Acts of desperation
Last week, two major events took place with a lot of fanfare which indicate the desperation of a country to address its problems.
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The first was the unveiling of a logo on ‘Made-in-Ghana’ goods which took place on Monday, April 13, 2015, followed by the launch of a National Employment Policy on Wednesday, April 15, 2015.
We all know our country Ghana has become a dumping ground for all manner of goods either in their new or used forms. They range from toothpicks to generating sets, now that we are experiencing acute shortage of electric power.
While we can find locally produced foodstuffs in the markets, it is not the case when you enter the supermarkets. Almost everything is brought from outside.
The painful thing is that, a lot of the imported items have local substitutes already in production or could be produced given the necessary support and encouragement.
If we take food items such as fresh fruits and fruit juices, tomato, rice, onion, beans, potato and many others, there is no need to adorn our shelves with imported ones if we are determined to take full control of our food requirements. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The reasons are many.
The first and quite obvious is the lack of production capacity. We have the natural resources such as arable land fed by abundant water resources.
Unfortunately, our national policy towards agricultural production is veered towards rhetoric than practice.
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The incentive to go into large scale is very limited and, therefore, unattractive to many young men and women with entrepreneurial skills.
Our industrial base is very weak and the little energy left is being sucked away by lack of electricity and, therefore, there is no way we can find locally manufactured goods on the market.
We have the psychological burden of purging ourselves of the inferiority complex that has consolidated our preference for foreign goods as against local ones where they are available.
Part could be blamed on what is obvious to the eye – packaging – which is what attracts the consumer to even approach to examine a product.
The second is of course the confusion in our minds as what is good and what is better.
The logo, no matter how attractive, may contribute very little to the solution of the problem. First, we must be able to produce the goods and food items. We must be able to process and package them nicely and lastly, we must be able to market them in a very aggressive manner.
If we can do these and remove the unfair trade competition brought about by an unbridled trade liberalisation policy, we will be getting closer to eliminating our excessive dependence on imported items.
That also means there will be no need for an employment policy which will remain a mere wish on paper if there are no industries thriving on local raw materials to offer employment to both the skilled and unskilled labour.
If we continue to be excited about exporting our cocoa beans raw, exporting our mineral resources, name them – bauxite, manganese, gold, diamond and many others in their raw forms and in turn import processed goods from other countries, no employment policy will solve our problems and no beautiful logos will bring made-in-Ghana goods flowing into the supermarkets.
When our agriculture remains largely subsistence and all the industries have collapsed, no employment policy will reduce the burden of unemployment in the country. It is as simple as that, and we do not need any World Bank or International Monetary Fund expert to tell us.
Some of us believe strongly that bauxite alone, from the mining of the ore, the building of alumina plants and the smelter up to the industrial stages of the production of aluminium goods that are uncountable, could take thousands of employable youth from the streets and drastically change the fortunes of this country.
The same can be said of cocoa if the emphasis could be shifted from the mere production of raw beans to processing. Malaysia and Brazil have virtually stopped the exportation of raw cocoa beans. Can’t we do the same here?
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It is one thing recognising our problems and another coming out with the right strategies to combat them. The launch of certain policies and branding techniques will at best remain cosmetic and a scratch on the surface without making any meaningful impact on the real problems.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk