By: Henry Adjei Boadi
President John Dramani Mahama is quoted to have opine among other things on 2 June, 2025 as “We must ask ourselves the hard question: Why does the wealth beneath our feet not translate into prosperity above ground?”
I find the President’s observation to be ambivalently great and puzzling. My immediate question is how different is this whining and lamentations from “Yete sika so nanso ekum de yen” to wit, in the midst of plenty a fool is thirsty statement made by the former President Akufo-Addo?
Undoubtedly, Ghana and, by extension, Africa is blessed with vast natural resources and rich environments as observed by our whimpering leaders. We are generously endowed with productive land and with valuable natural resources (emphasis). These include both renewable resources and non-renewable resources. Ordinarily, these resources should constitute a principal source of public revenue and national wealth but the opposite seems to be the case.
The recent high foreign exchange inflows from the country’s raw natural resources is causing politicians to trip over each other as to who should take credit. I was thinking it would rather make us for once want to evaluate how we could have gotten multiple folds of benefits from what we are currently getting had there been a value addition to those raw exports.
The global market is full of uncertainties. Revenues from our raw materials can fluctuate dramatically, leading to unpredictable revenue streams. It is unfortunate that Ghana has been an unrefined resource-dependent economy from the time immemorial. We have not been able to make any meaningful long-term planning and execution of developmental programmes because of the volatility in the world commodity prices and reliance on external sources of funds.
This disadvantageous situation calls for economic diversification. We should strive to diversify the Ghanaian economy to reduce reliance on natural resources and create a more resilient economy.
The resource curse (also known as the paradox of plenty) is not a recent phenomenon, but we don’t seem to have learnt useful lessons from countries that have successfully gone around it.
While we have arguably been spared of conflicts and authoritarianism that our counterparts elsewhere with resource boom encounter, the same cannot be said about our lower rates of economic stability and economic growth, tendency to over-spend in areas like Article 71 office holders, inefficient subsidies or social interventions and large monuments like the cathedral. Regrettably, these expenditures are at the expense of low spending in areas like health, education, useful infrastructure, and other social services.
Under the right circumstances, our natural resource ought to be an important catalyst for growth, development, and should be able to transition us from the low pedigree enterprise of “nkoko nketekete” (cottage industry) to factory production. Indeed, with the right approach, our natural resources can be used to make the most needed transformation from a low-value economy that relies on exports of primary commodities to one with a substantial labor-intensive manufacturing base.
Albeit Ghana and, for that matter, Africa remains as not being industrialized and continues to stagnate in a staple trap, dependent on the exports of these mineral resources as our President’s rightly observe.
I would have expected or hope that the government’s big push programme would equally be geared towards the diversification and development of the manufacturing sector.
The writer, Henry Adjei Boadi is a corporate generalist and a researcher