SOUTH Korea is regarded as a Third World country — in the same category as Ghana. There is, however, a clear difference. While the former is described as a newly emerging economy, the latter is euphemistically called a developing country.
While South Korea has a development strategy which is propelling it into the developed country bracket, Ghana is perpetually banking its hopes on donor support and, therefore, can hardly deserve the developing tag placed on it. A country cannot sincerely be considered as developing when, in actual fact, things which make life better are not improving but rather deteriorating.
Our schools, for instance, cannot be said to be better today than they were in the immediate post-independence era. In those days, some of them boasted of empty classrooms and dormitories, unlike today when almost all of them are hard-pressed, with facilities such as classrooms and residential accommodation being overstretched to support the student population.
Road development has not matched the pace of human and vehicular growth. Food production has lagged behind consumption levels, forcing us to import food items from countries that have bigger populations to feed than Ghana’s 20 million people.
Basics like safety matches, razor blades, toilet rolls, shoes and other leatherwear which the country was manufacturing in the past are now being imported, mostly from other Third World countries, including South Korea, India, China, Taiwan and Malaysia.
In the meantime, South Korea has progressed steadily over the years to become a major producer and exporter of automobiles, electronic appliances and other consumables. Brand names like Daewoo, KIA and Hyundai have become common sights on our roads, while Samsung, Daewoo, LG and many others have become electronic companions which adorn many Ghanaian homes.
While South Korea is celebrating its arrival on the global electronics market, Ghana’s Akasanoma (GIHOC Electronics) and Sanyo factories which were assembling radio transistors and television sets locally are now extinct.
Our textile factories are distressed because of unfair competition from cheaper imports. Sad to relate, therefore, the bulk of our Golden Jubilee anniversary cloth and other textile products had to come from China, a Third World superpower.
South Korea, in comparative terms, is far richer than Ghana and by global standards cannot be described as a poor country. However, its citizens do not take pride in driving European models like BMW and Mercedes Benz when they can get worthy substitutes by Hyundai, KIA and Daewoo.
The spiralling oil prices are a global phenomenon and the South Korean approach to its solution can offer us food for thought. Charity, they say, begins at home and as a first step, the government of South Korea has decreed that all public vehicles should alternate on the roads to save fuel. In the long term, the government has decided to spend money purchasing only fuel-efficient hybrid models of vehicles.
Apart from fuel price increases passed onto the consumer, we are yet to be told how we are going to confront this global situation without necessarily subjecting the citizens to higher fuel prices. May be we are banking our hopes on the windfall of oil discovery and are, therefore, not in a hurry to institute any vehicle import policies to save private pockets and the national coffers.
In Ghana, moderation and modesty have never been operational words in official circles and the government itself takes the lead to import expensive, high fuel-consuming vehicles for use by top public officials.
Additionally, the fuel and maintenance bills of these government-owned vehicles are picked by taxpayers and, therefore, top policy makers are not in any urgent need to economise the use and application of these vehicles. That may also partially explain why there is hardly any human consideration when our governments are raising prices of petroleum products.
How can we claim to be poor and on a constant basis seeking foreign assistance in almost every area of national development and yet when it comes to importing vehicles for official use we hardly cut our coat according to the size of our cloth?
We are on the spending spree importing Toyota Landcruisers and Ford 4x4 wagons for our ministers and senior civil servants, while at the same time lamenting the lack of funds to build more classrooms for our children.
Incidentally, there are many public sector areas in dire need of vehicles, such as the hospitals, educational institutions and the Police Service, which are not available, while it is not strange to see two or more official vehicles parked in one person’s house.
The South Koreans do not have excuses for failures. That was why last week their President sacked three of his cabinet ministers in the wake of protests over US beef imports. They were the Agriculture, Health and Education ministers. For those who may not know, South Korea is almost like one of the states in the US and for the government to muster courage to take that harsh decision meant a lot.
Here, we do things differently. Goods of all types come into the country and no one cares whether the health of citizens are under threat or not. There are rumours of infiltration of genetically modified rice onto the local market and no one cares to conduct any thorough investigation, let alone take any preventive measures.
We do not care to protect local industries because we alone understand the rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). In short, we have embraced trade liberalisation without import rationalisation.
Ministers who could hardly point at any achievement during their tenure, including those who were dismissed while in office, could be lucky to be given national honours for being part of the team.
The case of those in the latter group is quite serious. It can be likened to students who were dismissed during the academic year for non-performance being invited later for recognition during the school’s speech and prize-giving day.
Under such circumstances, it is not strange that we are unable to achieve our national goals and continue to think that the problem should be laid on the doorstep of slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism, globalisation, debt burden, inadequate donor support or unfair trade practices.
We do not reward the productive sector of the national economy but rather spend more on the parasitic elements who are mostly political noise makers and praise singers parading as special assistants, advisors and communication managers.
Why should the salaries of doctors and other health workers be in arrears for over eight months while people whose role in national development can hardly be defined get enough to spend and spare with careless abandon?
We should ask ourselves: Why should people be ready to draw daggers just campaigning for Parliament if that place is only for law making? Why should people be prepared to pay hotel and transport bills for delegates and dole out pocket money to people who are only going to exercise their voting rights to pick a parliamentary or presidential candidate?
It was, therefore, not strange that selected African leaders returned from the meeting of the powerful and rich Group of Eight (G8) in Japan last week beaming with smiles and proud that they had dined, wined and taken group pictures with George Bush (US), Nicolas Sarkozy (France), Silvio Berlusconi (Italy), Stephen Harper (Canada), Dmitry Medvedev (Russia), Yasuo Fukuda (Japan), Angela Merkel (Germany) and Gordon Brown (Britain).
They were the more excited because the G8 leaders had pledged to support development programmes in the rest of the world with US$50 billion, with African countries assured of US$25 billion between now and 2010.
Why should our leaders demean themselves by waiting in the corridors of conference centres for some selected persons to come and tell them something good when they had left behind in their respective countries abundant resources given to them freely by God?
The irony is that most of these advanced countries, if not all, are surviving on the resources of Third World countries, especially Africa, whose leaders have failed to think and act like their counterparts in South Korea, China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Singapore and other emerging economies who shared a similar fate with us but have since decided to take their destiny into their own hands.
Our life between now and 2010 is not likely to change, just as it did not in the past, but that will not give us the least clue that there is something fundamentally wrong with our mentality and that those promises, pledges and platitudes which are not fulfilled, any way, will not solve our problems.
So it came to pass that even Malaysia, whose independence history we know very well, has expressed its commitment to provide Ghanaian students with opportunities for higher education in Malaysia (Daily Graphic, Wednesday, July 9, 2008) and we are excited.
Meanwhile, we are waiting for another G8 meeting to hear the next batch of promises from our benefactors after they have had their fill with good wine and caviar.
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