1. The story of gold in Ghana (once the “Gold Coast”) is the story of missed opportunities.

2. Opportunities missed due to a constipation of imagination.

3. In the Mediaeval world, Ghana was part of the West African belt supplying 60% of the world’s gold. When gold was the source of global wealth.

4. By the Renaissance, Ghana’s share was in the 10% range, still mighty.

5. In the modern era, it has dropped from a peak near 5% to less than 3% and, due to record high prices, is climbing back up.

6. Though gold is a special commodity, it is still subject to the same value addition constraint that African countries have been grappling with for decades.

7. Except that African countries like Ghana have “value addition” here totally confused.

8. As we in the school of katanomics (www.katanomics.org) like to say: it is not the vision or ambition that endures. It is the detail and stamina of policy.

9. Ghana has been pushing bullion refineries for decades, starting in the 1^st Republic. At one point it had nearly a dozen.

10. But in the gold sector, value addition through refining doesn’t save your country. At best you get a 4% markup.

11. What you need is “value transformation” if you really want to hit the big leagues. So, jewelry. Because then you would be talking 200% plus markups. But jewelry is all about brand equity. Value can’t be imposed by fiat. Simply stringing some Adinkra symbols along does not brand equity make.

12. True transformation goes beyond even brand equity. It sits in high-knowledge enriched brand equity.

13. A Swiss Watch embodies a whole legacy and ecosystem of knowledge. Gold’s value contribution is less than 5%.

14. It is good that Ghana has kept faith with the ancient plan to turn gold to jewelry. Recently, GoldBod rebranded PMMC Jewelry to GoldBod Jewelry.

15. But the policy aspects can be improved massively. There is a need for deep brand equity and knowledge-ecosystem strategy.

16. For years, Ghana’s state-owned jeweler couldn’t find 2 kilograms a month for craft. Yet the country exports 2500 kilograms and almost 4000 kilograms a month raw.

17. There are weeks when the craftsmen in the 74-person strong workforce were literally idle.

18. Should Ghana look at countries like the Philippines that have used a public-private partnership model to enhance jewelry output? Where the state focuses on investing in knowledge and capacity and leaves the private sector to focus on brand development and marketing?

19. In Ghana, the state-owned GoldBod competes with the private sector as a jeweler, and is also responsible for licensing them. So far, it appears to have licensed less than 10% of the sector.

20. Yet the companies that seem to be pushing forward most aggressively in brand development, like Morgan Touch, are private.

As I said, the devil is in the detail. Overcoming the constipation of imagination that has afflicted Ghana for decades where gold is concerned would require the laxative of anti-katanomic critical thinking.