Covid-19 has triggered more thought about physically healthy living. I find, as have many others, that despite going out less than I did before the pandemic, I am exercising more, and feeling healthier for it.

But at least in Ghana, I have seen relatively little discussion of mental health. This is a big omission, particularly given the severe stress that both the pandemic, and measures taken to show its spread, are putting on many Ghanaians. That stress comes in many ways including loss of employment or income, reduced physical interaction with friends and family, and the uncertain future that faces many of us.  Of course, a degree of stress can be positive, keeping us alert and performing at peak levels. But high stress raises “flight or fight” hormone levels in the body, which evolved to help humans survive immediate and critical, but generally short-term challenges, such as being attacked by a dangerous animal.  When on-going stress keeps these levels high for long periods, it is bad for both body and mind. There is therefore a likelihood of deteriorating mental health across the population, particularly as the effects of the pandemic extend, as now looks likely, for several years.

Mental health and stigma

Turning to the example of the UK, over the last few years personal mental health has become more openly discussed. Indeed Ed Miliband, the Labour party contender to become Prime Minister of a couple of elections ago, boldly stated that he’d had mental health challenges (it would be nice to be able to say he went on to win the election…. but no). His openness was seen as highly unusual and a significant step in lifting the stigma that surrounds mental health issues. Perhaps a few Ghanaian leaders could follow suit?

And at a more personal level, a recent snap survey in my church in the UK found 1 in 4 of the congregation said they had experienced mental health problems, a figure in line with larger scientific studies in the UK. The surprising thing about the result from my church was that so many were willing to admit to such challenges in this quite personal context, rather than in an anonymous survey. These are welcome signs of positive change and reducing stigmatisation.

My anecdotal experience is that individual mental health in Ghana typically seems better than in the UK. Perhaps this results from stronger acquaintance and acknowledgement networks in Ghana: there’s almost always someone to talk to or greet here, unlike the UK. Psychological studies have found such networks to be perhaps the most important factor in people’s happiness and health (interestingly, both mental and physical). Religious belief is also a positive indicator for happiness, so Ghana’s particularly strongly religious culture may also be a factor.

Building better work cultures in Ghana

Yet a Ghanaian friend who does a lot of training and development work with Ghanaian companies commented that Ghanaians are reluctant to reveal their deeper feelings, particularly if these are of stress or grief.  In formal situations yes – I have seen widows berated for not wailing and beating themselves vigorously enough at their husband’s funerals – but in one-to-one personal encounters much less so.

My friend believes that this lack of emotional openness leads to psychological problems, and is a key cause of the massive emotional disconnection often seen between Ghanaian employees and their companies, leading for example to employees often feeling no compunction in stealing from or cheating an employer, even if it destroys the business that employs them

My own observations support my friend’s insight, and I am convinced she’s identified an important problem that affects many Ghanaians.

In a previous column, I talked about economic instruments that could help address the employer: employee disconnect in Ghana, in particular regular profit sharing through team-wide bonus schemes. But good employer: employee relationships are not just, or even primarily, about money; they are largely about positive emotional connection.

Employers need to engage and show interest in the whole employee including their life beyond work, if they hope employees will develop affection and loyalty for the business. And employees, particularly in Ghana where the vast majority of businesses are owner-run, need to recognise the humanity and emotional needs of their employers too. The typically hierarchical relationships of Ghana, with subservience expected by older or more “important” people in every context, including work, is a significant barrier to developing openness and mutual respect, but must be tackled.

The numerous employers I meet who have been stolen from by their employees are not just upset by the loss of money, but often feel personally betrayed. They say they have tried to be generous to employees, yet received bad treatment in return. They often become less trusting and more micro-managing and controlling of employees in response, accelerating a negative spiral of distrust and disengagement.

How do we break this vicious circle?

We need to create a business culture where employees feel safe to reveal their whole selves at work. Employers need to be willing to change themselves as part of creating a positive culture, if they hope to lead change in their business. Employers also need to ensure that all employees contribute to developing a positive culture in the business, as a non-negotiable and primary job requirement.

The post Thinking Healthy appeared first on Henry Abraham's articles and posts.

In Ghana at the moment, the daily number of people detected to have covid-19 is doubling every 3 to 6 weeks. Our health system is already creaking under the strain, so it’s obvious that this growth, if it continues unchecked, will soon overwhelm it.  We must implement the well known basic preventative measures (hand washing, physical distancing and so on) that slow the spread of the virus, and exhort others to do so too.

On a happier note, the pandemic has given a huge boost to another potentially exponentially growing process, with more positive effects. This is digital (or virtual) transactions or processes, ranging from the use of mobile money, to video call work meetings: “virtualisation”.

But looking ahead, in Ghana and other similar countries, what is needed to make the most of the opportunity for virtualisation?

One vital factor is enabling investment. On a personal note, I have been looking for finance to scale up my business, so have spent some time with a few investors over the last year.  “Viral digital” is what makes some of them salivate. They hope to find a digital product to invest in, with limited costs for scaling up for more users once the product is developed, which can have fast growing user numbers, and an exponentially expanding revenue base.

But this investor enthusiasm is potentially misleading. Such investors are essentially looking to reap the low hanging fruit borne by trees planted and cared for by others over many years.  No investment in tree planting, no low hanging fruit. In this analogy, the tree planting corresponds to  massive earlier investments to support internet based virtualisation. Some of that is by individuals, for example in buying smartphones, but much of it is by private companies, for example in building fibre broadband and fast mobile data networks to carry information.

This highlights the short-sightedness of government’s recent special taxes on telecom operators and present policy to restrict MTNs market. MTN are by far the largest investor in strengthening Ghana’s internet infrastructure over recent years. It will not encourage MTN to continue this vitally needed investment to have the prospect of the resulting profits being essentially seized by Government or given to other telecom operators. Such actions by government will have the long term effect of increasing the prices of telecoms for consumers relative to other goods, or making telecoms less profitable for investment.

These understandable but short-sighted policies discourage investment in the telecoms sector, which is the backbone of digitalisation, and push it towards non-value-adding buying and selling activities which already take too large a proportion of Ghana’s investment. Government should instead be helpful by giving more tax breaks on the right sort of investment,  since our nation’s ability to make the shift to virtualisation with its huge long term cost-efficiencies will be a decisive factor in the long term future of our economy

Alongside the need to encourage hard infrastructure investment for the internet is the need for “soft infrastructure”. I refer to training and familiarisation with how to use digital processes , including gaining the confidence to entrust one’s hard earned cash to them.  This can happen in schools and colleges, building on the huge shift towards online delivery that the pandemic has forced on us, provided we make the investments needed now  in “training the trainers”, in this case teachers and lecturers who are likely not to be “digital natives”, to encourage and drive continuing virtualisation, and in the hardware needed by schools and colleges. This vital skills-building also needs to happen in businesses, at least those with ambition to grow; and within families who understand that only digitally aware children will be fully equipped to thrive in coming decades.

There are also investments needed in complementary or enabling systems such as mapping information, for example allowing online orders to be delivered cost-effectively. Here the government should be commended for the Ghana Post Office digitalisation project, which has provided an additional means for generating digital addresses throughout the country. However, there has been a lack of energy and attention to following through to ensure the benefits are delivered as quickly as possible. This reflects our general tendency to focus on spending project funds and the associated infrastructure (in this case the app that generates post office location codes) rather than defining and managing the realisation of the benefits which should have been the reason the money was spent.

These various categories of investment, both public and private, are mutually supportive. Without the right skills and confidence of the population in using digital systems, hard infrastructure investment will not deliver its full benefits, and conversely there is limited value in teaching people to make use of internet-based processes if the hardware is not there to make these run well.

Last but definitely not least, is investment in content. After all, virtualisation is just a delivery mechanism: the question is what is it delivering? We have seen that the internet is often used spreading misinformation, and can encourage us all to waste vast amounts of time. And we have also seen, particularly in these pandemic times, that it can be a tool for connection across distance, for reducing negative environmental impacts of physical travel and deliveries, for widening horizons and increasing global connection, and for a huge range of learning. Increasing the positive outcomes requires building skills and values that are not directly to do with the internet at all: respect and care for others, creativity, a commitment to continuous learning and self-improvement. Achieving these is what will determine the collective value we get not just  from virtualistion, but from the future in general.  And the challenge to build these skills and values is not just for our educational institutions, but is one for all of us.

The post The Road to Virtualisation (in Business & Financial Times, 10 July 2020) appeared first on Henry Abraham's articles and posts.

You must be sheltered indeed if you have not heard claims that covid-19 is either a result of 5G mobile masts weakening immune systems (the most popular recent conspiracy theory on the web up till February according to Zignal Labs); or is man-made and part of a plan to force digital tracking on human kind that Bill Gates (co-founder of Microsoft and now a philanthropist with an interest in vaccines) is accused of seeking to use to force compulsory vaccination on the world (Zignal says this  is now the most popular conspiracy theory on the web) . 

There have always been conspiracy theories, but why do they seem to have accelerated their spread exponentially alongside the pandemic? 

The rapid spread of such theories suggests that they meet underlying psychological needs: we all tend to hear what we want to hear.  Buying into a conspiracy theory can be comforting particularly in tough times. It makes me feel my special knowledge sets me apart from the common and ignorant masses. That sense of being a member of a knowledge elite is particularly attractive when the current pandemic leaves so many of us feeling far from special, a target that the virus may pick out  at random: a risk we do not really understand and cannot fully control.  In contrast, once we have decided there is a man-made cause for the current problems, we can start to think of ways of bringing them under control by dealing with the cause. 

To serve this purpose, a conspiracy theory must be only be believed by a minority, the conspiricists, who contrast themselves to what we may call the mainstreamers. If a large majority of the community comes to believe a conspiracy theory, it becomes the mainstream, and loses the power to comfort its followers with a sense of being part of a knowledge elite.  

You may say that whether or not we accept a conspiracy theory is surely just a question of examining the evidence.  The difficulty is that evidence will often be interpreted quite differently depending on what you already believe or wish to believe. Here are a few examples relevant to current conspiracy theories.

These examples illustrate our ability to interpret evidence in the light of our temperaments and existing views.  It follows that we cannot expect to reach agreement with others, at least on complex issues, simply on the basis of evidence. 

A further obstacle to reaching common conclusions is what implications we draw from evidence, even after it is agreed. For example, it seems probable that there are indeed groups of powerful people who try to control at least some world events to their own advantage. And that there are likely many such groups. But the very fact there could well be many such groups helps show why this, even if true, is not enough to establish a conspiracy theory, such as that one of these groups actually run the world. Running the world is a complicated, God-sized task. The fact some group or other desires to do so is far from being proof they actually are and so deserve our attention.  

Whilst there seems to be a spike in conspiracy theories during the pandemic, such theories have always been significant in human thinking.  One perspective is that even negative interpresations that bring meaning can be more comforting than the idea that bad events are simply the result of chance – that we are not even worth targetting! 

After all, a common view in Ghana (and in many other countries now or in the past) is that every bad event can be traced back to the local witch (and whoever paid her to intervene). This is a type of conspiracy theory, looking for deliberate purpose and action (let’s call this “agency”) behind events. This view not only helps us feel we matter, but suggests that  with suitable counter interventions, we may be able to reverse or at least stop the bad stuff.   

And at least for the non-believer, the view of many religions that the events of history may look random but are actually the result of a divine plan, may also sound like a big conspiracy theory, underpinned by an emotional need to find agency behind what we see.  

Whilst I am temperamentally disinclined to believe conspiracy theories (perhaps due to a relatively happy childhood), I have come to see the value of a key strand within conspiricists’ framework for interpreting events. This is that much in the world is potentially within our power to change and not simply the result of impersonal forces that are impossible to influence. 

On the other hand, I am a Christian, and do indeed believe there is positive agency behind what happens. Conspiricists, if they are right, may be able working with others “believers” in their particular conspiracy theory, to change or stop some particular bad things from happening or continuing. Religious believers, working together, aim to join in with ultimate agency (as we might call God) to change everything. 

A key to the exceptional interest we have seen in conspiracy theories during the pandemic is the sense that the pandemic, and/or the effects of efforts to contain it, could have major consequences for me, or those close to me.  

Issues that are clearly bigger than the pandemic in terms of the numbers of lives they impact, including absolute poverty (affecting 730 million compared to less than 7 million confirmed cases and less than 0.5 million deaths from covid-19 worldwide so far – of course, still a distressingly large number) or climate change (with the potential to push hundreds of millions into  absolute poverty or death over the next few decades as well as make the world poorer overall) may appear to have less impact on us as individuals at least  if we are relatively well off. If we  believe these issues are unlikely to affect me personally, its makes us less willing to sacrifice to overcome them. Much the power of covid-19 to get us to change our behaviour lies in the fact we are all much less sure we and those close to us can escape its effects. 

But it should be obvious that a hugely unequal world, or indeed the widespread poverty and injustice here in Ghana, is not only immoral, but will bring great risks to us all, and also to our children and their children.  Covid-19 has shown us the scale of societal change we can achieve in a few short months when there is a will, so let’s grasp these bigger and ultimately more important challenges, with a similar level of commitment. 

The post The Other Pandemic (in B&FT 13 June 2020) appeared first on Henry Abraham's articles and posts.

That is good news, as there will be many more challenges to meet, post pandemic. The economic effects of pandemic disruption will be dramatic even if, as we all hope, the health effects are not too large in Ghana. And of course, the future will bring other unexpected challenges, as well as foreseen “biggies” such as climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Hence Ghana needs people of entrepreneurial mindset, people who see opportunities where others only see challenges. They may be business owners, but they may also be within government, or working in existing corporates.  I have met plenty of such Ghanaians, from civil servants to bankers, from small shop owners to CEOs of major companies. They are all committed to building organisations and systems that respond to people’s needs by delivering what they value affordably, who are determined and energetic, and who are able to inspire and draw in partners to help deliver their visions.

We particularly need more such people in Ghanaian agriculture. Firstly, agriculture has been seen as a traditional industry that has not attracted many well educated entrepreneurs (surveys show the more educated you are, the less interested in agriculture:  only 2% of university graduates expressed interest in working in agriculture when surveyed a few years ago starkly contrasting with the 40% of our workforce in agriculture).  Secondly, the challenges in agriculture post pandemic will be magnified by the pressure both here and elsewhere to increase food security, which will mean long term impacts for global food supply chains, as countries keep hold of more of the food they grow. Thirdly, agriculture is a sector where we must not fail, given that need for our own food security.

These points focus on agriculture as a business. Another dimension is growing food for personal consumption. That too is likely to grow significantly, as individuals seek to protect their own food security, and facilitating that will also bring significant benefit.

One certainty post pandemic is that Ghanaians will continue to need similar amounts of food as we did pre pandemic, as will other countries. Indeed, if times are harder overall post pandemic as we expect, that will encourage a switch back from expensive and less available imported foods to local foods.  Hence the medium-term demand prospects for Ghanaian agricultural products are better than for many other industries.

But given the likely hard times post pandemic, there may be reduced buying power from the Ghanaian public. So cash available to buy food from farmers may shrink both from export buyers, and in-country buyers. How do we increase local production as will be needed given reducing imports, when the total money available to buy Ghanaian produce may be decreasing?

The answer is to make the radical improvements in cost-efficiency in Ghanaian agriculture that are well within our grasp, so both farmers and consumers do better.

Switching from costly imported agricultural inputs to cost-effective locally manufactured inputs will be one useful step. But most important is to use this economic shock as an opportunity to step up  how we address the poor integration between farmers and agricultural markets. This lack of integration means much food rots at farms, or farmers simply plant much less than they could, since selling more food would be difficult and unprofitable.

There has been significant progress in Ghana’s agriculture over the last decade that we can build on. There is much more use of fertiliser (albeit mainly imported synthetic fertiliser which may not give long term sustainability) and improved seeds than previously, though we are still well below optimal levels. Agricultural extension work has expanded, though we are still well below recommended numbers of extension officers.

But progress has been limited in addressing the weak links between farmers and markets. It is still too hard to get produce to a buyer that will pay a fair price (from the farmer’s point of view), and to find well organised and reliable farmers who can supply consistently and at an efficient scale (from the buyer’s point of view).

The recently announced Government plan to build new agricultural warehouses across the country this year, supported by purchasing food from them to the national food buffer stock, is to be welcomed as a significant step forward.

Yet similar past initiatives have had limited benefits for reasons such as failures in planning and delivery, and also because they have similarly focussed on solving only one of the problems within the ecosystem that links farmers, distributors/aggregators, and buyers together in the agricultural value chain. If one bottle-neck in this chain is released but other bottlenecks are not fixed, overall flow through the system will not improve.

What are these additional bottlenecks? As well as the lack of local aggregation facilities which the new government initiative should help, there are knowledge and skills shortfalls which could prevent effective use of the new infrastructure. For example, if local farmers do not have the skills to plan their farming business longer term, they may not work well with the warehouses which will need to plan and have contracts in place so they can pay back loans and secure their businesses.

There are also other physical infrastructure shortfalls.  In many areas, we need to improve local roads that give access to farms. Doing this within a rolling rural roads upgrade programme will help keep costs down.

Financing is another key bottleneck, with many farmers struggling to fund upfront purchases of inputs they need to improve productivity, market their produce and so on.

Whilst most banks in Ghana claim to support small businesses including farming, the feedback from farmers is that they face huge difficulty in getting the finance they need. Part of the problem is that many farmers have poor financial records and small business sizes, making loan due diligence costs exorbitantly high for both bank and the farmer to whom such costs will eventually be passed. Hence improved skills in record keeping and planning are critical for the farmer, and efficient local intermediaries who have the knowledge to judge and minimise loan risks are also vital. Here there are interesting initiatives taking advantage of farmers mobile money records to help address this.

So the big picture is that the interconnected nature of these challenges requires integrated solutions. The new produce warehouses across the country, if well delivered, could be very useful. But they must be complemented by strengthening other measures. If farmers do not have the skills and finances to increase production to access opportunities provided by new warehouse facility, decent local roads to transport their produce to the facility, and financing to enable increased productivity, results will disappoint. Similarly, clarity on government produce uptake contracts will help investors in the warehouses raise finance more cheaply.

So why not link up these pieces of the jigsaw more closely and transparently, to ensure no piece goes missing just when it is needed?

• Business should own the warehouse facility, and also offer to finance inputs for local supplier farmers at fair and transparent rates to increase their productivity. It may make sense to have common ownership of several warehouses in the same region, to give economies of scale.
• Banks should provide finance for the warehouses backed by clear contracts for Government offtake of produce and where possible private offtake contracts too.
• Government should ensure delivery of timely improvements of the local road networks around the warehouses, with contractual penalties if it fails.
• Government should encourage extension work and “information brokers” to expand and improve the quality of their information, improving farmers knowledge of opportunities to improve production, and of fair prices for their produce.
• Warehouses should be required to publish their offer prices for produce so these are transparent to farmers and information brokers, to reduce the risk that the market power of a local warehouse may lead to reduced prices for farmers and reduced overall output.

The alignment of interests proposed above could be helped by simple standard contracts between the farmers, the warehouse businesses, government and the banks: for example, that specify an offer of supply of inputs to the farmer by the warehouse business and sale of produce by the farmer at prices clearly linked to retail market rates to the warehouse; and between the warehouse business and government for purchase of produce by government and management of delivery of local road infrastructure improvement by government.

Achieving this will require not just rapid mobilisation of finance, but project management capabilities which likely far exceed government’s capacity. Project management will have to be urgently nurtured and bought in from the private sector, and increasing local project management capability will itself be a valuable outcome of this process.

None of this is beyond our grasp. And the responses to the pandemic proves we can mobilise quickly when we see the challenge clearly. Here, the prize is food security and big economic benefits for Ghana. That’s a substantial enough prize to go all out to win!

The post Growing Ghana’s agriculture appeared first on Henry Abraham's articles and posts.

How has Ghana done so far, and what are the issues and challenges now?

– Grasping the severity of the challenge is difficult. Covid-19 has been doubling cases in affected countries worldwide every 3 days (exponential spread) unless very actively combatted. Hence any omissions in our battle against it (“big men” allowed to avoid testing or quarantine, foreign arrivals sneaking through unregulated land borders, unreported cases that go on to spread the virus, not taking lockdown seriously) will mean we may be overrun very quickly. Given Covid-19’s rapid potential spread pattern, undealt with, just one case could lead to more than a million cases in just two months! Relentless commitment to total warfare against the virus is vital.

– Pro-active leadership is essential in these uncharted waters. Given the novel challenges raised by Covid-19, Ghana’s government has made commendable progress. However, there is much needed that government has not got the capacity to do. Other institutions must show leadership too, particularly our sleeping giants, the church and mosque networks. These have very relevant assets and the necessary strong local connections and knowledge. They should go beyond praying, and act together and at scale to support the millions of poor Ghanaians for whom lockdown means zero income. There are great examples of churches and mosques acting to help, which I commend, but far more is needed, including more working together to ensure all needs are covered. Regarding other institutions, I have been encouraged to see our professional built environment institutions recently take the initiative to provide unified public advice and expertise for tackling the crisis. But we need all to mobilise, speak out, and share their knowledge and resources, if Ghana is to succeed in this war against Covid-19. Physical distancing must be accompanied by total social solidarity.

– We must celebrate and support our Heroes: their work will decisively affect the outcome. Our medical staff are working long hours and taking personal risks for the good of their patients and society: there can be no physical distancing for them. They deserve appropriate protective equipment and other support right now. And our Covid-19 testing and contact tracking services are performing a complex and difficult job well. They are essential to avoiding a catastrophically fast spread of the virus. Again, no resource should be spared to support them.
And what broader lessons we can draw from all this? I will focus on those for two crucial trade-offs that have a huge impact on our long-term success as a society.

Now or Later?

The first is time preference – for example our willingness to trace losses now for future gains. This is of course the essence of lockdown. Time preference is an economist’s phrase to describe the well-known view that a bird in hand is worth two (or more) in the bush. Gains and losses now tend to influence us far more than future gains and losses This issue is at the heart of our difficulties in making tough choices on long term issues like climate change. However, the short time horizon for likely losses from corona virus, and the ability in a social media age to see those negative impacts happening elsewhere, so making them more tangible, has meant many countries, including Ghana, have taken actions such as lockdown that would have seemed inconceivable just a few months ago.

Another description of time preference that is unhealthily skewed towards the present is short-termism. Whatever one calls it, this problem is severe in Ghana.

One reason is the massive long-term depreciation of the cedi (over 30,000 fold against the pound since Ghana’s independence, when two old cedis were worth a pound, whereas it is now 70,000 old cedis to the pound – the rebasing to Ghana cedis did not change the real value of the currency). Why invest for the long term inside Ghana, when any cedis you generate will be able to buy so much less on global markets in a few years’ time? Rather, consume now or invest abroad, and that’s what we have been doing.

Another is Ghana’s “winner takes all” political system where affiliates and funders of each of the two main political parties know that they will have access to easy and quick money whilst their party is in power, but face hard times when it is out of power. Again, this incentivises getting as much as you can as quickly as you can, rather than working to build long-term value in Ghana.

However, despite flaws in the responses made to it, Covid-19 has shown that when the potential losses are clear enough and close enough, people everywhere are willing to accept and undertake drastic action to avoid them. That willingness to act and change is going to be needed not just to get the world through this epidemic, but for future challenges too. The massive shift in what we consider to be possible in terms of collective behavioural change to ensure a better future could therefore be a very positive outcome.

Neighbours and others

The other trade-off I want to discuss is the boundary line we all draw between our “neighbours”, the group of people we are committed to, who we will share resources with and help look after in time of need, and “others”. Jesus taught that we should see all humanity as inside that boundary, in his story of the Good Samaritan, where a traditionally looked-down-upon enemy helps “one of us” in need, without any hope of recompense. But most of us draw the boundary much closer in – my family, perhaps my clan, maybe also members of my church or mosque but definitely not even all my fellow Ghanaians, let alone the world.

The lockdown has acutely highlighted the plight of millions of Ghanaians living off tiny daily wages they need each day to buy food, whilst the elite sail past in $150,000 Land Cruisers. Of course, this is not a new issue. It shows our elite draws its boundaries for its neighbours close. That once may have seemed to be a smart strategy. Why share resources widely, when you can keep more for yourself and those closest to you?

Well, Covid-19 has shown that in an increasingly interconnected world, that strategy is flawed. Ultimately, we will swim together or sink together, so ensuring everyone has the opportunity for a decent and fulfilled life is not just the right thing to do, but also, in the long run, the right thing to do for oneself and one’s nearest and dearest (and most particularly the children and grand-children of today).

I therefore believe that alongside its many tragic consequences, the Covid-19 pandemic may do considerable good, if it helps us think longer term, and broadens our definition of who our neighbour is. If so, ironically it may also ultimately contribute to our collective survival and well-being.

The post What Covid-19 means for today, tomorrow and beyond (published Business & Financial Times, 3 April 2020) appeared first on Henry Abraham's articles and posts.

A fortnight ago, I attended a morning of lectures on “Territoriality and Hospitality”, marking the launch of the Sanneh Institute. The new institute, based at the University of Ghana Legon, addresses Research, Religion, and Society. It is named in honour of the late Professor Lamin Sanneh, who served for many years as Professor at the Yale School of Divinity, and was a leading scholar on Muslim-Christian relations.

The conference organisers explain that the theme of Territoriality reflects the view that tensions between Christians and Muslims (and indeed other groups) often have mainly to do with who is in control of a particular place. Hospitality, on the other hand, is seen as a key element of the solution to such tensions, in particular when practiced across religious boundaries. Africa has often demonstrated harmonious coexistence of Christians and Muslims, even within the same family, and this reflects African traditions of hospitality. These themes of Territoriality and Hospitality are ones explored by Professor Sanneh through his numerous academic publications. He argued that African traditions of hospitality played a large part in both Christianity and Islam being welcomed into Africa; but that as Christians and Muslims have ended up often vying for territory with each other and with African traditional religion, accommodation of other religionists is now often trumped by claims that I am the true citizen, and the “other” is somehow a foreigner or at least without ownership (and indeed, often other) rights.

The main speakers were Professor Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, from the UK, and Professor Farid Esack, a leading Muslim scholar, from South Africa. We were told that both Christianity and Islam, at least as interpreted by the speakers, preach universal hospitality and compassion, where we see the whole of humanity as worthy of being welcomed because each person is a creation of the one God, the creator who called us all into being. The two religions should therefore also be against a territoriality that excludes, because God does not ask us to capture land from others, since all people and land already belong to God.

What can we learn from tensions between settlers and herders?

An interesting example is given of the tensions between herders and settlers across West Africa, and the question posed of whether drawing on our traditions of hospitality could help us manage these tensions better.

My own reflection on this example highlights two additional issues: first, the perception of the likelihood of reciprocity, the hope that giving hospitality may have indirect benefits for me and my family later; and second that of group identity.

Indeed, on reciprocity, one can view both religions as aiming to persuade their adherents that kindness to others will result in later benefits to oneself, such as gaining approbation and reward (or avoidance of punishment) from God, in this life or the next. The benefits of this teaching for peaceful human coexistence depend whether the approbation and reward we hope to receive applies when the beneficiaries of our kindness are outside our own religion. Both Christianity and Islam have shown that when they are interpreted as only requiring hospitality and kindness to co-religionists, they can contribute to conflict rather than peace-making.

On group identity, in this as many other conflicts, how we see ourselves and our primary group, will shape how we relate to others (and indeed who we see as “other”). For example, an offer of farming land to herders so they can give up herding, as a way to try to stop the conflict with settlers, may not be well received if it is seen as undermining the herders’ identity, however generous the offer in economic terms. In other words, conflict with “others” is often not just about economics and resource conflicts in Africa or elsewhere, but also about protecting one’s group identity. The UK vote for Brexit and US voter support for President Trump’s exclusion of economic migrants, against the advice of most economists, illustrate this.

On likely reciprocity, the implicit calculation for settlers and herders is likely to be that there would be little future advantage to be gained for oneself and those closest to one from generosity to the “other” in this case. Rather, hospitality to them today may seem to increase the chance of poverty for oneself tomorrow, as the other’s cattle eat one’s crops, or conversely the settlers chase away one’s cattle from the plants they need for sustenance. Indeed, for such reasons, hospitality to the “other” may be seen as treachery by one’s own side, and punished as such.

However, bringing in the issue of identity also reveals a potential positive contribution of territoriality to hospitality: by having somewhere one can call home, one is potentially enabled to offer hospitality there.

Going beyond hospitality

Returning to the potential conflicts arising from territoriality, the benefit of hospitality is less in providing a direct solution in itself, but rather in widening the size of group we consider to be “one of us” or at least close to us, rather than an “other” to be ignored or exploited. It is good will to the “other”, which can indeed be encouraged by the practice of mutual hospitality, that provides the necessary but not sufficient basis for finding ways to peacefully coexist, and hopefully beyond that to learn how to see ourselves as enriched by diversity rather than diminished by it.

This point came out clearly in some of the illuminating examples given by Professor Esack. He spoke of how people who had lived peacefully as neighbours for decades and knew each other well – often to the extent of intermarriage – have, notoriously in Rwanda and more recently in South Africa’s anti-African violence, shown that shifting perceptions of identity and the interests of the group one particularly identifies with, can rapidly whip up destructive hatreds that overwhelm the connections formed over decades of living closely and hospitably together. These are strong reasons never to take the relative peace we enjoy in Ghana for granted.

Professor Sanneh’s own life, growing up as a highly religious Muslim in Gambia, and later becoming a Christian living in the United States who came to see Ghana as a spiritual home, provides a challenging perspective on how we address identity and loyalties. Professor Esack named the “elephant in the room”, the sense for many Muslims of rejection and betrayal when a co-religionist such as Sanneh “joins the other side”. The Christian speaker responding to Professor Esack’s lecture responded by a moving reflection on her own likely response and emotion, if one of her Christian children told her they had converted to Islam.

Territoriality in economics

Professor Williams commented on the irony that in our ever more globalised world, where a virus emerging in a remote part of China is killing hundreds of people in Italy within weeks, we see a resurgence of narrow group identity and the politics of fear and demonisation of others.

This may be ironic but it is not surprising. Globalisation is seen as a threat to many people’s sense of identity, and their perceived access to resources. It is notable that world economic output, having changed little throughout human history, has increased 100 fold over the last 2 centuries. This enormous growth reflects increasing trade bring larger markets, opportunities for specialisation, and innovation spurred by the widening market in ideas. But siren calls to impoverish ourselves and others through ill thought out protectionism whether in what we buy, or who we allow to own things in our country will continue to be reinforced by distrust of the “other”. This focus on a form of economic territoriality is a distraction from the most significant economic challenges of our time: how to ensure a fairer distribution of resources when 1% of the world owns half the world’s wealth (and who typically are little constrained by national boundaries), and how to eradicate extreme poverty now focussed mainly in Africa, which would only require application of a small fraction of the half of the world’s wealth owned by the richest 1%.

Our biggest global challenges in economics and development therefore turn out to have much in common with the challenges in politics and sociology that were the focus of the Sanneh Institute lectures. They all require embracing concern for wider groups than those closest to us, perhaps starting with neighbour but then widening out to include more “others”. The theologian would say the underlying principle reflects the nature of our creator God, so will naturally apply in every sector of human society.

Why I am hopeful

To conclude, let me explain why I found the Sanneh inaugural lectures a sign of hope. It was so positive to see Christians and Muslims together talking openly about the challenging issues relating to their religious identities, in a group going well beyond academics and clerics specialising in interfaith dialogue. I realised I have not come across much of this either in the UK or Ghana, so I commend the Sanneh Institute for a real achievement even in its inaugural lectures, providing a wonderful example of hospitality at work. I hope that hospitality will prove a good foundation for also developing the other challenging virtues needed to enable us to build a happier, fairer and more peaceful world for all.

A fundamental building block will be the imagination to grasp that in the end, our true individual and group interest lies in working towards a happy and safe world for all, rather than in grabbing as much as we can for ourselves and our identity group. True religion can help, and false religion hinder, so let us be discerning and open to the insights of the “other”.

The post CAN HOSPITALITY SAVE THE WORLD? (Published in Business & Financial Times, Friday 13 March) appeared first on Henry Abraham's articles and posts.

There is very little published information to help me assess these issues for Accra’s skytrain, which is disappointing given we are told it’s a $2.6bn concession – that’s a lot of money to be justified. For example, the Railways Ministry website has no information at all under the scheme name. And as usual what limited information is publicly available focusses on the physical infrastructure and cost. I have found nothing on the critical topic of specific benefits to be delivered and how those will be achieved (or for example what the fare levels on skytrain will be, which are crucial in determining the scheme’s impacts). Such information is needed to allow scheme realism and value for money to be assessed, to enable scheme improvements by external challenge, to build a sense of shared ownership that helps give longevity beyond the initial government sponsor; and to help ensure those making scheme decisions can be held accountable for the achievement of the benefits which are the stated purpose for their expenditure of public resources.

The scanty published figures I have seen do give pause for thought. In April 2019 the Railways Minister is quoted as saying there would be 256 km of skytrain track in a first phase of the project, costing $1.2bn. However, the concession agreement announced in November 2019 is said to cover 194km of track and to cost either £2.3bn or $2.6bn, quoted in different reports in the same month. It appears that over the 7 months before the concession was signed, the budgeted cost per kilometre of track to be delivered increased to almost three times its earlier value. Of course, as projects are worked up in detail, it is common for additional costs to be identified. And as it is a private concession, it is to be hoped most of the costs will initially fall on the private construction firm.

But in the end, there are only two sources of money to pay for public transport projects such as skytrain. The sources are fares, and government support from its tax base. (For the latter there might have been the opportunity to capture some of the increases in land and property values generated by the scheme, as is done in Hong Kong. This has not been discussed as far as I am aware, which is a pity, given high property values make this potentially a useful contributor to overall funding. However, Ghana’s often-dysfunctional land ownership system would need to be improved before such an approach could really be viable.)

It follows that increases in the cost of the scheme should be of great interest to the public as they are the ones who will ultimately bear these costs through higher fares, higher taxes or both. And with low cost tra-tras presumably continuing to compete with skytrain, the extent to which higher fares can raise more money may be limited, as they will push some potential skytrain passengers back to slower but cheaper alternatives. The concession agreement (which is not in the public domain) will specify how the concessionaire will recoup their investment and crucially who bears the risks if ridership and fares collected fall below initially projected levels. It may give assurances to the concessionaire on limits to the competition they will face from buses and tra-tras. Government should be open with us about what they are committing citizens to pay, and the case for doing so.

Most importantly, if skytrain is to be successful in making travel round Accra more efficient, as I very much hope it will, skytrain needs to be part of an effective and integrated public transport network. A moment’s reflection makes it obvious that almost no-one simply wants to travel from one station to another, however high the speed between them. People rather need to get between homes, offices, shops and so on. It is therefore the weakest link in their overall journey that largely determines overall public transport system effectiveness. However good the skytrain service, if I cannot get to its stations it will be of little or no benefit to me. Indeed, it may slow down my overall journey, even if I use skytrain: for example if it results in increased gridlock round the skytrain system’s central hub at Nkrumah Circle. It is therefore how well pedestrian, bus, and taxi networks (together with some car drop off) perform and complement skytrain that will largely determine the latter’s success or failure in terms of transport impact. It is these other travel options what will have to be available, attractive and affordable for accessing the skytrain, and to operate in a way that does not increase congestion, if skytrain is to make a substantial positive difference.

But I have yet to hear any commitments to making the fundamental and rapid changes that will be needed to these other networks: for example, the fare and quality increases for complementary bus services that might be required alongside skytrain. Perhaps this silence is intended as astute politics rather than being an oversight or showing a lack of understanding of how the overall transport system works. It may be politicians hope that once the skytrain is in place, it will become easier to garner public support for making difficult decisions to increase the road space allocated to collective means of transport and take it away from the cars often carrying just one person and so wasting a lot of road space. And to gain support for rigorous enforcement of traffic regulations (whether it be for the tra tra drivers who stop to block traffic flow behind them that might be bringing a rival bus to join them at the stop; for “big men” insulated from traffic realities by their motorbike outriders, who worsen congestion for everyone else; or for you and I when we also clog the system when it suits us).

Whilst it might be smart short-term politics to postpone mentioning difficult decisions, it reduces the chances of building the trust and wide support we need to make the sometimes difficult changes needed to get the whole transport system working better. And if skytrain is really delivered to the ambitious timescales of less than 2 years that government has quoted, there is no time to lose in ensuring complementary improvements are also completed, or at least well underway, by then.

Skytrain could be a fabulous thing for Accra, as the heart of a much-improved public transport network, and helping put Ghana in the forefront of transport developments in Africa.

Or it could be a colossal wasted opportunity that diverts attention and funding from other necessary decisions needed to truly improve our overall public transport system, and becomes an underused “white elephant”, assuming the scheme does indeed happen.

Which will it be? Of course, the correct answer to this question should not be a function of the party you support. Such commonplace lazy, party-before-country thinking is at the root of many of our problems. Rather, it depends on getting to grips with the detail of the scheme, its cost and its delivery to make sure these are right; and to our leadership and relevant stakeholders clarifying and committing to the complementary changes needed for the scheme’s success.

The post We need to make the network work (published Business & Financial Times 21 Feb 2020) appeared first on Henry Abraham's articles and posts.

One huge challenge is the housing shortage, estimated by the housing minister at 2 million and by the Ghana Real Estate Development association at close to 6 million.

Such figures are compiled by trying to compare the number of housing units people desire with what they actually have – evidently not an easy task given the huge differences in the figures quoted by these knowledgeable sources.

Beyond practical measurement challenges in quantifying the housing shortage, there is a conceptual difficulty: we don’t speak of a shortage of motor cars because there are many who would like a motor car but don’t have one, or have one but not the one they would like. Similarly, with housing, it’s not just what housing each of us might desire, but what we have a potential opportunity to acquire that should be counted as economically effective demand. Yet most of us feel that in a healthy society, everyone should have at least a chance to choose to live in reasonable accommodation with dignity, even if they cannot have the car – or indeed the house – they would ideally like.

We need to analyse both demand and supply issues for housing. We need to understand where demand can be expressed in more effective ways (for example through increased availability of mortgages, or shifting demand for housing towards areas where it can be more easily and cheaply supplied); and where supply can effectively be increased (for example by adjusting the utility companies supply charging structures to make construction of low and medium price housing more economically attractive to developers than at present). And of course, demand and supply issues interact and so need to be considered together.

Behind these statistics and economic dynamics is much difficulty, even suffering, endured by millions of Ghanaians due to their living conditions. Many have no stable place of abode, live in severely over-crowded conditions, spend the majority of their day commuting on crowded tra-tras because it takes so long to travel from somewhere they can live to somewhere they can work or study, or suffer from the absence of water or electricity at the property they live in. It is to our collective shame that so little progress has been made over decades to address these serious problems, and we must not just give up on this.

Many of the issues that need to be addressed to help improve the operation of housing demand and supply are well known, albeit they have proved difficult to solve. They include improving our land acquisition and registration system and reducing the friction often amounting to years of wasted time before development can even start; facilitating the feeble mortgage market so that many more Ghanaians can access finance to acquire housing; enabling alternatives for efficient provision of utilities to give choice and greater availability in more areas to developers and buyers; enforcing our planning system more rigorously so building is done in suitable locations, to the right standards, and coordinated with provision of wider infrastructure; avoiding the ridiculous waste of resources arising from stopping housing schemes started by previous governments whenever a new party comes to power, and so on.

I will add two less frequently discussed issues to this list.

First, the need for greater taxation of capital gains on land and building value increases, to reduce the attractions of holding on to undeveloped or under-developed land and simply waiting for prices to rise whilst doing nothing to make the land more useful.

Second, the technical and cultural barriers which mean that our desperate housing shortage is happening alongside a glut of under-occupied houses, often with just an elderly couple or single person inhabiting them.

Addressing these two issues could go a long way towards solving our housing crisis at relatively low financial cost. However, to properly unpack them needs more space that is possible within the bounds of this column, and I hope to return to them in the future.
Coming bank to the wider question of tackling the challenge of housing need, architects can play a key role as facilitators of a common agenda and united pressure for change from relevant built environment professional groups (analogous to the individual architect’s role in coordinating diverse professionals to carry out a building project). Architects could even form a vanguard for movements of civil society and individual citizens addressing wider built environment concerns, by helping pinpoint and publicise the questions that all should be asking, and the actions that would be most effective from a professionally informed perspective in solving agreed challenges.

And now is the time to act! Architects and other built environment professionals must seize the golden opportunity of an election year to promote worthwhile debate that is informed by technical knowledge and practical experience. They can encourage a context that elicits appropriate commitments from the political parties by playing the election game smartly.

For example, there needs to be a deeper diagnosis of the ills of our land tenure and registration system, going beyond simply talking of digitisation (desirable though digitisation is) towards identifying specific changes in our currently broken processes and incentives, and how these can be brought about. Professionals need to agree on key specific actions to deliver change, and create a context that elicits greater accountability from our leaders.

Specifically, architects could orchestrate, with other built environment professionals, a public platform where political parties are challenged to respond to specific politically neutral and technically identified policy recommendations, on the record. This needs to be done early, ahead of manifestos being fixed, so influence can be maximised. This platform should also challenge relevant institutions on what part they should play in driving change. The platform should be webcast and video recorded, as well as having journalists and public present, to assist in holding political parties more accountable against the statements they make in response to the challenges put forward by built environment institutions, once one of parties has been elected to power.

If architects play their part in encouraging more effective civil society engagement with political parties on a major challenge such as the housing shortage, they will at the same time achieve something even more important: helping to build the culture of greater accountability from and engagement with our leaders, that we – and they – so need, for Ghana’s good. But time is short to influence the platform of next government, of whichever party that turns out to be. If architects are to build the necessary alliances with other professions, and achieve support for the sort of engagement sessions with politicians and institutions that I have suggested above, in time to influence key ideas in party manifestos, action is urgent.

Here’s to a future for Ghana in 2020 and beyond where architects play that positive role, alongside many others, in ensuring the country develops in a sustainable and professionally informed way, that benefits all its citizens. It’s a future that is within the built environment professions’ collective grasp, if they have the will to make this happen.

Henry Abraham is a social entrepreneur, Managing Director of HJA Africa, suppliers of a highly cost-effective organic fertiliser, pesticide and fungicide, and formerly Head of Transport and Economic Development for London.

The post The State of the Built Environment – published in The Architects Newsletter, Dec 2019 (https://issuu.com/thearchitectsnewsletter/docs/tan_02decissue pages 12-14) appeared first on Henry Abraham's articles and posts.

This may help account for one consequence of the intertwining of British and Ghanaian history through colonisation, a modern perception of farming as somehow marginal here in Ghana, as is largely the perception in the UK. Whilst there is some factual basis for this in the UK, where less than 2% of workers are in agriculture, it is clearly wrong in Ghana where 34% of the population work in agriculture. Yet the statistics for Ghana show a rapidly falling proportion of workers in agriculture, from 50% just a decade ago, so we are on a similar trajectory.

This ongoing shift of workers out of agriculture, in Ghana and many other developing countries, fits with the general pattern of economic development over the last two centuries. Yet, to be truly economically positive, this shift needs to be accompanied by two things: increasing productivity in agriculture, so overall food production is maintained or increased despite fewer workers; and job-generation elsewhere in the economy, so workers leaving farming go into other productive pursuits, not simply unemployment or underemployment. It is therefore concerning that Ghana’s performance against these criteria is patchy.

I attended the recent National Farmers Day celebrations in Ho. Farmers Day’s aim of raising the profile and attractiveness of farming (and fishing) in Ghana, and to counter negative perceptions that farming is an outmoded career choice, is worthy. The current prizes for winning farmers of trucks and tractors are appropriate symbols of the need to encourage mechanisation and increased productivity in our agriculture. They may also help in shifting perceptions away from farming being just about being stuck doing back breaking toil all day in the sun with a hoe in one’s hand, whilst more fortunate people lounge in air-conditioned offices and cars.

However, there is a broader need, to shift a perception (based in the history of the Industrial Revolution) that farming is a symbol of our lack of development, and that we would rather have Ghanaians working in “more advanced” sectors of industry or services. Yes, there will be fewer people working in agriculture in the future, but we need to understand how in modern times, farming can rather be the key driver of our economic development.

The Ghana government’s efforts include promoting agro-processing with its One District One Factory programme could be a positive policy if well delivered. And government’s Planting for Food and Jobs programme claims more rapid success, including a doubling of Ghana’s maize output per hectare in just two years. If correct, this is a huge achievement by Ghanaian farmers, with government help, that indeed deserves celebration.

However, my Farmers Day trip to Ho left me with some questions.

Firstly, about the Day itself. I find it a little odd for Farmers Day to be yet another of our numerous statutory holidays, when most farmers will continue to work through the day, and it will mainly be office and government workers who get time off. More importantly, when our biggest economic challenge is making our agriculture and other parts of our economy more productive, statutory days off tend to de-emphasise the imperative of increasing productivity.

And I also have some policy questions.

Do we favour maintaining our high proportion of small holder farmers, or rather consolidation to larger farms which may be better able to afford the necessary capital investment for efficient modern farming?

In principle, farmer cooperatives can be a way of giving smallholder farmers access to capital intensive farming aids, but these have proved difficult to implement successfully in Ghana at scale, hampered by our usual difficulties of low trust and in making and enforcing clear agreements. A more promising approach is the development of business based solutions which give access to facilities such as tractors, improved seed, irrigation systems, training and even land on a commercial basis, but farmers will need better access to credit facilities if this market orientated approach is to reach its potential.

And what about the fundamental issue of ensuring more reliable routes to market for farmers, without which much of the benefit of increasing productivity will lost in rotting food piles at the farm?

Big improvements in feeder roads, food storage facilities, and market information and linkages for farmers are urgently needed alongside continuing productivity gains, if we are to make our agriculture the development success story it should be. There is a long way to go on all this.
So Farmers Day, as a government sponsored celebration of the importance of farmers and is a good thing, though I would argue it would be better for it not to be a statutory holiday.
But it is the new breed of farmer I meet more and more often these days in Ghana, who give me the most hope for our agricultural future.

These are generally educated people with business (though not necessarily farming) experience, who understand that farming needs to be approached as a business to be successful in the modern world. They start by identifying markets and buyers rather than simply asking what they can most easily produce. They are keen to work in partnership with other farmers, market makers, researchers and so on. They are fully aware of new opportunities and challenges such as the increasing popularity of previously little-known crops such as moringa, or organic farming methods that can open up export markets and improve our health and soils, and they are willing to experiment with innovative approaches.

For example, when I was honoured to meet last year’s national best farmer, I was struck to learn he had been working as a farmer for a relatively short period, having moved from a career in other businesses, and yet he had been able to achieve great success in farming over this short period.

So Ayeeko! indeed to all our farmers. But let’s also encourage our youth to think not so much of becoming farmers, as of becoming successful agri-business entrepreneurs working in all parts of the agricultural value chain. That will help them maximise their own economic welfare, and also that of Ghana.

The post The day of the farmer: past or future? (in Business & Financial Times 13/12/2019) appeared first on Henry Abraham's articles and posts.

When the referendum was first proposed in the last NPP manifesto, it promised District Chief Executives (DCEs) would become directly elected rather than, as currently, being appointed by the President, a change I support. I commend the Government on moving forward to deliver that reduction in the President’s power of patronage now.

But to simply change from Presidential appointment to direct election for DCEs is a matter for Parliament changing the law, and does not require a referendum. That parliamentary process is underway.

The President has subsequently clarified that the government want DCEs to be directly elected on a party-political platform basis. Elections that are party based for local politicians are currently constitutionally banned, and therefore this does require a referendum to change it.

The proposed change to allow party political platform based local elections would bring Ghana into line with practice in most democracies, so on the face of it does not seem unreasonable.
It is striking that this would be the first nationwide referendum to be held since 1992, quarter of a century ago (though there was a referendum last year on the new Ghanaian Regions that was limited to the affected regions). The rarity of nationwide referenda suggests that whether DCEs should be able to stand for election on party platforms, rather than on a non-partisan basis, is considered a very significant issue. Another possibility is that having mentioned a referendum in the manifesto, possibly without a full analysis of whether it was in fact needed, there may now be pressure to “deliver” on a manifesto commitment. A third is that the proposal is a internal NPP political compromise, seeking to retain some effective powers of patronage through controlling selection for local election from the party centre.

I believe most Ghanaians consider that ensuring competence in overseeing the delivery of services and national development, accountability to citizens, and freedom from corruption are the key challenges for our politics.

So let me ask two questions.

First, does it seem likely that election of DCEs on a party political platform basis would help address these three challenges?

On competence, a serious concern for allowing party political platforms for DCE elections is that it would in practice rule out many of the best qualified local candidates who are technocrats in local government from standing. On the other hand, one could argue that the current situation makes it difficult for competent candidates who are active party members to stand. I judge that on balance, the advantage in this area lies with keeping to the status quo of not allowing party platforms.

On accountability, whilst direct elections should have the potential to make DCEs more responsive to their local citizens, it is not clear how allowing party political platforms for DCEs would help further; indeed, it could be argued to weaken the direct tie between the local politician and their electors, since the politician will be beholden to his or her party for selection. Again, I judge the advantage lies with keeping to the status quo.
However, it is on freedom from corruption that my concerns with introducing party political platforms are greatest. Unfortunately, we have a situations in Ghana where party loyalties often trump loyalty to nation. Making local government an explicitly party based battle field would seriously exacerbate the pressure on parties in power are under great pressure to get in the money by whatever means, to fund their next election campaign. So raising the necessary cash to fight the next election is a strong incentive to be corrupt now. Increased pressure to “look after” local voters with cash gifts and the like will worsen this.

It is relevant to consider Ghanaian student politics, which are an existing local party political platform based electoral process. Friends closer to student politics than I advise me that it is not an encouraging precedent in terms of the criteria I set out above, and that corruption is particularly rife.

My second question is whether putting the election of DCEs on a party-political platform basis is really the best current focus for efforts to improve the performance of our political system.

Earlier this week Occupy Ghana made a commendable push for senior officials within the scope of legal requirements to record their assets on assuming and leaving office (and every four years whilst in office), to actually do so, as this requirement has largely been ignored.
Enforcing the assets reporting requirements, and subjecting these asset reports to independent scrutiny (or better still, publishing them) for all those to whom this requirement applies would have two benefits.

It would reduce the scope for corrupt gain (though there would still be a problem of such gains being accrued by friends and relatives rather than directly, which also needs to be addressed).
And it would tend to deter people whose focus is on maximising their own wealth, and perhaps also on minimising their tax bills, from public office. That would no doubt be a loss to Ghana in some cases, but overall, having leaders who are less interested in their personal wealth seems likely to be positive for the country.

So how about being much more radical about improving Ghana’s political system?

We could make a start by adding teeth to our existing assets declaration requirement, for example by complementing an enforced wealth declaration regime with the automatic seizure of any significant increases in wealth during office that relevant office holders cannot account for as legitimate and show any required taxes have been paid on, every 4 years?
And complement this by enforcing strict election spending limits, to avoid reinforcing rich “godfathers” calling the shots for our politicians from the shadows, because they have paid for their electoral success.

Ensuing elections are relatively cheap, and that election spending is transparent and monitored will help tackle some of the most serious problems of Ghanaian politics, and encourage more competent Ghanaians to put themselves forward for election, as many are currently deterred by the high costs of fighting elections and the consequent pressure to be corrupt.

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