President Receives 'Ghana Beyond Aid' Vision Charter

By Yaw Kyei

A charter which provides a roadmap to achieve the Ghana Beyond Aid vision, developed by a committee chaired by the Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo Maafo, was presented to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, at the Jubilee House in Accra yesterday.

The document was developed in consultation with 30 different institutions in academia, with inputs from the general public and some Ghanaians in the diaspora, and is expected to set the tone for a comprehensive nationwide discussion.

The committee that developed the charter includes the Ministers of Finance, Employment and Labour Relations, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, Local Government and Rural Development, and Information.

It also included institutions such as the Trade Union Congress, Ghana National Association of Teachers, Association of Ghana Industries, Ghana National Chamber of Commerce and Industries, National Union of Ghana Students, and Private Enterprise Federation.

The document details how Ghanaians can build a prosperous and self-confident nation that is in charge of its economic destiny; a transformed Ghana that is prosperous enough to need aid; and a nation that engages competitively with the rest of the world through trade and investment.

It contains strategies on how the resources can be harnessed effectively and deployed creatively and efficiently for rapid economic and social transformation. It also suggests how Ghanaians can break from the mentality of dependence and adopt a 'can do' spirit fueled by love for the country.

Mr Osafo Maafo, who presented the document to the President, was pleased with the level of inputs and the enthusiasm behind the Ghana Beyond Aid vision and appealed to the President to send the document to Parliament for discussion and further inputs by law makers.

He said the input by the academia and the well-written documents on Ghana Beyond Aid by some members of the public, which were used to develop the charter, were overwhelming.

President Akufo-Addo, who commissioned the committee on June 13 last year, expressed gratitude to the members and indicated that the document would be a guide on how to apply the slogan of Ghana Beyond Aid to make it meaningful in the lives of 30 million Ghanaians as well as those living abroad.

"It provides a very clear guidelines and roadmap for how we are to go about things in Ghana, and to go about it collectively. Trade unions, business groups, academia, young people, members of the executive have come together to accept the document and recognised that we are all part and parcel of it," he said.

President Akufo-Addo expressed the commitment to forward the document to Parliament since the House was the main deliberative chamber of the country.

"I am glad that what began as a slogan has caught the imagination of our country and people have found it necessary and useful and make a contribution as to how it will work out," he added.

President Akufo-Addo entreated the committee to make constant inputs as the public discourse took shape, identify the weaknesses, and make constant improvement on the document

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