Ghana: Oil, Millionaires And the Poor

The question hanging today in the dusty Ghanaian air is: creating few millionaires out of the oil yet to be tapped or putting in place sustainable structures that will ensure lasting prosperity for millions of Ghanaians who have suffered too long? This is what we all want to be sure of. We are all interested in which direction if we take is likely to build for us a new Ghana.

A new Ghana which is respected by even those who have never taken as serious and only see us as tame gorillas, a new Ghana with a prosperous economy, a new Ghana which has recaptured its lost hope and can see an incredible bright future. But it is like we are going to fall into the oil trap. Already some Ghanaians have started having fantasies of becoming extremely rich to be accepted as a member of the millionaires club.
God bless whoever pushed the idea of Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) into the heads of Rawlings, his men and women to invest in the oil exploration and also Kufuor, his men and women who did not abandon the project. Ghana is to become a proud member of global oil producers by 2010. By either late 2009 or 2010 Tano Basin of the Gulf of Guinea in the Western Region is to start oil production.

Today everyone is talking about making a fortune from the oil yet to be produced. It is dangerous for us to build our economy from oil alone. Rather we should think of diversifying our economy away from the oil dependency. Russia and Nigeria have fallen into the oil trap. They have become lazy riding on the back of oil money.

They are not too much interested in the needed modernisation of the manufacture sector and dealing with the devil called corruption.

AllAfrica