First published in December 2010
Image credit: Pexels
It was a busy day for me, yesterday. but I managed to wade through the day. Snow fell overnight and still falling. I called the nursery and they were open but not sure if they stay open the rest of the day. Heck! I still took my daughter there anyway so she can join other kids at the nursery to make snowman so that I can have the focus on work. Got there and they turned us back saying some staff had phoned in to take a day off. Its great being a dad but sometimes it makes no sense when you look into the future based on what is happening today especially as an African. Being an aware African living in the west can be quite challenging and sometimes depressing. It looks bad for the African from anywhere he exists and worst on the continent we all call home.
I happen to stumble upon a news item titled “In The Name Of Oil, Ghana Is Already Swimming in a Flood of Debt”. Given the recent gains made by the people of Ghana in sustaining what is beginning to take the shape of a democratic system we can be forgiven for singing the praises of the Ghanaian leadership. Ghana has found oil which has attracted the foreign parasites. They have smelt blood and are circling with their mouth wide open and fang-like teeth exposed and ready to hack into the pie. They are hovering around waiting to strike (the Chinese and Japanese are already in pole position) and the Africans seems to be at the brink of taking the world back to the pre-colonial days of ignorance and greed; an epoch for which Africa has earned the title of "the dark continent". Nigeria, Zaire, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon etc had, and continue to play their parts in this tap dance into modern slavery and beggary.
About ten years back the Ghanaian stock market boomed, African-Americans and our Caribbean relatives were heading there as the destination for investment and also to feel at home. When the noises about the discovery of oil in Ghana started I took the whole thing in with mixed feeling. On one hand I feared that the Nigerian experience may be repeated in Ghana which will spell disaster and doom for the good people of Ghana. On the other hand I took solace in the prospect of the new Ghana being more sensible and strategic in formulating their oil exploration, drilling contracts and perhaps revenue sharing policies. It is not clear how much they have of learned from the Nigerian experience of abject failure.
One thing Ghana must avoid is to take loans and credit facilities from their Asian counterparts or the International Monetary Fund (IMF). China, Japan, India and the West are trotting the length and breadth of West Africa in altruistic dressing but their real intention is to grab, smash and re-colonise the sub-region. The world is a global village which should makes it mutually beneficial for these countries to come to West Africa to invest and help to provide economic development; that is what they must do and nothing else. Africa must stop being the welcoming and smiling friend with a cap in hand.
For the people of Ghana to benefit from the Chinese and Indian invasion, the country’s leadership must have their thinking caps on. For every foreign investment contract with the Chinese especially, Ghana must include a comprehensive plan for the development of local indigenous skills and expertise in the design, manufacture, planning, deployment and maintenance of oil and gas facilities in order to keep foreign investors (Asian or Europeans) in their place which is; trading partners and not masters with all the technical and economic advantage.
African government must build and sustain strong democratic and economic institutions to help with the structural development and economic independence of the continent. As of this moment, one will not be wrong to conclude that what is passing as political democracy is indeed a quasi dictatorship given the open electoral frauds, political oppression, theft and corruption, nepotism and the lack of civil society participation in the process of governance.
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