‘Beyond aid,’ my compatriots, is a very simple phrase, with a meaning as simple as it’s stated. It is a visualised motherland condition where the plea ‘government and NGOs must come to our ‘aid’ gets not spoken at gatherings such as the commissioning of a project or commiserating with man-made or man-made-but-disingenuously-attributed-to-God disaster victims. Neither would be spoken at festivals where self-help completed projects are launched.
Meanwhile, despite the owner-speaker meaning positive with it, congress mischief makers want to make it look something else: sinister, unachievable or even not worth pursuing. Often, you can easily tell where such critics are coming from. You can easily identify their political pedigree as talk plenty with no positive action amp?br? people. They politic to scavenge off state resources. Many are talkers whose means for earning a living only they themselves know.
One of them is talking bipartisan approach when she knows all they care about is creating, looting and sharing judgment debt money. Somehow, they so easily grab the headlines with their empty ‘beyond aid’ criticism talk, idly and evilly never can-do or best do-little except spew their unwholesome verbiage.
The wise who know what ‘beyond aid’ means know it is working hard to achieve prosperity. They know you don’ just achieve prosperity but you know how to sustain it. You strategically wean yourself off aid as you work assiduously towards prosperity. You put structures and measures in place that promote development that makes no room for aid. You organise yourself towards a status of a developed community that does not rely on aid from others as a means for sustaining self and improving self.
One of the most effective ways of ensuring you wouldn’t rely on aid in development is the creation of jobs. When work is plenty and people easily find jobs, the economy thrives. Taxes roll in and there is money available for social intervention programmes to take care of the poor, weak and vulnerable. You gain respect among motherlands.
Begging is not a known attribute of respect. Thus, ‘beyond aid’ is regarded with respect. We are a proud motherland with many achievements that have earned us lots of respect. Alex Quaison-Sackey as first African to chair the UN General Assembly, Kofi Annan as UN Secretary-General, A.L. Adu as Commonwealth Secretary, Robert Gardiner and K.N. Amoako as ECA heads, Mohammed Ibn Chambas as ECOWAS chief, the mighty shining Black Stars, attracted lots of respect.
It took Brazil Wold Cup player strike along with flying three million US dollars cash fiasco, a president’s international conference address ‘where’s my speech,’ and other series of motherland embarrassments to seriously dent that respect. One way to regain the respect and hang on to it is the achievement of the ‘beyond aid’ level of development. For those who are criticising in mischief, they would not separate investment and borrowing from the ‘cup-in-hand soliciting for aid’ the vision aims to overcome and discard.
Yes, to develop to reach a point of beyond aid or without aid is a vision. Ghana beyond aid is a vision, an anticipated stage in the development of the motherland where leaders won’t have to go begging to be able to build schools, roads or hospitals. It is a stage where government as leadership engineers the creation of jobs. Once jobs are aplenty, people will find work, work hard, pay taxes as they work and government revenue will rise to fund the schools, roads and health facilities. With all that will come boosted national self-worth. My compatriots will move around the globe with pride and dignity.
‘Beyond aid’ critics, especially within the fold of congress, are so consumed in impossibility thinking that, after nearly twenty years of governing the motherland, they could only envision achieving middle income status in twenty more years. When that vision was shattered by a true political party achieving that status in seven years. Congress became visionless therefrom, and to date remains so.
The congress species of ‘beyond aid’ critics cannot see how their persons can survive without creating judgment debts they pay to themselves, collecting bribes and procurement cheating. They have become such a burden on the motherland with their thieving from the state, our common property, ways like the one person selfishly hiding the meat for self-consumption in the days we ate fufu from one bowl.
Recently, I heard one congressperson say on radio that, in government, they (congresspeople) were unable to find GoG money to continue Kufuor’s affordable housing projects. Sadly, the host didn’t find the wisdom to educate him (the congress ignoramus) that the GoG money they were supposed to use to complete that and other projects such as the ‘gang of four’ roads was what they shared as judgment debt together with the SADA, SUBA, and GYEEDA ak?nf?m chop, chop.
By Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh