Bright B. Simons, of IMANI and mPedigree, took participants through the rudiments of the theory of Unintended Consequences, after which a spirited discussion about the role of the government in the developmental state ensued.
Bright spent some time justifying his position that “specialization” and “competition” are fundamental principles that seem to produce optimal results and favour small government over big government. “We can only ask government to do more when it has demonstrated competence in the things it is specialized to do, or ought to specialize to do, such as the provision of judicial services, guaranteeing the rule of law and strengthening the framework that enables fair competition amongst self-interested private interests”. When government neglects these core duties and wanders off into areas where it has not historically developed a capacity to engage, all sorts of sub-optimal outcomes are the result.”
He cited the sprawls that have taken over the Spintex and Tema motorway corridors as examples of the unintended consequences that can defeat even the best intentions of even decent governments. Ghana’s post-colonial economic policy design saw these corridors as necessary to connect an industry periphery with municipal heartlands, but the technocrats could not have fully foreseen and therefore accommodated the eventual effects, which are the emergence of residential sprawls across a vital set of metropolitan arteries.
Gabby Otchere-Darko
Gabby Otchere-Darko, Executive Director of the Danquah Institute, and former Managing Editor of the Statesman, usually credited as being the oldest newspaper in Ghana, developed the theme of government duty further, narrowing the focus to Rule of Law and Civil Liberties.
He made an interesting point that nearly all the purposive social actions of the Hitlers, Abachas, and Stalins, of yesteryear, were perfectly legal according to the constitutions that they bulldozed through. In that sense “The Rule By Law” does not necessarily coincide with the “Rule of Law”. To properly identify the key features of the rule of law, we must necessarily view it against a backdrop of a kind of constitutionalism which assumes certain basic rights to be unquestionable and unalterable by any sovereignty beyond the law itself.
Franklin Cudjoe
Franklin Cudjoe, Executive Director of IMANI, thrilled the gathering, when his time came, with an amazing array of anecdotes and personal accounts of the struggles – both intellectual and social – involved in the process of developing a “homegrown think-tank” that was independent-minded and prided itself on objective, but forceful, research.
He later laid open the critical elements of the debate about property rights, by situating it firmly in the struggle for fundamental freedom. Property implies empowerment and guarantees dignity. Property implies a stake in the security of the collective, because the guarantee of freedoms also, necessarily, requires a mechanism to implement restraints on any anarchic tendencies that may pose a threat to the notion of property. Therefore, property is also critical to the prospects of civil society – the layer beneath the state that activates our concerns about the collective that predate the state.
Reverend Ogbarmey Tetteh
The last tutorial speaker of the night was Reverend Ogbarmey Tetteh of Databank Research & Information Limited recounted the amazing story of the founding of Databank, and its evolution into one of the most iconic brands in Africa today. Databank rubs shoulders with the biggest global names in finance for Africa’s most coveted investment and investment research prizes, such as the Africa Investor Awards.
His main talk highlighted the importance of capital markets and financial intermediation in the development processes of emerging and frontier economies. He saw that the many knowledge gaps, and even capacity constraints of the regulatory system, are all in fact considerable opportunities for a new breed of African entrepreneur who appreciates the power of financial services to deepen progress in all other sectors of the economy.
