By Ben BRAKO
Across Africa, and particularly in Ghana, one paradox persists: we boast some of the most highly educated leaders, trained in the world’s finest Western institutions, yet our nations remain stuck in cycles of dependency and underdevelopment. Why? Because those leaders have become captives of Western paradigms.
They view Western models as universal truths, while sidelining the very indigenous systems that sustained us for centuries. Instead of charting original pathways suited to our realities, they act as local managers of Western interests. The result is a hollow kind of progress that erodes cultural confidence and leaves our people impoverished.
Agriculture: From ownership to dependency
Agriculture offers a clear example. For generations, Ghanaian cocoa farming thrived under the Abusa system, where farm owners, managers, and laborers shared the harvest in three equal parts. This ensured fairness, motivation, and productivity.
Western capitalism replaced this with wage labor. Farmers lost ownership and pride, becoming mere hired hands on plantations dominated by machines that rarely fit our local conditions. Instead of empowering communities, this model entrenched dependency and alienation.
IMF and World Bank: New Colonial Masters
Our leaders, schooled in Western economics, take their cues from the IMF and World Bank. Their policies—structural adjustment, macroeconomic stabilization—sound sophisticated but serve the same purpose: Africa remains a supplier of raw materials and a market for Western goods.
Thus, we prioritize export crops over food security, weaken our small farmers, and depend on aid that appears generous but only deepens dependency.
Healthcare: The Betrayal of Herbal Medicine
Few sectors show our alienation more starkly than healthcare. For centuries, African societies relied on indigenous herbal medicine—affordable, accessible, effective. These remedies gave us robust health and continue to prove their worth.
Yet our leaders, eager to please Western pharmaceutical interests, dismiss them as “unscientific.” Instead, they flood hospitals with costly imported drugs that remain inaccessible to rural communities and riddled with side effects.
The tragedy is enormous. First, millions are denied affordable care. Second, Africa forfeits the chance to export herbal medicines at a time when the global demand for organic, plant-based therapies is booming. We are sitting on untapped wealth but refuse to claim it.
Beverages: Losing Our Flavor
The drinks industry tells the same story. Traditional beverages—palm wine, pito, asaana, and herbal tonics—once formed the backbone of social and cultural life. Some, like Alomo Bitters, have shown global promise when properly branded.
Yet leaders favor imported beers, wines, and spirits. Supermarkets overflow with foreign brands, while local brews are derided as “backward.” Instead of nurturing industries rooted in our heritage, we enrich foreign companies.
Fashion: From Attire to Uniforms
Our clothing is another frontline of cultural alienation. Kente, batakari, and woven textiles are more than fabrics; they are culture, artistry, identity. Yet our political elites appear in suits and ties—alien clothing designed for Europe’s climate, not ours.
This obsession with imported “professionalism” undermines local industries and floods our markets with secondhand Western clothes, leaving our textile factories to collapse.
But the problem goes deeper. Even the uniformed services of government—police, military, customs, fire service, immigration—wear outfits borrowed wholesale from Europe. These uniforms have never been subjected to cultural or economic localization.
Imagine if our own designers were commissioned to create culturally inspired uniforms, stitched from locally woven or produced fabrics. Not only would this express pride in our heritage, it would inject massive income into the local fashion and textile industries while saving millions in foreign exchange. These uniforms are produced in huge quantities annually; localizing their design and production is a no-brainer that could transform the economy.
Yet our Westernized leadership cannot see it. To them, professionalism still means copying Europe, even in the clothes we wear to defend our sovereignty.
Spirituality: Hollow Faith, Forgotten Roots
Even spirituality has not been spared. Our ancestors built profound systems of belief that integrated morality, community, and reverence for the environment. Today, many leaders proudly proclaim that while our ancestors “worshipped idols,” they “worship Jesus Christ.”
Yet in their embrace of hollow, Westernized religion, they ignore the liberating essence of Jesus’ teachings—principles of community and solidarity that resonate with African philosophy. The result is a people alienated from their heritage, ashamed of their own traditions, and spiritually adrift.
The Cost of Alienation
In every field—farming, healthcare, beverages, fashion, uniforms, faith—our Western-educated elites prove alienated from the very people they claim to serve. They speak the language of the IMF rather than that of their farmers. They wear Italian suits instead of kente. They fund foreign hospitals while neglecting herbal clinics. They toast with French champagne while scorning palm wine. They buy European uniforms for our police and soldiers while local textile workers lose jobs.
This alienation kills industries, erodes cultural pride, and perpetuates dependency. Worst of all, it convinces ordinary Africans that everything indigenous is backward and everything imported is progress.
Reclaiming the Compass of Development
True African development will never come from IMF prescriptions, foreign pharmaceuticals, or imported fashions. It will come from reclaiming, modernizing, and globalizing what is already ours:
- Agriculture that revives communal systems like Abusa.
- Healthcare that refines herbal medicine for local use and global export.
- Beverages that turn palm wine, pito, and bitters into international brands.
- Fashion that makes kente and batakari symbols of pride and professionalism.
- Uniforms for state institutions designed and manufactured locally, fueling industries and saving foreign exchange.
- Spirituality that marries African wisdom with universal truths of love, justice, and community.
Africa is not poor. It is rich—in resources, culture, and heritage. What we lack is leadership rooted in the soil of our realities rather than in the corridors of Western universities and institutions. Until our leaders reconnect with the people and their heritage, we will remain trapped: resource-rich but vision-poor.
The path forward is clear. Africa must stop mimicking others and begin believing in herself. Only then will development be authentic, sustainable, and liberating.
