An opportunity To Deal With our Trauma, Ghana’s path To Industrialization

AN OPPORTUNITY TO DEAL WITH OUR TRAUMA

“Being tired late at night, I close my eyes and mentally trace back the difficult course of our national history… our historical legacies … only seem to impede our progress.”, Park Chung-Hee lamented in his 1963 letter to South Koreans. “Is there no way to mend our decayed national character … and build a country of prosperity and affluence?” He criticized “the habits of sycophancy, laziness, and indolence” among the people, stating that the national character must be changed: “so that our people may stop telling lies, cast away the habits of sycophancy and indolence, and make a new start as industrious workers”.

That was 1963 when Ghana seemed more organized than South Korea if one compares photos of Cantonments in Accra to Itaewon in Seoul. It was in the same environment that Ghana found itself in the chaos of its history of military dictatorships.

After 1992, Ghana stabilized politically, but the business–state relationship remained opaque. This included contracts awarded in secrecy, selective tax exemptions, politically created state-owned companies designed to compete with private firms, sudden regulatory harassment of businesses that fell out of favor, and a procurement system seen as a marketplace for rent extraction.

When citizens observe this for decades, what conclusion can they draw? That state support for indigenous firms is not a development strategy but a political bargain. The result is a peculiar equilibrium: Ghanaians distrust their own firms more than they distrust foreign multinationals, because the latter are assumed to have earned their success abroad, while the former are assumed to have stolen it at home. This is our current Ghanaian tragedy.

AN UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH

Korea built winners before democratizing. This is uncomfortable but important. Korea built its capitalist class during an authoritarian period with long-term strategy and policy continuity, then democratized afterwards. Ghana, on the other hand, liberalized before building its domestic capitalist foundations.

Democracy without economic structure produces suspicion. Democracy with economic structure produces trust. South Korea succeeded because it deliberately created a national capitalist class, disciplined it, supported it and integrated it into its development narrative. Koreans came to trust their domestic firms because the state created a system in which trust was earned through performance.

Ghana’s history taught the opposite lesson. Domestic wealth was politicized, criminalized, and repeatedly destroyed. The public internalized the belief that success at home is suspicious unless validated abroad.

HOW DO WE COURSE-CORRECT?

We are here, so what do we do? Every society that has industrialized began with the capitalist class it had, not the one it wished for. South Korea did not begin its transformation with polished technocrats or textbook-perfect entrepreneurs. It began with scrap-metal dealers, merchants, and shop owners. Park Chung Hee took the firms available to him—Samsung, Hyundai, LG, Hanjin, SK—enterprises that were tiny, imperfect, and in many cases distrusted, and forced them to industrialize. The result is the Korea we admire today.

Ghana’s situation is not fundamentally different. The names on my list – Ibrahim Mahama, Daniel McKorley, Ernest Ofori Sarpong, Akuamua Boateng, Osei Kwame Despite, Joseph Siaw Agyepong, Edmund Poku, Mike Thakwani, Kevin Okyere, Sam Jonah and many few others – are not universally loved. Some are polarizing. Some inspire suspicion. But they are the actual builders in the Ghanaian economy: individuals who have proven they can scale organizations in a landscape where scaling is almost impossible.

They are, in economic terms, Ghana’s surviving capitalist class prototypes. Industrialization requires firms with four essential attributes:

• Capital accumulation
• Managerial competence
• Risk appetite
• The ability to scale and execute

These individuals have demonstrated these traits. McDan builds logistics and infrastructure. Jospong has shown operational scale. Despite and Ofori Sarpong have built consumer production chains. Ibrahim Mahama has executed large engineering projects. Edmund Poku has built a competitive processing firm in Blue Skies fashion. Mike Thakwani has built steel capacity in a difficult market. Akuamua Boateng operates with strategic sophistication in frontier finance.

In a developmental state these are exactly the types of individuals the state harnesses as industrial partners. Korea did it. Malaysia did it. Chile did it. Taiwan did it. China is doing it now. Ghana alone insists that it must first find morally perfect, politically uncontaminated, universally beloved entrepreneurs before it can build an industrial economy. But that entrepreneur does not exist anywhere in the world.

Our hesitation is psychological and historical. Ghanaian society carries a deeply internalized fear of domestic capital. Decades of political patronage, the AFRC trauma, opaque procurement and a culture of envy fueled by institutional breakdown have conditioned Ghanaians to distrust any local business that grows too large. The public assumes corruption before competence, patronage before performance. This is the psychology of a society repeatedly betrayed by its state. It is understandable. But it is economically destructive.

South Korea made a different psychological choice. It decided, consciously, that Korean firms – imperfect as they were – were the instruments of national survival. Cho Choong-hoon, founder of Hanjin and later Korean Air, was not a saint. He was a trucking contractor. Park Chung Hee tapped him anyway to build the national airline. Why? Because he could execute. Because he could scale. Because he could deliver national goals. Ghana refuses to make that leap. We want transformation without trusting domestic actors. We want industrialization without industrialists. That contradiction guarantees stagnation.

GHANA AIRWAYS?

The question I have is a blunt and correct one, and I know you want to ask as well. Why can’t Ghana take one of its proven business leaders and mandate the construction of a world-class national airline, just as Park Chung Hee did when he handed the national flag carrier to Hanjin’s Cho Choong-hoon?

The answer is equally blunt. Because Ghana fears the optics more than it values the outcome. A Ghanaian Cho Choong-hoon – whether Ibrahim Mahama, Daniel McKorley, Mike Thakwani or another – would be accused of capture, corruption and political patronage before a single aircraft takes off. The society’s trauma overwhelms its strategic reasoning. Suspicion overrides public interest. And so the state defaults to foreign operators or politically neutral committees, both of which lack the entrepreneurial instinct and operational drive necessary for success. In other words, Ghana would rather fail safely than succeed controversially.

DO WE HAVE THE COURAGE TO BREAK THE CYCLE?

The foundational challenge is whether Ghana can finally accept the capitalist class it has and harness it for national development. That means:

• Selecting and supporting firms based on capacity, not public popularity.
• Embedding them in transparent performance contracts.
• Demanding exports, technology upgrading and job creation in exchange for state backing.
• Enforcing discipline when targets are not met.
• Protecting firms from arbitrary harassment.
• Making support public and rules-based so citizens see results, not secrets.

This is what Korea did with its chaebols. This is what Ghana has refused to do with its entrepreneurs. And this is why Korea industrialized while Ghana remains stuck in a low-trust, low-capital, low-productivity economy.

THERE IS A COST TO FEAR

The reason I always ask any young man or woman who seeks my mentorship to read “AGAINST THE GODS” is precisely because there is a cost to fear in developing one’s own self, and that applies even more so to nations.

If Ghana cannot overcome this inherited fear of its own capitalists, it will continue to destroy the very capacity required to build a modern economy. The path to industrialization runs through domestic firms, not around them.

The list you provided is not perfect. No capitalist class ever is. But they are the raw material for transformation. They are Ghana’s Samsung before Samsung. Ghana’s Hyundai before Hyundai. Ghana’s Lotte before Lotte. The question is whether Ghana, for the first time in its history, will have the courage to trust its own builders long enough to create a national economic revolution.

A NEW PATH I PROPOSE

For half a century, as long as I have been alive, we have lived with a kind of inherited trauma – a national reflex that recoils whenever a domestic entrepreneur gains visibility or receives a public mandate. It is a memory stitched into the fabric of our civic life. From colonial sabotage of African business to the AFRC years, to the opaque politics of procurement, Ghanaians have been conditioned to mistrust their own capitalists. But every society that transformed itself began by confronting its fears. South Korea did. Malaysia did. Chile did. They took the imperfect entrepreneurs they had and forced them into national service through clear rules, relentless targets and disciplined oversight. They did not wait for flawless businessmen. They built institutions that extracted performance from the entrepreneurs available.

There are the few among us who know how to scale in an economy that suffocates scale. They are, in effect, our raw industrial material. The policy question is not whether we like them, but whether we can construct a system that channels their capacity toward national development. The real work lies with the state.

The FIRST action must be the creation of a transparent, rules-driven framework for state partnership with domestic firms.

Government cannot continue to operate in a fog of discretion, where public mandates appear as transactions between politicians and businesses rather than as instruments of national strategy. A Ghana Industrial Partnership Act could require that large-scale public assignments follow published criteria: track record, capital strength, export potential, technology acquisition and measurable developmental impact. Winners should be announced publicly, with detailed performance contracts open to scrutiny.

The SECOND action is performance enforcement.

Korea’s success did not come from blind loyalty to its business class. It came from a harsh discipline that tied state support to results. Ghana must adopt a similar posture. If a firm receives a mandate to build a national airline, process cocoa, assemble vehicles or develop steel capacity, it must also accept binding targets. Missed targets would trigger automatic penalties. Achieved targets would unlock more support. The public would see a government that rewards output, not connections.

The THIRD action is protection from arbitrary interference.

No domestic firm can grow if it fears sudden taxation, unpredictable regulatory intrusion or changes in contract terms with each electoral cycle. The state must build a commercial governance system where contracts are enforceable, timelines are respected and firms can plan across decades. Without this stability, even the most ambitious entrepreneur will hesitate to invest at scale.

The FOURTH action is the creation of a national narrative that links the rise of domestic firms to the rise of the nation.

Korea turned its private companies into patriotic symbols. Ghana, in contrast, often treats its large businesses as suspects. Government can change this tone by making performance data public, celebrating firms that hit their targets and demonstrating, through visible results, that support to local companies is not a gift but an investment in national capacity.

Once these institutional foundations are in place, the question that once sounded provocative becomes entirely sensible. Why can’t Ghana tap one of its proven business leaders to build a national airline the way South Korea tapped Cho Choong-hoon to build Korean Air? The answer is simple. We currently lack the rules, the transparency and the discipline to make such a partnership legitimate in the eyes of the public. Build the system, and the choice becomes rational rather than controversial.

The path forward is not mysterious. Ghana must construct a framework in which domestic entrepreneurs compete for national mandates transparently, execute under measurable contracts and grow under predictable conditions. This is how a society turns private ambition into public prosperity.

We have the builders. What we lack is the courage to use them. But if the state acts boldly, if it breaks the cycle of trauma and constructs a fair, disciplined, transparent industrial system – Ghana can finally do what Korea did half a century ago: take the entrepreneurs it has and turn them into the engines of a modern economy. If we don’t or if we miss this opportunity, our industrialists will someday be imported, and our children will become slaves, this time…in our own land.

~ Hene Aku Kwapong, CDD Ghana Fellow, Ecobank Ghana board member, Park Street Denmark board member, DBGG board member. Former SVP & Treasurer of New York City Economic Development Corp. Graduate of AshTown L/A aka “Bodaso primary”.