Ghana is a very interesting country. I mean this both in a good and sarcastic way. The things that happen in this country, sometimes you don’t want to believe until you read the headlines.
That being said, the most hilarious of all the jokes are the ones perpetrated by the Ghanaian government itself. Passing outrageous bills, changing perfectly working systems and replacing them with once politicians can profit off of, an endless stream of things they do just because.
The most serious cases, I reckon have to do with allocating huge funds into projects that even the mere citizen can deduce isn’t feasible or necessary. When it comes to spending the country’s resources, it’s a very sensitive topic because we’re already a struggling country in debt to our necks.
For some reason though, it seems our government makes certain monetary decisions that sometimes you just can’t help shaking your head at, because you wonder how an entire body of professionals that are supposed to manage a country all saw it right it right to spend such huge funds on a project with so little impact.
I think it’s time I stopped being vague and went into the details.
This topic, many people might come for my head if I declare that it’s a waste of resource. I am, but hear me out first.
Sure, free education is a very thoughtful and considerate project started by the Ghanaian government, but I think we can all agree that since it’s launch, Ghana’s financial situation worsened. And this makes sense.
You don’t put a weight you know your head can’t handle on your head and not expect it to dangle. Our government knew well enough we couldn’t handle it but hey, the president promised he’d deliver on that as part of his campaign message, so it was either face the citizens or find a forceful way to make it happen.
If I’m complaining about it getting implemented, I think it’s pretty obvious the president couldn’t bring himself to disappoint the citizens by telling them the truth - that with the country’s financial situation, we just can’t handle mass scale free adoption.
You don’t even want to know the lengths we went to to make this happens. The loans we took and the taxes imposed on citizens?
Im my opinion, free education was not too far fetched. It was the scale on which the government implemented it that is costing us. Free education for all. This right here was the problem.
Forget the money spent, this free education has dumbed most of the high school kids for reasons I already talked about in this post months ago.
I think the best way to have implemented free education was to roll it out as a scholarship scheme for bright students. It’s still free education, but on a smaller scale supporting numbers we can afford. Not to mention that this would’ve encouraged people who had their eyes on the scholarship to perform excellently academically - unlike the reverse we’re seeing where high school kids don’t even learn anymore because they’re guaranteed “free education” awaiting them in the higher level whether they pass or not. It’s sad.
If the free education project doesn’t prune it’s numbers, it’s going to leave a big burning hole in the Ghanaian coffers and will slowly be the end of us. This is in no way suggesting free education be stopped entirely.
Okay so if let’s say we did get the free education beneficiaries under control, and some funds were saved up, what would I suggest.
Ghana is a producing country. But it’ll surprise you to find out we import almost everything we eat. There has even been jokes going around about us importing even simple toothpicks. Even though those aren’t true, they just go t9 show how heavily importing we are.
A lot of the farmers tending farms lack access to the machines with which they’ll carry out production. Others lack the capital to do simple things like buying weedicides to spray the farms.
I don’t see why the government is not placing heavy focus on equipping the agricultural sector. It definitely would’ve helped provide some kind of stability to farmers as well as generate raw materials and revenue for the country.
About a month ago, I went on a field trip to check out an irrigation dam with my friend’s class and it was amazing the kind of production the damn facilitated. It allowed the farmers there farm and produce in large quantities through out the year.
Before Ghana’s current president came into power, he promised us (citizens) he would be building 1 damn and 1 factory for every district. I knew this was cap as hell, but some people bought into it. Even though I didn’t have faith it’ll happen, I secretly wished it did. Because when I visited that irrigation dam a month ago, I imagined what Ghana would’ve looked like if every district was producing equivalents of what these guys were producing here. It would’ve been ground-breaking development!
Not forgetting the factories. After primary production in farms, the next thing would be to process the products in factories or industries. Lack of industries and proper machinery to process our raw materials is one of the biggest reasons Ghana exports our resources. Raw materials that are exported at cheaper prices and re-imported as finished products at exorbitant prices. God!
The truth is that even though the government and politicians are supposed to represent us, they’re unstoppable once we vote them into power, and so they do whatever they like with the country’s money. But if only they’d listen, I’d allocate less money to free education by creating requirements to enjoy the free education which will reduce beneficiaries, and instead focus more of the money on more agricultural and industrial projects.
If you made it till the end, thanks for reading. I’m sure this must’ve been a terribly long and boring read. Haha
all images in this post are mine
