When Iceland was Ghana?

By guest blogger Holli Holdsworth from Holli's ramblings, the adventures of an expat in Ghana.

Thorvaldur Gylfason is a professor of economics at the University of Iceland. I’m sure he’s quite enlightened on the economic history of Iceland and he’s probably a pretty nice guy. With a sense of humour.

Maybe it was his sense of humour at work when he wrote this article: ‘When Iceland Was Ghana’. Indeed.

Sweating over what a little displaced Canadian ex-volunteer, lost in Africa for over a decade could possibly contribute to Guy’s brilliant blog about Iceland, I Googled around for inspiration and found this article. I have to say I was intrigued.

On the surface, Iceland and Ghana have about as much in common as a frozen fish stick and a beach ball.

Good old Thor though, he discovered that the GDP per capita in Iceland in 1901 was the same as Ghana’s is today. Roll that around in your head for a minute. Does this mean that the two countries have something in common, or is it a sad comparison of statistics?

Apparently in 2006, Ghana’s buying power per head was an annual figure of $2,640. Other reports give this figure as something much much lower. In the same year Iceland had a GDP per capita of over $36,000. Over 13 times Ghana’s and over 13 times where they were in 1901.
He might not have realized that unlike Iceland, Ghana’s GDP per capita, instead of growing, has halved since independence from Britain in 1957.

Where am I going with this? Well where was Thor going? He basically asked why Iceland’s tale of drastic success over a century couldn’t be replicated in Africa…

He cites the importance of universal literacy (as achieved by Iceland early on) and the reduction of family size, which appears to be happening slowly in Africa.

This is where Thor ends off and I begin. The trouble with Africa and it’s persistent poverty is extremely complicated. It’s rooted in tribal feuds, colonial legacy, corruption, corruption and more corruption.

Not sure where Iceland compares on any of these points.

Since I’ve been in Ghana there has been billions of development/literacy/aid projects launched, funded and abandoned. Volunteers flood into the country yearly to ‘make a difference’, and help.

Yet nothing helps. Ever. It’s amazing actually.

In the north where the population is mostly rural and has traditionally been the poorest, the villages today look as they did probably 500 years ago. There is no electricity, no running water, no hospitals, and schools consist of a tree with an underpaid half time teacher and students who spend more time tending the farm fields for the teacher than looking at the one book they’ve been sent to share…

It’s dismal and that is the sad truth.

Ghana’s government has managed to appease the West’s guilty conscience and has known the right egos to massage over the past 10 years, and as a result the country is seen as the ‘Gateway to Africa’ – a peaceful, successfully democratic country where companies are urged to invest.
Yet day to day life in the country deteriorates for the average man. Inflation is over 25% and the currency, which recently rid itself of 4 x 0000’s and was at par with the US Dollar a year ago – is now worth half.

A colleague of mine who broke his arm in a car accident in the north of the country is now disabled for life – because every medical centre he was sent to could not help him. No doctors, no supplies. He was flown to the capital and spent three more days in a main hospital, ignored because he had no ‘connections’… By the time someone found a connection in yet another hospital and paid the obligatory bribe to have him treated, the operation was botched and now his arm has healed wrongly and he has lost significant use of his hand.

So Thor – I love the comparison between Iceland (of which I know little) and Ghana (of which I know too much) – but I beg to differ. Ghana has about as much chance of replicating Iceland’s success over the next century, as a fish stick has of bouncing along the beach…