U.S. Should Help Ghana’s Experiment for Recovery

Kudos for Scott Kraft’s uplifting article on Ghana (Times, Aug. 21), “Ghana Now a Showcase for Recovery.” It was one of those rare articles that departed from the norm of the gloom and doom reportage on Africa.

Kraft was right in pointing to the radical changes in attitudes as the most significant achievement of the regime of Jerry J. Rawlings. But perhaps more important is the image of non-corruptibility that the leader has maintained for the past four years.

The West is aiding Ghana now precisely because of the perception that aid money will be properly applied. But above all, it is in the mutual interests of the aid-receiving country and the donor countries that Ghana’s economy be placed on a sound footing. As the Oregon-based Kaiser Aluminum Co. has learned after its long experience in Ghana, a right attitude and an understanding of a country’s peculiar needs can be beneficial. The Kaiser aluminum smelter plant in Ghana is among the most profitable in the world.

The Japanese who are also providing aid are aware of the rich marine life Ghana is endowed with, and most important of all, of her highly skilled and trainable work force, a spinoff from her heavy investment in education during the early ‘60s.

During the mid-1970s the Japanese built a medical research center in memory of Hideo Noguchi who died in Ghana at the turn of the century while conducting research into yellow fever. The Japanese contractors were amazed at the speed with which Ghanaian artisans and technicians caught on with their modern equipment, and how easily they followed instructions.

If Ghana is now implementing the World Bank/International Monetary Fund plan to the hilt, as Kraft pointed out, she requires more aid from the United States and not less. U.S. investors can take advantage of Ghana’s new investment code and invest in the vast mineral deposits of gold, diamond, bauxite, iron, columbite, titanium, platinum and manganese, which are yet untapped.

It is unfortunate that the U.S. government should be cutting back on aid at a time when other Western industrialized countries and Japan are proffering assistance.

Ghana, a tiny country with a big mouth, is bound to differ with a superpower on certain matters of principle, including racism in South Africa. And who said small countries cannot have principles? But that should not be cause for the punitive withdrawal of aid by the leader of the free world.

Rather, the United States should be perceived as providing workable alternatives to Third World countries and not as thwarting Third World aspirations.

Ghana, like many African countries, is resilient. She does not ask for handouts. All she requires is help, which most all nations have had at one time or other in their histories.

If the Ghana experiment works out, it will most definitely have a reverberating effect on the continent, the way her independence in 1957 did. The time is ripe now for the U.S. government to review its policy toward that country, and to make the experiment a success story.

KWAKU ANNOR

Los Angeles