The NPP Campaign has adopted this theme for some of their ads: As for Bawumia, he is using digitalization to transform this country; he won’t bring you “nkokɔ nkiti nkiti”
The message they try to send is that Bawumia is looking at doing big things while Mahama wants to major in minors.
Of the two, who is being honest with the electorate?
- DIGITALIZATION
Digitalization is the direction of the world. Any country that does not respond to it in this era of AI is going to forever remain behind. Ghana taking this step is never the brainchild of Bawumia. He sure takes a lot of credit for his part, but it would be erroneous to think that without him, we would have done some of the things he takes credit for championing. For instance, under the previous government, they started with the laying of fiber optic pipes from the south all the way to the north. They set up the Accra Data Center. The previous government awarded the contract for interoperability. All this government did was to abrogate it, reduce the scope, and write it on their CVs as their brainchild.
In terms of digitalization, the difference between the NDC and NPP is noise. NPP is better at making noise about what they do. Even if it’s a COVID tracker that works like Microsoft Word, they’d sell it as though it repairs kidneys.
For instance, in the 2020 manifesto of the NDC, they promised to train 1,000,000 young people in coding. That was the first time such a promise was found in any manifesto. The NPP copied this in their 2024 manifesto. They said under Bawumia, they’d train 1 million youth in digitalization. Coding and digitalization mean the same thing. In this case, it is clear that Bawumia stole Mahama’s idea on creating jobs through digitalization. As I said, the only difference between NDC and NPP in digitalization, for instance, is noise. The question is, looking at the profile of the Ghanaian, is digitalization going to fix every unemployment problem?
- NKOKƆ NKITI NKITI
In a country where you have people selling water under traffic lights, people dealing in the pettiest of trades to survive, it is interesting for a political party to deem a promise to establish people through poultry production by providing them day-old chicks a ridiculous plan, and even think of making mockery of it.
The poultry industry is over 7 billion Ghana cedis, and domestic broiler production constitutes just 5%. If we go back to the year 2000, domestic broiler production contributed over 60%. Such an alarming decline should send us back to the drawing table and revisit the methods of the past.
What was the method of the past?
Households raised their birds; small-scale producers played their role.
This is what Mahama’s “nkokɔ nkiti nkitinkiti” is going to do.
You don’t start a poultry farm with fowls in their menopausal stage; you need them young. This is all that “nkokɔ nkiti nkiti” is about. Dr. Bawumia has in his manifesto a promise to establish people in poultry. How is he going to do it? Provide birds that have grandchildren?
Again, we need to understand that to create jobs and put people in control of their lives, we need to give them support within their managing capacity. You cannot call someone hawking chewing sticks and immediately give them ten thousand birds.
Conclusion
I can go on and on, but this is all I am communicating. There is a place for digitalization and a place for supporting people at the small-scale level. Digitalization in itself comes with its attendant job losses. To think that it is the panacea for unemployment is to considerably miss the fact that once I can withdraw MoMo from the ATM, the MoMo vendor is out of a job. What is the plan for the MoMo vendor?
We need to utilize all avenues that can put food on the tables of people.
In terms of job creation through digitalization, both parties intend to train 1 million youth in digitalization. The NDC was the first to document this promise, so it cannot be said that they don’t appreciate digitalization.
In terms of poultry, the NDC has a plan to take it down to the small-scale level. The NPP has the same poultry promise with little detail. Maybe their mockery of Mahama’s plan could give an indication that they’d prefer to support Darko Farms rather than assist 1,000 small-scale producers.
If you are informed, “nkokɔ nkiti nkiti” is not funny, and digitalization is not going to deal with all our unemployment challenges.
By Kofi Kyei