Thinking values

By Dela Doyen DAKPO

When you do not understand and appreciate “VALUE,” you will focus on today’s profit, today’s numbers, and celebrate “MEDIOCRITY”.

This is exactly the case of Ghana, when it comes to our natural resources and key national assets.

It is surprising that as far back as 543 years ago (thus 1482), people came and built Forts in the Gold Coast for Gold and Trades.

The irony, however, is that after trading in Gold for more than 500 years, we only have less than 35 tons of gold in our national reserves. People celebrate this kind of data with pride as though they achieved heaven for this country.

If we were to be keeping only 2 tons of gold per year for the past 500 years, we should be holding about 1000 tons of gold in our reserves. The value of 1000 tons of gold today is about 110 billion USD, and this is way more than our projected GDP of 86 billion USD by the end of 2025.

In nominal terms, if we understand the value of our resources (gold) and keep them, even a small portion for ourselves, Ghana’s GDP should have been around 186 billion USD today.

The question is, why are we getting it wrong? In my humble opinion, as a country, we do not teach values, we do not teach resources, we do not teach asset and we do not appreciate values. We are focused on the paper money we will get today, forgetting that the paper money is fiat  and fake money.

Not only that, but we also have a lot of our citizens who do not understand the value of things. A lot of these people rise to become leaders, and they are quick to accept a 1 million USD and give our resources with over billions in values away in a grand celebration with national pride in the name of democracy that do not take into consideration the views of the citizens even when the citizens opposed such moves.

It is surprising that after 500 years of the white man’s arrival and building Forts and Castles for slavery and Gold trade in the Gold Coast, we are fighting for who increased Gold reserves and by what margin…..!!? I don’t know!!!

The lack of understanding of values is very evident in our daily life in this landscape called Ghana. We are not ready to understand the value of knowledge, research, and merit, because of this lack of understanding, a country of about 34 million people are expecting a GDP of 86 billion USD by the end of this year with pride and national announcement all over the world.

With an average GDP production of USD2500 per citizen per annum, how can we be saying that we will eradicate poverty?  When and how? I do not know!!!!

Just like that, there are no real-time measuring metrics. The best I have seen in years is slogans, and you dare not ask questions, or else you will be labelled as “NPP or NDC”.

Once your ideas are labelled, you’ve become a political enemy rather than an ideological alternative and imperative. They will chop your personality and your family into pieces such that you will appreciate the single fact that you’re not a citizen of Ghana if you’re not in this dirty-smelly game called politics.

This is a complete lack of understanding of the values of reasoning and thinking clearly aloud.

However, this is the kind of ecosystem we have built over time. Don’t forget, this is only about gold. I did not mention cocoa, timber, crude oil, human capital, water bodies, lands, space, hospitality, rail connections, processing, and manufacturing.

If one really looks at these value chains carefully, one will appreciate that Ghana is not poor, but we and our leaders have a poverty mentality.

Moving from where we are, my humble suggestion is that we focus on the values of our resources not the paper money they bring. Let us have serious national debate about accumulation of reserves for all our resources.

Let us accumulate more tons of gold per month (at least 3 tons per month and offset the wrongs of our forebears), we need to act faster and more swiftly with little or no celebration of our small achievement because we know that we are behind and celebrations will only reduce our momentum and pace of progress. If the price tumble on the world market, let us keep our gold, for the world population will wake up looking for gold next week, next month, next year, next decade or century.

The Author is a Specialized Projects Expert with Quatran Services Ltd, a team of Engineers, Architects and Contractors providing all General and Specialised Civil Engineering, Architectural, Electrical and Mechanical Services for industrial plants, ports, mines, commercial and security infrastructure in Africa and beyond. He is trained in the application of the FIDIC, NEC and FAC conditions of contract in the administration of multi-lateral, bi-lateral and unilateral funded projects with focus on delivering value within time and budget.

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