This is Our Chance to LEAP!
Ghana is on the cusp of achieving an unprecedented level of development and an increase in the general standard of living, and this process has already begun. All around us we see skyscrapers reaching up, we hear the hustle and bustle of growing cities and we can almost feel it in the air; in our very bones, that our country is finally beginning to wake up and leave behind a past of poverty in favor of a bright and prosperous future. Therefore if as a nation we can play our cards right, we can accrue benefits that will accelerate our level of development even more. There is palpable change afoot, the world is recovering from the depths of a deep recession that left Ghana relatively unscathed; this is our chance to leap and achieve prosperity.
In the perpetual economic race between nations, the West stumbled, fell and caused a pile up that affected everybody, but fortunately Ghana escaped with only a few scrapes. We were so far behind, and still so crippled that we were not financially sophisticated enough to be seriously affected by the global credit crunch; after all access to credit in Ghana is next to impossible for most people. How much more could credit have tightened if it was practically non-existent? Our banking industry even saw some healthy growth whiles the world’s biggest banks were suffering great woes. All this illustrates is that developed countries have slowed down, whereas Ghana is perhaps one of the few developing nations in the world that can sprint onwards, and if not catch up with the frontrunners, at least leave the seat filled with the backbenchers.
The country is marching slowly but inexorably from a mostly illiterate agrarian society towards an industrialized economy. However, the developed world has the lead on us, they are in the deep throes of a post-industrial age where access to information is almost as crucial as access to natural resources. After all Ghana is not an island in a vast sea, we are competing with many other nations, developed and developing nations all for dwindling resources to sate their hungry masses. We can only remain competitive by leveraging our nation’s assets and resources; appropriately branding the country as a safe haven for business for both the local and foreign investor, reducing the cancer of institutionalized corruption, and hopefully the government will also provide that “enabling environment” where rapid but sustainable development can occur instead of spitting the same rhetoric over and over again.
However let us be frank and pragmatic here, the established inefficiency of government bureaucracy and a deeply stagnated socio-cultural and political system is no longer the key to achieving our development goals. Various political regimes have come and gone, many more will come and go but the preserve of Ghanaian politics has always been a particular affinity for the verbose eloquence of a conman. Our leaders certainly have some commendable plans, but I have lost my faith in their turgid prose; I believe that Ghana needs to look elsewhere for the impetus we need to increase and manage our momentum as we hurtle up the economic ladder.
Personally, I believe that the private sector holds the key, and that the entrepreneur is this key. I am not lambasting the government as completely useless and inefficient, but I believe that their role is simply to create the conceptual and policy framework that will provide incentives to existing and would be entrepreneurs to do what they do best, bear risk and create wealth. The brunt of the work should be borne by the private sector with the public sector providing the needed support. I believe that we need to move away from a system dominated by public bureaucracies to one dominated by private adhocracies. Adhocracies are fluid and dynamic organizations that can rapidly adapt to constantly changing environments and can better handle one of the biggest problems of the 21st century as coined by Alvin Toffler, information overload. The entrepreneur sets up an ad hoc business to achieve his particular aim by identifying a niche within which to profitably operate across a vast, confused and inefficient system that is fraught with so much information, most of which is useless, therefore the adhocracy quickly discards with it. A bureaucracy is a big lumbering beast that must swallow all the information presented even though it cannot make sensible or profitable utility of most of it. Instead of concentrating on pampering bureaucracies, we should be encouraging our adhocracies to prosper.
To be continued - Come back for more NEXT WEEK!
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