Building The Future By Empowering The Individual

Nana Akufo Addo

Disciples of the Danquah-Dombo Busia doctrine start from the premise that all individuals can overcome their adversities, that material want and destitution are not inevitable features of the social landscape, as classical liberals tend to assume when they set up institutions of largesse to cater for a perpetual underclass.

Secondly, we believe that the best way to help people to do better is through a policy of empowerment, not a doctrine of entitlement.

To give an individual the opportunity to contribute and benefit from the marketplace is to provide what is needed to excel.

Thirdly, we believe that prosperity must have a purpose — that there is more to life than what is bought and sold in the marketplace.

Thus, the taps of wealth must not trickle down, they must be un-choked to flow like the Densu would through the rain forest.

Something every Ghanaian understands can never be learned or realised at the marketplace alone: it is that the least paid worker of the community is a man of substance, economic substance; every member of a group or association is a man of substance, social substance; every subject of the law who despises crime is a man of substance, civic substance; and every member of the community who suffers himself to be educated or trained is a man of substance.

Even children and babies in arms are persons of substance, domestic substance.

These men and women of substance are insulted gratuitously when they are treated as dependents of the state.

We must bring back that empowering hunger that pushed many before us to fill their stomachs with a can-do, must-do bowls of vim.

We must bring back the old courage of excellence. We must bring back that old love for community which ensures that we look first within to scratch each other’s back; and fortifies the home front, before leaving ourselves vulnerable to the outside world, in an admirable but sometimes misplaced extension of akwaaba.

We must revive that old respect for each other as Ghanaians. That is the core value of patriotism.

We must also respect individuals as persons of substance — a trait exhibited by the principle of fair market economics which ensures basically that people have more control over their own wealth, on the assumption that they will invest it in what they and their families need.

A well-established conservative principle is that government’s role is not necessarily to invest in individuals or to fulfill their needs, but rather to create incentives that will encourage such investment and fulfillment.

We need to refocus the responsibility of government. The central state bureaucracy should function not as a dragging, but as a driving force.

Rather, government should function as a driver for the people in the sense that a chauffeur offers his services to the owner of the car. The people issue instructions where they want to go; the driver’s role is to assist them to get there.

J. B. Danquah told nananom and his fellow countrymen and women in the 1950s how his goals had been fashioned and streamlined after three decades of opposition to colonial rule.

He had focused his vision on three goals: the earliest possible acquisition of independence; the maintenance of administrative efficiency; and a radical development of the people’s progress.

It would be no exaggeration to say these goals are as pertinent now in our struggle to achieve economic growth in a globalised economic order as they were in developing a strategy to resolving our problems as the Gold Coast.

Danquah was driven by a sense of what is required for a democracy to succeed.

His concerns are as vivid today as they were 50 years ago: the right to choose freely; the duty to achieve the best; and the service of each for all and for each.

Government must provide respectful stewardship to the people and pursue global business ventures whose aim is the growth of Ghana’s economy.

Both these responsibilities entail the judicious use of power, but when that power inhibits, subjugates or frustrates the will of the electorate, then it has perverted its purpose. It needs to be checked and balanced through the voice of the electorate.

That is why Danquah said in 1947, when inaugurating the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) of blessed memory, the first nationalist movement to articulate the demand for national independence and freedom, that the aim of Ghanaian nationalism was to institute a system of government “whereby those who are in control of government are under the control of those who are governed”.

So, while a government may struggle to fulfill the promises of prosperity in time to quell dissent, it must not fear that dissent.

Dissent is healthy – it’s the oil that keeps democratic institutions running well. But, unless everyone has a stake in the fruits of capital accumulation, a free press degenerates into a game park for those whose pens are bought too cheap, and whose aim is too sloppy to be a productive source of innovative ideas.

So we are back to the point where all shoulders must be at the wheel; and the way to prevent a gridlock among shoulders, the way to keep the wheel moving, is to make sure there is an opportunity for those with the will, the stamina, the fortitude and the talent to get on board.

Ghana is a nation with a rich history and strong sense of identity. Our successful fusion of the traditional and contemporary in many aspects of daily life makes it possible for us to develop our own unique civilisation, which will make its own positive contribution to the growth of world civilisation.

For an epitaph, let us write upon the gravestone of Ghana’s repressive and impoverished past, with absolute confidence in its fulfillment, these words: “We are determined to succeed.

We are on course to revive that can-do, will-do spirit. And, God willing, we shall triumph!”

Thank you

Culled from a lecture by the then Honourable Minister of Foreign Affairs and MP for Abuakwa South at the Great Hall, KNUST, 15 Feb. 2006, Chaired by Prof Kwesi Andam, Vice Chancellor of KNUST, Kumasi.