President Xi Jinping
Last week, China organised an unprecedented parade of her troops, state-of-the-art arsenals et al.
President Xi Jinping proudly invited many heads of state to come and witness how far his country has come; ready to take on the most powerful country in the world.
It took hard work, focus and unalloyed commitment for the world’s second most populous nation to achieve the feat she has in technology and international trade.
Unfortunately, Ghana still has her sight locked on trivialities such as unproductive esoteric enterprises.
That certainly is not the way to go and unless we change our mindsets, we shall be stuck in this sorry state of backwardness.
So strong has the economy of China become that not even the bullying tariff threats would make them play second fiddle to the US.
Indeed, the tariff-obsessed President Donald Trump had to review his approach in dealing with China.
Trump was invited to join other heads of state for the Chinese arsenal display but he declined, sending instead an innuendo-laden message. He pointed in the message what in his estimation was a gang up against his country.
That is what a focused people achieve for their country. China exports more to the rest of the world than she imports today. Shouldn’t we be looking at that state in the nearest future? Not with this unenviable mindset by political leadership and the people.
A few weeks ago, the state of our palm oil made worrying headlines. It was all about the country importing from Malaysia a certain quantity of the product to make up for the shortfall for industrial use.
It sounds ironic that a country which imported its first set of palm seedlings from Ghana is today exporting palm oil to us.
Whatever is the reason we are not producing enough palm oil for both food and industrial use? There is no denying the fact that we have the expertise and the appropriate land for the production of palm oil.
We are still far away from registering a remarkable stride in technology not because there is dearth of human resource; the necessary policy direction and focus are what we lack.
There was a government which decided on a new approach to addressing this challenge, hence the introduction of the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) education modules.
Following the exit of that government, we would have expected a continuation of the programme, after all development is a continuum.
We have noticed however a pedantic application of nomenclatures to play down previous strides as though names matter in such serious national endeavours. From STEM education to Basic Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (BSTEM).
We have noticed a slowdown in the momentum which characterised the introduction of the programme regardless of the recent pomp in the re-christening of the existing initiative.
Developments by governments being continuums, when a new set of political leadership is ushered into office, there should be a sincere handing-over notes about such important policies so there would be no breaks.
Until there is a paradigm shift from this unproductive discontinuations to a forward-looking continuums, we would continue to admire the strides being made by China and others.
No wonder sometimes the media space is not filled with issues about how to catch up in technology and ensure an uptick in our food production leveraging on science, but how to interpret and implement prophecies. Are we serious?