Ghana Economy

This small state perched on Africa's Atlantic coast has set its sights on being the gateway to social and economic development in West Africa for the next century. For 15 years, the government of President Jerry J. Rawlings has kept to a strict regimen to rebuild Ghana's economy. Pro-business laws and programs have encouraged Western donors to pour millions into this mineral-rich nation.

This small state perched on Africa's Atlantic coast has set its sights on being the gateway to social and economic development in West Africa for the next century. For 15 years, the government of President Jerry J. Rawlings has kept to a strict regimen to rebuild Ghana's economy. Pro-business laws and programs have encouraged Western donors to pour millions into this mineral-rich nation.

A man stands on the median strip of a busy Accra boulevard and relieves himself in full daylight. An ordinary occurrence in Africa, but this man is conspicuous. He wears a pressed business suit and holds an expensive leather briefcase. Elsewhere, two Ghanaians try to digest the meaning of May's bloody riots here; they discuss the aftermath via an expanding network of cellular car phones.

A man stands on the median strip of a busy Accra boulevard and relieves himself in full daylight. An ordinary occurrence in Africa, but this man is conspicuous. He wears a pressed business suit and holds an expensive leather briefcase. Elsewhere, two Ghanaians try to digest the meaning of May's bloody riots here; they discuss the aftermath via an expanding network of cellular car phones.

"Clandestine attempts by malefactors to sabotage the labor redeployment effort will be dealt with severely." If this stern warning posted in the lobby of the Ministry of Finance here has the tone of a wartime stricture, that is no mistake. Ghana's anti-patronage campaign, which is designed to pare 100,000 excess workers from the civil service, has all the purposefulness of a military operation and the desperation of a last-ditch defense. So far the defense is holding, even prevailing.

Call it today's other election. For the first time since 1981, when Flight Lt. Jerry J. Rawlings banned political parties upon seizing power in a military coup, Ghanaians go to the polls in multi-party presidential elections. With a splintered and generally ineffective opposition, the vote is seen largely as a referendum on Rawlings, 45.

About 1.5 billion people in developing nations earn less than the equivalent of $1 a day, partly because of stingier aid-giving by rich countries and feeble efforts by their own governments to fight poverty, according to a U.N. report released Friday. In South Asia, half the children younger than 5 are malnourished, and almost two-thirds of all South Asian women are illiterate.

In light of Africa's tabloid of horror stories in recent years--famine, civil war, wanton carnage and destruction--it's excusable to cheer about good news, which the Western press often misses. Last month, Ghana carried out a successful democratic transition, closing the darkest chapter in its post-colonial history. The 19-year rule of Jerry J. Rawlings, who seized power in a 1981 coup, was often marked by brutal repression, extreme cruelty and vindictiveness.

Kudos for Scott Kraft's uplifting article on Ghana (Times, Aug. 21), "Ghana Now a Showcase for Recovery." It was one of those rare articles that departed from the norm of the gloom and doom reportage on Africa. Kraft was right in pointing to the radical changes in attitudes as the most significant achievement of the regime of Jerry J. Rawlings. But perhaps more important is the image of non-corruptibility that the leader has maintained for the past four years. The West is aiding Ghana now precisely because of the perception that aid money will be properly applied.

Voters in this West African nation cast ballots Thursday in a landmark presidential election marking the end of an era dominated by charismatic former fighter pilot Jerry J. Rawlings, who has ruled for almost two decades. Rawlings, who staged two coups and led a brutal military regime before embracing democracy, is abiding by a two-term constitutional limit and stepping down, leaving the presidency to one of seven candidates.

"Clandestine attempts by malefactors to sabotage the labor redeployment effort will be dealt with severely." If this stern warning posted in the lobby of the Ministry of Finance here has the tone of a wartime stricture, that is no mistake. Ghana's anti-patronage campaign, which is designed to pare 100,000 excess workers from the civil service, has all the purposefulness of a military operation and the desperation of a last-ditch defense. So far the defense is holding, even prevailing.

Thousands of Ghanaian migrant workers who recently returned from Libya after attacks there against black Africans say they are relieved to be home, though their hopes of finding their fortunes have been destroyed. At least 5,200 Ghanaians have returned since October, after violence against blacks that, by unofficial accounts, left more than 135 dead.

At the edge of a blacktop road verging on highland fields of tea, five Kenyan women sat waiting for the bus to the city. Sacks of beans, cabbage and corn, tied with bits of broken rope, waited with them. Far in the distance lay the cluster of buildings, the center of Nairobi, dominated by the cylindrical tower of the Kenyatta Conference Center, where this week several thousand people are gathering under auspices of the United Nations to assess the progress of women in the last decade.