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Re-Designing Ghana’s Development
Paradigms
By Kofi Akosah-Sarpong, Ghanadot
Kofi Akosah-Sarpong discusses Ghana’s Health
Minister, Mr. Courage Quashigah’s statement that Ghana’s
progress should be driven it’s by culture
Ghana’s Health Minister, Mr. Courage Quashigah, part of
the emerging Ghanaian thinkers, who are convinced,
beyond all reasonable doubt, like all progressive
thinkers world-wide, that Ghanaian/African norms, values
and traditions should be hugely factored in Ghana’s
development process. Not just factoring in the culture
in the development process just for factoring in sake
but rather that while appropriating the good aspects for
policy-making, bureaucratizing and consultancies, at the
same time the inhibiting parts, too, should be refined.
Why would Mr. Quashigah say that Ghana’s development
should be driven by its culture? What is wrong with the
on-going developmental dispensation? Why is Mr.
Quashigah concerned about that? What informs Mr.
Quashigah’s current transformation and vision? Where is
Mr. Quashigah’s thinking coming from? Who is Major (rtd)
Courage Emmanuel Kobla Quashigah?
Born on September 9, 1947 at Kedzi in Ghana’s Volta
Region, Mr. Quashigah has brilliant military academic
background, apart from military training at Britain’s
prestigious Sandhurst Military Academy, had had
distinguished studies in Ghana, United States and
Canada, with strings of esteemed awards. Over the years,
Mr. Quashigah has had long and illustrious career in
various fields in Ghana and Lebanon. Overtime, Mr.
Quashigah has been involved in civilian and military
governments: apart from being Minister of Health, he had
earlier being Minister of Agriculture under incumbent
President John Kufour’s government, and Chief Operations
Officer for the Jerry Rawlings’ military regime
Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC).
Against this rich background, Mr. Quashigah is famous
nationally as a courageous and brave man - virtually
saving Head of State, Jerry Rawlings, from being
overthrown, armed with remarkable dexterity. Now in some
sort of transformative way, Mr. Quashigah is tackling,
among other emerging thinkers, one of the most pressing
challenges facing Ghana – how to skillfully appropriate
the suppressed Ghanaian values and traditions in its
development process so that they can be opened
decisively for progress. Still, Mr. Quashigah
demonstrates a well developed mind, which has good
holistic grasp of Ghana, its prospects and its
challenges – pretty much of which is influenced by its
culture. The challenge is not only to appropriate
Ghanaian cultural values openly in its progress, the
challenge are also how to refine the inhibitions within
the culture in the development game.
And this will be done, more or less, by skillful and
matured policy-making, bureaucratizing, and
consultations, more driven by research owned by
Ghanaians through their norms, values and traditions.
Such challenges have occurred because either the
extremely long-running colonial rule, which profoundly
suppressed African values for developmental
transformation, or post-independence African elites’
weak grasp of Africa’s values in its progress, certain
parts of Africa’s values deemed unconstructive have not
seen conscious attempts to refine them for greater
progress. Added to the above, the test, once again, is
how Ghanaian thinkers, writers, policy-makers,
bureaucrats, and consultants could hybridize Ghanaian
values with their colonial legacies in the global
development process. No doubt, Mr. Quashigah argues that
“no country could development if it relegates its
culture to the background and concentrated on Western
values that were of little relevance to its people.”
This has occurred because of weak confidence, more from
the elites, as Mr. Kofi Annan, the former UN chief,
says, for historical reasons, within the development
process.
Ghanaian elites, as directors of progress, should
“harness the human resources of the country, taking into
account our cultural beliefs and accepting only good
foreign cultures,” as Mr. Quashigah contends, will not
occur just like that. The test is how Ghanaian thinkers,
writers, policy-makers, bureaucrats, and consultants,
with thorough grasp of Ghanaian values and traditions,
will be able to play their values with the dominant
neo-liberal structures currently running Ghana in the
global development context. In the long term, as Mr.
Quashigah asserts, it will demand “complete overhaul of
the education curriculum in line with the people's
beliefs and practices.” That means Ghanaian values and
traditions will be accorded as much prominence as the
Western ones in the content of education curriculum.
This will have two-fold effects: raise the level of
confidence among Ghanaians, more the elites, in regard
to Ghanaian values and traditions, and help develop a
new generation of elites who can think holistically from
the foundations of their cultural values and traditions
up to the global level, as the Europeans, the Japanese,
the Chinese, the Malaysians, and the South Koreans have
been doing.
Like the Southeast Asians, Mr. Quashigah’s famed
conviction, courage, and bravery will help midwife this
new thinking in a society that fears change, that do not
consider their values as good as that of the Europeans,
through sustained advocacy and public education, as he
has been doing for some time. This will help the new
policy-making, bureaucratizing and consultancies that
will be needed to appropriate Ghanaian values and
traditions. And some of the references to rally this
cause could be Ghana’s own Dr. George Ayittey, of the
American University, – “Indigenous African Institutions”
(2004), “Africa Betrayed” (1992), “Africa in Chaos”
(1998), and “Africa Unchained: The Blueprint for
Development” (2004).
The task is how the refurbished Ghanaian thinkers,
writers, policy-makers, bureaucrats, and consultants
will be able to work with Ghanaian values and traditions
in the context of the “problems facing the country and
come out with workable measures to address them,” as
journalist Kwesi Pratt Jr, has argued elsewhere. The
test is how Ghanaian thinkers, writers, policy-makers,
bureaucrats, and consultants will demonstrate the
ability to communicate these new ideas and influence
debate outside of it. It is when these serious ground
works are done, as the Southeast Asians had, that
Ghanaians will be able to reconcile their values and
traditions, authentically, with the global ones for
sustainable progress.
Kofi Akosah-Sarpong, Canada,
August 9, 2007
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