The Point of View: Akufo-Addo’s SONA from the perspectives of citizens

Host of The Point of View on Citi TV, Bernard Avle on Wednesday, February 28, interviewed eight people from different sectors of the Ghanaian economy to get their perspectives on President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s penultimate State of the Nation.

The various sectors cut across, Ethics, Education, Energy, Youth Empowerment, the Economy, Media, anti-corruption, and the Environment.

Bernard Avle spoke to John Awuni, the president of FABAG, Angel Carbonu the president of NAGRAT, Ben Boakye, Executive Director of the Africa Center For Energy Policy (ACEP), Mavis Owusu Gyamfi, the Deputy Executive Director of the Africa Center For Economic Transformation (ACET).

Also on the show was Mary Addah the Executive Director of the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII). Daryl Bossu, the president of A Rocha Ghana, Vera Addo, a youth activist and Reverend Akua Ofori-Boateng, an engineer and a priest were on the show.

Bernard Avle: Reverend Akua, good evening. Thanks for agreeing to do this.

Rev. Akua: Good evening, Bernard, and good evening to you and your listeners.

Bernard Avle: You are the only person I could find who would agree to do this on such short notice. So thank you for saying yes. So what is the state of your nation or our nation as far as ethics is concerned?

Rev Akua: Okay. So, Bernard, I’ll dive straight into it and say that as a priest, I’ll speak about this from a Christian perspective where ethics is defined as the standards of right and wrong based on the bible and the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now from that perspective, I would say that the state of ethics in Ghana today is the sum total of the state of ethics in each of us as individual Ghanaians. And I want to borrow from John Wesley and say that state can be described as almost Christian, almost Christian. I say we are almost Christian because many of us are ethical per the standards of the Bible if and only if it serves us well. But the moment being ethical doesn’t serve us well, we become less and less ethical until, eventually, we become downright corrupt. And because of this, if you will, convenient ethics, I would dare say that as a nation, we have a crisis of ethics.

And I say this because even though over 70% of us are self-professed Christians. As a nation, we do not place a premium on doing what is right based on the bible and based on the teachings of Jesus. And it reflects in practically every aspect of our society. It reflects in the way we throw rubbish on the streets without a care for the fact that when it rains, the rubbish that has been discarded will clog the gutters, and this will cause flooding on the streets. But you see, because it is not the streets that we live on that is being flooded, it’s okay, and it serves us well. So that even if we have loved we have not loved our distant neighbor by littering their streets. We feel as if we’ve done right because we’ve loved our immediate neighbor by keeping their streets clean. And that is why I say we are almost Christian.

Again, it reflects in the way we build our roads, for instance. Many of our roads, their asphalt is half as thick as it needs to be, leading to premature potholes, potholes that have caused accidents, some that have caused people to lose their lives. But because putting the right quantity of asphalt will affect our profit, we weigh our ethics and we weigh the cost of the Prado that we want to buy and then we build the road or build the hospital or build the school. However, we want to sub at a substandard level, then we walk away knowing that we haven’t done the right thing. We know and other people, the people we bribed along the way, also know that what we have done is unethical, but everyone is silent.

Instead, we convince ourselves that at least the road is there. At least the hospital is there. After all, And that is why I say we are almost Christian. And yet that same contractor will go to church and pay tithes from the money that was stolen from the job, and all the congregation will stretch their hands over him and bless him for how generous he is even though there are some in the congregation who know exactly how that money was acquired, some who even benefited from this money. We all know that it is not right by the standards of Christ, and yet we hide behind tithes and say that the contractor has done well because he brought a tithe of his beauty to God.

Again, almost Christian. It is to the point where some in society, especially our youth, have actually lost track of what is ethical and what is not. So that things like, oh, oh, yeah. I’m going for the meeting. You make sure that you prepare something for the people has become a normal part of the cost of doing business.

And I say that this is a crisis of ethics because the level of misconduct, people deliberately doing what is wrong from the board chairman to the gatesman has permeated and eroded our society to the point where it’s a threat to our nation-building, and it’s a threat to our survival. And the only way we are going to come out of this crisis of ethics is when the individual Ghanaian, first of all, does what is right and secondly, calls out what is wrong without fear or favor. Because when we do what is right, but then we deliberately turn a blind eye to what is wrong, then that in itself is unethical. It just enables this behaviour to be unethical. We have to be bold enough as Ghanaians to speak the truth to each other and to speak truth to power.

It’s important that as Ghanaians, we don’t forget that for every king David amongst us, there must be a Nathan who can rebuke and call out unethical behaviour in his leader. If we fail to do this, Bernard, then the ethics of the whole nation fails to rise up to the standard of Christ himself. And that is why if you ask me what is the state of ethics in Ghana today, I would say that we have a crisis of ethics, a crisis for which all of us are responsible and a crisis for which we alone can liberate ourselves. So that is my view, my take on the state of ethics in Ghana. Thank you, Bernard.

Bernard Avle: Thank you, Reverend Akua. That was amazing. The state of the ethics of the nation is the state of our individual ethics collectively, and it’s not enough to do what is right. We must also call out what is wrong. And I think the point has been fantastically made.

Reverend Akua is an engineer by training and a priest as well. We are on the citizen state of the nation. We’re moving next to energy. Benjamin Boakye is the executive director of the Africa Center For Energy Policy. He’s going to tell us what is the state of the nation as far as energy is concerned.

The president spoke a lot about the power sector on the state of the nation yesterday. Ben, good evening. Thanks for joining us on this special program.

Ben Boakye: Thanks for having me, Benard. And good evening too.

Benard Avle: What is the state of the nation as far as the energy area is concerned? You have 5 minutes, Ben. Go ahead.

Ben Boakye: Yes, I think, first of all, the challenges of the energy sector are not constant. You’re always going to have new challenges. You’re going to have, new situations that require leadership to address. And if you ask me what the fundamental challenges of the energy sector, are today, there are inefficiencies and waste that are actually crippling the entire nation.

And therefore, if anybody wants to reflect on what the problems of the energy sector is, I expect those challenges to emerge and also a deliberate attempt to address those challenges. And the waste, as I talked about, is the fact that now we can’t as a nation sell electricity and make money to pay the value chain. So those who are generating power are owed. Those who are transmitting power are owed. Those who are supplying fuel are owed.

And the only thing we hear from the president is that we want to isolate the cost of fuel and just discuss what we owe, the generators of power. I don’t think that’s where how you address the problem. You know, either way, the cost burden is on the people. The cost burden is on the citizens. So whether it is 1,200,000,000 or 1,600,000,000, we are in the billions, and that is scary enough for us to have heard, how we stop that kind of bleeding of our resources to add rather channel the revenues, to development because what we need to be able to build the schools, the hospitals, and take care of our people, the vulnerable people of this country is what we are using to pay electricity bill because people are failing to deliver on their responsibility to ensure that power generated can be sold so that is the problem that we have today Once we have generation plants, we are not making any sense comparing ourselves to the past government.

Because their challenges were different. Their challenges were to bring in power plants to solve. Once we have the power plants, we have to move on to what other challenges we have as a country and address the challenges. And the challenges we have today are people who are not delivering on their mandate, to to make sure that the public purse is not sacrificed the way we are doing. We are spending over $2,000,000,000 every year of our hard-earned money to be able to sustain the light and keep the light on.

So when you tell the people that the light is on, at what cost and at whose expense? It is the same people who are paying for it. So how do we address this sustainably? I was expecting that to come from the president, and unfortunately, that did not happen. And I’m hoping that in the coming days, we will see pragmatic, effort to really deal with this.

Otherwise, the sustainability of Ghana is really under threat. And we’ve been talking about this, for so long, and it it’s constantly on deaf ears, and we keep paying, those hard, end money, into this. And we keep piling levies on ourselves, you know, to be able to address. We had. At some point, they intro introduced a delta, which is also, money being charged at the pump to be able to address the same, energy sector, debt situation.

And we don’t know when another tariff will be imposed, on us, for us to be able to address the escalating, challenges that we have in the energy sector. So if you ask me what I expected, what the situation really is in the energy sector, it is one single sector that is bleeding our budget, and we haven’t had solution, for years. And, the state of the nation failed to address it. So you are not that optimistic, Ben, about the energy sector. I I didn’t intend to ask questions, but what’s the one big thing we need to do to survey the sector, you think?

I think we have to go back to the drawing board. We agreed that the government cannot do it. Government, once they touch where revenue is and the politicians have control, corruption breeds, procurement takes over, and that is essentially what they have done. When we agreed to the energy sector in 2014, the commitment that we’re looking for the private sector to salvage the situation and improve the distribution end was about $500,000,000. The government has spent almost $700,000,000 on ECG, and still the inefficiencies have rather deepened, and they have worsened.

So it tells you that once politics is involved, we are not going to fix any problem. How did we invest our money and still fail to deliver? The inefficiencies at the time we decided to bring in, the private sector was around 23%. Today, the inefficiency has gone to over 30%. When we have spent far more than we expected the private capital, to deliver.

So it’s just the politics and the corruption that is robbing all of us our resources. Uh-uh, because the politicians are the ones doing the procurement and managing the sector the way they want. And then they sacrificed everything else, to pay for the electricity bill.

Bernard Avle: Thank you very much. Ben Boakye is the Executive Director of the Africa Center for Energy Policy.

We’ve heard from Reverend Akua Ofori-Boateng on ethics. Benjamin just spoke to us on energy. Mary Addah is the Executive Director of GII. Her area is anti-corruption and good governance. Mary, thank you so much for joining us on this special program.

Mary Addah: Good evening to you.

Bernard Avle: What is the state of the nation as far as the anti-corruption fight is concerned?

Mary Addah: Thank you very much, Bernard. Good evening to you, and good evening to the other panellist and your viewers alike. Let me begin by saying that the state of anti-corruption in Ghana is one where, the policy maker, the executive for that matter is doing what they believe is right by their standards, whichever those are, and the citizen sits and watches aloof while the, country continues to dwindle within the space and the resolve of the various service that have been conducted soon.

Let me quickly say that, for instance, if you look at the corruption perception index, over the last 4 years, that’s from 2020 to 2024. We have stagnated, and stagnation is not just the word because if you do a thorough analysis, you would realize that we have, in the past 12, 13 years, made a negative two-mark. And so if it is negative it, it means we are negatively regressing in the fight against corruption. The state is pretending to fight corruption while they are doing something else. Citizens sit aloof and increasingly are becoming very accepting of corrupt behaviours.

Making and implementing spaces, our democracy is dwindling. We are beginning to see negative trends. We see that as a people, we have moved from a mark of 75 during 2017 to now about 35%, and that is a big worry. A worry in the sense that from everywhere around us, we have seen that the benefits, the negative effects of governance and anti-corruption have fueled so much distrust in systems which have led to what I do not even want to talk about. The state of corruption again, we see in this country is, one of the worrying trends of the rising cost of elections, which have been fueled by a largely unregulated campaign financing regime as a people.

And study after study has indicated that there is so much you need to invest to be able to get appointed or elected into office. And the, effect of that on having to engage in behaviours that are not acceptable. We have seen it manifest in the weakening of the horizontal structures of accountability within our systems. We have seen it reflected in the weak public ethics that we are currently operating with. Begin to show that if, people are accepting it because citizens are asking when it comes to most of the instances this recently what’s happened during the camp, campaigns at the various levels of the parties.

So citizens have also realized that at this point what they need to do is to also seek and then to grab some of the money that are being, put out there. We have seen the state of corruption being fought more by rhetoric than action. Most of the public sector institutions including the executive are seen to be talking about the issue more than action. We have seen that in most of the instances, we do a lot of public awareness and yet it does not reflect in actual investigations, prosecutions and sanctioning of the corrupt. And this has been fueled also by the restrictive nature of our legislation, particularly when it comes to the definition of what exactly corruption is.

And so people get away with all sorts of wrongdoing which constitute corrupt behaviour, corruption, and corruption-related offences. And because adjudication is not that trending when it comes to our laws, then we see people get away and for that matter, fueling and promoting further behaviours in this regard. We have seen institutions being set up, a lot of duplication of functions, a lot of test laws happen, and yet very few resources invested in the fight against corruption. So we are where we are, a very pathetic sight, not too encouraging, and yet, we are restricted and constrained. Mhmm.

Bernard Avle: Thank you very much, Mary Addah, for keeping it brief but hitting all the major points. She is the executive director of the Ghana Integrity Initiative, speaking to us on anti-corruption. This is still the point of view. We’re looking at various thematic areas as part of our citizens engagement on the state of the nation. Let’s move to the environment.

We’ve dealt with ethics. We’ve spoken about energy. We’ve dealt with anti-corruption. Daryl Bossu is the executive director of A Rocha Ghana. They are into the environment. Daryl, thanks for agreeing to do this. What is the state of the nation as far as the environment is concerned? You are 5 minutes. Go ahead.

Daryl Bosu: Good evening, Bernard, and good evening to all. And, thank you for having me. I think that listening to the president, a lot of the issues that bordered on the environment were excluded from the statement, which we thought that he did maybe deliberately because they were too controversial, and we have not seen a lot of positive outcomes in those areas. One of them was clearly missing, which was the galamsey issues, which was missing in the statement, the president made. And that’s already testify to the fact that galamsey is still with us. Because if you move across the country, we see the impact, the effect of galamsey all over the place.

Our rivers and water bodies have not cleared as has been expected. We see more pollution in a lot of places. I mean, you cannot count one river body now in this country that you can say is very clean. And it’s not only our rivers that have been polluted. Our health has also been put at risk because of these mining activities, we’ve seen their unprecedented, pollution by heavy metals and residues in these river bodies and all of that.

And this is also even affecting our food system, particularly on farmlands. You have seen most farmers returning to these lands that have been mined and abandoned in most areas. Again, critical to the discussion on on environment has been the unprecedented false assault on our forest reserves. I mean, we’ve seen in the last year, I would say, the last 2 years, several laws and several executive instruments that have been passed that have come to take away several key protections for forest reserves in this country. We can talk about Airline 2462, which has come to expose some of Ghana’s most pristine and critical forest ecosystems to log in.

And now we have on record administrative instruction from the Ministry of Lands, instructing the first commission to open up our first reserves for logging. These are the first reserves that historically have not been put up for logging. But the Ministry For Lands has given instructions to the Forestry Commission to open them up for logging. So it tells you that the government has no intent to really commit to protecting our forest reserves as they have said on many platforms at COP 28, COP 27, and COP 20 26. As you know, Ghana is a partner with the US on what you call a forest and climate leadership partnership.

And in all of these, you only hear sweet words, but no commitment to real action on the ground. And, again, Bert, we shall mention is the fact that the president talks about, the planting of 42,000,000 trees and also, again, about 690,000, degraded forests cultivated. All of these things are good, but it has not been reflected in the extent to which the integrity of our forest ecosystems has been protected. We have seen smaller and more forest reserves being under siege for illegal mining and logging activities, and there’s no commitment from the state agencies to readdress with them. That said, I can also mention the fact that we have also been confronted with an unprecedented onslaught of activities relating to, attacks on, urban forests, and we know of the Achimota forest.

This issue has still not been resolved, and we know that the government is even taking steps to go ahead with the planning and development of this area. So we really have serious issues with the government’s commitment on these areas. What has also been very shocking is that in the face a lot all of these, the government has become the engine of also perpetuating an injustice that’s really led to the passing of the emissions levy, which we say that in view of Ghana’s commitment and also Ghana’s least responsibility for climate, climate and the issues that you are faced with, Ghana shouldn’t be taxed. Ghanaians shouldn’t be taxed for the emissions levy, and this is something the government has not taken into consideration. This issue is still an issue of public debate, and we want the government to come kind of rescind decisions to ensure that this, levy is enforced on Ghanaians.

So you look at all the sectors, forestry, water resource management, and even on biodiversity conservation, all that. Because our forests have been destroyed, biodiversity habitat and all of that are also going to be explored. And I think the president was very, very strategic in not mentioning or touching them at all Yeah. Just because the 2 push out for them to push and be sensitive, and he knows that there has not been any positive action on that. And so to that extent, I think that there is more there is more to be done.

And so far, it has been very abysmal on the part of the government in relation to these issues.

Bernard Avle: Thank you very much, Daryl Bosu. Daryl is the executive director of A Rocha, giving us his view on the state of the nation as far as the environment is concerned. So we’ve dealt with ethics. We’ve dealt with energy and anti-corruption, and when we come back, we have education.

We have economy. We have youth empowerment. We have media, and we have private sector. On this special edition of the point of view, stay with us. Welcome back.

My next guest has been working in the youth space for a few years now. She’s done Oxfam, she’s done CDD, and she’s a youth activist, Vera Abena Addo.

She’ll give us the state of the nation as far as youth empowerment is concerned. Vera, good evening. Thank you for joining us on the point of view tonight. What is the state? Yes, what is the state of the nation as far as youth empowerment is concerned? Go ahead.

Vera Addo: Thank you for having me and also for the substantive conversation you are inviting in this issue. The state of the Ghanaian youth is a reflection of the Ghana we have today. It is more like show me your young people, and I’ll show you the kind of country or economy you have. Just to give a bit of context to our our discussion.

In Ghana, when we say youth, we mean persons aged between 15 to 35. And this is according to the Ghana National Youth, policy, and then it’s also in line with an African youth charter. So who are Ghana’s youth? In Ghana, persons aged 15 to 35 constitute 38% of the population, while children under age 15 make up another 30 5% according to Ghana’s Tax Car Service. So together, that is about 73% of our population.

This means that we have a youthful population, so it is only smart for any nation to be deliberate and intentional about youth development. I want to I want to discuss the state of this youth demographic along 2 main indicators. 1, participation in the economy and then 2, participation in politics and governance. Let’s look at the first one, participation in the economy. What does the data tell us?

The upper barometer around 9 survey 2022 funding show, shows that young people are more educated than their elders. We can conclude from that that they constitute a larger percentage of the skilled labour force. However, the same survey is also telling us that young people are the least employed. Also, the most underemployed in respect to this is in respect to the formal economy. Also, just 3 days ago, the government’s attestation tweeted that on, average, more than 3 quarters, that is 77.4 percent of the total unemployed persons in the Q1 of 2023 comprise age 15 to 35.

So this is the state of young people’s participation in our economy. It stands less than 23%. So what do young people do? They have to travel.

This leads me to the next point, Bernard, that, I want us to talk about immigration. The desire to immigrate is higher than ever according to OECD. That is the Organization for Economic Corporation Development. 44% of Ghanaians expressed the intention to migrate permanently from the country.

And so when you disaggregate this information, you see that it is only it is not only the unemployed young people who are interested in immigrating. It is also critical for professional classes. It’s the nurses and teachers. So the thing about these indicators is that they speak to each other. So for instance, young people who are bent on immigrating are less likely to create jobs and to create businesses, meaning that we are losing out on potential job creation endeavours.

And the government have government upon government have tried through our Ministry of, Youth and Sports. We have the National Youth Authority. There are lots of programs, but it appears not getting the results that we we want. So what are we doing? What is working?

Why are we not getting the results that we desire? What is wrong with all that you are doing? It means that there’s something wrong somewhere. And then that maybe this raises a lot of questions for another, conversation if we are not doing our targeting right. So finally, I want us to look at participation, young people’s participation in politics and governance.

Meaningful youth participation, not what has been limited to just voting in an election. But when we talk about meaningful youth participation, it means we are ensuring that the voices of young people, their perspectives, and ideas are not only heard but also valued and integrated into the decision-making processes that affect our lives. Protest is one of the many ways that young people can express their own views and voices as part of the governance process. Unfortunately, for young people or young Ghanaians, when they have come together and mobilized to protest, we have seen intimidation and police brutality. We’ve seen the demonstration, with the country groups, how the police treated young people who went on the street to express their own displeasure with the economy and wanting to be part of the governance.

And so to conclude, I think that the challenges that young people face in Ghana are not necessarily different from the challenges young people in other countries face. What is different, however, is that other countries intentionally put in measures to recognize and address the challenges that, young pea or youth face. So, finally, I would say that they need to reorient the societal mindset of challenges facing young people. We have normalized the hassle mindset.

In normalizing that, we have shifted the problems from, society and the state to the youth themselves. So they say we are lazy. Sell this. Do that. Why are you not doing anything?

You are sitting at home. And so it’s important that we are intentional and also deliberate about your development. Thank you, Benaji. Thank you, Vera. Fantastic perspectives on the youth participation in economy, youth participation in governance.

Bernard Avle: What Ghana has to do, I really appreciate that Vera Addo, youth activist now with CDD. This is not a Q and A. This is just to take statements, so we appreciate that a lot. Let me move to the private sector.

Now FABAG is the food and beverage association of Ghana. John Awuni is the president. He has a lot to say. He has just 5 minutes. I’m just going to jump straight to him.

John, what is the state of the nation as far as the private sector is concerned using the food and beverage association as the entry point?

John Awuni: Thank you very much, Bernard. Good evening and good evening to our listeners. Thank you for the opportunity. I will quickly say that, Bernard, as you are an economist, who am I?

I am a development economist. In economics, we say that the private sector is the engine of growth and if we are going by this statement that the private sector is the engine of growth, currently, the Ghanaian economy has collapsed, and we are trying to resuscitate it through IMF support. If that’s so as that is so, that clearly will show that the private sector is also dead. Our private sector, Bernard, is no different from what it used to be 20, or 21 years ago. We are still largely informal sector.

A lot of the people in the private sector fear to formalize their businesses because of the nature and how government, organizations and institutions kind of are are are in the business. The private sector is still really under serious, tremendous taxes. Only last year, we still have we have we have COVID levy, and VAT increased from 12.5 to 50%.

We have carbon emissions tax, growth and sustainability tax. I can go on and on. Our interest rates still remain very high. We have inflation rates remaining very high. Currency our currency remains highly unstable.

That makes, the players keep boosting their working capital by the day. We started this year almost with about 12 cedis. Today now, we are going about 13 cedis to 1 dollar. Indeed, the forex below are quoted above 13 cedis. And just that, you know, if you look at it in kind of a big amount, you can imagine how much the cap the private sector is losing.

Clearly, there’s high level of unemployment in the country. That shows that the private sector is not doing well. And as a result of the high level of and then poor performance of the private sector, people have devised various means of surviving, making their businesses survive. However, not we are in an era where most players in the private sector have started looking at businesses in the neighbouring countries and most importers right now, as you see, are rooting their business, their imports through to through Togo and through Cote d’Ivoire.

And that has been shown clearly in our import, data. The Bank of Ghana last year in the last quarter released a report that showed that there was a reduction in imports by 14%. Even though we thought that was far more than that. And clearly, when you look at the import data, now we use significant, import data for rice. Rice in 2021, we imported about 805,000 metric tons of rice.

In 2022, it came down to 650,000 metric tons, came down to 440 or so in 2023, and that was largely due to the fact that people have decided to root their goods through and through. And, Ben, let me tell you, that became a very serious thing for players in the industry because people were under captain. And those who could not sell in the market. You went into the market, you found a lot of French debut boots in our market. And that had clearly killed it to the chance of killing many businesses.

So to say, the private sector is not doing so well. But one thing, clearly, that came to the fore in the presentation of the state or national address, which clearly, saddens me, is the our data, our statistics, the use of our statistics, the sources of our statistics. Bernard, I will I know we do not have time, but I will encapsulate my story shortly in a manner. On January 22nd, I took up a data from a private person from the port, and we’ve done that for a couple of years. And I took this rice data in for statistics because we wanted to demonstrate to the to government that there was smuggling happening seriously through the Togo and Cote d’ivoire borders.

I took these figures, and that is the 805,000, and that is the 805,000, 650,000 metric tons in 2023. And get between a journalist in the multimedia sector. And then I said that, listen. We need to highlight this for the government to see what they can do to combat smuggling and combat, and see how they can do, revise the price regime so that they can encode impose through the Tema port. The next day, the journalist took this figure and said they were going to, contact the minister of Agric to react to the figures.

Next day, I saw the minister of agriculture took the figures, and said the rice imports have reduced by 45.4%. And as a result of government planting for foods and jobs, as crucial of the story, and sent to the the the gentleman in the multimedia. And I said, listen. This story has been twisted. I don’t it is not acceptable.

Where did they get the figures from? How did they arrive at that? I have generated the story, and how come mix of a Greek is not inheriting this is inheriting these figures? That is it. The right import has reduced by 45.45%, as a result of planting for food and jobs.

Why did the means of trade only in December, they took an LI to parliament seeking to restrict imports of sale?

Bernard Avle: So you are saying that the comments the president made that Rice imports have come down were actually based on wrong information and that you were trying to communicate an increase in the usage of other ports and smuggling into our country, which the journalist misconstrued to mean rice imports had come down, which the government also misconstrued to mean PFJ had reduced rice imports.

So the information the president put out was based on wrong information. That’s what you’re trying to say. Is that what you’re trying to say?

John Awuni: Absolutely wrong, absolutely wrong information, so to say. And then my sadness is that it has been saved since, the year 2000. Our data in this country is absolutely a major problem because if you misinterpret the data Alright. Then your policy from the team is going to be wrong. Alright.

Bernard Avle: So thank you. We’ll probably explore this on a different date. This is not the time for this, but thank you, John Awuni. Not sounding positive at all.

Now earlier on, we had the take on the economy from Mavis Owusu Gyamfi with the Africa Center For Economic Transformation, the state of the nation as far as the economy is concerned. Let’s hear her.

Mavis Owusu Gyamfi: Thank you, Ben, for the opportunity. Let me start with the good news. Growth is increasing since we secured the IMF loan. Last year, our growth rate was 1.5%. This year, it’s projected to grow between 2.8% and 3.5%. The Cedi is showing signs of stability. Inflation has gone down from a high of 54% in December 2022 to 23 a half percent in January this year. The not so good news. We are not transforming as a country, which means we continue to be vulnerable to shocks.

In the recent ACET African transformation index, Ghana scored 19.1 out of a 100, which means we are a low transformer. Our growth is also concentrated in a handful of sectors. So, for example, the growth that is projected in this year, most of it will come from the mining sector. The mining sector will not generate enough jobs, which means that our unemployment situation will at best stabilize, but most likely get worse. 3rd, even though inflation has fallen, it is still way too high.

The cost of, you know, basic things like food, water, and electricity is too high for the ordinary Ghanaian. Since December 2022, the minimum wage has only increased by 10%. This means that people are not earning enough to keep up with inflation. So their side of living is simply getting worse. We are seeing more people get hungry, and the World Bank is projecting that between 2023 and 2024 2025, sorry, our poverty levels will increase to nearly 34%.

Despite all the efforts that is being made towards economic recovery, we continue to we will continue to face challenges this year. Our weak economy means we will struggle to attract foreign investment, which will affect our balance sheet, making the CD fragile and our exchange rate unstable. It’s an election year, and we are likely to face the same overspending we see in every election year, which is not good given our current fiscal challenges. And we are anticipating that there will be external shocks, like fluctuations in commodity prices. And also the tightening of US monetary policy will continue to pose a risk for countries like us and others.

Finally, corruption will continue to affect us adversely. Corruption is not unique to Ghana, and it’s not unique to any administration, But we need to address it. ISODEC has estimated that Ghana loses about 3,000,000,000 every year from corruption. Think about it. This is the same amount of money we went to collect from the IMF.

Imagine what we could do with that money. But for me, it is not all doom and gloom. We have opportunities going forward, and we must use the momentum and attention of the election cycle to nudge our leaders in the right direction. First, we all need to agree on a national transformation plan that is focused on diversifying our economies and making us more export competitive. This will require us to invest in industries that can create truly Ghanaian and truly African products so that we can export regionally and globally.

We will need to invest in the skills, infrastructure, and technology that will enhance our productivity in key industries. There is nothing stopping us from growing our textiles, chocolate, art, pharmaceutical, agro-processing, etcetera, industries. We can do this most successfully if we collaborate with other African countries. We need to build globally competitive value chains, drawing on our respective strengths and reducing the cost of production in the continent. 2nd, as we diversify our economies and improve our export competitiveness, we must ensure we broaden our tax base so that we can generate our resources to invest in services and job creation for our citizens rather than having to rely on borrowing all the time.

Finally, we must be fiscally prudent. This means spending wisely, getting rid of wastage, and saving for a rainy day. By doing this, we will ensure that we build an economy that is strong, is resilient to shocks, but most importantly, is able to create jobs, increase household incomes, reduce poverty, and broaden our tax base. But Ben, we can’t wait for tomorrow to get on track. We need to start doing all of this now. Because, as we all know, tomorrow is not promised.

Bernard Avle: Wow. Awesome. Mavis, that was amazing. Mavis Owusu Gyamfi, Africa Center for Economic Transformation.

Let’s see what we can do with education. Angel Carbonu is the president of NAGRAT. He’s joining us by phone with some quick thoughts on the state of the nation as far as education is concerned. It’s almost an impossible job to do in 2 minutes. Angel, thanks for joining us.

Go straight ahead and tell us the state of the nation as far as education is concerned.

Angel Carbonu: Thank you very much, Bernard. You recall that over time we’ve been calling for, bringing stakeholders together for us to look at this free senior high school situation and then the entirety of education. The president alluded to it in one way or the other. When he made a statement that, people can, ideas can be tolerated and ideas can be brought on board. I think it is a subtle way of accepting the fact that, there is a need for, there is a need for a conversation for us to be able to iron out some rough edges of the free senior high school concept.

So that to me is an introduction to a conversation, and we need to latch on it and see how we can expand the horizons of that conversation because that conversation needs to be had. Bernard, it is very important we have that conversation. As you and I speak today, the public basic schools are on a downward trend. Seriously.

And we need to look at that and then we also need to look at best risk for tertiary institutions those poor people who have passed the senior high school exams and cannot enter into C universities, we know, so we are calling for a conversation of stakeholders brought together facilitated by very well informed intellectual facilitators so that we can find solution to the problems of education in this country. Don’t forget the unions have also sent their manifesto to the various political parties. Proposals so that they can incorporate our proposals into their manifestos. This time we don’t want people to come and stand on platforms and make flowery promises. Promises have to be based on what is containing the various manifestos of the various political parties.

Bernard Avle: Thank you very much Angel Carbonu. We will take that from you. Ending tonight’s edition.

 

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