Let me take this opportunity to thank you for your moral support. Hopefully, as we wind up on this year, we would benefit from your continuous patronage, but this time, in a very structured and forward-looking manner. Organisations such as ours, funded mostly by individuals and businesses, rarely should be doing well in this rather difficult environment. Recall, we were ranked the 5th most influential in Africa by the Foreign Policy Magazine this year. And yet, our other 21 competitors are four times larger and a hundred times better funded.
Dear friend of IMANI,
Let me take this opportunity to thank you for your moral support. Hopefully, as we wind up on this year, we would benefit from your continuous patronage, but this time, in a very structured and forward-looking manner. Organisations such as ours, funded mostly by individuals and businesses, rarely should be doing well in this rather difficult environment. Recall, we were ranked 5th most influential in Africa by the Foreign Policy Magazine this year. And yet, our other 21 competitors are four times larger and a hundred times better funded.
However, we want to engage a proper understanding of the role of think tanks with as many individuals and businesses, hence my personal call on you to consider being an associate of IMANI with minimal annual contributions to our work. Minimal could be the equivalence of $50, $100, $200, $500 and $1000. Please do send me a personal email at franklin@imanighana.com with the subject line “Associate donor to IMANI” on how you can take advantage of this exciting relationship. Corporate sponsors should email IMANI’s Senior Fellow, Mr. Kofi Bentil at kofi@imanighana.com .
Individuals who want to be Fellows of IMANI, who believe in our cause and usually hold expertise in or lay sensible views capable of affecting sound public policies in Ghana and beyond, should also send me an email with the subject line “IMANI Fellow”.
Finally if you have suggestions on how we can improve our work, please send an email to Mr. Bright Simons, IMANI’s Director of Development Research at bright@imanighana.com.
Please see below some of our publications. I also include a small introduction on a raging debate on the most controversial and costly government-sponsored project ever in the history of Ghana.
STX-Ghana housing contract signing on hold- Government ought not to have rushed the entire deal.
Two weeks ago, a much hyped signing ceremony of the Ghana-STX Korean ‘Affordable’ Housing project was called off. In attendance were a high-powered Ghanaian government delegation and their South Korean counterparts, STX.
Very strange reasons to the effect that legal omissions in the contract document induced the abortive fan-fare have been given to Ghanaians. Be that as it may, IMANI had warned through detailed reports and forums that the $US10billion housing deal was not a grant, and given our perennial predisposition to running huge uneconomic deficits, we should be careful where we sow our oats.
We were also worried about the hawkish and disrespectful manner the entire Parliamentary debate on the ‘deal’ was done. We at IMANI were particularly apprehensive about the unpreparedness of government to lay the joint venture agreement (the most important document) between the government of Ghana and their Korean counterparts before Parliament. Had that been done properly, we would not have witnessed what looked like eggs on our faces.
Alas, ours is a loud democracy, but sadly has many rather funny people, usually unpatriotic politicians who engage in name calling when the intelligent share their opinions.
I will hazard a guess that, the omission was not legal, but economic, and possibly Government’s decision not to include the commodity swap (our yet-to-be determined oil money) in lieu of payment for the houses the Koreans were to build for Ghana. And the Koreans were probably livid as the same week they were to append their signature to the deal, our President was in China securing deals worth $US13 billion. Naturally, the Koreans would be curious and ask, “What is it that the Chinese have been promised in return? The same oil which is likely to bring in just $650m annually?” Let us tread cautiously.
Follow the STX-Ghana housing deal debate at these links.
(www.africanliberty.org/node/982) (http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=185495) (http://business.peacefmonline.com/news/201006/44918.php )
Thank you!
Franklin Cudjoe is head of Ghanaian think tank, IMANI, a non-profit, non-government organization dedicated to fostering public awareness of important policy issues concerning business, government and civil society. He is also editor of AfricanLiberty.org. The Foreign Policy Magazine named IMANI, the fifth most influential think tank in Africa in 2010. Franklin was named Young Global Leader 2010 by the World Economic Forum.
IMANI Alert: Single Spine Salary Agitations: Signs of Things to Come
Friday, September 17, 2010
The fundamental logic of single spine is crooked. Wage harmonisation in the public sector betrays an arrogance of central planning rarely encountered in our tepid age of policymaking. The fact that it is riskier to clear virgin forest and more backbreaking to till the tired earth with hoes and cutlasses, plant corn, and harvest a depressing couple of sacks of maize, does not in any way prepare the ground for a demand to be paid at the same level as the favourite radio presenters of Accra’s swankier stations.
Read on @ http://www.africanliberty.org/node/1092
IMANI Report: Fierce Debates over How the World Bank Spends its Cash and Time in Africa
Monday, September 13, 2010
The World Bank is probably best equipped to contribute to big ticket, transformative, initiatives: trade corridors, integrated value chains, industrial parks etc., and all this on a purely strategic investment basis. Everything else should be the burden of indigenous wealth creators and national governments, operating with funds generated through taxation, and of course accounting to their people how their monies are being employed to their benefit.
Read on @ http://www.africanliberty.org/node/1090
Why Good Governance Matters More in Africa Than Aid
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
By Franklin Cudjoe, The Foundry, Heritage Foundation
African leaders “ask why can’t the rich Western countries provide $70 billion annually to meet the MDGs? It’s only a fraction of their annual GDP. They can easily spare it, but it would mean so much in the developing world.” Western aid advocates do their part by painting gory pictures of famine and disease in Africa to justify the demand. Yet, some way, somehow, African leaders have been able to squeeze close to $150 billion per year from their poor, developing countries to enrich themselves.
Read on @ http://blog.heritage.org/2010/09/29/why-good-governance-matters-more-in-africa-than-aid/
Say NO to Protectionism, Dr. Kwesi Nduom!
Franklin Cudjoe
Friday September 24, 2010
Seems to me, creating local champions is fine, but not at all cost, when the local costs outweigh international ones? Not even for patriotic reasons else we will end up with the likes of the defunct Ghanaian carrier ,Ghana Airways- whose oversight employs more cooks and crooks than pilots, with a single but usually faulty aircraft that occasionally spins its passengers in the air with careless abandon, whilst maintaining its political status as “strategic national asset”.
Read on @ http://www.africanliberty.org/node/1094
What is the Best Way to Help the World’s Deserving Poor?
The Sunday Telegraph (UK) August 22, 2010
IMANI- sponsored letter in the The Sunday Telegraph (UK) August 22, 2010
As Africans, we urge the generous-spirited British to reconsider an aid programme they can ill afford, and which we do not want or need. A real offer from the British people to help our development would consist of the abolition of the Common Agricultural Policy, which keeps African agricultural exports out of the European marketplace.
Read the letter @ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/7958485/What-is-the-best-way-to-help-the-worlds-deserving-poor.html#disqus_thread
Nigeria at 50- A Celebration of Brute Life, Penury and Disillusion
Friday, October 01, 2010
As Nigerians celebrate 50 years of nationhood today, the promise of independence- a nation of free people living at peace with itself and neighbours, undergirded by individual and economic well being is still a distant dream. The President and his Governors may cut mammoth cakes and pop champagne and toast to success, perhaps personal success. Yet, this artificial success is derived from plunder and supervised penury foisted on the poverty industry and fueled by years of bad governance.
Read on @ http://www.africanliberty.org/node/1097
Nigeria’s Population- the Ultimate Resource, not an Economic Burden
Saturday, September 11, 2010
By Thompson Ayodele and Olusegun Sotola
A recent government- sponsored report warns that Nigeria is teetering on the edge of a demographic disaster as its annual population rate outpaces economic growth.
Read on @ http://www.africanliberty.org/node/1088
Untangling Central Africa for business
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
By Chofor Che
Central African governments seem much removed from the principle, that the true role of government in a free society is for it to make it possible for individuals and businesses to go about their lawful duties unhindered through outright plunder or exorbitant taxes..
Read on @ http://www.africanliberty.org/node/1086