Gearing up for Ghana

ACCRA, Ghana: Yes, this week I am writing from Africa, or to be more specific, Ghana. I have long had a fascination for Ghana, thanks at least partly to one of my former bosses. He was none other than Kofi Annan, the late former secretary-general of the United Nations. When I first worked for the UN in the late 1990s, it coincided with Annan’s having assumed the top job at the UN. I can still recall the jubilant mood among my UN colleagues then. Previous secretaries-general were all former top diplomats or semiretired senior politicians of UN member states. Annan was the first secretary-general who actually rose through the ranks of the UN, having started his career as an international civil servant decades earlier as a humanitarian officer for the UN refugee agency. It was an exciting time for the UN, as Annan vowed to undertake much-needed reforms for the UN system which some criticized as being fossilized after half a century of admittedly worthy undertakings worldwide.

Annan, of noble Ghanaian descent, left Ghana as a young man, was educated mainly in the West, and was fluent in both English and French — almost a prerequisite for going far and high in the UN system where these have always been the de facto working languages of equal importance. He was of course also the first UN secretarygeneral from sub-Saharan Africa. He must have been the pride of both Ghana and black Africa, much as his predecessor many times removed, U Thant, was in a sense the pride of Burma and East Asia, having been the first UN secretary-general of Asian descent.

There were of course other Ghanaians of worldwide prominence.

One was Kwame Nkrumah, the father of Ghanaian independence. After the Second World War, the United Kingdom, the erstwhile colonial empire in which the sun supposedly never set as British colonies sprawled around the globe then, was in a sense too exhausted to continue to maintain its costly colonial presence. The winds of change brought about, well, a change in British colonial policy, such that instead of independence movements being repressed, many British colonies were actually encouraged to strive for independence. Consequently, Malaysia, my home country, and

Ghana achieved independence in the same year, 1957, barely half a year apart. Nkrumah should be duly credited with securing independence for his homeland. But what he did subsequently was more controversial. He aligned himself and his burgeoning country, the resource-rich Ghana, with the then fashionable Eastern camp of communist and socialist countries, led by the Soviet Union. Instead of free enterprise, collectivism was encouraged in Ghana. Nkrumah was later overthrown by the country’s military. He spent the rest of his natural life in exile. But as a prominent proponent of Pan-Africanism, i.e., of solidarity among all Africans, Nkrumah was fondly remembered by many who looked unfavorably upon the West.

Talking about the very activist Ghanaian military, another prominent figure immediately comes to mind — that of Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings. Rawlings came to power as Ghana’s national leader in the late 1970s. Like Col. Muamar Ghadafi of Libya, Rawlings never promoted his own military rank to that of marshal or beyond. But unlike Ghadafi, Rawlings did not quite toy with socialism or even Pan-Africanism. Instead he tried to promote self-reliance and entrepreneurship in Ghana. And when the ripe time came, Rawlings handed power voluntarily to a civilian government, such that he was revered by his countrymen — instead of having to go into forced exile or worse — throughout the remaining years of his natural life. As one expatriate in Ghana remarked admirably to me, Rawlings, despite his old-age ailments, decided to die with dignity in Ghana instead of some overseas advanced medical facility.

Enough of the stark contrast between the two prominent Ghanaians, Nkrumah and Rawlings. As the conceited me from Malaysia undertook a city tour around Accra, Ghana’s capital, there was frankly nothing to be spoken highly about. Malaysia, with its advanced infrastructures, boasts some of the newest and tallest skyscrapers in Asia and beyond. Ghana reminds me more of Malaysia in the early days of its formation, or perhaps even a few years back. I spoke of the so-called resource curse phenomenon in developmental theory, that of the ironic inverse proportion between the richness of resources and the degree of development of developing countries, to my expatriate friend, and he only nodded in agreement. Alas, we do not have a cure-all solution for such socioeconomic ailments.

My expatriate friend, who has spent more than a few decades in Ghana, told me that most Ghanaians couldn’t stand the sight of blood, and there was therefore a more consensual approach to national polity here. I think with all being said and done, it is acutely important for Ghana to develop its own import-substitution industries. For example, Ghana is one of the major sugarcane producers in the world. But in major Ghanaian hotel restaurants, the sugar for the coffee and tea, whether brown or white, was packed by a South African concern. Why can’t Ghanaians pack their own sugar from their sugarcane plantations?

Well, yes they can. But there should be genuine entrepreneurs who would stake their claims in an environmentally sustainable fashion for investment concerns involving sugar and other cash crops. It’s time for Ghana and, by extension, many African developing nations to rise in a responsible manner. And in the process, hopefully there are lessons to be shared with other parts of the world, not the least Southeast Asia.