Ghana’s president receives strategic plan to achieve self-reliance

President Akufo-Addo has reiterated the need for Ghana to be self-reliant ever since he took office.
He therefore set up a committee to draw up a document for a Ghana beyond aid.
The committee has presented its document to the president which will subsequently be laid before parliament.

Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo has received a strategic document and charter on the roadmap which will help the country to achieve its vision of a ‘Ghana beyond aid’.

The strategic document was prepared and presented to the president by the 13-member Ghana Beyond Aid Charter Committee. This committee was constituted in June 2018 by the president.

At the presentation ceremony which was held at the Jubilee House in Accra, President Akufo-Addo said the document was important for the next developmental phase of the country.

He said the main objective of a Ghana Beyond Aid, was to make Ghanaians know “that no one was going to come from anywhere to develop Ghana for them other than Ghanaians themselves.”

Since he became president, Nana Akufo-Addo has often 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, 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.

“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,” Akufo-Addo said.

“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 added.

The document will soon be laid before Parliament and will be a national policy document that will guide the actions of the government, its agencies, and other stakeholders.

Meanwhile, Ghana’s Senior Minister Yaw Osafo Marfo, who chairs the Charter Committee said a lot has gone into the document preparation and was hopeful it will be of great use to the country.

He added that the document is a reflection of the collective inputs of 30 institutions.