Its about 4:30am, and I can’t seem to tear myself away from the radio (online), so rather than sleep, here I am …
I’m listening to Joy Fm’s Frontpage program, and the discussion is centered around issues – what issues do we want to see our presidential candidates and political parties address? I have soo much on my mind, and it’s sad that I’m so far away, and cannot contribute. Well, I could call (usually a daunting prospect, considering that I’d have to try several times first).
Oh well, thank God for blog space. At least here, I can share my views …
So what are the issues that I think are key to our development? What should our politicians be focusing on? Here’s my list. It’s a chain – each of my five issues is linked with the other four. Ideally, there’s so much I’d like to see our leaders prioritize, but I’ll list only five out of a rather long list.
First of all, I would place manufacturing and processing and the protection of our local industries as my top priority. We need to craft an industrialization policy that wakes up to the reality that if we don’t look out for our own and move from the colonial economic system of producing raw materials and unprocessed goods, we’ll keep struggling economically. I would prioritize manufacturing, and start by conscientizing the people through public education campaigns. We’ll need to amend our thinking about M & P, and get people to realize the immense benefits of this area, especially in a globalized world. Our penchant for begging for grants and loans has locked us in economic ‘partnerships’ and bondages where our markets are forced open to foreign goods with the presumption that our local goods can compete in a free, fair and open market. The playing field is all but level, given our reality. The state must facilitate the growth of local industries by giving tax breaks, subsidies etc etc. that’s what will help our local industries to become competitive in our sub-region and globally.
M & P is linked to agriculture. We’re largely agrarian, after so many years, and there’s almost always talk of ‘improving’ agriculture. Well, I don’t see the answer necessarily in increasing the amount of land available to farmers, or small loans to farmers. I want to see a new way of thinking about agric for a start. A new and ‘green’ way of thinking of agric and sustainability in the long term. Once again, public education campaigns to help us realize the potential there is to unlock, in our agricultural sector. Mechanized farming for a start, and looking at our agric products not as end products per se, but seeing how we can process them and add value, making them competitive. This becomes ‘raw material’ for our local industries as well, and so we move into large-scale production, process and package our agric products and ensure that local needs are met as well as export needs. We can use agric waste materials as recyclables within our agric industry itself. If agric is to flourish, then we have to think of large-scale storage plants, and the infrastructure that will support agric – access roads, bridges, tunnels, ferried water bodies etc. This will be tied into infrastructural development and municipal planning.
Note my preference for ‘municipal’ rather than ‘urban’ planning, which reinforces the rural-urban divide. I want to see infrastructural development that is not geographically imbalanced, and this will go a long way to facilitate our industrialization process we will embark upon. Our industrialization plan will mean job creation on a large scale, and rail and other transport systems to transport people and goods. It will also mean the need for access roads into areas that have been hitherto neglected. If we have to tunnel a rail line through a mountain to get to the optimum location for our pineapple or garden egg plantation, then so be it, so long as it’s a creative and ‘green’ way of doing it.
M & P necessarily demands an investment into research and development, and educational reform. By this, I mean substantial and not just nominal reform. This is such a gargantuan task, but I believe if we strategize properly, we can fuel reform at all levels. First of all, we need to retrain our educators – get them to adopt more student-centered approaches that will fire up the potential that’s locked in our students at an early age. Our focus must shift to what is best for the student, and our emphasis must be shared between facilitating teaching and proactively facilitating learning. Let’s get our educators in touch with technology and creative new ways of teaching and learning. Let’s take better care of our educators at all levels, and through public education campaigns, let’s elevate the image of our educators, instill pride in what they do, and make it a viable career choice rather than a last resort, as it has become. That’s the starting point. Then let’s scrap this system that chooses for students what they have to study. This is a major, major, major concern of mine, and I can’t say it enough.
A system that does not encourage creativity, that is built on a colonial premise that we need to train for specific needs, and so stigmatizes some subject areas and exalts others is inherently flawed, and we’ve allowed it to persist for long enough. For example, in a sports-crazed country, why don’t we have sports administration and management programs in our institutions of higher learning? Yes, we need doctors and engineers, and let’s by all means produce them, but we do not live only by the work that scientists do. We need to allow students to explore the arts – visual, literary etc as well as the sciences and not select the ‘smart’ ones to do science and leave the rest to do arts. That’s a serious – very serious problem that needs immediate attention. Passion drives creativity, and creativity drives excellence, and excellence yields results. I strongly believe this. People say some subjects can’t or don’t put food on any table, but I beg to differ. Passion-driven work that is excellent, coupled with an entrepreneurial mindset will indeed put food on the table and do more than we can ever do by just following the crowd.
This educational reform at multiple levels will also encompass one thing – education on personal, civic responsibility. This is something that will be taught in our schools, encouraged in our workplaces and churches, and social groupings – personal civic responsibility, so that we don’t always look to government to do everything. Why lament government’s inability to clear the filth in our cities if we’re not taking personal responsibility for the filth we create as individuals? What of our conduct on the roads as drivers, passengers and pedestrians? It’s appalling, and we look to curative measures such as fines and police crackdowns on lawlessness etc, but if we start taking ourselves seriously we will behave better on our roads, and we can, through civic education, inculcate a certain sense of pride, self-esteem, morality, and discipline, it will serve us well. This tackles corruption at multiple levels, as we campaign against it and let people know that while it’s not okay to receive a bribe, neither is it okay to offer a bribe. We have to tackle the issue from both angles. Civic education at all levels will reduce the common flaunting of the law that we see, whether it’s on our roads, in our classrooms, in our courts, workplaces etc. if we take personal responsibility seriously, then we’ll have less trauma in the area of lawlessness and law enforcement.
Law enforcement and security in our society is of prime importance. We need a serious overhaul of our law enforcement apparatus – a transformation of our police ‘force’ into a police ‘service.’ A mental re-orientation is needed, proper recruiting and training of our officers, a heavy dose of socialization and education about their roles in our society, their civic duties etc is crucial, and I can’t possibly say it enough. Of course, as we need to do with the teachers, we need to take better care of our service men and women and focus on getting them to understand the philosophical foundations and reasons for their existence. They’re supposed to make our nation a prime/choice place for us to live in. If I’m in any difficulty, feel threatened etc, my first option must be to find a serviceperson, and they must be ‘findable.’ They must have the resources to show up and help me, rather then tell me to take it easy with the armed robbers while they go find a car to come to my house and deliver me from robbers.
We need strict enforcement of the law, which means we must educate citizens about their rights and responsibilities so that our law enforcement folks don’t take us for a ride. We must know the law, so that when I am stopped for driving without my license, I must know that I have 48hours by law, to produce it. If I know this, and it’s applied fairly, then I won’t have to pay the bribe when I’m threatened with a beating and ‘counter-back.’ I really respect the work some of these people do – out in the hot sun, through the night etc, and there’s much to be done to instill pride in what they do and equip them to be able to carry out their duties.
Finally, I’d like to focus on what I call the ‘little foxes’ – issues that seem minor and yet carry more weight than we realize. Fixing the little foxes tackles surface problems that cut across sectors and segments of our lives, and they serve as evidence of deeper, fundamental problems that need to be fixed. Sometimes the way to put out the fire is to first find out where the smoke is coming from. As we find the smoke, make our way through it, then we can find the source of the fire. The little things that will improve life while we tackle the deeper issues have to do with things such as signage, literacy, our addressing system, record keeping/management, and generally, how we do things. I’d label this a rationalization campaign. Max Weber, a German sociologist came up with this term to refer to how a system is standardized, de-personalized etc. I won’t go into that whole ‘doctrine’, but I would like to propose taking parts of it and applying it to our institutions, our ways of doing things etc.
My rationalization campaign will be combined with technology, so that we can ‘modernize’ and refine the way we do things. Specifically – we will re-organize our addressing system. This ties in to the more fundamental issue of land reform where we will have to do some serious zoning and re-zoning and get to a level where we can actually track people in our system – where people can’t just disappear into thin air. This will give us confidence in our credit/lending systems, reduce fraudsters’ hiding capabilities, help us to track criminals better, etc. Rationalization includes centralization – record keeping in our public agencies. Why do I have to go to Accra from Koforidua for my vehicle registration information because it is only available in Accra? If record management is properly done, in a decentralized or even centralized system, we will make life a lot easier. Once again, the fundamental issue of over-centralization of functions and power must be addressed.
When conducting research in Ghana recently, it was very striking, that we barely have signs around that tell us what to do. Go to public agencies, and you’re tossed from one office to the other without understanding the process and what’s going on. There are no signs to tell you what documents you must have, what the procedure is, how much it will cost you, etc etc., and these are the loose nuts and bolts that cause the system to fall apart because people take advantage of them and exploit the system. If the prices for services are fixed and made publicly visible, then I do not have to pay the ‘kalabule’ price an officer has just quoted because I am well-informed. This ties in to literacy. How many people are functionally literate? Answer lies in education – adult education for those outside the formal, educational system. So you see, this rationalization campaign is a hodge-podge mix of many seemingly minor things that if fixed, will help the system to work better. However, one must remember that these are only symptomatic of deeper problems that need to be fixed.
Okay, so these are my five top issues that are linked as in a chain – they will thrive on each other. Protectionism in manufacturing and processing (regardless of what the world says), agricultural and educational reform, civic education going hand-in-hand with law enforcement, and finally, rationalization. There are many other issues – human rights, sanitation, healthcare, etc etc, but if I were president, these are the top five issues I would start with, and I tell you, by the time I’m done, Ghana will be a better paradise than it already is. To me, it is paradise because of its incredible potential, and I’m madly in love with Oman Ghana. Yes … I did say PARADISE!
ps. as usual, this was supposed to be a very, very short piece, but you know me ... once i get wound up ... ...
If I were running for president, would you vote for me?
hehehe.)] Well, I come from behind and from seeing about 10 people in front of me in the beginning, I now see about 5. Blood is rushing through my body and my stalky legs are racing as fast as they can (like a cheetah’s chasing me), and ... I finally cross the finish line and come in 3rd! Phhew!! That was quite an experience! Anyway, I’m re-living this experience because it felt sooo good, and it felt even better when I kept coming in 1st, 2nd or 3rd on different occasions for Long Jump—my favorite sport. I was da bomb!!! Well, I’m about to do some more athletic stuff, and this time, not just for the adrenaline, but to support a good cause! ... ...
