocols.
As eyes are fixed on Ghana as host country of the AfCFTA Secretariat, Investors are highly interested in how Ghana conducts its economic drive as the gateway to Africa. This calls for an astute leadership in economic management.
With the Minister of Trade and Industry implementing the 1D1F and being the architect of the AfCFTA, investors see the opportunity to invest in Ghana to be able to export to all the African states.
The surest bet to Ghana’s industrialisation, the panacea to Ghana’s economic upturn is to make Alan Kyeremateng lead Ghana NOW.
The writer is at Legon Centre for International
Affairs & Diplomacy (LECIAD),
University of Ghana, Legon.
By Nana Kwame Nkrumah (PhD Candidate)
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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BY ROBERT EKOW GRIMMOND-THOMPSON
