[afro-nets] Ghana gets a half billion - will this improve MDGs? (5)

["Niagia Santuah" <nsantuah@pcaccra.org>]

Ghana gets a half billion - will this improve MDGs? (5)
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Dear Dr. Williams,

Thank you most sincerely for enriching the quality of the debate. I appreciate your comments and acknowledge the good points raised.

At least you do agree with me that the poverty of the northern regions has a historical basis and that not one single government is to blame. All Ghanaian governments, as a rule, have pursued an urban-biased agenda which has drawn back the development of the largely rural north.

Half a million dollars to a 'poor' country like Ghana is a lot of money. But the issue that seems to pervade all developing countries is the issue of leadership and of priority planning.  It is not so much the size of the cake as the way it is shared.  Whether Ghana gets one pesewa or one trillion dollars for poverty alleviation, the money should go to where the poverty is and not invest it somewhere while counting on the ruse of a 'trickle down' effect.  

If you had scientific evidence that malaria was endemic in one community and you decided that a combination therapy of artesunate-amodiaquine was the best remedy you don't go and administer the drug in a different community hoping that when those people get well they would help the malaria endemic community work on their farms. This is abstruse logic.  Happily, this kind of logic only works with politicians, not with scientists! 

Though I am no scientist I am a master of signs.  And if you were to ask me what signs I see with the Americans and the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) I would say without hesitation that a viper does not become innocuous simply by changing the colour of its poison.  The MCA is meant to promote investment with a catchy phrase - poverty alleviation.

Investment, free trade and export led-growth (call it what you please!) policies are no sustainable solutions to the problems of poor countries. Free trade and export led-growth policies can work but they will work for only a limited number of countries which are already able to compete in global markets.  Even in those countries only relatively small proportions of the population, mostly belonging to the already better off, will benefit. Ghana is not even in this class of countries.

Needless to say market-driven economic policies as solution to the problem of development in 'the third world' have been the subject of considerable criticism but they are still being pursued by mostly short-sighted governments in developing countries and that unfortunately includes Ghana.   

When they say the MCA money is meant to promote 'investment', that is not synonymous with alleviating poverty - in fact in the long run such development assistance works to exacerbate poverty leaving us in what some call the 'poverty trap'!

Local and global poverty can only be eradicated through satisfying the basic needs of the people.  To meet the basic needs of the people governments need to guarantee the people access to adequate basic education and health care, food, clothing and shelter, clean drinking water and sanitation, etc. 

I consider it inappropriate, for instance, that part of the MCA money is being used to develop urban roads.  Grants such as are obtained under the MCA should be used to develop rural roads because it is difficult if not impossible to get commercial loans for that purpose.  On the other hand it is much easier to get loans for constructing urban roads since the money can easily be recouped and the loans repaid.  These are what I will term some of the major flaws in the way the MCA money is to be disbursed.   

But the bottom line is that, no matter how we spend the 547 million dollars we would achieve the goals of the benefactors!

I'd like to conclude by stating that it is the lack of vision on the part of our political leaders, and not Ghana's politically unstable history, that is responsible for our backwardness.

Santuah Niagia
Accra, Ghana
mailto:nsantuah@pcaccra.org