Tough economic lessons from Ghana (1)

Though I may have been to Ghana, Nigeria’s closest English-speaking nation up to ten times now, there are always lessons to learn at each visit – good and bad. I will start from the airport.

So we have opened our own version of Accra’s new international airport in Abuja, and ours is much larger, one is usually touched by the serenity of Kotoka Airport. The people of Ghana are just a touch better organized. Or are they just slow? We shall look at that later. I needed to change some money into their local currency and was referred to a money exchange in the same airport building. The money exchange was manned by a single lady. The entire environment had a relaxed corporate feel about it.  For us here, we are now scared of our own shadows. Also, though Ghana is as diversified culturally as Nigeria, there were no stragglers around the airport asking if you wanted to change dollars. There weren’t a horde of beggars and hustlers or street traders at the airport too.

Lesson two, and still within the airport: As the taxi sought to exit the airport, there was an electronic barrier on which the driver had to scan a prepaid card. I asked how much they paid for parking, and it was around 20 Ghana Cedis per day (about N1,400). He said it was much higher for private cars – at least 50 Ghana Cedis for two hours (about N3,500). Here in Nigeria – at least Abuja that I use more frequently, private vehicles pay N200 or N300 to park all day, and big men go for free, especially if they have a long convoy with sirens. All cars with some government sticker on them also park for free. That is part of why we have too many loafers around our airports. All sorts of people who have no business there simply go to ‘hustle’ and source for unstructured ‘daily bread’ at the nation’s very gateway.

Let’s leave the airport. There is a surfeit of Daewoo Matiz (tiny cars) in Accra. Most of the Uber cars in Accra are that small. Sometimes you get a Rio or Corolla. Most of them have no air-conditioning and it seems that is not a big deal for them there. A typical Nigerian will complain, about the heat and the size of the car. There are a couple of lessons here. Each Daewoo Matiz car costs about 19,000 Ghana Cedis or a little less than $4,000. This is like N1.3million. But they are new, and effective. There are no ‘keke Napeps’ in Accra. There were a few bikes used for transport in some rough suburbs but none was noticed in the whole of Accra City. Because these small cars are purchased new, Uber easily prequalifies them.  There is a sense of contentment and modesty about people here. Nigerians are very aspirational and nothing can hold us down. However, I am unsure if our insatiable craving for luxury when we actually produce nothing will augur well in the near future.  Nigerians love big things, but we are incapable of making the smallest of things. Anyhow, Keke Napeps go for as much as N700,000 each in Nigeria, meaning that with the price of two, one could purchase one of these Daewoo cars. It must be a special arrangement they have because things are expensive in Ghana but one cannot find any new car in Nigeria for N1.4million. The cheapest Innoson car when I checked online, is N7.6million. The smallest Kia here could be as much as N2.5million.  It takes having a vision for a people to create these opportunities. However I don’t think we should proliferate Keke Napeps in our cities and make them a permanent feature in our future. I see small smart cars in the future of smart cities full of smart people.

The neatness of Accra city is always touching. Nowhere did I see any refuse dump on any road; not even in and around the notorious Makola Market. I have been to some really bad ghettos around Accra, though I understand many of them are now evacuated. I see a people that take themselves seriously. But it wasn’t all rosy. I had cause to get to Kwame Nkrumah Circle, trying to make my way – out of curiosity – to West Hills Mall Weija (which they claim is the largest in West Africa). The total chaos at the roundabouts was quite annoying, and after an hour we had to turn back. I felt that African leaders should begin to subscribe to 100% performance in everything they do. Service Excellence should be a state policy. Actually I humbly run an Institute so named (Institute for Service Excellence and Good Governance), which tries to promote these issues. The idea is that except you set service targets beyond 100% you could never attain 90%. By not having any standards at all, sometimes service falls to negative region.

There is a thick layer of classism and discrimination running in our governments in Africa. We would rather create things like VIP Lounges to try and patronize people who have money while leaving the vast majority in the lurch. But we forget that we could get so much more money from the international community if we treat our people like proper human beings. Kwame Nkrumah Circle should be manned 24hours a day by traffic controllers. I could say that what I saw there that day will not be permitted even in Nigeria (apart from traffic created by churches at some times in the month), because we complain a lot.  We have youths in great numbers in Africa. We should use them to organize our societies.

In the hotel where I stayed, there were elaborate brochures detailing tourist sites in Ghana. Another brochure focused on investment opportunities. These guys left nothing to chance. God help Nigeria. Even the immigration form we completed was more practical, made of better mat paper material and looked more respectable. And it is still a wonder that even within Africa, Nigeria is the only country where no one does any biometric capture of visitors. In Ghana, your iris is scanned, and your fingerprints taken as you enter and depart the country. This is the same in the African countries I have been – Liberia, Rwanda, Zambia, Cote D’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Benin Republic, Egypt, Uganda, Kenya. This biometric capture at the airport gives even visitors a sense of security and seriousness.  It’s a certainty that the contracts would have been issued out here, with the proceeds ending up in the foreign accounts of some oppressor. Ghana was organized and is trying to organize more and more. They are targeting tourist money, business money, and of course money-miss-road money.

What about the local products? I was shocked when I saw the packaging of Zobo drink by one Mensdo Limited. They called it Bissap – from Hibiscus. The packaging in glass bottles will sell the product anywhere in the world. That is what we need in Africa. The palmwine product we found in a restaurant was less well-packaged, but the product itself was wonderful. I doubt if one could find palm wine in any upscale restaurant in Nigeria. Things like packaging require a certain presence of mind. One of our problems in Nigeria is that we put the money first. Everyone is encouraged to get into entrepreneurship for no other reason than to ‘hammer’. Someone wishing to simply ‘hammer’ is likely to let slip on some quality issues. Yet I know that Nigerians appreciate quality when we see one. I believe there are many things we should be innovating and pushing to the world because we have the abilities to so do.

More next week.