I know my well-knowledged Economics friends would and could expand all I am about to say, with technical jargons, with graphs, with data etc etc. But what good is it if we all cannot understand and push it through together as a people.
You see, its been 60+ years and it appears we are still searching for the magic wand to make us a prosperous nation. Well let me offer a makola-level dissection. Nothing technical.
FIRST - PRODUCTIVITY
The most fundamental of all economics is this: Just like water always finds its level, economics always finds its level. To that end, the singular foundation of ALL economics stands on is this - the MONEY in any economic system, must be at least equal to the total VALUE being created in that system. Value means, products, services, production (in other words, productivity). If the two are not at par, we can be guaranteed the value of our cedi will always FALL to match the level of productivity. CUT it whichever way you like and with whatever jargon you choose - you will come back here. It also means that depending on our productivity, the value of our Cedi can never rise above a certain level. The big question is HOW PRODUCTIVE ARE WE? And several questions can arise from this: Does our education equip graduates to the degree that ensures they can deliver global competitive skills that ensure global companies start looking for Ghana on the map with their money for those skills? Do we have enough electricity and are our manufacturing companies running 22hrs daily to ensure expanding supplies, exports and full use of unskilled and semi-skilled labour 70% of the year? Are our farmers using the best yields and techniques to produce more per farmer so they can take advantage of volume sales on competitive markets? (its a volumes game, that one).
GLOBALLY PLUGGED
The next question is "Are we globally plugged?" After 60+years, we have not succeeded in one thing - CREATE an intentional doorway for all citizens (if they wish) to gain access to the outside Global market. That's what China did. NO, we must not be content with only producing for the Ghanaian market. We should be doing 3 things very crucially - intentionally working to ensure that LOGISTICAL alliances are formed with global players to ensure that goods/products from Ghana (no matter how small), are able to be delivered to the rest of the world, ON TIME and CHEAPLY. The world must gain access to us and everything every Ghanaian has to offer. 2nd, we must spread and enable Quality Control. 3rd we must ensure the world can do business with us with its global currency - CASHLESS. We should by now be sitting at the table with the likes of Amazon, Visa, Paypal, etc to get them to integrate with our own local platforms so we can Cash-Connect the world to us and remove any market doubts about "how do I get paid doing business with Ghana?" - everybody wins.
FINALLY - THE CYCLE
We know we are bleeding ourselves dry - we are just too lazy or GREEDY to stop it. Most of our huge contracts are executed by external companies, we pay them our hard earned monies, they take it back to their countries and then we go back to those countries to borrow from them. Or better still, in the name of "We want investors to come in" so we allow them to come in, use Ghanaian resources and labour, make huge profits and with no strategic agenda to GUARANTEE an form of long term retentions, we craft a GIPC law that allows money to just LEAVE at will to foreign countries, then we chase them to borrow and with the borrowing, we pay it back to them......and the cycle continues. We are NOT retaining more in Ghana than we are leaking out because we do NOT intentionally develop Local Capacity and the few that have developed themselves, we sadly do not have the political will to draw the line for them between Business and Politics (I haven't even started talking about monies stolen by our politicians and invested outside). In other countries, Governments ensure that they leverage their relationships with other countries to bring contracts to their indigenous companies - because by so doing, these companies develop necessary QUALITY of delivering to external market, which the local country also benefits from - those companies in turn make employment and economic guarantees to government - again, everybody wins but the lines are kept between Business and Politics. So how do we develop Local Capacity? It requires 2 crucial elements: firstly Research and Development and secondly and most IMPORTANTLY .............. Hey!!! You think the world is FREE?
Thanks for reading.... :-)
