Ghana’s potential development opportunities and capacity constraints within ECOWAS and Continental Free Trade Area
What are the development opportunities to be derived from Ghana’s participation in the ECOWAS integration process and the projected African Continental Free Trade Area? Ghana’s participation in the ECOWAS trade liberalization scheme, for example, would eliminate the barriers to the country’s exports to the partner countries, which would ensure the development of trade between Ghana and these countries in a significant manner. Ghana’s Trade Policy launched in December 2004, notes that the integration of the ECOWAS into a full customs union will provide access to a larger market, thereby promoting investment and industrialization. This will also enable Ghanaian products to compete freely in the regional market and promote exports. Increased regional competition will bring lower prices and a greater range of both imports and local products to the benefit of consumers and producers.
Moreover, the enlarged market would encourage expansion of the activities of Ghana’s institutions such as the Ghana Export Promotion Authority, Ghana Tourist Board, Ghana Gateway Programme, Ghana Investment Promotion Centre, as well as private sector organizations such as the Association of Ghana Industries. Besides, Ghana could derive enormous advantages from the ECOWAS agenda with regard to integration of production and physical structures, as well as monetary and financial cooperation to reduce the country’s dependency syndrome.
With regards to the Continental Free Trade Area, some of the benefits which Ghana stands to gain would be derived from a free trade market including first, availability of a variety of goods and services; second, huge market outlet; third, reduction of market fluctuations and fourth,huge job opportunities resulting from the market boom. A free trade agreement would also increase Africa’s competitiveness and boost Ghana’s manufacturing sector. The CFTA is expected to spur economic growth in Ghana, boost industrialization, and improve infrastructural development and business diversification.
Furthermore, Mickson Opoku of the Ministry of Trade and Industries , in a recent study highlights the opportunities which the implementation of CFTA offers Ghanaian private sector, as it helps “create markets for industrial goods and services to be produced under initiatives such as 1 District 1 Factory, and Export Diversification and Development.” He points out that presently “Ghana makes far less than 10% from cocoa exports. With CFTA, Ghana would no longer sell raw cocoa beans in that magnitude but rather begin to add value to the production line to become more competitive.”
In other words, effective implementation of CFTA will enable Ghana to overcome dependence on exportation of primary products and promote social and economic transformation for inclusive growth, industrialization and sustainable development in line with Agenda 2063. CFTA would also be an enabler to attract foreign direct investment into Ghana and the continent as a whole. Thus Ghana has much to gain from the CFTA, as it might help wean Ghana off foreign aid, an initiative that President Nana Akufo – Addo strongly advocates in the Ghana Beyond Aid agenda.
The question which forces itself upon us is: why has Ghana, a vanguard and an advocate of West African regionalism and integration since the 1920s has not appreciably benefited from the ECOWAS integration agenda? What are the critical challenges confronting Ghana’s efforts to realize the ECOWAS agenda? To what extent have Ghanaian technocrats acquired the necessary skills and capacity for effective management of the process of integration at national, regional and continental levels?
A study conducted by the Centre for Regional Integration in Africa has identified a number of interlocking capacity constraints impeding Ghana’s efforts to realize the potential development opportunities open to the country within the framework of ECOWAS. A crucial challenge is related to the country’s lack of institutional capacities of national organisations that are tasked with implementing sustainable development. Related to this is the lack of capacity to mainstream the ECOWAS integration agenda into Ghana’s national development strategies and plans. Whereas decisions taken at the European Union (EU) level, for example, do find their way into national decision-making processes, those taken by African regional groupings like ECOWAS do scarcely feed into national policies and plans . No relevant institutional machinery has been established to enable the business community, the private sector and civil society groups to find appropriate and adequate channels of participation in economic development activities at the national level, as evidenced in the member states of Latin American regional groupings such as the Andean Group. As the Association of Ghana Industries concludes in a recent study, “the feeling among economic operators in Ghana is that integration remains a political project.” This is in stark contrast with the European Union where organised corporate groups emerged to support European integration.
Significantly, too, despite Ghana’s overwhelming commitment to Pan-Africanism and promotion of regionalism and African unity, there is no widely recognized agency capable to coordinate implementation of ECOWAS agenda in Ghana. No effective national apparatus has been established for monitoring and coordinating the country’s involvement in regional and continental integration like ECOWAS and African Union. This constitutes a major setback in ensuring progress on the ECOWAS and continental African Union agenda. The situation is compounded by (a) inadequacy of human capacity, limited skills, lack of financial and technical capacities to oversee the implementation of regional programmes; and (b) the ignorance on the part of public officials, including police, customs, immigration personnel and other security officers at the border posts who display knowledge – gap about current protocols guiding, for example, free movement of goods and people across countries in the sub-region. A similar disturbing situation awaits implementation of the integration programmes of the CFTA.
The lack of critical capacities to manage regional as well as continental integration processes has been heightened by the comparatively limited training programmes to update the skills and enhance the productivity of existing staff, including professionals whose fields are characterized by rapid advancement of knowledge. Ghana lacks a strategic plan or a training policy or programme that is aimed at equipping integration staff with necessary skills or upgrading the skills of the staff. Added to this is the insufficient awareness of ECOWAS and African Union integration agenda and protocols as well as national actions of implementation.
By Prof. S. K. B. Asante