Ghana already working to wean itself from aid - 3 experts

Three governance and development experts have espoused that Ghana is already working towards weaning itself off foreign aid.

They, however, said for the country to go at full throttle on  the President’s dream, there was the need to do a proper audit and management of the country’s resources, take a second look at the country’s investment laws and put in place a strategy to achieve that.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, during the commemoration of Ghana’s 61st Independence anniversary, espoused Ghana’s ability to wean itself off foreign aid.

The experts are the Chief Executive Officer of policy think-tank, Imani Ghana, Mr Franklin Cudjoe; the Executive Director of pan-African research and advocacy organisation,Third World Network, Dr Yao Graham; and the Executive Director of the Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG), Dr Emmanuel Akwetey.

Achieving Ghana Beyond Aid

Speaking on the President’s call for a “Ghana Beyond Aid,” Mr Franklin Cudjoe said: “I suspect the President means handouts, and obviously as a country we are already doing somehow better with the whole idea of Ghana Beyond Aid because frankly speaking our budgetary support of donors is slightly less than 15 per cent.

“It is hovering around 12 per cent right now so we are already making progress. I suspect that when the President talks about taking Ghana beyond aid, it also
means that even the little that we are able to generate by way of local revenues is used prudently, so that we won’t go and be begging for some of the little things and we get to fix some roads here and there.”

To Mr Cudjoe, however, “for that thought to take root, a couple of things ought to happen. First of all we need to do a proper audit of what exactly we mean by Ghana
Beyond Aid and what the linkages ought to be.”

He said an audit was very important to understand whether with increased revenue by a certain percentage, the country could optimise
development in such a way that it would not even require the least form of aid.

Mr Cudjoe called for an audit of the economic readiness of the country, saying; “We need to quickly look at the indices we are performing poorly on; for instance, the doing business report from the World Bank.

Investor confidence  

Mr Cudjoe stated that a Ghana beyond aid also meant having a working business environment which went beyond just meeting investors and talking to them, but showed the investor what he or she might derive from even doing the smallest things.

“It will also mean that we need to touch on the soft issues, where soft issues here mean fix the gutters, fix water supply because some investors could be turned away 
simply because they didn’t feel right about poor sanitation, open defecation and all of that stuff,” he urged.

While calling for a quick passage of the Public Private Partnership (PPP) draft bill which was still before Parliament, he also urged the government to aid young entrepreneurs to set up after school. 

Coherent strategy

Dr Graham, for his part, was all for a Ghana Beyond Aid, saying; “If you look at the amount of influence donors exert on our policy, it is disproportionate even to the
financial value of the aid that they give.

Secondly, he said quite a bit of the aid went back in terms of expenditures on various things. 

He, nonetheless, believed “What is needed is spelling out of a coherent strategy that unites everything.”

Dr Graham asked, “How do you square Ghana Beyond Aid with the terms that you allow foreign investors in various sectors to operate?’’

Long-term strategy

Dr Akwetey also expressed the view that Ghana was already on the road to weaning itself off foreign aid and the President was only recreating the vision of
Ghana’s first President Dr Kwame Nkrumah and refocusing the country on that path by calling for a Ghana beyond aid.