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Before the Covid-19 pandemic struck the world, the New Patriotic Party government, under the leadership of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, had exhibited exceptional ability and courage in driving basic development through enhanced productivity.
The government proved a point in restructuring the economy and scoring enough points to pluck the country out of an IMF programme it had inherited from the previous Mahama-led National Democratic Congress government.
It subsequently came out to score an average six percent economic growth up into 2019 before the pandemic struck.
Despite the COVID-19 challenges, the government initiated several job creation and social protection programmes that provided strong pillars for the economy to score a positive, when the trend was for global economies, including EU and Asian ones, to score negative.
Managing COVID
Its management of the COVID-19 pandemic, in redeeming lives, was not only recognised, but rewarded with partnerships in investment and multilateral support that would otherwise not have been made available to it.
Ghana took the centre stage in Africa for effective management of its economy, though it was struggling to tackle a debt burden, which is not only peculiar to the country.
That Ghana surprised global development experts and financial analysts with 5.4 per cent GDP growth showed that it was not all gloom and doom, but that hope was in sight.
That makes the Africa Development Bank’s decision to think Africa, by coming down to Accra to discuss home-grown solutions to Africa’s economic woes, very historic and revealing. And the crucial message in there is that we have something to share with the rest of the continent in surmounting our economic woes.
Project Africa
As a founding member, and with key Ghanaian personalities, including Dr Kwame Donkor-Fordjour, previously, and Hannah Serwaa Tetteh, now, having seats within the AfDB’s elite corridors, we can only pat ourselves on the shoulder, and encourage ourselves that, indeed, this is an opportune time to shine.
With rising food and energy prices as well as tightening financial conditions that are driving our youth into Europe through the Mediterranean, at great cost to human lives, the collective responsibility to take advantage of that platform to construct a bipartisan development architecture is imperative.
Collective survival
As we await the upcoming Accra AfDB meeting, the Daily Statesman believes that stakeholders in our governance spectrum must begin to organise in putting together in nonpartisan manner the building blocks for the key areas of development for national discussions. This should include measures for protecting the environment and our natural resources, renewable energy, water, food security, among others.
This is important in offering government a wide range of options to choose from, in exercising its mandate as an elected corps of leaders tasked to protect and improve the lives and livelihoods of citizens.
The upcoming AfDB Accra meeting is a pointer to the fact that no country has all the answers to their current economic challenges. The fact of the matter is that it is only by generously and conscientiously sharing ideas and space that we can move forward in attaining our collective goals, as well as ensuring our collective survival.