What Is The Nature Of The Society That Will Evolve In The Ghana Beyond Aid We Seek?

What is the world coming to, one wonders? Recently, I witnessed a vicious fight between the biggest two boys in a gang of young boys numbering six, and aged between ten and fifteen. They appeared to be street urchins who made a living collecting scrap metal and plastic waste for sale to a recycling business on the fringes of the Budumburam Liberian refugee camp, where I surmised they were heading for.

Such was the intensity of the fight I witnessed - and tried valiantly to halt and luckily eventually did - and the ugly nature of their rivalry (made plain by what they told each other they would have done to the other had I not intervened) that one could not help but wonder whether they were destined to end up becoming the kind of callous and ruthless armed robbers, whose egregious  cruelty towards their victims one hears, sees and reads about,  in Ghanaian media reports, if as a people we fail to commit to the UN SDGs and achieve all of them by the 2030 deadline.

It is alarming that our society's moral fabric has eroded to such an extent that today many marginalised young people are having to fend  for themselves at such tender ages. Surely, the more responsible sections of the Ghanaian  media have a responsibility to question the nature of the society we want to evolve in the Ghana beyond aid, which precious few in this country appear to know precisely how we will eventually get to?

Above all, we must  question whether as a nation committed to the attainment of all the 17 UN SDGs,  it makes sense to mortgage the future of our younger generations, in order to get to the Ghana beyond aid that our current leaders have rightly set as a national goal, by continuously borrowing money.  And should we not also question whether it is fair to future generations of our people, for private-sector entities to be allowed to destroy our natural heritage in pursuit of short-term profits, at the expense of the well-being of ordinary people today?

The question is: Are those who say it is foolish and shortsighted for a nation with a warm and welcoming population, which is also blessed with a countryside full of the awesome bounties of Mother Nature that could anchor a thriving ecotourism industry creating trillions of cedis in wealth that remains in Ghana, and jobs galore for millions of our younger generations - including those six street urchins I mentioned earlier - to continue focusing on the extractive industries destroying our forests, and poisoning  soils, streams, rivers and groundwater sources across vast swathes of the Ghanaian countryside with sundry  toxins including heavy metals such mercury and cynide?

As political slogans go, it is definitely one of the cleverest yet. However, our leaders must take cognisance of the views of the contrarians amongst us who insist that endlessly parroting the slogan 'Ghana beyond aid' without telling the world how we actually intend to get there, and the nature of the society we expect to evolve in our country when we finally get there, will get us nowhere fast. For the sake  of the aforementioned street urchins and other marginalised citizens who make up Ghanaian society's base-of-the-pyramid demographic, those who now govern our nation must provide answers to those troubling questions.