There is a quiet yet deafening frustration that has settled over Ghana.
We are tired of governments starting projects that the next government abandons, infrastructure being left to deteriorate because it was associated with another political party, resources being spent and plans announced, only for the country to change direction every four years.
And perhaps most painfully, we know we have the resources, people and ideas, but our greatest problem is continuity.
Every election brings new ideas and new promises.
We need to move beyond the politics of erasure and adopt continuity.
Governments are elected for four years; nations are built over generations.
Ghana
Ghana needs a long-term National Development Plan, perhaps spanning 30 years, developed through broad national consultation and adopted as a national compact rather than the property of one political party.
The destination of this nation should be agreed upon and accepted by all.
Political parties should compete over who can accelerate development, create jobs, improve education and health care, build infrastructure faster, manage public resources better and deliver greater value to Ghanaians.
They should not compete over where Ghana is going.
They should compete over who can get us there faster.
For too long, we have looked outside ourselves for solutions while exporting much of the value that could have built our own economy.
Rather than bringing in foreign expertise simply to do the work for us, why not invite that expertise to help establish engineering schools, train our people and transfer the knowledge and skills we need to design, build and maintain our own technologies not merely to solve today's problems, but to equip our people to solve tomorrow's.
And perhaps in terms of development, we should stop looking only at the Western world when measuring what is possible.
Botswana, Rwanda, Namibia, Kenya, to name a few, demonstrate that African countries can build functioning and increasingly prosperous societies.
Botswana offers an important lesson.
Its government has invested substantially in education, health care and social protection, including support for eligible students pursuing tertiary education.
Such policies demonstrate that when a government deliberately reduces the financial burden of essential services, it gives ordinary people greater security and room to build their lives.
Kind
That is the kind of Ghana we should be building—a country where home is not a place our people feel they must escape from, but a place where they can thrive. And we have examples beyond Africa.
Singapore became independent in 1965 and pursued rapid industrialisation, infrastructure development and investment in human capital.
China’s transformation accelerated after 1978 thorough reform, followed by decades of rapid economic growth.
Dubai and Qatar started developing aggressively in 1990 and 1995, respectively.
These countries did not become destinations of attraction overnight.
They made decisions.
They invested.
They planned. And they stayed the course.
Ghana became independent in 1957, way before some of these countries did, and we have been free from any unrest that could have caused retrogression, yet we remain beggars.
What if we had pursued clear national development with the same consistency?
The unfortunate experiences of our people seeking greener pastures elsewhere must challenge us; xenophobia and hostility in parts of Africa and the world over, being called a “shithole country”, etc., should push us to resolve to work towards developing what we have.
Decades
Nearly seven decades after independence, we are still called a developing country.
What a shame!! Our people have suffered for too long! Young Ghanaians should not have to cross deserts to find dignity.
They should not have to risk their lives travelling through Libya or across the Mediterranean because they cannot see a future at home.
We must build a country that is home.
As Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger seek to chart their own path through the Alliance of Sahel States, Ghana should not wait until they develop before recognising the urgency of our own development.
Let it never become our reality that in the very near future, our young people begin to see the Sahel states as the greener pasture because those countries have created opportunities that we failed to create for them all this while.
The time to build is now!! We have seen what others have achieved.
The main thing we need now is the courage to commit and the discipline to stay the course. Let political parties compete fiercely, challenge one another and expose failures, but also acknowledge the success of the opposition.
One day, our grandchildren will ask what we did when we had the opportunity to transform Ghana.
Let us answer that we stopped tearing each other down and that we put aside the divisions and short-term interests that held us back, gathered the full strength of our people, our resources and our ingenuity, and committed ourselves to moving Ghana forward.
That we chose to build a nation that would give them greater opportunity, greater dignity and a brighter future than the one we inherited, rather than a place to flee.
Political parties and governments are temporary.
Ghana is permanent. And it is time we started building accordingly!
— The writer is an emergency physician at a private health facility.
