Foreign aid has not raised any country’s gross domestic product one notch

... aber die Taschen kurrupter Eliten gefüllt und sie von den eigentlichen Aufgaben abgelenkt!

"Ghanaians can be forgiven for seeing all those mansions and late model luxury cars and thinking Ghana is awash in venture capital. The reality is that after 17 long years, the total capitalization of the Ghana Stock Exchange inched close to $18 billion as of August 4, 2008. Modern Ghana News attributes the growth to what it calls “significant offshore investments.” If you follow the information trail from the Bank of Ghana you also know that the bulk of money fueling the stock market as far as the banking sector has come from Nigerian and other foreign sources. Where is all that local, read Ghanaian money when foreigners snap all those bank shares even though the banking sector has been the main engine fueling the growth of the Ghana Stock Exchange over the past five years? If Ghanaian can’t or won’t invest in a known winner how does one expect them to pour money into a certified loser? There is no need to spend a lot of time on the argument that selling GT to a foreign investor amounts to inviting the colonialists back. Much has been said about the fact that at the time of independence in 1957 Ghana was roughly at par, economic development-wise, with Malaysia and Singapore. Today, those two countries are two of the pillars of the so-called Asian tigers. While we go round the world’s capitals cup-in-hand pleading for handouts to balance our budget, Singapore commands one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds with assets in excess of $100 billion and is fast overtaking Hong Kong to be the world’s fourth largest financial center. Singapore didn’t get to where it is today because God was kinder to the city-state. They opened their economy to “exploitation” while we closed ours because everything foreign was “colonialist” and/or “imperialist.” Critics of the sale of GT to Vodafone seem stuck in the 1960s. The reality is that foreign aid has not raised any country’s gross domestic product one notch. It takes private capital with all its ugliness to develop an economy. Look at China and Russia today and then look at North Korea. China and Russia saw through the emptiness of socialist sloganeering and opened their economies to participation by the same “capitalists” and “imperialists” they spent decades maligning. In just about ten years, foreign participation (like what Vodafone is doing in Ghana) has catapulted China’s economy into the word’s third largest after the U.S. and Japan. By contrast, North Korea with its closed Stalinist economy relies on foreign handouts to feed its people. We can be like China or we can be like North Korea." (Hervorhebung KDL)

>> zum vollständigen Artikel / to the entire article (ghanaweb.com)

Ich glaube sowieso nicht daran, dass sich in oberflächlich verankerten Demokratien westlicher Provenienz, die oft nur Fassadenchrakter aufweisen und sich im Ritual vierjähriger i.d.R. gefälschter Wahlen erschöpfen, Demokratie und Wirtschaft nahchaltig entwickeln können. Sie sind auch fast 50 Jahre nach ihrer Unabhängigkeit noch durch hochgradig klientelistische Regierungs- und Wirtschaftsstrukturen charakterisiert und verkörpern Staatsgebilde und Wirtschaftssysteme, die aufgrund ihrer ethnischen Vielfalt weit davon entfernt sind, homogen im Sinne von Nationalstaaten zu sein. Letzteres ist aber meiner Auffassung nach eine Grundvoraussetzung für nachhaltige Demokratie- und Wirtschaftsentwicklung nach westlichem Muster. Bei dieser Beurteilung folge ich übrigens einer Historiker-Strömung, die das Scheitern des Kaiserreichs (1. Weltkrieg) und der Weimarer Republik auf den „späten“ deutschen Nationalstaat (1870/71) zurückführen.