Foreign affairs ministry annex building China–aid, Nana Addo must be sorry!

Our Ghana beyond aid sloganeering President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo–Addo through the foreign affairs minister, Madam Ayorkor Botchway, successfully signed the implementation agreement of the China – Aid annex office building project for the ministry of foreign affairs and regional integration.

To the notice of many, the agreement took place in Accra between Madam Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and regional integration and Mr. Lu Kun, the Chinese Ambassador to Ghana.

China and Ghana established diplomatic relations on 5th July 1960. The founding fathers of the two new-born republics laid a solid cornerstone for the development of the bilateral ties. In recent years, fruitful achievements have been made in various fields of bilateral cooperation, especially under the framework of China-Africa Cooperation Forum.

Our elders say, not every open eye is seeing and every closed eye is sleeping but our country has had a well-documented relationship with many donor countries and multilateral donor agencies since the 1960s.

Suddenly, in his Independence Day speech in March 2017, Ghana’s first gentleman, Nana Akufo-Addo beckoned his intent to pursue the vision of a country that is not dependent on aid.

This led to the commissioning of the Ghana Beyond Aid Committee to draw up the road map for achieving this objective.

Eventually, the committee presented the document which provided a roadmap to achieve the dream of building an economically independent country prosperous enough not to depend on aids but rather be competitive enough to engage with the rest of the world through trade and investment.

Strategies on how the country’s resources can be harnessed effectively and efficiently for rapid economic and social transformation. The ministry of foreign affairs problem of inadequate office space will be solved by china – aid.

Nana Addo must be very sorry for his slogan on Ghana beyond aid, the
China- aid annex office building project is to be funded by the Chinese government under the agreement on Economic and Technical Cooperation between China and Ghana. The project is a six-storey building to be situated south of the existing office building.

The Project will include ultra-modern office space for the Minister, the Chief Director, Directors, and Officers, and will host a Conference Room, Press Room, Banquet Hall, Gym, Clinic, Flag Holding room, and underground Parking Lot.

During the signing process, Madam Ayorkor Botchwey is remembered to have said, ‘for the past two weeks, the Ghana side had been working assiduously with the Team of Experts led by Mr. Shen Gang to undertake further investigations on the assessment and evaluation of the Design Scheme and Architectural drawings of the Annex Office building project.’

Mr. Lu said ‘the Foreign Ministry annex building office building project was a very important gesture from the Chinese Government to the Government and People of Ghana.’ Nevertheless, thousands of Ghanaians hold the belief that the notion of aid to alleviate systemic poverty and has done so is always a myth. Millions in Ghana are poorer today because of aid, misery and poverty have not ended but keeps increasing.

Aid regardless of its nature has been and continues to be an unmitigated political, economic and humanitarian disaster for most parts of the developing world.

A country that relies on aid? Death is better than that. It stops us from achieving our potential, just as colonialism did.