The President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is rolling full steam ahead with his plans of building a modern Ghanaian economy which is not overly dependent on the export of raw materials.
The President who has described the country’s over reliance on gold and cocoa as reminiscent of the Guggisberg economy has launched several initiatives that are intended to turn the economy around. A Guggisberg economy is credited to the economic philosophy of Sir Gordon Guggisberg, the Governor of the Gold Coast between 1911 and 1919 which emphasized the export of raw materials to Great Britain. Unfortunately this phenomenon has persisted for decades since its creation even after the Gold Coast assumed the name Ghana post- independence.
President Akufo-Addo is in a hurry to change the status quo.
The One District One Factory, the Planting for Food and Jobs and the National Entrepreneurship and Innovations Plan are some of the initiatives from the Presidency which are meant to refocus Ghana’s economic development. All these initiatives have since been launched and are set to accelerate job creation.
The President however wants more revolutionary thinking in the private sector development space and is bent on making the local entrepreneur the focus of this upturn.
“We are determined to build a new Ghanaian civilization, a Ghana beyond Aid. It is a Ghana where we aim to be masters of our own destiny, where we marshal our own resources for the future, breaking the shackles of the “Guggisberg” colonial economy of a producer of raw materials, and a mind-set of dependency, bailouts and extraction.
“It is an economy where we look past commodities to position ourselves in the global marketplace at the high end of the value chain. It is a country where we focus on trade, not aid, a hand-up, not a handout. Said the President of the Republic.