Professor Ernest Aryeetey is a former Vice Chancellor (VC) of the University of Ghana and currently the Board Chairman of the African Economic Research Consortium.

Prior to his appointment as VC, he was a senior fellow and director of the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. He was also director of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) of the University of Ghana, Legon for the period February 2003 – January 2010.

He has also been a temporary lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (1993); visiting professor at Yale University Department of Economics (1999); and the Cornell visiting professor, Department of Economics at Swarthmore College (2001-2002).

Prof. Aryeetey has published three books, six edited volumes, 32 journal articles and over 100 conference, working and discussion papers. Among his publications are Financial Integration and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa (Routledge 1998) and Economic Reforms in Ghana: the Miracle and the Mirage (James Currey 2000). His publication with Ravi Kanbur on “The Economy of Ghana Sixty Years after Independence” published by Oxford University Press in 2017 is one of his best known recent works. He was the second recipient of the Michael Bruno Award of the World Bank to become a visiting scholar for May–October 1998.

Read: ISSER calls for strategy on debt reduction

Importance of statistics

Speaking on Springboard, Your Virtual University, a radio programme on Joy FM, Prof. Aryeetey, whose name is synonymous with statistics, said even though he came from an economic background, his main interest was always in statistics and ensuring that the analysed data could be fed into policy making.

He said he was interested in providing the evidence that was required to make the right choices when it came to policy.

He noted that data was extremely important, but unfortunately, it was one of the things that the country had neglected.

“We do have the Ghana Statistical Service, and the whole idea was to have a central point from which you could gather the data even before ISSER could analyse it, but with time, we didn’t pay enough attention to the gathering of the data, so by the time we started a lot of the reforms in the 80s and 90s, we didn’t have enough good data to guide the process,” he explained.

Read: We’ll guard economic gains - Oppong Nkrumah

Efforts being made

He said although efforts were now being made to remedy the situation, there was still a long way to go.

“We need good agricultural data and good industrial data. We are completely hopeless when it comes to labour statistics. In terms of the financial sector, things have improved considerably as a result of private participation but one area where we are still missing a lot is the labour sector.

“It is my hope that as a nation, we will begin to pay more attention to the gathering and analysis of data to ensure that policy making is on a solid ground. We need to have a structured and regular way of gathering any type of data,” he explained.

He said any information on jobs that had been provided was clearly debatable because of how the data was arrived at and how it was analysed.

 
Activities of the informal sector

Prof. Aryeetey also pointed out that one of the challenges faced in the country was the difficulty in bringing informal activities into the formal data gathering process.

“Many of the activities that we are interested in as a nation when it comes to industrial transformation are done informally and no records are kept, and that makes it even more difficult. We have a structural problem when it comes to discussing what the true situation is in terms of industrial development and labour associated with it.

“We have to create incentives that will encourage people to regularise their activities. Most of what we say on the contribution of the informal sector to GDP is an estimate based on several things that may not be entirely accurate,” he noted.


Tertiary education

Prof. Aryeetey said the challenge with tertiary education was now not about access but quality.

He said the situation was different from what was the case some decades ago when the country had just three public universities, adding that the country now boasted of lots of public tertiary institutions and private tertiary institutions in all the 16 regions.

“There is a challenge with the quality of what you are getting from your higher education. We have not paid enough attention to the standards and regulation and there is a lot to be said about how the regulatory regime has been handled.

“To me, there are so many people in there who should not have any business in delivering higher education,” he stated.


Top ten principles

Prof. Aryeetey also shared the top 10 principles that had helped and continued to help shape his life.

1.    Problem solving: A servant-leader must be prepared to solve problems. One cannot be a leader if you have no interest in solving problems beyond your personal needs.

2.    Do not act alone: A good leader must be a team player and a consensus builder. Be willing to work with others and harvest their thoughts for decision making.

3.    Decisiveness: Be decisive and firm, but be fair and transparent about it. Transparency makes the principles underlying your actions obvious to all.

4.    Accountability: Be accountable to those you serve. Leaders do not often see themselves as being accountable.

5.    Ambition: Be ambitious but not over-ambitious. A total lack of ambition is not good, but it’s even worse to be over-ambitious.

6.    Anticipation: Always be prepared for the unforeseen. Things can go wrong and people could seek to undermine you, but anticipate them and develop strategies for dealing with them.

7.    Confidence: Exude confidence but remain modest. Being over-confident pushes you to set lofty targets you cannot or may never meet.

8.    Humour: A good sense of humour calms nerves and wins over your toughest protagonists. Use humour in the right way and at the right time. Don’t be so serious that people will be afraid of you.

9.    Loneliness: Leadership is often very lonely. The credit for your successes is denied you or shared by many; however, when there is failure, everyone leaves you alone to carry the responsibility.

10.    Consistency: Be consistent and predictable. Do not keep changing your position depending on the circumstances and individuals involved.