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ON “A VISION FOR GHANA AND
AFRICA”.
SPEECH BY NANA AKUFO-ADDO, 2016
NPP PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, AT THE HERITAGE
FOUNDATION
WASHINGTON, DC, USA, TUESDAY
20TH OCTOBER 2015,
I thank the Heritage Foundation for inviting me to
speak at one of Washington’s most celebrated centres
of thought and intellectual endeavour. It is an
honour to be here in such company and to see so many
people eager to discuss the future of my country,
Ghana, and Africa more broadly.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am, as you know, going to
compete in Ghana’s next election in the latter part
of 2016 as the presidential candidate for the New
Patriotic Party. I was privileged to win our party’s
primary with over 94 percent of the 140,000 strong
electoral college, so our race was perhaps less
exciting than your primaries going on at the moment.
Our election is likely to take place one day before
yours, November 7.
This has often been called the African century. Our
growth is second only to that of Asia. We are rich
in natural resources. Though we have security
challenges, we are more at peace than before. We see
the beginnings of meaningful inter-regional trade,
and inter-continental trade.
In West Africa’s largest country, Nigeria, we have
seen this year the first peaceful transition of
power from one elected government to another. The
world, fearing vote-rigging and violence, breathed a
sigh of relief when Goodluck Jonathan conceded to
Muhammadu Buhari. Buhari, like myself, was
contesting not for the first time and not for the
second time either. His victory is, obviously, a
source of inspiration for me.
The whole of Africa is praying for President Buhari
to succeed in the three main things that he set out
to do: successfully countering the security threat
from Boko Haram; instilling public sector discipline
and radically tackling the culture of corruption and
transforming the economy of oil-dependent Nigeria.
My own country is often held up as an example for
the rest of Africa to follow. Our democracy is
young, the first elections of the Fourth Republic
took place in 1992; like here, with two main
political parties, the NPP (my party) and the NDC,
the incumbent. At the height of the Cold War in
1961, when authoritarian rule was beginning to rear
its ugly head in post-colonial Ghana, Joseph Boakye
Danquah, the founder of the Ghanaian liberal
democratic tradition, defined the goal of the United
Party, from which the NPP descends, in the following
terms: “Our duty is to liberate the energies of the
people for the growth of a property-owning democracy
in this land, with a right to life, and freedom and
justice as the principles to which the government
and laws of the land should be dedicated to in order
specifically to enrich the lives, property and
liberty of each and every citizen.”
Since 1992, power has changed hands from one party
to the other twice, each after two terms. Next year
marks the end of the second term of the NDC. What is
different, however, is that, even though 2016 marks
the end of the second term of this NDC government,
the current President took office in July 2012,
after the sad death of President John Atta Mills.
This, it can be said, ups the stake, with a
president desperate for a second term, yet pulled
down by his own government’s unimpressive track
record since 2009. Nigeria showed the way last April
and we hope this will turn out to be a lesson that
Ghanaians can learn from our neighbours; that change
is, sometimes, needed after just one full term.
The stakes are certainly high. The calls for change
in my country continue to increase. And let me
explain some of the issues informing this clarion
call. Ghana’s public debt has shot up 1,000% in less
than 7 years since the NDC took office. This year we
are spending nearly $2.5 billion to service interest
payments on our loans alone. That same figure
represented our entire debt in 2009.
Over the last 3 years, the social and economic lives
of the people have been heavily disrupted by severe,
chronic power cuts. The cost of this is estimated to
be equivalent to 7% of our GDP, according to
calculations made by the reputable Institute of
Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER),
based at the University of Ghana.
Corruption is perceived to be at an all time high.
Investor confidence is low. Unemployment is
worsening as businesses are folding; cost of
borrowing is at 35%; inflation keeps rising, at
17.5% last month; cost of living is high; our cedi
has been one of the world’s worst performing
currencies over the last couple of years.
Depreciation and our inability to pay our bills
forced Ghana, oil-producing Ghana, to apply for an
IMF bailout last year. This has put a 10% cap in
wage increases, way below the rate of inflation,
making people poorer, and a cap on public sector
hiring as well.
Perhaps, one of the perplexing state stories in the
last decade or so is how did it all go so
spectacularly wrong for Ghana. As a Bloomberg story
captured it earlier this year: ‘Ghana's Success
Story Goes Dark’.
Even we in opposition did not think our competitors
could cause this much damage – could bring us to a
point this low. What is frustrating for the Ghanaian
people is that we believe it is all, in essence,
avoidable. We believe we have what it takes to make
Ghana work again. So my task is not to deepen the
gloom, but to give both Ghanaians and the investor
community a reason to hope. That, yes, the story
today is bleak and it’s painful, but change is
coming.
But it is also that option of being able to change
which some of us fear is being threatened. No one
should take democracy for granted. Democracy must be
protected at all times, and right now it is under
threat in Ghana.
The biggest threat facing Ghana’s democracy is our
fraudulent voter register. It contains millions of
extra names. The register is bloated – it is
estimated that upwards of 2 million of the
registered voters are bogus. It is packed with
ineligible underage voters, and foreign and fake
identities. If we’re calling ourselves a democracy,
this is unacceptable. This is a real problem, the
kind that cannot be brushed under the carpet as it
provides the vehicle for manipulation and fraud.
• 2012 we compiled a new register. The EC captured
some 13m. It set about to clean it up and came up
with the figure of 14m after.
• Ghana has a median age of 20.
• Yet, we have over 55% of the population registered
to vote. This is by far the highest in the whole of
Africa and its young population. The numbers simply
do not add up.
• We have presented evidence of tens of thousands of
cross-border registration of non-nationals on the
register to the EC.
• For a country where a margin of 40,000 votes can
determine who wins an election, having a register
bloated by over 2 million names is totally
unacceptable.
• Three out of the five main political parties have
called for a new register. Our two living former
heads of state, both President Jerry John Rawlings
and President John Agyekum Kufuor, several important
civil society organisations, religious leaders such
as Imams, the Christian Council, the Catholic
Bishops Conference and others, have also spoken out
in favour of a changed register.
On September 16, a civil society organisation, Let
My Vote Count, took to the streets in a
demonstration for a new, credible register. Much to
everyone’s shock, the peaceful demonstration turned
bloody when police brutalized the unarmed
demonstrators. This type of violence is a troubling
occurrence in Ghana.
Ghana has worked incredibly hard to preserve her
democratic character, one administration shouldn't
be allowed to undermine it. And at times this
requires putting the good of the country above
partisan interests. In 2012, as you may recall,
Ghana was on the knife’s edge as a result of the
Supreme Court ruling 5 – 4 rejecting the
opposition’s challenge of the presidential election
result. As the leader of the opposition, I decided
that the interest of peace and stability required
that my supporters and I accept the disputed verdict
to prevent any possible turmoil.
The hope is that the global community takes notice
and urges change before the election. Rather than
looking back at the 2016 election, shaking their
heads saying "how did this happen"? We're telling
you exactly how it's going to happen. All the pieces
are in place for a rigged election.
As Africans, we have witnessed election-related
violence tear countries apart. We know what we risk
should these problems not be addressed.
There is a connection between poor democracy and
poor economic performance. Short term-ism and
political expediency in regard to elections tend to
correlate with a lack of vision and incompetence in
the economic field.
In Ghana, we are so much poorer than we need to be.
Despite our status as many people’s favourite
African country, Ghana, like other African
societies, offers limited opportunities for the
masses. One thing that Ghana, and Africa, must do is
to add value to the sale of raw materials and
natural resources.
We need to transform stagnant, jobless economies
built on the export of raw materials and unrefined
goods to value-added economies that provide jobs to
build strong middle-class societies and lift the
mass of the people out of dire poverty. We can do so
by insisting on the most basic elements of social
justice – making quality basic education and
healthcare accessible to all to promote a culture of
incentives and opportunity.
In east Asia, I see three key things that allowed
their economies to develop so spectacularly:
modernising agriculture, a clear industrial policy,
and rationalising the financial sector so that it
supports growth in agriculture, and growth in
manufacturing and industry.
That is the way we can build a resilient economy.
Agriculture, in particular, must be modernised, with
the help of government, to bring about this economic
transformation.
Over the border in Cote d’Ivoire, we are seeing a
tremendous expansion of agricultural productivity.
Today, the export value of products from Côte
d'Ivoire – cashew, cotton, oil palm, cocoa and
coffee – is $12billion a year. The same can happen
in Ghana with our farmers, who generate barely
$2billion annual export revenues, largely from
cocoa. The same diversification that has occurred in
Cote d’Ivoire can also take place in Ghana, with a
corresponding increase in agricultural productivity.
Above all, we must stimulate private sector growth
by giving free reign to the Ghanaian’s sense of
enterprise and ingenuity. This requires a monetary
policy that stabilises the currency and reduces
significantly the cost of borrowing to make Ghanaian
enterprises competitive; and a fiscal policy that
encourages local production and controls the growth
of our national debt.
Africa has benefitted from inward investment from
the west and from major developing economies,
particularly China. But we must be careful to put
these investments to the right purpose, which is to
develop our infrastructure for the long term,
diversify the economy, promote local production and
develop trade within the continent and within its
regions. We must accelerate the process of regional
integration of ECOWAS so we can create a genuine
regional market of 350 million people, which is
estimated to reach 500 million by 2030.
Africans travel to Asia or Europe to buy finished
products for our local markets, but we must acquire
the know-how and technology that will enable us to
produce our own finished products and trade within
the continent.
Our dependence on raw materials has in fact
increased in the past century. It is this dependence
that feeds our dependence on foreign aid. We cannot
be doing the same thing over and over again and
expect a different result.
The challenges are immense. Much damage has been
done. But, I remain staunchly optimistic about our
future. I am proud to be a Ghanaian, the people who
were the first in sub-Saharan Africa to free
themselves from colonial rule, and who remain the
pace-setters in the development of the principles of
democratic accountability, respect for human rights
and the rule of law on the African continent.
And as we move toward another election, I am
reminded – and proud – of how hard we have fought
for our democracy. But I must warn you that we
cannot take progress for granted, we cannot take
fair play and democracy for granted in my country,
indeed in any country.
We welcome – and need – the vigilance, the advice
and the assistance of all lovers of freedom as our
country continues its journey to prosperity and
modernity. And, then, the Ghanaian people will make
their own unique contribution to the growth of
African and world civilization.
Thank you.
Nana Akufo-Addo
October 21, 2015
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