Ghana beyond democracy – Graphic Online

To say Ghana’s democracy suffers from a lack of the application of its abounding intelligence is not an insult to Ghanaians.

It is an indictment on the system. Ghana is not short of educated people.

We produce accountants, economists, bankers, engineers, auditors, lawyers, professors and entrepreneurs who perform excellently across the world. Intelligence leaves Ghana every day on planes and succeeds elsewhere.

Yet at home, the state behaves like it cannot count, cannot remember and cannot learn.

This is not a crisis of God. It is a crisis of financial intelligence.

Ghana’s democracy does not fail because it lacks prayers. 

It fails because it lacks financial intellect, institutional calculation and economic discipline.

These are human problems and they persist because, inconveniently, they benefit powerful political networks that thrive in disorder. 

Democracy without financial intelligence

At the heart of Ghana’s democratic failure is a simple truth: we do not govern with numbers.

We govern with emotions, slogans, party loyalty and short-term political survival.

Budgets are prepared, but consequences are ignored. Loans are taken, but lifecycle costs are rarely discussed.

Projects are announced loudly, abandoned quietly and paid for painfully. 

An intelligent financial system asks basic questions: What is the total cost of this project over time?

What happens if we stop halfway? What is the interest implication?

What is cheaper: completion or abandonment?

Ghana’s democracy rarely asks these questions publicly.

When it does, the answers are inconvenient, so they are buried.

Paying interest on forgetfulness

Nothing exposes Ghana’s lack of financial intelligence more clearly than abandoned projects.

Since the time of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana has started ambitious projects, halted them through political change and then borrowed again to restart similar ideas decades later

 Roads, factories, housing schemes, railways, hospitals, irrigation systems and many others were never economically dead.

They were politically interrupted.

The loans, however, were never interrupted.

Interest continued to accumulate.

Penalties were triggered. Arbitration followed. Inflation increased restart costs.

In some cases, Ghana paid more servicing debt than it would have cost to complete the project immediately.

This is not misfortune.

It is financial imprudence normalised as politics.

A household that behaves this way would be bankrupt.

A company that behaves this way would collapse.

But a democracy that behaves this way survives because the cost is spread across generations and no one is personally accountable. 

Financial illiteracy or political strategy?

At this point, one must ask a hard question: Is this truly ignorance or is it design?

Ghana’s democratic inefficiency feeds a political-financial mafia ecosystem: Loan renegotiations create consulting fees.

Project restarts create new contracts. 

Delays justify cost variations.

Abandonment creates arbitration opportunities. Debt opacity protects political actors.

Chaos is profitable.

Continuity is dangerous to those who benefit from resets.

A financially intelligent democracy would be boring.

Projects would be completed.

Budgets would be predictable.

Debt would be disciplined.

That kind of order threatens rent-seeking networks that thrive on disorder.

So, disorder persists.

Democracy that cannot calculate is easily manipulated.

Because Ghana’s democracy lacks financial intelligence: Voters are mobilised emotionally, not economically.

Campaigns avoid balance sheets. Parties debate personalities, not cost structures. Citizens argue about leaders instead of liabilities.

No party campaigns on how much abandoned projects have cost the nation.

No manifesto includes a historical debt breakdown tied to political discontinuity.

Why? Because numbers would expose everyone.

A democracy without financial transparency becomes a storytelling arena.

And storytelling is cheaper than accountability.

Education without application

Ghana’s tragedy is not lack of education; it is non-application of knowledge to governance.

We train economists who do not shape policy. We train auditors whose reports change nothing.

We train accountants whose warnings are ignored. 

We train planners whose plans are shelved after elections.

Knowledge exists, but institutions refuse to absorb it.

Policy is driven by political convenience, not technical reasoning.

That is not ignorance. That is anti-intelligence.

One of the most damaging habits in Ghana’s public life is spiritual outsourcing.

We pray for solutions to problems caused by poor accounting.

We fast over issues created by bad contracts.

We invoke God where spreadsheets are required.

Let us be clear: God does not complete abandoned projects. God does not compound interest.

God does not renegotiate bad loans.

These are human responsibilities and pretending otherwise is a convenient way to avoid accountability.

Democracy as ritual

Ghana’s democracy has become ritualistic: Vote.

Change government.

Reset projects. Borrow again.

Accumulate debt. Blame predecessors and repeat.

There is no institutional learning loop.

No national memory.

No financial reckoning. 

The system touches the same hot stove every election cycle and acts surprised by the burns.

An intelligent democracy would pause and ask: What did this cost us the last time? Ghana rarely does.

Ghana’s democracy lacks financial intelligence, cost discipline, institutional memory and continuity enforcement.

This lack is not accidental.

It is tolerated because it serves powerful interests while dispersing pain among citizens and future generations.

This is not a failure of faith. It is not a curse. It is not destiny.

It is a man-made system that refuses to think financially.

A nation does not develop because it votes. It develops because it calculates, remembers and corrects itself.

Until Ghana’s democracy learns to count properly, finish what it starts, punish financial irresponsibility, it will remain loud but poor, free but inefficient and spiritual but economically reckless. 

This problem does not need divine intervention. It needs intelligence applied to power and until that happens, Ghana will keep paying interest, not just on loans, but on its failure to apply financial intelligence.