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Africa and the Current Issues, by Adrian Joe

by Adrian Joe

Africa is a continent in the world map. It is the second largest and the second most populous continent in the world. Africa is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea in the North, the Indian Ocean to the South East and the Atlantic Ocean to the West. The continent is blessed with 54 fully recognized sovereign states which include countries like Namibia, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Eritrea, Madagascar, Algeria and Morocco. The word AFRICA originates from the word AFRI-KA, meaning “a sunny place”. According to Wikipedia, it is believed that Africa, particularly the Eastern Africa is the origin of humans. Africa as a continent suffers a great exploitation from the Europeans. The continent was firstly partitioned by the European powers such as Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal e.t.c at the 1884/85 Berlin conference which subsequently paved way for them to take full occupation of the continent. The European powers established different steps in order to capture the Africans, for instance, France introduced policy of assimilation and association in their various colonies while British introduced indirect rule. Faced by this exploitation, Africans although benefit from the policies these Europeans introduces because it gives African citizens the opportunity to be educated but at the receiving end, the Africans are the major losers in the sense that most of their natural resources were been taken abroad to develop the industries of the European powers.

After a long and terrible experience of colonization and the independence of India in 1947, nationalist movements erupted and they embraced the spirit of independence. This action was also spear-headed by Resolution 1514 adopted by the United Nation which could see the end of colonization. Nationalist like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Nelson Mandela of South-Africa and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania exhale and started the crusade of independence. The year 1960s were regarded to be the years of African countries because 17 countries (with Ghana been the first in 1957) got their independence, though political independence in nature, and later that year 16 of them joined the United Nation. Furthermore, since the end of the cold war and the appreciation or practice of capitalism and globalization making up a Unipolar world, African continent has witnessed a great number of turbulent actions ranging from ethnic crisis, terrorism, deadly disease and politically motivated violence against the state. These issues need to be tackled in order to make the continent a peaceful and conducive environment for its citizenry to fully participate in the development of the continent. However, there have been many issues which are not satisfactory or needed to be addressed urgently within the African continent. Africa as of today is regarded as a “backward continent”, not because they can’t think or implement good and reasonable policies that would move the continent forward, but because of problems such as sit tight syndrome, corruption, and lack of technological knowhow put them in this quagmire. Some of the contemporary issues facing the African continent include:

  1. Bad, corrupt and autocratic leadership
  2. Xenophobia in southern Africa
  3. Migration in Northern Africa
  4. Terrorism and Ebola epidemic in West Africa

Let us now examine them one after the other: Continue reading “Africa and the Current Issues, by Adrian Joe”

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Wake up, Nkrumah, by Dr. Tunde Oseni

Dr Kwame Nkrumah. the father of African independence
Dr Kwame Nkrumah. the father of African independence

The Gladiator of no distant past

Who fought for liberation with a distinction pass

Wake up now, and resurrect in our land

Before things degenerate beyond our hand

Nkrumah, the father of independence

Now is the time for your kind of intelligence

Wake up now and resurrect in our land

Before we bite more than we can chew

The shining star and the golden voice

Your type is what we crave as an urgent choice

Wake up now and resurrect in our land

Our continent needs an urgent fix

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Cheetahs vs. Hippos for Africa’s future

TED Talks

Ghanaian economist Prof.  George Ayittey unleashes a torrent of controlled anger toward corrupt leaders in Africa — and calls on the “Cheetah generation” to take back the continent.

Please enjoy. Then contribute to the discussion. The space below is yours.

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Old Leadership, New Leadership

Leadership has become a buzz word for practitioners, bureaucrats and theorists of African development. The term variously means a process of getting work done through people. Leadership may not be science but it is committed responsibility. Africans in civil service, in business schools, in NGOs, in the mass media, in think tanks, in academia, in State Houses, in opposition political parties use leadership as a sort of reality refiner – a way of contrasting past and present, an implement for cataloging out history at a moment of African changes, the flowering of The African Century.
African leadership, being heavily over burdened and scatterbrained, is part of the Old Leadership. For the past 50 years, Africa has been sorting itself up into categories of Old Leadership and New Leadership. We see this in one of Africa’s foremost leaders, Kwame Nkrumah. Prof. A.K.P. Kludze, former Justice of Ghana’s Supreme Court, observes that although President Kwame Nkrumah was a freedom fighter and committed Pan-Africanist, he later succumbed to the Big Man syndrome, turned Ghana into a one-party state and became the life chairman of his ruling Conventions People’s Party and general secretary of the party’s Central Committee. It was considered treason to challenge him. Nobody could stand as a candidate unless his candidature was approved by the General Secretary of the party (read-himself).

The 1960s to the 1990s have become a transforming boundary between one age and another, between a format of things that has crumbled and another that is taking shape. A millennium has come, a celestial divide. Kwame Nkrumah’s era of autocracy of the 20th century is dead; the 21st is a kernel, revealed in continental giant Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan. New Leadership-Old Leadership makes a match of lists: what’s in, what’s out in the African experiences. More imperative, it is a way of considering what works (New Leadership) and what doesn’t work anymore (Old Leadership).

The horrible Central African Republic’s Jean-Bedel Bokassa was the Old Leadership. The New Leadership is what we are seeking for – Liberia’s Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson. One-party system and military juntas are Old Leadership. African communism as seen in Ethiopia’s Menghistu Haile Mariam is Old Leadership. Big one-party systems, military juntas and Jerry Rawlings’ emotionally charged aggressiveness style are dead. Democracy brewed from within African experiences is becoming more and more alive as a development fertilizer. Botswana is one example; Mauritius is another.

With over 45 years in Ghana’s and Africa’s turbulent politics, ex-president John Kofi Kufour is more than qualified to examine Africa’s leadership from very close range. His analysis: “Leadership is key to unravelling the problems of Africa. With the right leadership, good policies would be enacted that will create the right condition for economic growth, respect of the rule of law and the conducive atmosphere for business to thrive,” observed Kufour. Kufour said this in South Africa during the launch of “Why Africa is Poor and What Africans can do about it,” written by Greg Mills, Executive Director of the Brenthurst Foundation of the Oppenheimer and Son Group.

Kufour diagnosed the awful Old Leadership this way: “Africa’s problem was that people assumed leadership positions without being adequately prepared for it and they lacked the vision and drive to pursue policies to the benefit of their people … Studies of individual historic leaders exemplified in the likes of Biblical Moses, among others, would show conclusively that each one of them had come through relevant experiences to be imbued with epochal visions of great and abiding development of their nations … The time when people just jumped into leadership positions should be by-gone. Budding leaders must bide their time and go through the apprenticeship exposures and institutions to better prepare them to assume the rightful role expected of them.”

Old Leaderships: Mobutu Sese Seku, military juntas, one-party and communist systems, Sekou Toure, Mamadou Tandja, the Big Man syndrome, tough talk, imperially threatening attitude (Yaya Jemmeh), arrogance (Idi Amin), centralized bureaucracy and Big government, the leader as a massive juju-marabou dabbler (Samuel Doe), the leader mired in extreme superstitious believes (Marcias Francoise Nguema), the leader under the control of warped spiritualists (Sani Abacha and Bokassa), refurbished ancient paternalism (Siaka Stevens), dictatorship, “God has destined me to be leader” (Jerry Rawlings), heavy cultural inhibitions (all Africa), charisma, tribalistic blood-feud payback, primordial corporate loyalties, Guinea Bissau, and Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (the military politician as the face of the unrepentant African traditional autocracy).

New African Leadership: Humility. God fearing. Deep decentralization so much so that decision-making is pushed down as much as possible to the people affected. Truthfulness. High sense of African history and traditions. Traditional consensus building mixed with modern leadership practices. John Kufour. Evans Atta Mills, Nana Akufo Addo, Ian Khama. Balances. Democratic tenets, human rights, freedoms, social justice, the rule of law. Goodluck Jonathan, Ernest Koroma, Jakaya Kikwete. The African Union, the Economic Community of West African States. Television news network, participatory communication, information, facebook, fax machines, tweeter, myspace and other new media. David Mark (the Nigerian soldier greatly democratized). The new Liberia. Pluralism. The new Sierra Leone. Kwasi Pratt Jr. Botswana.

In the African context, Old Leadership is a mixed bag. New Leadership isn’t necessarily the best. There are sham democracies and leaderships – The Gambia and Yaya Jammeh. The New Leadership is an on-going project that needs a lot of socio-political engineering constructed from within Africa’s traditional values, but better than Old Leadership. New Leadership is about output instead of input. The assessment of the New Leadership is what works. It Africanizes Botswana’s leadership skills, the capability to mix the traditional with the modern so as to refine any inhibitions within the traditional.

Old Leadership and New Leadership are often intermingled. Jerry Rawlings and Jacob Zuma as awkward, stalled in stupidity, complete dumbness, are Old Leadership. Foolhardiness is New Leadership, as seen in Central African Republic’s Francois Bozize and the entire leadership of Guinea Bissau, can be different style – small-minded, dishonorable, blank, and uninformed of Africa’s painful past of agony and sadness. New media, the medium of the New Leadership, has an overwhelming addiction to the mediocre that it constantly wrestles with. The New Leadership is a distraction that sometimes reveals simple-mindedness.

In Emilio Mwai Kibaki’s mind, Old Leadership and New Leadership circle each other suspiciously, as Kenya struggles for better leadership and governance. Kibaki is often New Leadership in regional issues but Old Leadership in domestic affairs. Under his watch, Kenya’s 2008 general elections descended into fatal violence and saw over 1,300 people killed and over 300,000 homeless. The International Criminal Court coming into Kenya and planning to put six top Kenyans on trial saw Kibaki dashing back toward patriarchal conclusions.

Rawlings and Atta Mills? Object lessons on how Old Leadership and New Leadership clash with each other. Dictatorial Rawlings wants members of the opposition National Patriotic Party arbitrarily arrested for suspicion of being corrupt. With enormous pressure from Rawlings, Mills reveals how fragile the New Leadership could be, how it could be menaced by Old Leadership. Rawlings sticking to Old Leadership despite the fact that its time is gone has become a dilemma for Mills. The trouble is there is no New Leadership for Rawlings to migrate to. Maybe never.

Either in the analysis of Kufour’s African leadership impasse or Botswana’s and Mauritius’s ability to mix modern leadership practices with their traditional ones that has paid off remarkably, the Ghanaian Joseph William Addai argues in Reforming Leadership in Africa that transformations in African leadership, as a way of improving the quality of governance, should start from African traditional values and then mixed with global governance practices. This means African leaders should have a high sense of African traditional leadership values in relation to global governance ideals.

In this sense, Africa’s leadership struggles are rationalized from within Africa’s soul. It is a new intellectual construct to make things work. A way of thinking about change. For long, Africans have taken their leadership for granted seeing the likes of Bokassa, Doe, and Amin mount power and destroy their countries. The New Leadership is above all struggling toward a working model for the progress mechanisms of The African Century.

Short of this, there will be huge imbalances in the quality of leadership and governance, and this will impact negatively on Africa’s progress. Kenya’s and Nigeria’s struggles for better governance practices, as progress act, seen in their attempts to reform their constitutions, illustrates Africa’s tussles to grapple with its leadership challenges.

Fifty years after freedom from colonial rule, Africa is largely still Old Leadership. But as the flowering of The African Century reveals, Africa’s brilliance would be how it renew itself, how it improvise itself, technically how it quickly grow New Leadership as a replacer of Old Leadership, as part of its transformative endowment. This means New Leadership should be the overarching idea, the signature of The African Century.

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The Way Libya May Go Next

Obama has spoken, Sarcozy has made up his mind, NATO has taken the lead; all in a bid to get the common enemy they called Maoummar Gaddafi out.  But rebels fighting from Benghazi flank are crude in their approach as they lack regimental command structure. They have demonstrated that they want to take-over power, taking the advantage of the No-Fly-Zone clause of the UN resolution 1973. But Gaddafi troop are reclaiming areas like Adjabya and Sirte, earlier acclaimed to have overrun by the rebels, as more Libyan refugees in their thousands invading the small Italian Island of Lampedusa, Egypt and Tunisia, to escape the crisis.

While the rebels beat a retreat in the face of fierce attacks from Gaddafi’s troops, the prominent actors and top decision-makers in the regime are defecting to the opposition’s side.  Moussa Kuossa, Ghaddafi foreign minister made a surprise entrance into UK, two days ago, and he was followed by others. Most of the defectors were staunch supporters of the tyrannical rule of Gaddafi all these years. Gaddafi is a mean man, he knows what the end would be sooner or later, thus; he would left no stone unturned in dealing with those he referred to as ‘cockroaches, rats, and drug addicts’. Whatever anyone thinks, the end is near for Gaddafi; either he gives way for peaceful transition or he faces humiliation as did Iraqi-once -strongman, Saddam Hussein.

Whatever the stakes are, there is every likelihood that those men bombing and firing missiles from war planes would have to come down; do some infantry job to keep Gaddafi men in check. Or they have to negotiate a soft-landing plank for Gaddafi to step aside. Anything short of this would still give the Libya maximum ruler more opportunity, to kill thousands of the civilian population the No-Fly-Zone is to protect. Because the 1973 is vague and open, various interpretations are being derived from it to achieve a specific purpose. Why is the UN resolution 1973 clause not being applied in Barhain, Syria or Yemen?

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Libya: Politics of Humanitarian Intervention

Mahmood Mamdani

Iraq and Afghanistan teach us that humanitarian intervention does not end with the removal of the danger it purports to target.

It only begins with it. Having removed the target, the intervention grows and turns into the real problem. This is why to limit the discussion of the Libyan intervention to its stated rationale – saving civilian lives – is barely scratching the political surface.

The short life of the Libyan intervention suggests that we distinguish between justification and execution in writing its biography. Justification was a process internal to the United Nations Security Council, but execution is not.

In addition to authorising a “no-fly zone” and tightening sanctions against “the Gaddafi regime and its supporters”, Resolution 1973 called for “all necessary measures to protect civilians under threat of attack in the country, including Benghazi.” At the same time, it expressly “excluded a foreign occupation force of any form” or in “any part of Libyan territory”.

UN conflicts

The UN process is notable for two reasons. First, the resolution was passed with a vote of 10 in favour and five abstaining.

The abstaining governments – Russia, China, India, Brazil, Germany – represent the vast majority of humanity.

Even though the African Union had resolved against an external intervention and called for a political resolution to the conflict, the two African governments in the Security Council – South Africa and Nigeria – voted in favour of the resolution.

They have since echoed the sentiments of the governments that abstained, that they did not have in mind the scale of the intervention that has actually occurred.

The second thing notable about the UN process is that though the Security Council is central to the process of justification, it is peripheral to the process of execution.

The Russian and Chinese representatives complained that the resolution left vague “how and by whom the measures would be enforced and what the limits of the engagement would be.”

Having authorised the intervention, the Security Council left its implementation to any and all, it “authorised Member States, acting nationally or through regional organisations or arrangements.”

As with every right, this free for all was only in theory; in practise, the right could only be exercised by those who possessed the means to do so. As the baton passed from the UN Security Council to the US and NATO, its politics became clearer.

Money trail

When it came to the assets freeze and arms embargo, the Resolution called on the Secretary-General to create an eight-member panel of experts to assist the Security Council committee in monitoring the sanctions.

Libyan assets are mainly in the US and Europe, and they amount to hundreds of billions of dollars: the US Treasury froze $30bn of liquid assets, and US banks $18bn. What is to happen to interest on these assets?

The absence of any specific arrangement assets are turned into a booty, an interest-free loan, in this instance, to US Treasury and US banks.

Like the military intervention, there is nothing international about the implementing sanctions regime. From its point of view, the international process is no more than a legitimating exercise.

If the legitimation is international, implementation is privatised, passing the initiative to the strongest of member states. The end result is a self-constituted coalition of the willing.

War furthers many interests. Each war is a laboratory for testing the next generation of weapons. It is well known that the Iraq war led to more civilian than military victims.

The debate then was over whether or not these casualties were intended. In Libya, the debate is over facts. It points to the fact that the US and NATO are perfecting a new generation of weapons, weapons meant for urban warfare, weapons designed to minimise collateral damage.

The objective is to destroy physical assets with minimum cost in human lives. The cost to the people of Libya will be of another type. The more physical assets are destroyed, the less sovereign will be the next government in Libya.

Libya’s opposition

The full political cost will become clear in the period of transition. The anti-Gaddafi coalition comprises four different political trends: radical Islamists, royalists, tribalists, and secular middle class activists produced by a Western-oriented educational system.

Of these, only the radical Islamists, especially those linked organisationally to Al Qaeda, have battle experience.

They – like NATO – have the most to gain in the short term from a process that is more military than political. This is why the most likely outcome of a military resolution in Libya will be an Afghanistan-type civil war.

One would think that this would be clear to the powers waging the current war on Libya, because they were the same powers waging war in Afghanistan. Yet, they have so far showed little interest in a political resolution. Several facts point to this.

The African Union delegation sent to Libya to begin discussions with Col. Gaddafi in pursuit of a political resolution to the conflict was denied permission to fly over Libya – and thus land in Tripoli – by the NATO powers.

The New York Times reported that Libyan tanks on the road to Benghazi were bombed from the air Iraq War-style, when they were retreating and not when they were advancing.

The two pilots of the US fighter jet F15-E that crashed near Benghazi were rescued by US forces on the ground, now admitted to be CIA operatives, a clear violation of Resolution 1973 that points to an early introduction of ground forces.

The logic of a political resolution was made clear by Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, in a different context: “We have made clear that security alone cannot resolve the challenges facing Bahrain. Violence is not the answer, a political process is.”

That Clinton has been deaf to this logic when it comes to Libya is testimony that so far, the pursuit of interest has defied learning political lessons of past wars, most importantly Afghanistan.

Marx once wrote that important events in history occur, as it were, twice – the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. He should have added, that for its victims, farce is a tragedy compounded.

Mahmood Mamdani is professor and director of Makerere Institute of Social Research at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, and Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University, New York. He is the author, most recently of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, The Cold War and the Roots of Terror, and Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror.

Originally published on http://english.aljazeera.net on March 31, 2011. Republished on talkafrique.com on April 2, 2011. Courtesy Tunde Oseni

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Between Muammar El-Gaddafi and the African Union

MUAMMAR EL-GADDAFI AND

Tales coming out of Libya, a country that has been under the leadership of one-man rule for the 42 years are those of anger, frustration, popular uprising and death. The world has been lured to believe that all is well with the Libya’s economy, but recent occurrences have shown the opposite. Gaddafi has been anti West since he came into power and established his Jamariya government in 1969. He has waged wars on several fronts with the West. He is an ardent advocate for one Africa, where all autonomous nations would lose their sovereignty for a united African state.

The early years of the last decade was spent by Muammar Gaddafi in touring many African countries canvassing for support of African Heads of state and Presidents for a United States of Africa. Reports had it that he single-handedly contributed US$1million to fund the formation of the African Union (AU) to replace the Organization of African Unity (OAU) founded in 1963. He wanted to be the leader of a body that would be the equal of the United States of America (USA), where he will wield unlimited powers above other countries.

Nonetheless, Gaddafi’s dream for a Pan-African body, just like Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, came to fruition. However, his personal ambition for a stronger union and weaker nation-states was dashed as Nigeria and South Africa opted for what some writers have referred to as ‘gradual incrementalism’( a situation whereby sovereign nations were allowed on their own to be integrated into the regional body but still retain their nationhood). This singular move clipped his ‘wings’ and tamed his fulsome ambition. They did this because he was never to be trusted.

Meanwhile, considering the manner he has conducted himself recently, does it show any sign of a leader who has his people at heart? He referred to the citizens as cockroaches, people under the influence of drugs and that he would fight streets to streets to live and die in Libya. What kind of leader is he; killing the same people he is now violently fighting to defend and protect? Ghaddafi should be told that patriotism is not by force.

Sordid enough, the leadership of the African Union has not yet led a high-power delegation to Libya to neither stop Ghaddafi nor condemn his scorch-to earth massacre using paid snipers. It is still unclear if he has some of these African leaders supporting him underground, because many of them are like him. Even the manner in which they are responding to the evacuation of their citizenry has left much to be desired. African leaders who are Ghaddafi-copies, who have made life miserable for their people over the years, should expect the Tunisia, Egypt and Libya-type of change soon.

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Development of Science and Technology in Ghana/Africa – part 4

This article looks at several other methods the government of Ghana (and that of other African countries) can explore to quicken the pace of Science and Technology (S&T) development in their respective countries. For a systematic development in any field, there must be a well formulated policy/plan which seeks to guide the field. The necessary adjustments to the policy/plan are then made with advancing knowledge in the field. That is for Ghana and other African countries to make a leap in S&T, they need to have a sound S&T policy in place. Such a policy should be partly guided by the type of technology they wish to develop in their respective countries. Broadly speaking, two forms of technology could be available to a country and they are the Borrowed Technology (BT) and Indigenous Technology (IT). The former, as the name implies is a type of technology which is accessed from another country whilst the latter is developed in the home country.

Ghana and other African countries need to be clear about the direction they are taking as far as the two types of technology are concerned because, that will largely guide the nature of Research and Development (R&D)they set up.  The question then is, do African countries stick to the Borrowed Technology or the Indigenously Developed Technology, or use both of them simultaneously? Definitely, we cannot move away from developing our Indigenous Technology, because we need that to be able to process many of our raw materials that we consume and export. That is to say, the Indigenous Technology, when well-developed has several advantages including development of skills of the labor force, availability of jobs and reduced prices of consumer products. However, IT alone may not be enough to keep up with the technological demands of our growing economies and especially improve the standards of living of people in the short-term. And so in addition to the IT, African countries can borrow technology from scientifically and technologically developed countries, adapt and possibly improve such technology to suit their environment(s). For instance, one area of importance to many African countries is improving farm yields, and currently we are aware that Biotechnology among others has the power of accomplishing that task. So if such a technology is available we can establish an R&D to adopt and adapt it to our benefit – saving us the trouble of researching from the scratch. In other words, it will be a good idea if African countries formulate policies, which make use of both Indigenous Technology and Borrowed Technology simultaneously, which in turn is expected to guide planning and investments in R&D related to S&T development.

Funding is required to develop Indigenous Technology and properly use Borrowed Technology. Especially in the Borrowed Technology situation, expertise would have to be sought at a cost probably from the country or countries which have developed the technology. To minimize the costs for such technology transfers, the government of Ghana (and that of other African countries) should seek to form bilateral relations in science, technology and innovation with the industrialized and newly industrialized countries. Under such bilateral relations, we can benefit from among others, training of our personnel, sharing of technologies, solving of common problems together and systematic development of capacity and capability for science and technology. Such bilateral relations should also seek to actively establish research and training centers of excellence in Ghana (and other African countries). The African Union (AU) is poised to encourage the development of S&T in Africa and harmonize emerging technologies and innovations among member states, which is a good first step.

Funding for R&D in Science and Technology (S&T) can come from three main sources: the private sector, government funds and foreign loans. It is very helpful when the private sector contributes significantly to R&D development of a country because that means the private sector is robust and is building the skills of the labor force and creating jobs. However in Ghana, private sector contribution to R&D is very small (less than 5%) compared to about 40% or more in industrialized and newly industrialized countries. Government funding of R&D through locally generated funds is economically wise for the main reason that the government tends to dictate its scale of preference for projects and their funding. However, in the last case of funding R&D with foreign loans, there could be a problem in that the lender usually sets up guidelines for the use of the money and that could conflict with the priorities of the government and indeed the country. This situation can lead to stagnation or even retrogression in S&T growth. So it is advisable that government tries as much as possible to generate funds from its local resources to pursue R&D in S&T programs.

Process Plant Technology is a South African technology company, based in Johannesburg.

It must be understood that many of the countries which have excelled in S&T have devoted considerable amount of resources to R&D and currently, the percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) invested in R&D is an important parameter in measuring technological advancement. That is, in those countries with high science and technology development, investments have been between 1 – 4 % of their GDP. South Africa is investing close to 1% of its GDP in R&D and it appears to be the only country in Sub-Saharan Africa with advanced development in Science and Technology. In Ghana and in many other African countries, the percentage GDP invested in R&D has been below 0.5% and consequently, the level of S&T development in such countries has been poor. The African union (AU) recommended that African countries strived to achieve an investment of at least 1% of their GDP in R&D by 2010, but it is not clear how many African countries were able to meet that goal. It is imperative that African countries strive to achieve that goal and go beyond that in the short-term as part of their commitment to use S&T to transform the economies of their countries.

As we mentioned above, in Ghana, the contribution to R&D development from the private sector is very small. This does not augur well for development of S&T especially in the circumstances where government funding to that sector is also weak. Government must take bold steps to encourage R&D in industries by creating a congenial atmosphere for that purpose. It must also put in place measures which do not favor wholesale import of semi -finished goods to be assembled to finished products in Ghana – some of the key reasons being that, importation of semi finished products takes away research and development (R&D) from the local industry, diminishes technological advancement and reduces job creation, which are bad for the economy. So government must rather encourage imports of raw materials (if they cannot be found locally); and process such raw materials in Ghana to finished goods for consumption locally or for export.

One area lacking proper coordination and management in Ghana and other African countries is harnessing innovative ideas from academia and translating them into industrial products. To address that, government must set up an innovation and technology transfer office to oversee such creative endeavors. Such an office, among others will seek to minimize the bottlenecks which come up during the process.

These are few suggestions which will impact on the S&T development in Ghana and other African countries. Please look out for the next article.

By Nana Osei-Kwabena

sciencnt@yahoo.com

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