AN EXAMINATION OF GHANA BEYOND AID: PROSPECTS AND CHALLENGES

ABSTRACT

Ghana has had a well-documented dalliance with many donor countries and multilateral donor agencies since the 1960s. However, in his Independence Day speech in March 2017, the President, Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo signaled his intent to pursue the vision of a Ghana that is not dependent on aid. This led to the commissioning of the Ghana Beyond Aid Committee to draw up the roadmap for achieving this objective. The main objective of this study therefore is to examine the government’s new direction of taking Ghana beyond aid to know what it means, the options to foreign aid the government seeks to explore and how it intends to achieve this aspiration as well as the prospects and challenges that could result from this new direction. To achieve the set objectives, the study employed qualitative methods by relying on primary and secondary sources which include face to face interviews, books, journal articles, reports and internet sources. The study found that the approach to a Ghana Beyond Aid is not a radical rejection of aid. Rather, it takes a gradualist approach by building capacity to go beyond aid. It also found that aid will be leveraged alongside domestically mobilized resources to eventually go beyond aid. These alternative sources to aid include both foreign and domestic options like a 100 year sovereign bond, municipal bonds as is the practice in Rwanda, broadening the tax base, fiscal prudence in the public sector and leveraging natural resources as has been done in the 2018 Sinohydro agreement. The study concludes that although the vision of a Ghana beyond aid is a laudable one, it can be achieved when there is agreement among politicians on the direction of the nation when it comes to its development trajectory.