To Kevin Parcell - Greetings From Ghana!

Hello Kevin,

I have just literally discovered you - and gosh, you are so young: yet have such a brilliant mind! I write and farm in Ghana - and like to think I do original thinking, too.

And nothing irritates me more, than those whose activities have turned the continent of Africa, into a global superpower, in begging bowl diplomacy (both in individual terms, as well as at the nation-state level).

Years ago (in the early 2000's!), I used to write a column called "Young Entrepreneurs" in the Ghanaian newspaper, The Independent. And during that time, I came across so many brilliant and hardworking young Ghanaians - both male and female.

It is simply amazing the huge numbers of hardworking young people (with drive and an amazing sense of initiative!), doing incredibly creative things, to try and make an honest living for themselves, in our country.What many of them desperately need, is free broadband internet access.

Unfortunately, the morons who rule us, have just sold off a state-owned telecoms company.

Yet, that most valuable national asset in a 21st century ICT age, someday could easily have become the national instrument, which an imaginative regime would have used to empower the Ghanaian nation-state, to in turn empower its growing pool of bright young minds - thus enabling them to take their place under God's sun, in the competitive 21st century knowledge-based globalised world economy: by having subsidised and affordable mobile broadband internet access!

Short-term thinking; lack of foresight; zilch vision; and a predilection for accepting kickbacks from foreign carpetbagger-tycoons, on the lookout for undervalued state assets across Africa, to acquire (as revealed in the recent case in the law courts of Norway, at Oslo: involving the Norwegian cement giant, Scancem - which had a secret slush fund, it used to buy off African leaders, to get them to offload vastly under-valued state-owned cement factories, across the continent!), has led to the sale of Ghana Telecom; which in today's fast-changing technological world, could be such an important instrument for creative and imaginative national development, in my native Ghana.

How could any forward-thinking regime, even begin to think of selling a state-owned company that has the technology, to potentially locate and communicate with every single citizen in the land, whom the sensible modern African nation-state with the means to do so, issues with a free mobile phone with GPS technology built into it - so that state institutions and agencies, can interact directy, with each resident of Ghana on a daily basis, you might wonder?

Well, this is Ghana, Kevin - a nation ruled by very well-educated men and women, many of the most powerful of whom, are nothing more than (oh, ever-so-respectable and clever!) ace-hypocrites and plain daylight robbers!

And yet, unbelievably, Ghana, Kevin, will have the wherewithal, within the next five years - if our leaders then, are patriotic enough, as well as clever and strong-willed politically, to nationalise our burgeoning (nascent) oil and gas industry: which literally sits atop billions of barrels of confirmed and proven deposits of oil; and heaven knows what quantities of cubic metres, of natural gas too!

Nationalising that industry (and paying fair compensation to the foreigners now dominating the industry, naturally!) will be the only way of ensuring that the tragedies of endemic poverty amidst national abundance, in nations like Chad; Equatorial Guinea; Nigeria; Angola; and Congo Brazzaville, is not repeated in Ghana.

In those sadly benighted nations, it is only the politically well-connected and educated urban elites, and foreign oil companies (as well as thousands of sundry carpetbagger-foreign adventurers!), who have been the only beneficiaries of revenues from their oil and natural gas industries!

But ordinary Ghanaians have a quiet and steely determination that democracy will not be allowed to be used by our super-clever (at ripping our country off, regularly!) political and business elites, as a convenient cloak, to enable them to legally hijack the benefits of the wealth from our new-found oil and natural gas deposits.

The Ghanaian people (and, I mean all of them, without exception!) and their nation, not foreign corporations and their well-fed, and fat-cat shareholders, will be the only beneficiaries of the wealth from Ghana's oil and gas deposits! Period.

Ordinary people are going to make sure that that wealth is used to transform Ghanaian society, into Africa's equivalent, of Scandinavia's egalitarian societies!

But I digress, Kevin - would any regime that did creative-thinking, and was interested in creating an enterprise culture amongst the next generation, not think of using a state-owned telecoms company, such as Ghana Telecom, to provide subsidised and virtually free broadband Internet access, to the populace at large: as a means of growing the SME sector - by the provision, by the state, of this vital technological tool as a window to the world, for the broad masses of Ghanaians?

And would that not enable millions of mobile phone owners in this nation of hardworking and ambitious individuals (without opportunity!), to use the world wide web to help them trade their way out of poverty?

Traditionally, our pre-colonial societies frowned on begging - and there is no need really for any African today, to have to beg anyone in the developed world.

We have been blessed by nature in my part of Africa, for example - and we have all around us, everything we need to enable us lead sustainable lives: that are of the best quality and comparable to that found in other well-led and well-run societies, elsewhere, right across the planet Earth .

A key missing link is free access to the "web 2.0" online world, for ordinary people - something which will provide young people with an opportunity to sell their products and services to buyers from around the world.

I'd like to share ideas with you - as you seem to strike a cord in me! Do Google: ghanapolitics. And if you feel like the way I think, after reading some of my articles, do get in touch: peakofithompson@yahoo.co.uk

We could also "googletalk", if you want - as its always nice to hear what people actually sound like! Somehow, of all the "thinkers" I have come across lately (literally stumbled upon your "world", by accident!), you seem the most "human" and approachable! Stay blessed, you brilliant young mind!

Best wishes,

Kofi.

PS As I have virtually no formal education, I admire original thinking and thinkers, a great deal - hence this missive to you!