The Arab Spring started in Tunisia after a December 17, 2010 self-burning of a street vendor in a provincial town of Sidi Bouzid sparked mass anti-government protests. Unable to control the crowds, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was forced to flee the country on January 2011. Over the next months, Ben Ali’s downfall inspired similar uprisings across the Middle East.
The shocking self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi was the fuse that lit the fire in Tunisia. According to most accounts, Bouazizi, a struggling street vendor, set himself on fire after a local official confiscated his vegetable cart and humiliated him in public. The death of a struggling young man from a poor family struck chord with thousands of other Tunisians who began to pour into streets in the coming weeks.
Public outrage over the events in Sidi Bouzid gave expression to deeper discontent over the corruption and police repression under the authoritarian regime of Ben Ali and his clan. Though considered in Western political circles as a model of liberal economic reform in the Arab world; Tunisia suffered from high youth unemployment, inequality, and outrageous nepotism on the part of Ben Ali and his wife, the vilified Leila al-Trabulsi. (Source: BBC)
In more than one ways, Ghana – and indeed many African countries – looks like the Tunisia of 2010/2011. As a nation, are we not considered in Western political circles as a model of liberal economic reform? Sure, we are. Is corruption – particularly in public life – not rife here? Your answer is as good as mine. Has discontent not been building up for years such that public outrage now and again threatens to explode into something uncontrollable? What about the menace of unemployment? Ours is not too different from what drove the university graduate to sell vegetables beside the street only to be beaten by the police for him to set himself ablaze. I’m not doomsday prophesying; touch wood. But we need to be wary! The unemployment situation could soon get explosive.
How many are the unbizz?
At the site of the Ghana’s Statistical Service, you read such stuff as Ghana having the highest level of unemployment in the whole wide world. Mid last year, a report issued by the World Bank was to the effect that about 48% of Ghanaians between the ages of 15 and 24 do not have jobs. Titled: “The Landscape of Jobs in Ghana,” the WB report also claimed that 90% of those 25 – 64 years old were employed. And, a third of the population was in school; 14% were inactive and four per cent were unemployed actively looking for jobs. Young women have even higher inactivity rates than men in Ghana, says the World Bank.
About two years ago, the government announced it was able to admit only three of every 100 people that pass out of Ghana’s universities into the civil and public services. That is serious! You are tempted to feel soothed by the claim that the jobs are in the private sector. The private sector? After dumsor-dumsor and the myriad of challenges, how many private businesses remain capable of hiring graduates from the universities, diploma-awarding institutions and polytechnics? And, if higher school graduates land no jobs, what is the fate of illiterates and school dropouts? Ghana Today is a state of jobs. Indeed, it is an understatement to say there is serious youth unemployment in Ghana; better say there is general idleness in Ghana. It is inaccurate to suggest that most people here above 25 are employed; too many fully-grown men and women in this country are either unbizz or only pretending to be working. Outright beggars, those who use religion to extort alms and those who depend solely on remittances from abroad multiply by the day.
The Akufo-Addo regime, thus, have a herculean task giving jobs to – or engendering the creation of jobs for – millions of young and old Ghanaians. How does this government intend to create the job avenues? I guess the One-District-One-Factory promise readily comes to your mind. Fine. That can be one reliable avenue for jobs. The biggest factories in America, China and Europe offer staggering job figures.
But, the ambitious state enterprises of the First Republic and how they ended should guide us in setting up: if the planning is poorly done, cost of production will continually outstrip revenue. The Operation Feed Yourself and Operation Feed your Industries were bold ventures this country embarked on under the junta of Kutu Acheampong in the early 1970s. Lack of focus and dynamism collapsed them and this government must be wary of the nemesis of the OFY and OFI.
Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen, the Trade and Industry Minister-designate, on Monday, January 23, 2017 gave us snippets of the One-District-One-Factory implementation. It is going to be collaboration among the central, local governments and private investors. Supervision, monitoring, evaluation and effective corrections must be continually effected to ensure continual improvements in the ventures. I am not a prophet of doom; but, I warn as a sentinel over the public interest: if the One-District-One-Factory policy is not executed with the utmost dedication and diligence, Ghana will be plunged into irredeemable debts that will render virtually everybody jobless.
No jobs for the (political) boys
While at it, this government should faithfully eschew political considerations. Jobs should be jobs for all and not New Patriotic Party (NPP) people alone. Captains of industry with proven record should not only be encouraged to lead in the rural industrialisation, but, should actually be lured into playing pivotal roles – whether they are Progressive People’s Party (PPP) faithful or even apolitical.
This government also sounds like targeting agriculture to stimulate more jobs, alleviate poverty and create wealth. Farming and fishing in Ghana Today are nearly fruitless ventures. Costs are unfavourably high; productivity is relatively low and revenues are unattractive. Government must do all it takes to strike a healthy balance between keeping food prices affordable and making it rewarding for people to keep farming. I recommend to the Akufo-Addo regime to consider subsidising agriculture, discouraging importation of cheap junk foods and helping the private sector to add value to as many as possible of our agricultural products. There is no reason we continue to import turkey tails and euro-carcasses into this country.
In or about 2008, the Kufuor Administration is said to have invited a Dutch-South African firm to take over the feeding of all public universities. One of the needs of the food company was to get about six thousand live birds every day. No poultry farmer could promise that; no businessperson could pool from the scattered low-capacity farms; the government simply had no answer to the precondition. In the end, the giant caterer relocated in another African country. Can you imagine the jobs and prosperity the demand for 6,000 chickens a day would have created for Ghana, if satisfied?
As one of the most respected voices of the NDC while they campaigned for a comeback in 2008, John Dramani Mahama convincingly told of how their next government would build linkages among the cereal, cowpea and poultry industries in the north. After 96 months, there is no impression the Atta Mills/Mahama regimes left from the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority that is more famous than guinea fowls flying away to Burkina Faso. No wonder the exodus of youth from the three northern regions to Accra and Kumasi has intensified.
All parties and presidential candidates vying for power talk big about modernising the shea-butter industry; it practically remains the rudimentary collection of nuts in the midst of snakes by women wearing no protective gear.
When the going gets tough…
The cause of our economic stagnation is not that our leaders and administrators are bankrupt of ideas. Our bane is that they lack focus on the ball. When the going gets tough, our leaders don’t steel themselves up to get going. When they have to stay the course, they turn their gaze on to the ballot box and rush through politically expedient programmes. For a meaningful growth, this and subsequent governments must keep committed to the broad frameworks of their policies and programmes, through thick and thin; rain or shine.
Because of the compelling need for value addition and processing of agro commodities, there is an urgent need to forge a much stronger synergy among our agric colleges, polytechnics, food makers and farmers. There should be inter-ministerial collaboration to create and retain jobs. The coordination of the works of all the ministries and departments should be seriously done to curb wasteful overlapping and iron out regressive frictions and rivalries.
Apart from farming, fishing and agro-industries; the petrochemical sector, the automobile industry, service sector and several other businesses can be wisely expanded to create jobs and wealth. The expansion of infrastructure, particularly railways, should be planned to grow thousands of skilled and unskilled labour for Ghanaians. At this stage, we should avoid aiming at creating hundreds of thousands of jobs at each premise where goods are made. We should aim to create a few hundreds of vocations at this or that factory; at this or that industrial plant. Peasant farmers must be aided to graduate into semi-commercial farmers. Commercial farmers should produce oil palm, pineapples, mangoes, bananas on the scale produced by Alpha Blonde and the like in La Cote d’Ivoire. Outgrowers should be given the technical and financial assistance to offer the Komenda Sugar, Pwalugu Tomato and other factories the critical support they all need.
Terrible work culture: absenteeism, loitering at the workplace. Obtaining underserved excuse duties from equally unscrupulous medics abound at our workplaces. Low productivity is all we have been reaping in our attempt to break loose from poverty since the dawn of independence 60 years ago. Each and every Ghanaian owes it a duty to this and subsequent generations to turn a new leaf and work hard to establish the only economy we have. Our new craze for social media and information communication technology generally should be geared towards making us better informed, more productive and more protective of our wellbeing. It is not for pornography, fun or rumour mongering. ICT should be used to pursue useful knowledge. We must as individuals lift ourselves from this quagmire of wastefulness. Our institutional and national leaders should lead the way. We must make Ghana work again and work even better. For, if we continue to loiter about; if we continue to produce structurally unemployable and illiterate graduates; if we continue to close down industries; we certainly will be running this dear country of ours down.
And, the Arab Spring, or a semblance of it, could be only two or three blocks away. Enjoy your weekend, Cherished Reader.
By Ghana Today by A. C. Ohene/obk.press@yahoo.com
