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INSTITUTE
OF GHANAIAN VALUES
By Kofi Akosah-Sarpong, Ghanadot
Dr Kwabena Adjei, chair of the main opposition National
Democratic Congress (NDC), observations that juju-marabou and
other spiritualisms are dictating Ghana’s political machinery
once again raises the implications of Ghanaian values in her
development process. Why is Ghanaian/African values not
informing national policy so as to open up the implications of
the values in national development? The reason is that
colonialism, which one of its missions was to “civilise” the
African, suppressed African values, thinking wrongly that it is
“primitive,” and in the process did not open up African cultural
values for critical scrutiny for national policy development.
Almost 50 years after independence Ghanaian/African elites,
known more for their “booklong,” “laziness,” and their inability
to think within their values first and any other second, have
not been able, creatively, as the other ex-colonies such as
Japan and South Korea have done, to come out with policies,
informed by African values and experiences, that would have
refined the inhibiting values such as juju-marabou in the
development process.
For this inability to float new national policies informed by
Ghanaian/African policies many positive national developmental
strides are undermined by the inhibiting values such as Pull Him
Down (PHD) and other negative cultural practices such as the
interpretation of events by witchcraft. It is not surprising,
therefore, that Dr. Adjei says acknowledges and says in public
that Ghana’s problems are due to juju and other inhibiting
cultural values instead of the World Bank “in the matters of
state as the source of the non-performance of state affairs.”
The relevance of Dr. Adjei observations is that he equally
blames such negative cultural intrusion into state affairs even
when his NDC was in power for almost 20 years.
The issues here is not the ruling National Patriotic Party or
the NDC appropriating such inhibiting values in their thinking
in relation to national development. The issue is that all the
elites, as Ghanaians or Africans, were born into such inhibiting
cultural values, and so are part of their psychology, psychiatry
and sociology in their everyday life and, in that context, their
world view of some of the elements that are to oil their
progress. But there are implications, especially in an
increasingly rational world motored by science and technology.
Excessive intrusion or excessive reliance on such inhibiting
cultural values, as we saw in Liberia or Sierra Leone or Mobutu
Sese Seko’s Zaire, not only weakens reasoning but also jams the
mind from being objective. This may explain one of the reasons
why Ghanaian/African elites are finding difficult to think
critically from within their values first and any other second
in dealing with their societies’ progress. From the Europeans,
who have to battle “Darkness” in the 18th century and
“Neo-Darkness” in the 20th century, to the Japanese, all
societies who have progressed are informed by their core values
first and any other borrowed ones second.
In doing this, they were able to refine the inhibiting values,
such as spiritual mediums directing state affairs, and set the
forces of progress on the match. Ghana/Africa cannot progress by
employing only their colonial legacies and the global culture,
and overlooking their own tried and tested core cultural values.
Ghana/Africa can progress by mixing, or as the comparative
political scientists Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz would
say, hybridity or “cultural metissage” (mixture), their own
indigenous values with their colonial values and as Carleton
University political scientist Dr. Daniel Tetteh Osabu-Kle would
say the “enabling aspects of the global culture.”
But how are Ghanaians/Africans to go about raising their values
to the level of national policy-making so as study it, tout the
good aspects, refine the inhibiting aspects, and mix them with
their colonial legacies and the enabling aspects of the global
culture for progress? One of the solutions is to float an
Institute for Ghanaian Values, a 'think-tank' that will promote
Ghanaian/African values in policy development policies, and
their intervention of Ghana’s development process. Like the
Ottawa-based Institute for Canadian Values, the Institute for
Ghanaian values, with its mission to serve Ghanaians who see
Ghanaian/African values in the greater progress, should be
dedicated to “advancing knowledge of public policy issues” from
Ghanaian/African values and experiences “as well as aw
The Institute for Ghanaian Values would be a centre for news,
research, and debate of the Ghanaian development process,
demonstrating greater consistency between Ghanaian/African
cultural perspectives and actual public policy, and in the
process “seek a better understanding of how such perspectives
can benefit policy and the public."
Kofi Akosah-Sarpong, Canada, September 21, 2006
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