Founder and President of the Ashesi University, Dr. Patrick Awuah, has urged the government to create an enabling environment for the inclusion of the private sector in the development of the country.

He stated that society which subdues the role private sectors play faces high level of economic hardships that derail its developmental progress.

He told Samson Lardi Anyenini on Newsfile that it is critical for societies to encourage innovation in the private sector to bring about an infusion of capital which would, in turn, lessen the country’s debt burden.

“We’ve seen over the last 100 years that any society that suppresses its private sector quickly finds itself in very difficult economic conditions. In fact, we’ve experienced this in Ghana…the private sector came under tremendous pressure from the government and our capital income dropped, people went hungry, banks collapsed, and businesses collapsed.”

“It is critically important that we enable the private sector and enable innovation in the private sector. Just think about some of the products and innovations that we take for granted today that have dramatically extended and enriched human life. Things like antibiotics which doubled human life expectancy just over the last 100 years alone. Think about the refrigerator, the automobile, mobile phones and the internet and agriculture…all of these things were provided by the efforts of individual inventors, entrepreneurs, farmers and the private sector - they were not products provided by the government,” he said.

According to him, “these individuals and organisations earn money on the value that they’ve added in society, they pay some of that money as taxes to the government and thereby fund the government.”

“We need to educate people to have an entrepreneurial mind. We need to educate people to have curiosity, creativity, and the ability to search for multiple solutions to problems and to explore different solutions to problems.”

“We need to educate people who have the courage to take risks, who have the courage to act and to persist through difficulties,” he recommended.

Dr. Awuah, therefore, suggested that Ghana should focus more on development than on research.