Ghana needs to stop leaving its people behind
Today, Tuesday, May 10, Ghana holds its first-ever National Forum on Inclusive Development. It is being led by the Government’s National Development Planning Commission with the support of UNICEF and other partners, including the World Bank, UNDP and ActionAid. The aim of the forum is to move us beyond the headlines of Ghana’s development and to look more carefully at who is benefiting and, more importantly, who is being left out. This is important because while headlines might look good, we are in danger of jeopardising the progress that we are making as a country.
Advertisement
On September 1, 2014, an article appeared in the Daily Graphic with the headline “Ghana achieves MDG 1 target’. Despite being well in advance of the Millennium Development Goal 2015 deadline, we already knew by then that Ghana had reached the milestone of halving the number of people that live in poverty. This is fundamentally important. On exiting poverty, people enter a new world; one of dignity, one where they are respected, one where they have the unparalleled satisfaction of being able to provide a secure and happy future for their family.
Clearly, Ghana has had something to celebrate in recent years. The millions of people who have been gradually lifted out of poverty are perhaps glad that progress had been made.
Inequality
But this is only one side of the story. The other side of the story is that of inequality. Inequality has been rising in Ghana. What does this mean? Hang around many neighbourhoods in Accra and you’ll see swanky new cars and huge houses, but go to an isolated rural community in the north and it can look much the same as 20 years ago. In simple terms, that is inequality. And not only is it just not fair, but it is also damaging.
UNICEF collaborated with the University of Sussex in the UK and the Ashesi University just outside of Accra to compile Ghana’s Poverty and Inequality Report (the paper is available at www.unicef.org/ghana). We found that despite the successes of reducing poverty, particularly in reducing the worst kinds of poverty, our progress has slowed down substantially. After around 30 years of consistent economic growth, we still have one person in every four living in poverty in Ghana. And if we slow down now, how many more decades will it take us to eliminate poverty completely, as the new Sustainable Development Goal number 1 urges us to do?
Any reasons
So why is this happening? Why are some regions of Ghana living with unbearably high rates of poverty? Why are 6.5 million children growing up poor in Ghana today, right now? Our research found that while there has been growth, the poorest experience the least growth, and the richest see the most growth. We found that even in the last few years, the rich have seen their income share get even bigger – the top 10 per cent of the population now consume a third of everything in the country, while the bottom one per cent consume just 1.7 per cent of everything. Again, that’s not fair, but it also does nothing to promote our national development and can even damage it.
Policy efforts as remedy
This situation will continue until we begin making adequate policy efforts to deliberately reach the poor. To protect them from the worst kinds of poverty and to promote them so they can help themselves – to set up businesses, process crops, educate the next generation, and so on. So our strategy needs to change. Ghana now needs a deliberate policy effort to both generate growth and share its proceeds more equally among the population as a whole. Even as we are caught up in this year’s politically charged atmosphere, we can already begin to make that change now, to identify what needs to be done and start holding ourselves accountable for doing it. Ghana’s development needs to become fair. Its transformation needs to be equitable going forward. Tuesday’s National Forum on Inclusive Development is just a starting point. Let us all join in the conversation.
The writer is the Chief of Policy for UNICEF in Ghana.
