Former President of Ghana John Agyekum Kufour has blamed Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s rush for industrialization for Ghana’s failing fortunes.
According to him, instead if the country to plan after independence, the country under Kwame Nkrumah just zoomed into industrialization without any form of plan.
“When we gained independence we just zoomed into industrialization so we started building factories. If your memories serve you right, in the first republic there were several factories scattered across. That involved a lot of money. The money which was at the Bank of Ghana. That time we were 6 million people in Ghana and the reserves comparing it to now would have been billions because in 1957 it was about 450 million dollars.
Comparatively, countries that are now been used as an example of developed countries like Korea, China and others could not be compared to us at all. Just four years after independence and even before Ghana’s population got to ten million people, all the reserves were gone.
This was because we were running, we wanted to build factories. Shoe factory, leather factory. We didn’t take our time to plan and also make the treasury gain some interest in it. We just started chopping the capital. You don’t chop your capital. That is why the economy collapsed.”
The former President said after squandering the country’s capital, there was the perception that it was about ideologies but did not research to know what actually the problems in the country.
He believes that currently, the dependence on the government for everything in the country is becoming worrying and there is therefore the need for the private sector to be empowered in order to help address various challenges in the country.
