The Senior Minister has hinted on the need to see the ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ agenda of the Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo government as achievable through harnessing the resources of the nation for development.
Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo said: “To get to a Ghana Beyond Aid, we will have to harness effectively our own resources, and deploy them creatively and efficiently for rapid economic and social transformation.”
Mr. Osafo-Maafo said this when he met with the members of the Council of State to brief them on the ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ Charter and Strategy Document of the government at the Presidential Lounge of the State House, Accra.
In a presentation, he said harnessing our natural endowments would require hard work, enterprise, creativity, and a consistent fight against corruption in the public life.
“It would also require that we break from a mentality of dependency and adopt a confident ‘can do spirit,’ fueled by love for our dear country Ghana,” he added.
Mr. Osafo-Maafo explained that Ghana beyond aid was a prosperous and self-confident Ghana that was in charge of her economic destiny, meaning “A transformed Ghana that was prosperous enough to be beyond needing aid, and that engages competitively with the rest of the world through trade and investment.”
The Senior Minister indicated that ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ was not a development plan but a call for a paradigm shift through attitudinal and mindset change by all citizens in the country in terms of how to develop the nation.
He, however, rejected the notion that Ghana was rejecting aid, “But rather we should determine what the aid should be used for in order to benefit our people.”
Mr. Osafo-Maafo, in a presentation, said ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ would require all Ghanaians to embrace a new mindset, build and deepen social partnerships involving key stakeholders, evolve a non-partisan approach to national development, and embrace a national consensus on the direction of our national development.
As the senior Minister indicated, the agenda would hinge on a-ten-point reform strategy which would look at macroeconomic stability, higher public resource mobilization, greater efficiency in use of all public resources, anti-corruption, improved public infrastructure and land accessibility, and creating a robust financial sector for higher domestic private savings.
Others included a foreign private portfolio investment, a more supportive private sector environment, export promotion and import substitution, building technological capabilities, creating strong social partnership among government business and labor for social and economic development, and a more strategic mobilization and use of aid.
The Senior Minister affirmed that the ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ agenda was non-partisan and therefore the vision should be owned by all Ghanaians, “So that every government will remain committed to the vision.”
In light of that, Mr. Osafo-Maafo told of a ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ council which would be set up to oversee the implementation of the vision.
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