Professor Ernest Aryeetey, the former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, has remarked per his observation, that Ghana and most West African countries have short-term views on development.
According to him, due to our very short-term approach to dealing with policy matters, we always end up not finding ways to trigger transformation or trigger change that is sustainable over time.
He said on the 13th edition of the Y-Leaderboard Series with Rev. Erskine that, “So long as you think short term, every decision you take has risks embedded in it. You think about how to minimize the risk and by so doing, you focus on yourself and your small group of backers.
When you think short term, then you’re not going to think about transformation. Your short-term sense brings temporary relief to people so if you come and fix the roads in my area, it’ll bring relief to me and I’ll be very happy short-term. There’s no guarantee that when those roads develop potholes in four or five years time, you’ll come back and fix it”.
Prof. Aryeetey noted that in Ghana, we build roads but we do not invest in managing them, hence most of the projects that are done in the country have no long term impact.
In accordance with this, he recommended that unless we are committed to having and making a change, each political party coming into power and having a new national agenda is not necessarily the solution to Ghana’s developmental problem.
By: Maureen Dedei Quaye
