Enhancing Ghana’s capacity for ECOWAS and Continental Free Trade
What is the way forward for Ghana? What is the agenda for action to enable Ghana to effectively meet the interlocking capacity challenges of the integration processes of ECOWAS and the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA)?
Undoubtedly, the success of integration at regional and continental levels very much depends on the critical issue of capacity, the need for external intellectual, technical and professional inputs to underpin the efforts of governments and their inter-governmental organisations to realise their integration ambitions.
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Hence Ghana has to enhance national capacity for effective management of ECOWAS and the projected CFTA to technically reinforce and complement the country’s historical role as vanguard of African economic integration.
Towards this end, and in view of the lack of skills training and updating or, simply put, lack of adequate knowledge of the techniques of regionalism, training or human resource development should constitute a crucial step towards enhancing national capacity for regional and continental integration.
Improving human resource capacity is a key element for the promotion of regional and continental integration process.
Building human and institutional capacity is a precondition for capacity to implement economic integration.
The process should be reinforced by enhancing the capacity of stakeholders by making them aware of the programmes of ECOWAS and the CTFA and participate in the identification, formulation and implementation of their integration process.
Many policies are needed to place the private sector and civil society at the centre of Ghana’s integration dialogue and agenda, as (a) active participant in policy and decision making, (b) as the driving force in development in cross border investment and production of goods and development of infrastructure and provision of services.
Strong non-governmental participation is a key factor in achieving the goals of regionalism.
Successful cooperation and integration schemes in Europe and elsewhere have not been the work of governments alone. They have all benefited from active participation by a wide variety of groups such as trade unions, employers’ organisations, and private entrepreneurs and these groups ensured that regional integration issues remained at the top of the political and economic agendas.
Sensitising
Closely related to this is the importance of projecting Africa’s regional integration message. Member states of ECOWAS and CFTA should declare an annual commemorative week on “Regional Integration” to instill a sense of belonging to the population at large.
During that week, a broad-based national committee of stakeholders and constituencies should plan and implement programmes of activities on peace, justice, security, governance and regional integration .
A case in point is the celebration of the annual ECOWAS Brown Card Day held on May 29, 2019 by the Ghana National Bureau of ECOWAS Brown Card Insurance Scheme.
This is a step in the right direction, as it would make ECOWAS central to the lives of most Ghanaians and not peripheral as is presently the case. Importantly too, is the oversight role of the Ghana
Parliament to be expanded to deal with implementation of the agendas of ECOWAS and the CFTA.
Ghana and the member states of ECOWAS, indeed the continental African Union as a whole must devote some of their resources to the foundation of integration journals and promotion of research and seminars in the field of integration. Such an undertaking would in no small measure contribute to the broadening of outlook of socio-economic groups in the sub-regions, as well as the enlargement of their regional understanding, all of which would help to create a favourable nationwide climate for the development of an integration movement.
In order to infuse among the younger generation of Ghanaians, a tradition of integrative spirit and thinking, a course on economic integration should be taught as an independent branch of study in all research institutes, schools, colleges and higher institutions of learning in Ghana.
And to facilitate communication between the various cultural and linguistic groups, the study of French and English should be made compulsory in all high schools and colleges.
All this would help to create a long lasting intellectual foundation for the movement towards regional integration in Ghana and indeed, Africa as a whole.
Popularisation
Added to this is the instrumental role which the media, television and the press should play in the popularisation of the schemes of the ECOWAS and the CFTA integration processes to increase the level of awareness of the largest section of the population about the contribution which regionalism could bring to Africa’s economic and social development.
Indeed, it is the media and the press which, given the requisite enabling environment, should inculcate into all segments of the population, what one may term an ‘an integration ideology’ to stimulate responses from the industrial, commercial, agricultural, labour, elite and student leaders.
The ECOWAS regional integration scheme and the scheme of the CFTA are critical to Ghana for making poverty history and sustainable development, the future which is critical for building credibility at home; critical for reduction of dependence on vulnerable and fluctuating overseas markets and elimination of external pressures; critical for Ghana and the entire African continent in meeting the challenges of globalisation, a world of trading blocs and rapid changes in technology; and above all, critical for evolving an effective people-centred development strategy that constitutes the essential key to the dawn of Africa’s renewal and indeed African renaissance.
We must learn how to use this key without delay and without hesitation.