Ghana has a significant presence and
investment of outsiders from the US, Great Britain, India, China,
South Africa, Japan, Lebanon, Turkey and Nigeria. In Accra you see a
South African retailer competing against a British retailer, fancy
Indian restaurants sharing kitchens with fancy Chinese restaurants,
Turkish chocolate selling alongside Lebanese chocolate in public
markets, Indian supermarkets next to Lebanese-run supermarkets,
Indians working for Japanese firms with Nigerians, and so on. Let's
not even get started on the numerous African countries where refugees
come to Ghana from. Is the solution to 'international intervention'
as our leaders so often complain about to make ourselves so open to
international presence that no single country has any significant
influence over other? I ask because Ghanian leaders say great many
things, but never seem to mention the 'hidden foreign overlords'.
As a note of interest, President KA
Busia in 1983 decided that Ghana had had enough of Nigerians and
blamed them for all the problems in Ghana. He deported 550,000
Nigerians. In retaliation, Nigeria stopped export of Wheat, the
staple food-grain, to Ghana. Ghana had to resort to buying Wheat from
the U.S at four times the price. Today, of course, there are many
Nigerians in all sectors in Ghana and Ghana is the top choice for the
Nigerian elite to send their children to study (apart from US and UK)
even though Nigeria is the bigger richer more resource-rich country.
As an uninteresting sidenote, three of
my classes are in the KA Busia lecture hall/building.
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