Our Mind-Set Our Pitfalls

Ghana today can be seen as a bright and shining example to the continent of Africa, and for good measure too. We are beacons of hope in a rather dreary continent. We have successfully held a general election that retained the incumbent government without any cry of foul play from the opposition and without needing to bring troops out on to the streets. Figures on the economy look largely encouraging with the stabilizing of the national currency and inflation well kept in single digits. Even the spate of armed robbery and burglary after the 2000 elections has largely stopped.

Multi-party democracy seems to be thriving with various shades of political opinions receiving significant airtime. We have a re-elected and emboldened president with a mandate to accelerate developmental projects. Still one senses that the country, for all its positives is still bedevilled with deep-seated problems that will stalk the path to meaningful development for a long time to come.

Our primary problem is obviously economic. But out of that has spawned many others including very weak administrative and civic structures. I am referring to the lack of organisational structures in the society. For instance, the lack of a proper system for individual identification and accountability. A system that is able to hold the various parts of the society together is palpably lacking and is more than needed.

At the moment, people can engage in all sorts of economic activities without needing to be known by any government department. If any law exist to that effect, it largely exists only on paper, with no enforcing mechanism and no penalties if found out. If you are a good artisan, such as a carpenter, you can just set up your own little workshop in front of your house and straight away you are in business. No one cares about you any more than you care about him or her.

Capital for economic venture is so difficult to come by because banks are reluctant to open accounts for citizens, never mind giving them loans to establish businesses because the minute the person walks out of the bank, he could be anybody at all. His address of 296/5, Kojo Lantey road in Adabraka is hardly verifiable. His water/electricity bill is hardly a sure-fire document that will reveal his whereabouts should he default on his loan re-payment and assume a new identity.

The family member who acted as a guarantor in the account application is no more liable for the disappeared person?s debts than the culprit, in the unlikely event that he were caught and files for bankruptcy. Meanwhile, if this person is clever and has the right contacts, his assets will all be safe from seizure. Any wonder local capital is so scarce and we always have to beg foreigners to bring their hard currency to invest in the country?

Take another example, the astronomical rise in the number of churches. The number is of no concern to me. It?s just the places they get set up. Any place at all, whether a residential or industrial area can have one or two sometimes three places of worship on one street because the house owners want that. Their noise and inconvenience to other residents through the use of loud speakers even if the entire congregation?s number is no more than 15 is of little consideration to them. There seem to be no authority structure or body that could step in and defend the rights of residents with no inclination to join in the service. Sunday and weekday worship as well as all-night services are held at the behest of the church leaders with little regard for the other residents.

One can give other examples, where the lacking of administrative bodies that could effectively hold people to account, results in high levels of negligence that cost serious money but which the culprits get away with it. To take but just one example. A road in Dansoman, a suburb of Accra has truckloads of sand, about ten of them deposited on the road, which is obviously intended for construction work.

Since they were deposited, no soul has come near them again. The sand is instead, being gradually collected by residents in silver and bucket loads for their private use, without anyone asking questions, while the rest is gradually washing away whenever it rains. It?s also a playground for kids and even some adults. When the contractor is ready to commence work, he will find a lot of the sand not where he left them so he will need to cart in more sand at extra cost. Any ones guess where the bill for that extra cost will fall?

I suppose one will argue that the lucky official in place to ensure that this kind of negligence is prevented will be happy to look the other way hoping for a share in the extra cost to come up. That backhand or bribe or call it whatever you like will be useful in topping up his salary.

Gordon Brown?s recent visit to the continent of Africa to highlight the desperate economic situation threw the searchlight on a people who seem to be destined for eternal hardship. This came hot on the heels of Tony Blair?s own trip to Ethiopia to launch the new African Commission, which is in itself another initiative to end poverty on the continent.

Octogenarian Nelson Mandela has been wheeled out to make Africa?s case to the summit of G8 leaders in London for an end to poverty in Africa. Already the United States has poured cold water on Gordon Brown?s International Financial Facility (IFF) plan that will see debts cancelled and grants increased substantially to third world countries. Without the US on board, the conventional wisdom is that the initiative will at best have limited success, and at worst fail completely.

Anyway, in Ghana, like many African countries, our problems are as much homemade as it is foreign-inspired. The question is what is the biggest contributory factor to our under-development? Is it bad governance being complemented by unfair trade agreements? Is it out-dated technology more than matched by Western greed epitomised by the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP of the EU? Is it down to a people bereft of creativity and/or are just lazy, an international system designed to perpetually keep a ?haves? and ?have-nots? for the benefit of the ?haves? (in which case the efforts of people like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are hypocritical and should be ignored) or a combination of all these factors in varying degrees that have conspired to hold the continent back?

In the West, as you drive out of the cities into the country, you see wealth, the neat lawns, the beauty of proper town planning, the serene environment. In Ghana, as in many African countries, as you make the same kind of journey, you see poverty strewn along the largely untarred and pot-holed roads. The cluster of houses and the sight of thatched-roof buildings all have a familiar and depressing view to it.

How do we reverse this situation? How do we give hope to the vast majority who still have to scrape under the barrel for a pittance? Does the answer lie in the efforts (however genuine they may be) of the white man or with us? Obviously a combination of both is required. The West, ending the unfair trade agreements that shut our exports out of their markets while simultaneously flooding our markets with their goods is a must. There is also a strong case for debt cancellation and perhaps increase in aid, if even for a limited period, along the lines of the post-war Marshall Plan that helped Europe get back on its feet.

Above all else is the need for us Ghanaians to be bold and radical in our thoughts and have the courage to change some of our ways and thinking. Some will argue that the poorly-paid police officer taking five or ten thousand Cedis and allowing the rogue driver to get away with his two-fingers gesture to the law is hardly causing any damage to the country.

After all, others in government or with access to the centre of power are doing far worse. That may be true but the police officer blatantly looking the other way while the law is being disregarded is doing his bit to undermine public confidence in the law. I don?t know how you make a person incorrupt. Is it through incentives or punishment or through a combination of both? By all means the situation on hand will determine the appropriate course of action. What do you do to the planning officer who took bribe and allowed a person to build on a land originally ear-marked for a roundabout? Do you raze the building down or just say, ?well he?s already built it so let him keep it? even though it blights the landscape and destroys the town?s planning and the planning officer remains at post?

To increase government revenue and enable more developmental projects to be undertaken as well as fix the public services like health and education, the tax-take has to increase dramatically. Currently, the vast majority of workers in the private sector; convenience store owners, dressmakers and hairdressers, small-time drinking bars, electricians, market women, hawkers risking life and limbs etc are invariably outside the tax bracket.

The system is simply not properly structured to draw these people into it. It?s very easy to stay outside it and indeed, why not, some will say. After all it?s my sweat and money, so why should I volunteer a slice of it to ?some government? sitting somewhere who does nothing for me? Yet when he goes to the hospital and sees a place looking like the burglars called before him, he laments and blasts the government for not doing anything.

Of course, if he has some money, he can always pay ?kwacha? and promptly be seen by the doctor who, by the way, swore his ?Hippocratic Oath? on completion of medical school, which was attended free of charge, but now moans about insufficient salary so thinks up the brilliant idea of ?kwacha? to top up what the Ministry of Health gives him at the end of the month. So it?s a cycle isn?t it? How do we break it? Perhaps raise salaries to levels commensurate with cost of living and you will remove the prime incentive for corruption. After all, it is said that ?if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys?. And we cannot afford to have monkeys running our important services and institutions so decent wages need to be paid to attract talents and skills necessary to run the place efficiently. But can the economy afford it?

To reverse this situation will require sending people to these tax-evaders if they cannot be incentivised enough to voluntarily declare their earnings and come into the fold. But knowing our society the tax policeman will also need to know that stringent measures are in place, (which largely are not) to expose him and punish him well or he is likely to see the job as an opportunity to line his own pocket, because after all his salary is barely enough to take him to the end of the first week of pay day.

Government and employers cite low productivity as reason for inability to raise wage levels, which seems to demoralise workers. Workers in turn asks for increase in wages, up to decent levels to enable them feed their family, and they will in turn be motivated enough to raise their game and production levels will go up. Of course, high level of wages not backed by productivity will only add to inflationary pressures in the economy. But try telling that to broke man!

Unquestionably radical measures are required to help rid Ghana of the factors that combine to keep us under-developed. More than ever, I am convinced that whatever initiatives are dreamed up in Washington or London or Paris or wherever, however many live-aid and band-aid concerts are organised by the Bob Geldofs and Bonos, however many times icons like Mandela are flown abroad to make the case for poverty-alleviation in Africa, a large dose of the answers lie within our own selves, individually and collectively.

PS: Why is President Kufuor such a big fan of the late President Eyadema, an avowed anti-democrat? Is it because Mr Eyadema had a frosty relationship with former President Rawlings? I have always been curious to know why. I?m sure Mr Kufuor is aware that if Rawlings, for all his faults, were of the Eyadema mould, his ambitions to lead Ghana would very likely have ended in a rather lonely prison cell. Has Mr Kufuor ever spared a thought for the many dissidents languishing in jails in Togo for daring to be on the other side of Mr Eyadema?s politics? Anyway, they said politics is not exactly the saint?s profession.