Where will Ghana be in the next decade?

By Prince Abbey

CHAPTER ONE - WHAT'S IN A NAME?

It will be refreshing to start my thesis with a reflection on the name Ghana. In the first place I am not going to go on about it being an Aramaic word or having its roots in medieval Ghana. The historical roots of the name Ghana has no bearing whatsoever on the next decade, or does it?

I will therefore be more interested in the name of Ghana as a brand. What does the name stand for now. Since J. B. Danquah and Kwame Nkrumah adopted the name Ghana, what has it come to stand for?

First, let’s take a test. If I mention Brazil, what comes to mind first (note; to take this test you must not be an economics professor)? Was it football and fun? Yes, I bet it was.

If I should mention America, what will you think of? Maybe, power, wealth and domination. And in 'trying' times like this, you may well remember Iraq and spare a prayer.

What about China, Russia or South Africa?

Main Point; A country name is not only its history. A country's name is its brand.

And for a brand, the name Ghana has gone through serious and continuous metamorphosis. We were in Nkrumah’s time viewed as Africa's hope and star. Both politically and economically we were the force to reckon with in Black Africa. We were leaders of the non-aligned movement and a country of free people (No wonder we were hated by the United States, the self-proclaimed free country).

I hold no brief for Nkrumah's presidency, but those days will have being exciting times to declare on an application form; Nationality -Ghanaian!

Well that branding did not last very long. Proud Nkrumah found out that Ghanaians in heart do not like 'too known' people. We were not interested in Black colonialism and chose freedom again.

However, in seeking freedom we destroyed our very brand as a free people. A series of coup d'états and political intolerance meant that the name Ghana began to stand for instability and military takeovers. We lost the moral urge to lead Africa, and the world (at least the right wing) shunned us. After Acheampong's 'Yen Ntua' project, we were gradually being viewed as a rogue nation and also a very timid people as we allowed people who think that as a gift from God and the gun they should be able to rule as far as their eyes could see.

Enter the Rawlings era. The Ghanaian white man who 'saved' us on two occasions perpetuated the 'rogue' brand for sometime until 'circumstances' such as the World Bank and the IMF tried to lead him on the 'straight' and ‘narrow’ way.

Forget for a moment what I said about coup d'états and our brand. The personality of Rawlings completely changed the brand of Ghana. He became Ghana, and Ghana became him. The eccentric charisma of Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings, the first President I met, defined the Ghanaian to many outsiders for over a decade. It had its up and down sides.

I remember one incident as a secondary school boy when Bill Clinton, President of the United States of America visited Ghana. I was one of the students selected to meet him and wave my heart out at the airport. That was one of the first times I actually saw the President (not Bill Clinton; who cares about the US President). I must confess he was more interesting than Clinton to most of us. That was the image of Ghana then. A proud and spontaneous nation who could in one era ally itself with both America and Cuba; turn from the left ideology to the right and then left again. This was Rawlings alright, a mixture of very good and…hem…maybe some very bad.

All said and done, our brand was back on track somehow.

The Kufuor government introduced a critical element. The word is maturity. No, I don’t mean his age (that is Kufuor) or the octogenarians in his cabinet. I actually mean Ghana became stable. Finally the world could know what to expect from Ghana. There was the stable economy, low conflicts and a continuing democracy. However to be frank with you, it has being quite boring (did I say that?). Ghana has become so stable it has become predictable. The new brand is that we are good people who do not like trouble and are just managing our affairs. Well, the IMF and the World Bank like that but we have lost the leadership of Africa in terms of vision and passion.

Do I deride the good returns of this stability? Definitely not! But I can still see why we need to move on.

In the next ten years or so, Africa will be desperately looking for leadership in fulfilling the promise of Africa which has been long in coming. These will be the days when the mantle of development will be moving from the Asian countries to Africa. Africa will need to seize the opportunity but only if a few countries can take the lead in this generation and provide a road-map. Such leader countries must be economically sound and democratically strong. Ghana is already well on its way to that and our hope is that it will continue.

But Africa will not accept our leadership until we can show the passion of an African people. We need again that feeling when Nkrumah declared that the independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is liked with the total liberation of the African continent. It is that passion for Africa that other countries must begin to recognise about us and therefore come to shelter under our wings.

Therefore Ghana needs to re-brand itself. And here I am not talking marketing and advertising, but an instilling of an African Spirit by our leaders including government, clergy, business leaders and role models. There must be a new sense of Africa! There must be a new Ghana!
I cannot overstate the strategic importance of this because until we lead Africa, the world will not recognise us and soon we will become inward looking and dissatisfied with ourselves.

Ghana in the next decade must begin to stand for something more than stability and economic growth which is the current branding being pursued actively by the government. We must go beyond that to establishing an identity as proud Africans who have a new agenda for Africa and believe me, the world itself will come grovelling at our feet!