It is hardly necessary to consult the statistical service brochures to discover that Ghana is becoming an affluent nation; a look around is sufficient. The current income level of most Ghanaians is high, and their purchasing power is becoming vigorous. They drive one or more cars, watch one or more television sets, own one or more telephones. They have washing machines to do their laundry and automatic appliances to do most of their household choirs-they now have more time than ever to switch off these appliances and get away from it all. In fact, leisure itself is becoming a serious problem.
In this backdrop of success it often appears a contradiction to discuss failure, but that is what one is talking about when one speaks of poverty. And in too many places, poverty is hard to see amid the glitter of prosperity. I do not think there is a Ghanaian unmindful of the fact that prosperity is only common with visible few; majority of Ghanaian are silently wallowing in poverty unseen. Ghanaians are mindful, for example, that there are region in Ghana, where the glitter of prosperity is extremely dull … where prosperity is a word in the dictionary but not a next-door neighbor. Ghanaians are aware, too, that there is something wrong in certain blocks of even all our big cities, blocks that are lumped together under names like Zongos in most towns, Ga Mashie, Chorkor or Nima in our capital city.
It is safe to say that there is no city, region or town in Ghana free of this kind of economic trouble. Therefore the question is not, does poverty exist? Nor how much poverty is there? But how are we getting rid of it?
In fact there is increasingly, an unseen Ghana, a land of limited opportunity and restricted choice. In it live over10 million families who try to find shelter, feed and clothe their children, stave off disease and malnutrition, and somehow build a better life on less than GHC10 a week, or approximately GHC520 a year. Almost two thirds of these families struggle to get along on less than GhC20 a week.
Being poor is not a choice for these millions; it is a rigid way of life. It is handed down from generation to generation in a cycle of inadequate education, inadequate housing, inadequate jobs, and stunted ambitions. It is a peculiar axiom of poverty that the poor are poor because they earn little and that they earn little because they are poor.
There can be no end to the evidence of poverty in Ghana. What now stand inevitable but often sang on rhetoric platform is the war against poverty. It is a war that can never be won quickly, of course, but it can be won decisively in Ghana through a concerted regional, state, and local effort to eliminate the conditions and causes of impoverishment.
Indeed, Ghana, with its enormous natural resources, growing technical know-how, and productive capacity, must demonstrated her ability to direct these resources toward this goal and to achieve it. Two factors are absolutely prerequisite to success in any effort to eliminate poverty: The economy must be and remain strong and continue to develop, thereby providing maximum employment at optimum pay and the last, barriers that seal off so many Ghanaians from the opportunities available to the selected few must be overthrown.
Indeed, it is only with this that we can visualize, on the near horizon, Ghana without poverty.
God bless
