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By Angela Ayimbire
Tema, July 30, GNA-The Reverend Dr Samuel Worlanyo Mensah, Executive Director of the Centre for Greater Impact Africa (CGIA), has commended the Church of Pentecost for hosting a national dialogue aimed at finding solutions to national development challenges.
Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Tema on the outcome of the Church of Pentecost’s National Development Conference, Rev. Dr. Mensah noted that unfortunately, as valuable as the recommendations from the dialogue sounded, the government would not listen and implement them.
While commending the church for the initiative, Rev. Dr Mensah, who is an economist, also suggested that Ghana must adopt a Bipartisan National Crisis Management Strategy (BNCMS) to deal with any future global catastrophe: “We must not always be defensive and protective in the midst of troubles but work together in fighting the common enemy.
Ebola, which hit some West African countries in the recent past and was capped by the global COVID-19 pandemic, offered enough warning for the country to establish the necessary infrastructure to deal with global catastrophes.
“But unfortunately, as a nation, we failed to develop the common grounds for fighting a common enemy, hence our struggle with the Russian-Ukraine war. We are not speaking as a nation but as politicians”.
To buttress his point, he said that as a nation, since the war broke out, we have been communicating to defend our weaknesses, but we must know that nobody will come and solve these challenges for us, and it’s up to leadership to know such things will happen, hence preparing for them.
He noted that the Bipartisan National Crisis Management Strategy would then spell out the national response, communication strategy to be adopted, analysis of whatever crisis, and appropriate local action to deal with it.
He also called on the government to fasten the development of the economy through capacity assessment and building; “this will go a long way in helping the country prepare for future uncertainties and take the chance to fast-track development.
He said Ghana was not able to positively benefit from the ongoing war due to a lack of basic economic infrastructure and a value-added commodities market.
Rev. Dr Mensah added that a country could only take advantage of such situations by originally having long-term and medium-term goals that were tactical for national development to absorb global shocks.
He also called for an attitude change towards the country’s development, noting that for African countries to grasp the opportunities being created because of the war, they must focus on building their capacity.
He also stressed that the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) presented an incredible opportunity for Ghanaians to scale up their activities and expand into the African market.
Dr Mensah questioned what specific strategy the nation had put in place towards taking advantage of the AfCFTA as it opened the citizenry to a market of 1.2 billion people across the continent and provided endless possibilities for the socio-economic growth of the population.
He said, “The AfCFTA provided a structure for Ghana’s foreign traders, producers, and stakeholders in the value chain to grasp its existence in the country and successfully trade with their fellow partners in Africa or even the world at large”.
Dr Mensah emphasized that the agreement aimed to reduce all trade costs and enable Africa to integrate further into global chains, adding that “AfCFTA will eliminate 90 per cent of tariffs, focus on outstanding non-tariff barriers, and create a single market with free movement of goods and services”.
GNA
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