Former President John Agyekum Kufuor says his recent comment that “we don’t just get up and say no to aid” has been misconstrued as an attack on the 'Ghana Beyond Aid' agenda.

“His [former President Kufuor] statement was in reaction to a media person's doubts about the feasibility of ‘Ghana Beyond Aid.’ President Kufuor reacted that it was feasible and that the president can only be interpreted as having made a visionary call to pursue such pragmatic policies as would enable Ghana [to] overcome aid-dependency as quickly as possible. Such policies would include loans, aid, or foreign investments to undertake the requisite investments including industrialization and export development to accelerate our wealth creation at all levels. What is needed to be done, he said, is to negotiate well in win-win frameworks with a grasp of the geopolitics around us,” the former President’s office said in a release issued on Wednesday.

At a graduation ceremony earlier this week, former President John Kufuor told the press that “we don’t just get up and say no to aid.”

He suggested instead that aid from foreign interests should be accepted until the country can sustain on its own. 

“No one comes here because they love us,” he acknowledged. “They come for what they can get and we must also know what we want from them and negotiate.”

Some publications and commentaries on the former President’s statement, according to the release issued by his office, have interpreted that to mean Mr Kufuor was taking a swipe at Ghana Beyond Aid, President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s vision. Ghana Beyond Aid is President Akufo-Addo’s grand plan to end Ghana’s dependency on foreign aid.

But in a response, the office  of the former President stated that “but for the ill-intention that appears to characterize these publications, they would not misconstrue his statement on ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ as a visionary agenda made with a conviction that, with the right policies and programmes, Ghana would see itself beyond aid in the foreseeable future.”

Read the full statement below.

Re: President Kufuor’s Alleged Comments on ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’

The Office of Former President John Kufuor has come across several publications in the Ghanaian media alluding to the former president allegedly having cast aspersions on the current Ghanaian government’s ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ agenda – the driving vision of its development agenda.

This office wants to make it clear that but for the ill-intention that appears to characterize these publications, they would not misconstrue his statement on ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ as a visionary agenda made with a conviction that, with the right policies and programmes, Ghana would see itself beyond aid in the foreseeable future.

His statement was in reaction to a media-person’s doubts about the feasibility of ‘Ghana Beyond Aid.’ President Kufuor reacted that it was feasible and that the president can only be interpreted as having made a visionary call to pursue such pragmatic policies as would enable Ghana overcome aid-dependency as quickly as possible. Such policies would include loans, aid, or foreign investments to undertake the requisite investments including industrialization and export development to accelerate our wealth creation at all levels. What is needed to be done, he said, is to negotiate well in win-win frameworks with a grasp of the geopolitics around us.

Indeed, we must be fair to ourselves as Ghanaians that ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ is the grand and achievable vision which we should seek to realize for the country. It doesn’t preclude us from using aid (loans included) to get there. Given the spread of the socio-economic and foreign policies which the government is currently pursuing, the call can be said to be already work in progress.

The former president wants all well-meaning and discerning people to cast their minds back to what the Marshal Plan of the United States did for West Germany after World War II. Germans utilized this aid from the US government under President Harry Truman to build their nation from the ashes of the war to create an economy which is the third largest in the world today. Of course, the German economy has, since the success of the Marshal Plan, graduated beyond aid a long time ago.

Such is what former President John Kufuor understands President Akufo-Addo wants the ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ vision to achieve for our nation. And he has the full confidence that Ghana, under the able leadership of the current president, will ultimately get there.

Signed

Dr. Kwabena Osei-Adubofour

Senior Aide and Spokesman for President John Kufuor

Tel: 020 8136920; email – oseiak1@gmail.com / oseiak1@hotmail.com.