I thank the Heritage Foundation for inviting me to speak at one of Washington’s most celebrated centres of thought and intellectual endeavour. It is an honour to be here in such company and to see so many people eager to discuss the future of my country, Ghana, and Africa more broadly.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am, as you know, going to compete in Ghana’s next election in the latter part of 2016 as the presidential candidate for the New Patriotic Party. I was privileged to win our party’s primary with over 94 percent of the 140,000 strong electoral college, so our race was perhaps less exciting than your primaries going on at the moment. Our election is likely to take place one day before yours, November 7.

This has often been called the African century. Our growth is second only to that of Asia. We are rich in natural resources. Though we have security challenges, we are more at peace than before. We see the beginnings of meaningful inter-regional trade, and inter-continental trade.

In West Africa’s largest country, Nigeria, we have seen this year the first peaceful transition of power from one elected government to another. The world, fearing vote-rigging and violence, breathed a sigh of relief when Goodluck Jonathan conceded to Muhammadu Buhari. Buhari, like myself, was contesting not for the first time and not for the second time either. His victory is, obviously, a source of inspiration for me.

The whole of Africa is praying for President Buhari to succeed in the three main things that he set out to do: successfully countering the security threat from Boko Haram; instilling public sector discipline and radically tackling the culture of corruption and transforming the economy of oil-dependent Nigeria.

My own country is often held up as an example for the rest of Africa to follow. Our democracy is young, the first elections of the Fourth Republic took place in 1992; like here, with two main political parties, the NPP (my party) and the NDC, the incumbent.  At the height of the Cold War in 1961, when authoritarian rule was beginning to rear its ugly head in post-colonial Ghana, Joseph Boakye Danquah, the founder of the Ghanaian liberal democratic tradition, defined the goal of the United Party, from which the NPP descends, in the following terms: “Our duty is to liberate the energies of the people for the growth of a property-owning democracy in this land, with a right to life, and freedom and justice as the principles to which the government and laws of the land should be dedicated to in order specifically to enrich the lives, property and liberty of each and every citizen.”

Since 1992, power has changed hands from one party to the other twice, each after two terms. Next year marks the end of the second term of the NDC. What is different, however, is that, even though 2016 marks the end of the second term of this NDC government, the current President took office in July 2012, after the sad death of President John Atta Mills.

This, it can be said, ups the stake, with a president desperate for a second term, yet pulled down by his own government’s unimpressive track record since 2009. Nigeria showed the way last April and we hope this will turn out to be a lesson that Ghanaians can learn from our neighbours; that change is, sometimes, needed after just one full term.

The stakes are certainly high. The calls for change in my country continue to increase. And let me explain some of the issues informing this clarion call. Ghana’s public debt has shot up 1,000% in less than 7 years since the NDC took office. This year we are spending nearly $2.5 billion to service interest payments on our loans alone. That same figure represented our entire debt in 2009.

Over the last 3 years, the social and economic lives of the people have been heavily disrupted by severe, chronic power cuts. The cost of this is estimated to be equivalent to 7% of our GDP, according to calculations made by the reputable Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), based at the University of Ghana.

Corruption is perceived to be at an all time high. Investor confidence is low. Unemployment is worsening as businesses are folding; cost of borrowing is at 35%; inflation keeps rising, at 17.5% last month; cost of living is high; our cedi has been one of the world’s worst performing currencies over the last couple of years. Depreciation and our inability to pay our bills forced Ghana, oil-producing Ghana, to apply for an IMF bailout last year. This has put a 10% cap in wage increases, way below the rate of inflation, making people poorer, and a cap on public sector hiring as well.

Perhaps, one of the perplexing state stories in the last decade or so is how did it all go so spectacularly wrong for Ghana. As a Bloomberg story captured it earlier this year: ‘Ghana’s Success Story Goes Dark’.

Even we in opposition did not think our competitors could cause this much damage – could bring us to a point this low. What is frustrating for the Ghanaian people is that we believe it is all, in essence, avoidable. We believe we have what it takes to make Ghana work again. So my task is not to deepen the gloom, but to give both Ghanaians and the investor community a reason to hope. That, yes, the story today is bleak and it’s painful, but change is coming.

But it is also that option of being able to change which some of us fear is being threatened. No one should take democracy for granted. Democracy must be protected at all times, and right now it is under threat in Ghana.

The biggest threat facing Ghana’s democracy is our fraudulent voter register. It contains millions of extra names. The register is bloated – it is estimated that upwards of 2 million of the registered voters are bogus. It is packed with ineligible underage voters, and foreign and fake identities. If we’re calling ourselves a democracy, this is unacceptable. This is a real problem, the kind that cannot be brushed under the carpet as it provides the vehicle for manipulation and fraud.

 

  • 2012 we compiled a new register. The EC captured some 13m. It set about to clean it up and came up with the figure of 14m after.
  • Ghana has a median age of 20.
  • Yet, we have over 55% of the population registered to vote. This is by far the highest in the whole of Africa and its young population. The numbers simply do not add up.
  • We have presented evidence of tens of thousands of cross-border registration of non-nationals on the register to the EC.
  • For a country where a margin of 40,000 votes can determine who wins an election, having a register bloated by over 2 million names is totally unacceptable.
  • Three out of the five main political parties have called for a new register. Our two living former heads of state, both President Jerry John Rawlings and President John Agyekum Kufuor, several important civil society organisations, religious leaders such as Imams, the Christian Council, the Catholic Bishops Conference and others, have also spoken out in favour of a changed register.

 

On September 16, a civil society organisation, Let My Vote Count, took to the streets in a demonstration for a new, credible register. Much to everyone’s shock, the peaceful demonstration turned bloody when police brutalized the unarmed demonstrators. This type of violence is a troubling occurrence in Ghana.

 

Ghana has worked incredibly hard to preserve her democratic character, one administration shouldn’t be allowed to undermine it. And at times this requires putting the good of the country above partisan interests. In 2012, as you may recall, Ghana was on the knife’s edge as a result of the Supreme Court ruling 5 – 4 rejecting the opposition’s challenge of the presidential election result. As the leader of the opposition, I decided that the interest of peace and stability required that my supporters and I accept the disputed verdict to prevent any possible turmoil.

 

The hope is that the global community takes notice and urges change before the election. Rather than looking back at the 2016 election, shaking their heads saying “how did this happen”?  We’re telling you exactly how it’s going to happen. All the pieces are in place for a rigged election.

As Africans, we have witnessed election-related violence tear countries apart. We know what we risk should these problems not be addressed.

There is a connection between poor democracy and poor economic performance. Short term-ism and political expediency in regard to elections tend to correlate with a lack of vision and incompetence in the economic field.

In Ghana, we are so much poorer than we need to be. Despite our status as many people’s favourite African country, Ghana, like other African societies, offers limited opportunities for the masses. One thing that Ghana, and Africa, must do is to add value to the sale of raw materials and natural resources.

We need to transform stagnant, jobless economies built on the export of raw materials and unrefined goods to value-added economies that provide jobs to build strong middle-class societies and lift the mass of the people out of dire poverty. We can do so by insisting on the most basic elements of social justice – making quality basic education and healthcare accessible to all to promote a culture of incentives and opportunity.

In east Asia, I see three key things that allowed their economies to develop so spectacularly: modernising agriculture, a clear industrial policy, and rationalising the financial sector so that it supports growth in agriculture, and growth in manufacturing and industry.

 

That is the way we can build a resilient economy.

Agriculture, in particular, must be modernised, with the help of government, to bring about this economic transformation.

Over the border in Cote d’Ivoire, we are seeing a tremendous expansion of agricultural productivity. Today, the export value of products from Côte d’Ivoire – cashew, cotton, oil palm, cocoa and coffee – is $12billion a year. The same can happen in Ghana with our farmers, who generate barely $2billion annual export revenues, largely from cocoa. The same diversification that has occurred in Cote d’Ivoire can also take place in Ghana, with a corresponding increase in agricultural productivity.

Above all, we must stimulate private sector growth by giving free reign to the Ghanaian’s sense of enterprise and ingenuity. This requires a monetary policy that stabilises the currency and reduces significantly the cost of borrowing to make Ghanaian enterprises competitive; and a fiscal policy that encourages local production and controls the growth of our national debt.

Africa has benefitted from inward investment from the west and from major developing economies, particularly China. But we must be careful to put these investments to the right purpose, which is to develop our infrastructure for the long term, diversify the economy, promote local production and develop trade within the continent and within its regions. We must accelerate the process of regional integration of ECOWAS so we can create a genuine regional market of 350 million people, which is estimated to reach 500 million by 2030.

Africans travel to Asia or Europe to buy finished products for our local markets, but we must acquire the know-how and technology that will enable us to produce our own finished products and trade within the continent.

Our dependence on raw materials has in fact increased in the past century. It is this dependence that feeds our dependence on foreign aid.  We cannot be doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.

The challenges are immense. Much damage has been done. But, I remain staunchly optimistic about our future. I am proud to be a Ghanaian, the people who were the first in sub-Saharan Africa to free themselves from colonial rule, and who remain the pace-setters in the development of the principles of democratic accountability, respect for human rights and the rule of law on the African continent.

And as we move toward another election, I am reminded – and proud – of how hard we have fought for our democracy. But I must warn you that we cannot take progress for granted, we cannot take fair play and democracy for granted in my country, indeed in any country.

We welcome – and need – the vigilance, the advice and the assistance of all lovers of freedom as our country continues its journey to prosperity and modernity. And, then, the Ghanaian people will make their own unique contribution to the growth of African and world civilization.