I once heard a rather shocking joke. It was rude, insensitive and rather insulting, so, of course, I'm going to share it with you.

When God was creating the Earth, He did it continent by continent. When He created the Americas, He didn't give them much by way of natural resources - a bit of oil, some good earth for growing crops… not much else. When He got to Europe, He gave them even less. Just a bit of coal, and lots of cold, cold weather. Same for Asia and Australasia. But when God got to Africa, He just went wild, throwing every single natural resource you could imagine at our continent; gold, diamonds, copper,  bauxite, manganese, cocoa, timber, fertile soil, amazing weather…

Now, Angel Gabriel had been watching God carefully and wondered why He was being so excessively generous with His allocation of resources to this one continent. Eventually, his curiosity got the better of him, and he just had to ask, "God eei! Na why? You gave so little to the Americas, to Europe, Asia and co., but you're putting everything you've got into Africa? That's not very fair, is it?"

God paused for a moment, stood up from his work, turned to the curious young angel and said, "Just you wait until you see the incompetent people I put there to manage things".

Yeah. Are you offended? You should be. I certainly was - especially since I heard this joke told by a white man to a room full of white people, who burst out laughing until one of them spotted me and was gracious enough to at least, pretend to be ashamed.

But may I ask why you are offended? Is it because the joke gives a false impression of what African people are like? Or is it because it gives an all-too-true reflection of our failings as a race? I'm sure opinion will be divided on this.

Ghana is the second largest exporter of Cocoa in the world. We make about 2 billion dollars from it every year. We supply cocoa to the USA, China, Japan, Germany, the UK, and several other nations. Nestle Switzerland is one company in one of the countries that buy cocoa from us. Their annual revenue is 10.4 billion dollars. Yep, they buy a small percentage of what we produce and use it to make ten times our total revenue.

But maybe it's not our fault. After all, we don't set the prices for cocoa… We don't for gold either. So whose natural resources are they anyway?

Oil is the latest natural goodie to be discovered on our shores. Do you remember how excited we were when we discovered oil? My goodness, we had hit the lottery! All our problems were solved! We started spending the money, our mouths writing cheques our butts couldn't cash. And we weren't in the least worried because we had found oil.

Then reality set in. Those capable of extracting the oil were pushing a hard bargain. They claimed they would be taking the biggest risk so needed the biggest profit share. As for us, we just wanted our oil to flow, so we signed on the dotted line, and ended up with next to nothing. Every year, we sit and watch the oil money flow steadily out of the country. So whose oil is it anyway?

So why does that joke offend us again? is it because it's false? Or because it's true? Today, we'll try and get closer to an answer. The Super Morning Show comes to you live from the Accra International Conference Centre, where the 6th Ghana Oil & Gas Exhibition is about to kick off. Throughout the show, we will be talking to industry experts and practitioners, trying to understand how Ghana can make the most of our latest Gift from God. Stay with us for the duration.

My name is Kojo Yankson, and oil is a resource nations dream of discovering. Ghana has discovered it, but will we be waking from a dream, or sinking into a nightmare?

GOOD MORNING, GHANAFO!