President receives roadmap on Ghana Beyond Aid agenda

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on Tuesday received a strategic document and Charter that outlines the roadmap for Ghana’s attainment of her goal of self-reliance and the vision of a country beyond aid.

The document, which was put together by a 13-member Ghana Beyond Aid Charter Committee, constituted by the President last June, is envisaged to become the mobilizing instrument for Ghana’s development.

The document is to be laid before Parliament for deliberations and expected to become a national policy document that would guide the actions of government, as well as that of the various stakeholders in the country.

At a short handing-over ceremony at the Jubilee House in Accra, President Akufo-Addo said the document, which he had perused, presented clear guidelines on how things ought to be done in Ghana “in a collective sense”.

He said the agenda of a Ghana Beyond Aid, essentially was a mobilizing strategy to conscientise Ghanaians “that no one was going to come from anywhere to develop Ghana for them other than Ghanaians themselves”.

President Akufo-Addo noted that “the document is also going to be a guide as to how we go about applying the slogan [Ghana Beyond Aid] for it to become meaningful in the lives of the thirty million Ghanaians in Ghana and those outside Ghana”.

He noted that the new awareness on the continent over the past four decades had shown clearly that Africa could only address its developmental challenges when it weaned itself from the addiction to dependence on aid.

Africa ought to utilize its own resources and rely more on appropriate home-grown policies to unlock the economic potential of the continent.

“Progress would be made when we accept responsibility for our own actions and thereby conduct ourselves in a manner that would be fruitful,” he said.

The President said, as soon as practicable, he would want Parliament to have access to the document, to enable the House to deliberate on it and approve the strategy to give it a national character, that would guide all interventions aimed at making the country self-reliant.

He said It was important that Parliament, which was the main deliberating chamber of our country was apprised of it and also sees it as a document that is going to guide all the work of institutions of our State; Executive, Legislature, Judiciary, across board, Social institutions as well as Public ones.

The President has continually stated that after sixty years of independence, Ghana cannot depend on external assistance to plan its yearly budgets.

Thus, “for the sake of dignity and pride, as a country, as a people,” the President said, “We should be in a position to fund our own activities, then, we will have control of ourselves.”

“This is important for our self-esteem,” he reiterated.

Senior Minister Yaw Osafo Marfo, who chairs the Charter Committee told the President that the strategic document was a reflection of the collective inputs of 30 institutions.

He said a lot had gone into the preparation of the manuscript and was hopeful that it (document) would give direction to the vision of a Ghana Beyond Aid.

The members of Committee drawn from various sectors of the governance structure also include the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta; Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffour Awuah, Minister of Planning, Prof. Gyan Baffour, and the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Hajia Alima Mahama, MP.

The rest are drawn from the Trades Union Congress, the Private Enterprise Foundation, the Ghana National Association of Teachers, as well as the Association of Ghana industries.