If We Dont Want To Be Lectured On Homosexuality.

In October, Britain threatened to withhold UK aid from countries in Africa including Ghana that fail to reform legislation banning homosexuality. This measure received vociferous outcry from the Castle and citizens across the length and breadth of Ghana. President Mills emphatically responded that homosexuality will never be legalized in Ghana for as long as he remains in charge.

This week, the United States joined forces with Britain by declaring that it will use US aid to promote gay and lesbian rights abroad. In the words of President Obama, "[t]he struggle to end discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons is a global challenge and one that is central to the United States' commitment to promoting human rights". Secretary of state, Hilary Clinton, further equated gay and lesbian rights to that of women’s rights and racial equality. These, she argued, are universal human rights.
As expected, the latest policy directive emanating from Washington is being met with strong condemnation across Ghana. Some are directing President Obama to go to hell. In the days ahead we can expect more hellfire from Ghana’s political and religious leaders, more rhetoric from pundits about Ghana’s sovereignty, and more political juxtaposition ostensibly to score cheap political points.
Unfortunately, all this noise from the various quarters in Ghana in response to London and Washington’s plans misses the real point. The real point is not whether Obama, Clinton and Cameron has the right to dictate what Ghana’s laws ought to be or whether homosexual rights ought to be universal human rights enshrined in law. Rather, the real issue here is Ghana’s historical unwillingness to wean itself off bilateral aid – the kind that empowers states like the US and Britain to influence political decision in Ghana’s internal affairs.

Leaders of Ghana and the citizens must understand that bilateral aid is not charity. It is often giving for the explicit intent of maintaining leverage over recipient countries. The British and American recent decision to make the availability of bilateral aid contingent to the decriminalization of homosexuality in places like Ghana serves this function. Their goal is to use foreign aid as a weapon to change states like Ghana’s behaviour on the issue of homosexuality.

If we Ghanaians want to determine what our socio-cultural values are or the pace of reform on issues such as homosexuality, then we have no choice but to stop sucking on the aid tits. Unfortunately, our record in this important endeavour is abysmal. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a government in our history that has actively engaged in efforts to wean this country off foreign aid. Over fifty years after political independence, Ghana remains one of the most heavily aid-dependent states in the world.

Despite the debilitating effects of foreign aid on recipient states – macroeconomic anomalies, corruption of state institutions, lack of accountability, and perpetuation of dependency among others – our leaders in Ghana of all political colours have thus far proven inept at finding innovative solutions to addressing shortfalls in revenue generation.

Even when an opportunity presents itself to create a fiscal space to substitute bilateral aid, we resist the attempts at doing so. For instance, asked whether it was time for Ghana to begin weaning itself off foreign aid with the discovery of oil, some high-ranking officials in the Mills administration were quick to nib the notion in the bud citing a litany of excuses – internal revenue constraints, infrastructural deficits, institutional incapacity etc – to justify why Ghana should continue sucking on the aid tits.

It is sad and vaguely pathetic that as a nation our mindset has become so entrenched on foreign dependency to the extent that we almost always fail to search for innovative solutions internally to address our socio-economic handicaps. The default option has been the tendency for our leaders to hop from Accra to London to Washington to Beijing with a cup in hand. When the charity sought is dangled with a string, we start kicking and screaming like a spoiled child.

The truth is foreign aid has and will always come with strings attached, no gay rights no aid is only the latest and it will certainly not be the last. So, before we jump on a megaphone shouting imperialist slogans or call for a brimstone of hellfire on Obama and Cameron, we must first ask ourselves, what are we doing to wean Ghana off this addiction called bilateral aid? Let no gay rights, no aid be a simple lesson for our leaders; we must strive to wean ourselves off bilateral aid because the political independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is totally linked to our economic independence.

Frank S. Debrah
School for International Studies
Simon Fraser University
Vancouver, Canada