The first paragraph is stated follows:
I have come here today to present to you, and to the people of Ghana, our Seven-Year Development Plan, which when completed, will bring Ghana to the threshold of a modern state based on a highly organized and efficient agriculture and industrial programme.
Right from the founding of this nation, the founding father understood clearly the most important path to economic growth was developing agriculture and industry.
In the second paragraph of the speech he states; “The main tasks of the plan are: firstly, to speed up the rate of growth of our national economy”1. Looking forward almost 58 years later, these are the current trends of the Ghanaian economy; about three-fifth of the GDP is the service sector, one-fifth in the agriculture sector and one-fifth of it is industry2. This is a far cry from the founding vision of this country.
According to the World Bank report between 2017-2019, the GDP growth rate was 7% per year and was halted by the COVID-19 crisis3. The poverty rate is hanging between 25% to 26%. The recent economic growth pattern observed was linked mainly to inclusivity and labor intensity, with the extractive sector making a small contribution. Agriculture and service have been the major influence on growth in the country. It has been proven time and again that sustainable development cannot be achieved with development patterns relying primarily on highly labor-intensive and unproductive agriculture, and an import dependent-service sector.
A conscious effort is needed to boost industrialization and move from highly labor-intensive means of production to a highly productive system with a high level of human skill. Industrialization should be looked at critically and persuaded aggressively as an economic agenda with purposeful industrial policies. The rapid transformation of the European, American, and Eastern Asia economies was backed by industrialization. Regardless of the time it was kicked off, major transformations began from that point onwards. Labor, Capital, Management, Technical progress, and an excellent social system is needed to prepare for the change in growth that can lift the country out of poverty and backwardness in the Gerschenkronian sense.
The Ghanaian society as much as the whole of Africa is a paradox. This paradox has been identified in many forms and Kwame Nkrumah put it right in his work when he mentioned “Africa is a paradox which illustrates and highlights neo-colonialism. Her earth is rich yet the products that come from above and below her soil continue to enrich, not Africans predominantly, but groups and individuals who operate to Africa’s impoverishment 4 (Nkrumah, 1965).
The current form this paradox has taken is the fact that Ghana produces engineers from various disciplines out of our universities, technical universities, and other institutions numbering in ten-thousands, yet they do not contribute to the industrialization of the country. There are numerous Small and Medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the country engaging in various businesses, although several of these businesses are within the service sector, numerous are attempting endeavors in the industrial sector. Yet, these numerous SMEs and graduates are not getting bridged to develop industries.
The elements needed for the development of a modern economy are in place, there are trained labor, a ready market proven by the rise of SMEs, growing capital accumulation through the strengthening of the banking sector, and a company registration system that will foster modern management. There is a need to now merge the labour and SMEs around a model that will increase productivity and technical progress, which will eventually lead to the transformation of these SMEs to LSEs (Large Scale Enterprises). This will shift the so-called “Informal” sector into a “formal sector”, one can only guess the benefit it will bring to the national economy.
In summary, the country’s development hinges on our ability to diversify our development pattern through industrialization. We cannot watch our natural resources, human resources, and dispersed capital resources stay unproductive; we need to consolidate them into a productive unit.
The one way to consolidate these dispersed resources is to merge them through the common purpose of industrialization, carrying it out through a series of programmes that try to put the effort of labor (graduate engineers, technicians, and trained personnel), capital (dispersed SMEs formation, focused investment from the banking, and financial innovations), management (organization and institutional structures to manage capital and labor towards technical progress) and technological progress. This technological progress should serve as the melting pot for these factors, hence should afford the necessary stakeholder within these various factors mutual benefits that will lead to a positive national effect.
Technology development programmes should be modeled after the available markets and developing markets, labor resources and potential, capital resources, and potential and management structures to birth enterprises that will grow into large-scale enterprises driving industrial growth. The technology development programmes should consolidate the supply chains of engineering skills and sciences to research and develop products, production systems, and human resource training for management and operation, distribution, and product end-life management.
Developing and not a transfer of technology will bring about the strengthening and expansion of the industrial sector. Naturally, technology transfer is a subset of technology development, and our priorities should not be confused. We should be fighting towards creating enterprises to meet the huge gap in technology development and its use is solving our national problems. Lessons from history should teach us the road to take, and a scientific approach should judge our methods and help guide us toward ensuring we are achieving growth and making progress.
reference
- 1. Nkrumah, Kwame, (1964), ‘Blue print of our-goal launching the 7-year development plan’, address to the parliament of Ghana 11th March 1964.
- 2. Ernest, A. Boateng and John, D. Fage and Oliver, Davies and Donna, J. Maier, (2023) ‘Ghana’, Britannica. Source: Ghana - Economy | Britannica.
- 3. Ghana - Country Partnership Framework for the Period of FY22-FY26 (English). Washington, D.C. : World Bank Group. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/823041645721495743/Ghana-Country-Partnership-Framework-for-the-Period-of-FY22-FY26
- 4. Nkrumah, Kwame (1965) ‘Neo-colonialism: The last stage imperalism’, Internation Publishers Co. Inc.