Remagine Ghana with H. Aku Kwapong, PhD: Escaping the colonial lens and mindset

…Our problem isn’t colonialism. it’s the story we tell about it…

Let me say something that will probably irritate a lot of people: the most important constraint on Ghana’s, and much of Sub-Sahara’s, economic development today is not the legacy of colonialism. It is the intellectual comfort that legacy provides.

I want to be careful here, because this isn’t an argument that history doesn’t matter. It does, profoundly. Harvard’s Nathan Nunn and Leonard Wantchekon published one of the most important papers in development economics in the last two decades when they demonstrated that current differences in trust levels within Africa can be traced back to the transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades — individuals whose ancestors were heavily raided during the slave trade are measurably less trusting today, through factors internal to the individual such as cultural norms, beliefs, and values.  That is a serious, causal, peer-reviewed finding. History is not just rhetoric — it is embedded in institutions, in behavior, in the very texture of economic life.

But here is the problem. Knowing why you have a low-trust equilibrium and doing something about it are two different things. And Ghana, increasingly, is getting these confused.

There is a mindset, increasingly pervasive, that filters nearly every serious economic, technological, and institutional question through the lens of colonialism.

I recently encountered a fellow Ghanaian on WhatsApp who sent me a post complaining how the West is controlling us through the internet, social media, and its satellites. Then why are we chatting on WhatsApp, I asked.

This is a typical reflex that sees domination where there may be competition, control where there may be capability, and conspiracy where there may simply be scale and coordination. It is a mind that assumes that the global system is something being done to us, rather than something we are participating in.

That mindset is not without historical foundation. But it has become something else. It has become a constraint.

The Seduction of Explanation

There is a certain intellectual comfort in grand explanations. When a country struggles to generate growth, build institutions, or sustain competitiveness, it is tempting to locate the cause in external forces. Colonialism, and its modern extension in the form of neocolonial influence, offers such an explanation. It is emotionally satisfying, politically convenient, and not entirely wrong.

But there is a quiet danger when explanation becomes worldview.

In Ghana, a mindset is emerging that interprets much of the global economy through the lens of external control. The dominance of firms like Google, Visa, Mastercard, and Palantir Technologies is seen not merely as the outcome of scale and innovation, but as evidence of systemic entrapment.

Undersea cables, cloud infrastructure, and payment rails are recast as instruments of control rather than as platforms built through decades of capital accumulation and institutional discipline.

The distinction matters. Because once the narrative shifts from “How did they build this?” to “How are we being controlled?”, the center of gravity moves away from construction and toward suspicion.

And suspicion, however justified in origin, is a poor foundation for development.

The Grievance Economy

Consider where Ghana actually stands. GDP growth accelerated to 5.7% in 2024 from 3.1% in 2023, driven by services, mining, and construction — making Ghana the third largest economy in West Africa with a GDP of roughly $76 billion and a population of approximately 34 million.

 That is not nothing. But inflation stood at 22.9% in 2024, far above the Bank of Ghana’s target, and the country remains under an IMF Extended Credit Facility program aimed at achieving macroeconomic stability and debt sustainability.  GDP per capita in purchasing power terms sits at roughly $8,000. Singapore, which I’ll return to, is at over $130,000.
The gap is not explained by colonialism. Singapore was a colony too.

Now, I’m not going to do the cheap thing here and pretend that all developing nations are equivalent or that colonial histories are interchangeable. They are not. The specific character of colonial rule matters enormously. Daron Acemoglu and his collaborators have shown that the extractive versus settlement distinction in colonial institutions has long, durable effects on subsequent growth. The mechanisms are real.

But mechanisms are not destiny. And this is where the intellectual posture of much of Ghana’s public discourse goes wrong.

There is a mindset — not universal, but influential — that filters nearly every serious economic and technological question through the lens of external control. The dominance of Google, Visa, Mastercard in global digital infrastructure is framed not as the outcome of decades of capital accumulation and institutional investment but as evidence of entrapment.

Undersea cable networks become instruments of subjugation rather than engineering achievements worth studying and, eventually, rivaling. The question stops being “how did they build this?” and becomes “how are they controlling us?” — and when you make that substitution, you have essentially given up on building anything.

The India Comparison Should Be Embarrassing

Let me give you a concrete example of what I mean. One of the most-cited grievances in African digital discourse is dependence on Western payment rails. Fair enough — that dependence is real and has costs.

But in 2016, India decided to do something about it. The National Payments Corporation of India built the Unified Payments Interface from institutional coordination and political will. By 2024, UPI had captured 83% of India’s total digital payment volume, up from 34% in 2019, with transaction volume rising from 375 crore in 2018 to 17,221 crore — representing a CAGR of 89.3% in volume over five years.  India now accounts for nearly 49% of global real-time payment transactions.  UPI is operational in seven countries and is increasingly setting global standards that Visa and Mastercard now have to respond to.

India did not achieve this by holding conferences about Western financial imperialism. It achieved it by building. The constraint was never colonial legacy. It was institutional coordination and the will to execute.

Ghana has mobile money. Mobile money penetration in Ghana is genuinely impressive by regional standards. But as the essay I’ve been reading argues — and I think it’s right — progress without scale is not transformation. And scale requires execution, not commentary.
The Education Problem Is the Root Problem

Here is what troubles me most when I look at the data. Ghana’s World Bank Human Capital Index stands at 44%, against a Singapore benchmark of 88%. A child born in Ghana today is projected to lose 56% of her productive potential due to poor education quality and health outcomes. With a harmonized test score of 307, Ghana falls near the bottom even among lower-middle-income country peers, whose average is 391. 

This is a civilizational problem that has nothing to do with Google’s market share. It reflects what gets taught in schools, how it gets taught, and what outcomes are being optimized for. Ghana’s enrollment rates are actually decent by regional standards — expected years of school reached 11.6, against a sub-Saharan African average of 8.6  — but 5.7 of those years are effectively lost to poor content quality.

You cannot build institutions that enforce contracts, allocate capital, and execute large-scale projects with a population educated primarily in memorization and examination performance detached from practical problem-solving. You get eloquent critics of the global system and not enough engineers, public administrators, and entrepreneurs who are comfortable with data, uncertainty, and iteration.

The Psychology of Bitterness

At the heart of the problem lies something less visible but more powerful. The psychological residue of history.

Colonialism was not merely economic extraction. It was also a system of humiliation and disempowerment. It reshaped how societies perceived power, agency, and possibility. These experiences do not disappear with independence. They linger, often in the form of distrust and resentment.

Over time, however, this historical awareness can harden into reflex.

That reflex interprets global systems through suspicion. It assumes manipulation where there may be coordination. It assumes control where there may simply be competitive advantage. And most critically, it directs attention outward when it should be turning inward.

Bitterness, when not translated into strategy, becomes economically disabling.

It creates explanation without execution. It offers moral clarity without practical direction. And in doing so, it produces a form of paralysis that masquerades as critique.

The Real Binding Constraints

I want to be precise about this, because precision matters in development economics. Ghana’s most binding constraints are almost certainly not the ones dominating the national conversation. They are: weak and inconsistently enforced contract law, delayed payments by the state that destroy working capital for small suppliers, administrative unpredictability that raises the cost of doing business, and limited organizational capacity to execute complex multi-year projects. These are internal. They are fixable. And they require no renegotiation with former colonial powers — they require political will and institutional reform at home.

This is not a comfortable argument. It is far more emotionally satisfying to locate the source of Ghana’s difficulties in Palantir Technologies or the architecture of the SWIFT network than in the payment practices of the Ghanaian state. But emotionally satisfying explanations that happen to be mostly wrong are a luxury that developing nations cannot afford.

There is a further point worth making. The mindset that locates all agency externally tends, over time, to develop a secondary dysfunction: it begins to police internal authenticity. Those with global exposure get treated as compromised. Diaspora returnees get viewed with suspicion. Different modes of reasoning get coded as foreign. This is how a country begins to exclude the very talent it needs.

Education and the Reproduction of Dependency

One might reasonably ask why education has not corrected this mindset.

The answer is that education, in its current form, often reproduces it.

Post-colonial education systems have overemphasized historical critique while underinvesting in practical capability. Students are taught what happened. They are less often trained in what to build.

The imbalance is stark. One becomes fluent in analysis but inexperienced in execution.

There is also a deeper structural issue. Education remains externally referenced. Universities benchmark themselves against institutions like University of Oxford and Harvard University. Students study global corporations but spend far less time solving domestic problems.

This creates a subtle intellectual dependency. The gaze is constantly outward. The West becomes both the model and the explanation.

The result is predictable. A society that studies others more than it builds itself will eventually become preoccupied with others.

The Social Cost: Fragmentation of Identity

There is another consequence of this mindset that is often overlooked. It does not only shape how we see the world. It shapes how we see one another.

A mind that is persistently anchored in colonial comparison begins to police authenticity. It asks who is “truly Ghanaian,” not in terms of contribution or commitment, but in terms of proximity to a constructed cultural ideal.

This is where the damage becomes internal.

Ghanaians in the diaspora are sometimes viewed with suspicion, as though distance has diluted legitimacy. Those who speak differently, think differently, or operate with global exposure are occasionally treated as outsiders in their own country. Language, accent, and even modes of argument become grounds for questioning belonging.

The accusation can be subtle or explicit. Someone speaks with precision, avoids emotional escalation, and is labeled a “wannabe WASP.” Another argues from data and is told they have lost touch with “real Ghana.” The implication is clear. To be authentically Ghanaian is to conform to a narrow behavioral template.

This is a profound mistake.

Because in a modern economy, diversity of experience is not a weakness. It is an asset. Diaspora exposure, linguistic range, and different modes of reasoning expand the country’s capacity to engage the world.

A nation that begins to exclude its own talent on the basis of style or exposure is not protecting its identity. It is shrinking it.

And in doing so, it weakens itself.

The Cost: Disconnection from a Competitive World

The modern world is not a moral arena. It is a competitive one.

Countries are not waiting to be fair. They are pursuing advantage. They are building technologies, capturing markets, shaping standards, and accumulating influence.

A mindset that approaches this world primarily through grievance becomes disconnected from it.

Because it does not engage on the terms that matter.

It does not ask, “Where can we compete?” It asks, “Why is the system unfair?”

It does not ask, “What capabilities must we build?” It asks, “Who is preventing us?”

This is how a nation quietly sidelines itself. Not through lack of intelligence or effort, but through a misallocation of attention.

Reorienting the Mindset: From Explanation to Construction

If mindsets are to change, they will not change through persuasion alone. They will change when a different way of thinking becomes more useful.

That requires a coordinated shift.

First, the national narrative must evolve. History should be acknowledged, but it should not dominate. The central question must always be forward-looking. What are we building now?

Second, education must be restructured. Students should be required to solve real problems. Build systems. Design solutions. Execute under constraint. Capability, not commentary, must become the measure of success.

Third, institutions must function. Timely payments, enforceable contracts, and efficient administration are not technical details. They are the foundation of economic confidence.

Fourth, incentives must reward builders. Visibility, capital, and prestige should flow to those who create, not merely those who critique.

Education: From Critique to Capability

A bigger lever is education.

Here the indictment is even sharper. Ghana does not sufficiently educate for citizenship, critical thought, or scientific confidence. We do not teach enough civics to produce a population that understands institutions and its own role in shaping them.

We do not consistently train children to interrogate claims, reason through evidence, and distinguish sentiment from argument. And we are still not, in any serious sense, a deeply scientific-minded society, at a time when nations are rising precisely because they have become comfortable with science, engineering, experimentation, and the disciplined solving of human problems.

That must change at the foundation.

Education should no longer be organized mainly around memorization, credentialism, and examinations detached from life. It should be reorganized around capability. Children should learn how government works, how contracts work, how technology works, how incentives shape behavior, how to test an idea, and how to move from complaint to solution.

They should be taught not merely to admire innovation abroad, but to participate in it. A country that does not raise scientifically literate, civically aware, critically minded citizens will continue to produce eloquent critics of the modern world rather than confident makers within it.

This is where the deeper cultural reorientation must occur. Ghanaians need to become at ease with modern science, modern methods, and modern trends, not as imitators, but as participants. The world is not waiting for traumatized societies to recover their self-esteem before competition begins.

Competition is already here. Every country is pursuing its interests. Every serious nation is trying to secure markets, technologies, influence, and advantage. That is not cruelty. It is the structure of the modern international order.

The proper response is therefore not wounded surprise. It is excellence.

We need an activist mindset, one that engages others confidently, argues our case clearly, learns aggressively, builds patiently, and competes without self-pity. A mature Ghana must be able to speak to the world without sounding perpetually injured, perpetually suspicious, or perpetually overwhelmed. Historical memory should give us depth, not fragility. It should give us seriousness, not paralysis.

The Role of the State: Reforming Institutions to Reform Thinking

If this mindset is to change, the Ghanaian state must lead. Not through rhetoric, but through action.

The first step is a systematic examination of the institutional vestiges of British rule that still shape public life. The question is not whether these institutions are foreign in origin. The question is whether they serve us well today.

Should our public universities retain ceremonial structures that emphasize hierarchy over performance? Should the judiciary maintain practices, such as wigs and robes, that symbolize tradition but may reinforce distance rather than accessibility?

These are not trivial questions. They go to the heart of how a society understands authority, competence, and modernity.

A confident nation does not preserve institutions out of habit. It evaluates them based on function. Does this practice improve outcomes? Does it strengthen capability? Does it make the system more effective?

If not, it should be changed.

Because institutions do not merely govern behavior. They shape mindset.

And so the task before government is larger than policy in the narrow sense. It is civilizational in character. Review the inherited institutions. Remove what weakens us. Modernize what remains. Rebuild education around science, civics, critical thinking, and execution.

In doing so, the state would send the most important signal of all: that Ghana does not intend merely to interpret the modern world through the wounds of history, but to enter it fully, compete within it, and help shape it.

What Would a Serious Country Do?

A serious country — and I think Ghana can be a serious country, given its democratic institutions, its entrepreneurial culture, and its position as West Africa’s most stable major economy — would do several things.

It would reform education around capability, not credentialism. It would systematically audit its inherited institutional structures for function, not ceremony. It would enforce contracts. It would pay its suppliers on time. It would study India’s UPI not as a curiosity but as a blueprint. It would treat diaspora knowledge as an asset rather than a threat to cultural authenticity.

There is no polite way to say this. Countries do not develop by being right about history. They develop by being effective in the present.

Colonialism explains much about how Ghana arrived here. It does not explain why it must remain here. The real question is whether Ghana can shift from a posture of interpretation to a posture of participation. Whether it can move from diagnosing the world to shaping its place within it.

In the end, the constraint is not colonialism.

It is the persistence of a colonized mind. A mind that explains more than it builds. That interprets more than it participates. That looks outward for causes when it should be looking inward for solutions.

It is also a mind that, in its insecurity, begins to narrow the definition of who belongs, turning difference into suspicion and diversity into division.

This can change. But it will not change through argument alone.

It will change when Ghana begins, systematically and deliberately, to reward building over blaming, execution over explanation, and capability over commentary.

History is not nothing. But development is not decided by who is most right about the past. It is decided by what gets built in the present. Ghana has the ingredients. What it increasingly lacks is the right question.

Hene Aku Kwapong, CDD Ghana Fellow, Ecobank Ghana Board Member, Former Head of Management for Royal Bank of Scotland EMEA Credit Markets, formerly of Deutsche Bank, Microsoft, GE Capital and NY Economic Development Corporation.

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