The Sociocultural Mathematics of Growth

and Development

We shall begin the second session with the problematic politics of numbers and the conclusions drawn by Dr. Nyarko and his co-authors. Let’s look at the problem from another angle. Vivek Wadhwa writes in “The Immigrant Brain Drain: How America Is Losing Its High-Tech Talent”:
“Then I learned an important lesson: Numbers never tell the complete story and some academics spend too much time in ivory towers. Data may say it’s a sunny day, but you need to open the window to make sure it isn’t actually raining…Subsequent research I performed by traveling to India, China and Silicon Valley revealed that…US Tech centers were starved for engineering talent…”
On the other hand, this is how James Moreland, a contributor on the online resource “Economy in Crisis: America’s Economic,” sees the problem of “brain drain” or outsourcing, writing in “The Outsourcing of American Jobs Hurts the Economy On Every Level” the following:
“By looking at both sides of the equation, it’s obvious while we are gaining short-term profit and a few jobs, we are forfeiting our manufacturing and industrial base. Eventually, we’ll be left few to no American-owned factories, leaving the nation completely dependent on other countries for work, resources and a fair standard of living.”
Is Nyarko’s “net benefit” a functional question of short-term gain or of long term gain to Ghana? Unfortunately, he and his colleagues did not raise this question, let alone address it. But do Nyarko’s conclusions adequately address the need or urgency to contain brain drain? Of course, Patrick Awuah, Jr., Fred Swainker, Herman Chinnery-Hesse, to name just but three, immediately come to mind, with the three constituting an example of “brain gain.” Dr. Ashitey Trebi-Ollenu’s Ghana Robotics Academy Foundation is another. “While the white man has abandoned his great city for space, the black man is only readying himself for the challenges of his village,” opined a Ghanaian-based mathematics professor.
Yes, some think Dr. Trebi-Ollenu’s project is unnecessarily over-ambitious and not worth the attention of Ghana’s immediate developmental calculus. How did India, China, South Korea, Japan, Brazil, and the West initiate the process of development, if, in fact, they, too, had their nascent developmental plans put on hold due to defeatist planation? If successful, which, we believe it definitely will over the long haul, our space project can spawn unintended as well as intended industries and, thereby, provide employment even to the naysayers.
But Prof. Atuahene-Gima makes another important observation, saying: “Despite many overseas trips by Ghana’s economic managers, they have failed to transfer the knowledge they gained into innovative solutions.” What is the problem then? What makes the translational equation between theory and praxis impossible or problematic? He goes further: “Public holders have not promoted the interest of Ghanaians. One of the key things about being creative and innovative is to be able to go outside your environment to see what solutions other people are using and adapt that solution to your country.”
Here is where, we believe, Rev. Otabil and Prof. Atuahene-Gima seem to find philosophical and ideological grounds of commonality. Ideally, we share in that noble commonality as well. Yet the post-modernist Kenyan scholar Ali Marzrui says it’s time for Africa to export religion to the West? Isn’t it clear that religion is already killing us in Somalia by Al-Shabab and in Uganda by the Lord’s Resistance Army? Why not science, innovation, and technology? Did he mean Tradition African Religion? Well, no. “A lot of our business have still not come to terms with the appropriate definition of innovation and the role it could play in the day-to-day running of their enterprises,” says Prof. Atuahene-Gima.
“We should encourage our people to break new frontiers and continue to challenge existing ways of doing things. These are difficult decisions. Similar to making a choice between cost-cutting and investments in new technology, leaders must make the right trade-offs because we’re expected to dream and squeeze at the same time,” says Access Bank Ghana Managing Director Mr. Dolapo Ogundimo.
So, the problems are manifold, as we can readily deduce from the foregoing. Definition. National Priority. Leadership. Responsibility. Ignorance or lack of scientific knowledge. Creativity. Accountability. Confidence. Political greed or selfishness…But are there the necessary institutional safeguards and frameworks, patent office, say, to protect intellectual property rights? Let’s backtrack a bit: What is the use of a patent office if a conflictual problem hovers over the precise definition of “innovation”? What specific technologies does Ghana need? Do we need an abstract space program now or physical structures for science laboratories, schools, hospitals, say, later? Indeed, the operation Research of prioritization is what we need. Do we have cutting-edge laboratories to test our ideas? Isn’t the “cutting-edge” phraseology itself part of the world of “innovation” or creativity? Quite apart from the definitional conundrums surrounding “innovation,” have we explored the connection between technology and the politics of pricing, given that technology, pricing, and power go hand in hand? What is the state of social services in the country presently? What about electricity?
Yes, Nyarko, et al, cite remittances as one of the primary justifications for why the net benefit of brain drain skews in the direction of Ghana, of Africa. But, to the best of our knowledge, we did not clearly see a corresponding econometric and sociological data on how remittances are actually applied in the source countries and how they actually benefit Ghanaians and Africans. Obviously, anecdotal evidence is not hard to find. But econometric and sociological corroboration is yet another. Does the government of the source country, Ghana, for instance, keeps tabs on its immigrating citizens? We do know that Indian and Chinese governments, for instance, keep tabs on their citizens, especially those studying abroad! However, can we say the same of Ghana or of other African countries? How did their results, Nyarko, et al, account for those Ghanaians who, for instance, after being educated by the source government, leave and don’t return, remit, or pay back their loans?
Let’s digress a bit: The Harvard economic professor and Nobel laureate, Amartye Sen, sees creative possibilities of “development” partly in the context of “freedom.” Academic freedom is a good example. Moreover, he attaches great importance to creative individualism, arguing that creativity or originality is possible without the imposed straitjackets of cultural, political, social, historical, and political chaperones. Creative individualism, or de-ethnicization, he believes, must be encouraged by any society which desires to be innovative. Coupled with his theory is his observation that “reason” must precede “identity.”
Yes, “humanity is limitless,” say our wise men and women. But given the communitarian contours of our societies, how do we incorporate Sen’s provocative ideas into that societal framework? After all, haven’t we heard “it takes a village to raise a child”? That said, well-known Ghanaian philosophers like Kwame Gyekye have cogently argued that community, society, family, nation-state, or humanity does not connote notional preclusion of individuality.
In other words, the “atom” of humanity starts with the “sub-atom” of the individual! “Being a member of the human community by nature, the individual is naturally related or oriented toward other persons and must have relationships with them. The natural sociality or relationality of human beings—and should—prescribe a social ethic, rather than the ethic of individualism. Individualistic ethics that focuses on the welfare and interests of the individual is hardly regarded in African moral thought. African social ethic is expressed in many maxims that emphasize the importance of the values of mutual helpfulness, collective responsibility, cooperation, interdependence, and reciprocal obligations” according to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. We think there is a proper context to account for Sen’s provocative assertions.
Further, if Sen’s philosophy of creative individualism or personal de-ethnicization is correct in our estimation, then he’s obviously not talking about arctic “islandism,” a reference to famished individualism in a communal ocean of plenty. Sen is Indian and Indian society values collectivity or community over arctic individualism of the kind practiced in the West. Of course, unless the acculturation he had undergone is so ferocious and deep as to completely cause him to lose his sense of natural and cultural origins.
However, this, we believe, is not the case. Sen’s creative individualism does describe a situation where the creativity of a “free” individual is not strangulated by official, bureaucratic, cultural, social, or political ignorance and bottlenecks. But “diversity” and “openness” have transformative power in the marketplace of ideas. “I also researched the secret of Silicon Valley’s success. I learned that diversity and openness gave it a global advantage,” writes Wadhwa. The question of open diversity, it turns out, has adaptive and transformative advantages over isolationist individualism. This is why we have persistently argued against ethnocentrism and intolerance.
Thankfully, we may adapt Sen’s definition for our case where his “creative individualism” substitutes for our “individualized communities,” a group of progressive and likeminded researches who come together to “create” or “innovate.” Sen’s a brilliant observer of social and economic phenomena. His book “An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions” is a transformative case study for African leaders. His essay “What China Could Teach India, Then and Now” is equally provocatively transformational. Sen says Chinese quality of life is way ahead of India’s and that it behooves the latter to emulate the former.
His radical views on India’s poor sanitation recalls Oprah Winfrey’s visit to India where her tour resurrected similar questions. Indian mainstream media castigated Oprah for her unguarded statements about her host country. Fortunately, the Indian-American spiritual guru Dr. Deepak Chopra and the American-based Indian Salman Rushdie, author of the sensational “Satanic Verses,” rallied around her. We bring these questions to the fore because our own African situation is closely similar to India’s and China’s though we markedly differ in historical, developmental, national, and cultural characters. MIT’s Chinese-American Dr. Yasheng Huang’s “The Wall Street Journal” article “The China Growth Fantasy” is yet another good one. Prof. Huang and his work shall be the focus of one of our papers in the future.
What can government and society do to create the necessary environment to harness the power of creativity? Sanitation comes to our mind. By “sanitation” we mean the creation of institutional and psychological processes and structural formulae required to facilitate the transition of nothingness from ideational formulations to concretionary formulations. In our definitional context, therefore, sanitizing, or de-colonizing, the African mind is one such indispensable process of “sanitation.” Decolonizing our curricula is another. Health constitutes another branch of the tree of “sanitation.”
How is health related to creativity? How is creativity related to famine? How is healthy diet related to good health and then to creativity? How is the state of social services, medical services, for instance, in our countries? How about good drainage systems, electricity, and transportation? Well, balanced diet contributes to a child’s growth, physical and mental. Easily preventable diseases, like malaria, are a chronic problem in our land. We don’t expect an individual to think clearly, if at all, when the omnipresent buzz and bites of mosquitoes are constantly in action. How about good drinking water?

Then again, in one sense, personal and community hygiene tie in with our preoccupation. Our position is captured in Adéwùyá’s “Family Living”: “Cleanliness of the home, cleanliness of the body; Cleanliness of our food, cleanliness of our surroundings; Cleanliness can conquer all diseases.”

“They introduced a compulsory Sanitation Day, every last Saturday of each month from dawn until noon, when the entire nation was expected to stay at home and clean up the environment,” Wole Soyinka writes in “The Open Sore of A Continent.” Ghana can take a cue from this! Promoting good health must be national priority.

The other question has to do with the availability of physical infrastructure. Why must we in this day and time allow some of children to study under trees? Studying under a tree undermines creative attentiveness! The buzz of bees, the chirp of birds, the mew of cats, the cackle of chickens, the bark of dogs, the coo-coo of doves, the bleat of goats, the baa of sheep…constitute the prohibitive distractive prize a child who studies under a tree pays through no fault of his or hers.

The long-term cost for the nation in terms of the lost of intellectual property is predictably incalculable. Lack of leadership is to blame for infrastructural dearth! Ironically, the corrupt politician has expensive furniture to sit and write on but the brilliant child who may one day be a decent politician lacks the basic amenities for psychological, intellectual, and emotional development.

Getting rid of retrogressive cultural traditions and practices is essential for national forwardness. We must look closely again at the problematic of “female genital mutilation” and “trokosi” in the context of national development. How much creativity are we losing to these practices? Reducing official corruption and cleaning the mess occasioned by kleptocracy and by scandalous politicalization of Ghana’s “judgment debt” is paramount to positive growth. Eliminating inter-ethnic conflicts, de-ethnicizing our politics, reducing organized crime, expanding educational opportunities to girls, addressing the problem of recreational drug use among the youth, increasing opportunities for women in the academy, eradicating poverty, giving teachers proper training and adequate remuneration, gathering de-politicized data on GDP and checking unhealthy inflationary distortions in the national economy, encouraging the youth to read, effectively monitoring and conducting periodic teacher evaluation and relating it to promotion, and passing progressive laws to protect girl/women rights add to the opportunities for creativity.

Concentrating our pedagogical effort on STEM education, technology, mathematics, science, and engineering, is an important idea. Boosting the confidence of our students by investing pedagogy in the divestiture of African inferiority complex is beyond elaboration. Decolonizing the humanities/liberal arts and giving pedagogical primacy to African thought is key. Self-reliance is power. “History shows that it does not matter who’s in power or what revolutionary forces take over the government, those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they had in the beginning,” writes Carter G. Woodson.


Some more ideas for us to think about: “So distorted has the situation become that the University of Syracuse is the center of information about Uganda and Kenya. If you want to find original documents about the Kenyan or Ugandan you are most likely to discover this information in Syracuse and not in Kampala and Nairobi…In some cases Africans and Europeans have granted Europeans knowledge about their societies. Freely we have given and freely the Europeans have received. A host of African guides, Indian guides, have led Europeans to natural wonders and to historical locations only to have Europeans claim that they are the discoverers of those places,” writes Dr. Asante in “Knowledge as Property: Who Owns What and Why.”

He continues: “Knowledge, like fire, is the literal and concrete result of creative production. Thus, knowledge, not the creative process, is locked behind the door of no-admittance. Knowledge becomes the accumulation of the products of creation, the actual information in a packaged and useful form. So in order to keep knowledge away from others it’s necessary to build structures that contain these forms, these packages, and then to put people in charge of protecting access…In other words, Dr. Asante says Ghana and Africa must not replicate this Western idea of knowledge production and excessive control. In this sense, therefore, knowledge must be made available to the public without rigid social, political, and economic controls. In other words, the professor’s argument also implies that the esoterica chokehold on knowledge production must be broken!

Here is another one: “Meanwhile, America’s most ruthless competitors are doing just the opposite. In China, for example, if a company wants access to those one billion-plus consumers, there is a minimum percentage of their parts and labor that must be produced in China. Unable to resist the potential gains in such a massive market, many companies move to China just to enjoy this benefit, while continuing to ship their products back to the US,” writes Moreland.

Let’s contextualize the afore-cited observation via the comparative relationship between China and Africa: “But it is also raising wariness here that Africa’s new benefactor may sometimes be driven by the same self-interested motives as the Western nations that preceded it in the colonial and post-colonial periods…The workers say they hardly interact at all with their Chinese managers. They eat and live separately from them…They don’t give us boots or helmets. ‘We work like this,’ says Maba Litile, pointing to the sandals he’s wearing. We work really hard, but the money is too little. If I find another job, I’d leave…,” writes “The Christian Science Monitor” correspondent Jacob Kushner in the article “As Africa Welcomes More Chinese Migrants, A New Wariness Sets In.”

Our final questions to you: “One, if the Congolese owned these businesses, what would have been their comparative situation? Two, frankly, Ghana and Africa, whose moral duty is it to buy or to see to it that the workers have the appropriate boots and helmets, the Chinese immigrant or the Congolese government?

Technology. Power. Pan-African democracy. Accountability. Material comfort. Good leadership. Transparency. Power over pricing. Mutual intra-racial respect. Good citizenship. Creativity. Poverty eradication. Improved sanitation. Self-love. These are the scrumptious ingredients Ghana and Africa needs for their salad of social and economic success. What do you think?