Courage Quashigah and Holistic Observation

By Kofi Akosah-Sarpong

The wisdom of observation is not difficult. One must first observe others before putting in place what we have learned – proverb of Cameroon

Ghana’s Health Minister, Courage Quashigah’s idea that Ghana’s educational system need infusion of applied research and traditional knowledge for rapid development reminds me of Y. K. Amoako, the former chair of the UN Economic Commission for Africa. Amoako painfully observes that Africa is the only area in the world where its development process, which includes its education system, is dominated by foreign development paradigms despite Africa’s immensely rich indigenous development values.

The implications of Amoako’s excruciating observation is that African elites are weak, cannot think, cannot contemplate, do not understand themselves, are confused, are inferior to themselves, their environment and the global development game, and are blind to their hugely rich indigenous values wheeling around them to be tapped for progress. The situation reinforce the late Senegalese President Leopard  Senghor’s believe that Africans are not good at thinking but are good at expressing their emotions. Sadly, to correct this, Senghor used to bring in Europeans when faced with dare developmental challenges. It is as if African elites fear to think; it is as if Africans have not had great remarkable empire builders like Okomfo Anokye, Mansa Musa or Shaka the Zulu who built their respective societies from within African values.

This reveals not only the fact that Ghanaian/African elites cannot think well but cannot observe their cultural values circling around them that need to be appropriated for progress as others have done. Quashigah, who has observed this weaknesses of Ghanaian/African elites, argued to young minds of the new Evangelical Presbyterian University College, that, “Most countries have developed more easily and faster by building upon their own traditional ecological knowledge and intensive observation of nature…The airplane, train and submarine are all inventions from the observation of birds, snakes and dolphins. The art of weaving was learnt through careful observation of the spider-spun webs. The elaborate system of organization and specialization was learnt from the highly organized systems of the honeybee and termites.”

It is sad to hear Quashigah saying this today, for Ghanaians’/Africans’ ancestors have been doing this for their survival. Ghanaians/Africans have not carried out such practices in the global context for their advancement today. It is fifty-one years after Ghana got independence from British colonial rule that Quashigah is making such progressively bold statements, not only in front of the budding minds but rather professors, statesmen, top bureaucrats, and senior citizens. Before this colonialism had suppressed the rich Ghanaian/African values, creating in its wake the long-running inferiority complex that might have jammed Ghanaian/African elites’ observation skills for them to see the richness of their innate values for progress.

But Quashigah, ever challenging the Ghanaian elites, argues that, that was then and this is today, so there should be a new development observation in the climate today’s global prosperity values in the context of “advancement in science and technology” that “had put Ghana in a much stronger position to develop faster once the country began to combine the advancement with indigenous technology and knowledge to solve problems.” As Quashigah said of the Chinese, the central issue isn’t just merely observations but how to observe and tie it to Ghanaian/African indigenous knowledge, research, scholarship, and the global prosperity values all at the same time. Quashigah’s thinking is playing with all these to “improved upon traditional knowledge” to accelerate the development process.

However, all these will not come easily; it will need a new regime of attitude, observation, and thinking. And as Quashigah acknowledges, that means “infusion of a strong sense of patriotism, community service as well as leadership and mentorship as part of the educational system.”

Kofi Akosah-Sarpong, Canada, June 20, 2008