Sarah Left sees many Ghanaians uneasy with the opulence of the country's golden jubilee celebrations, when so many live in poverty

Wednesday August 9, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

Critics have asked why the jubilee money is not being spent on more important matters, such as tackling child mortality, which is still very high in Ghana. Photograph: Nic Bothma/EPA

The west African country of Ghana will celebrate 50 years of independence next year and the government has planned a spectacular, year-long party for the golden jubilee.
The celebrations, and the attendant $20m (£10.49m) price tag, have caused a good deal of soul-searching among Ghanaians, torn between feeling tremendously proud of the achievement and being rather disappointed with the results.

On March 6, 1957, Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African country to break free from colonial rule. The country's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, considered Ghana the black star of Africa, a guiding light of African independence and solidarity. And with the aid of Ghana's example and ideological support, the decade of Nkrumah's rule did see much of sub-Saharan Africa achieve independence.

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To inspire the continent once again, Ghana's current president, John Kufuor, has ordered up a year of music, dancing and cultural festivals. Every head of state in the world has been invited.
Concerts, fireworks, parades, banquets, memorial lectures, school projects and traditional festivals will happen across the country. Oprah Winfrey is expected to broadcast a show from a coastal slave fort. Stars of Ghana's popular music export, highlife, will perform, along with as-yet-to-be-announced international hip-hop, jazz and R&B acts.

The jubilee also coincides with the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in British colonies, and the British Council is planning a commemoration at the country's most infamous slave fort, Elmina, on March 25.

But the matter of the $20m has angered people whose daily lives are still an economic struggle. The first purchase to hit the headlines was a fleet of foreign luxury cars, and the second was the planned construction of public toilets, particularly in tourist destinations.

The Ghanaian daily, the Chronicle, branded the expenditure a "monstrosity" for a poor country fresh from having its debts cancelled, adding that "it is incumbent on us not to revert to doing the things we have done in the past that has turned us into a beggar nation."

Without doubt, Ghana has failed to achieve the economic success Nkrumah envisaged. The average Ghanaian takes home just $1 a day. The price of petrol has risen three times this year alone, hitting cash-strapped citizens hard. Child mortality has remained stubbornly high, and life expectancy is stalled in the mid-50s.

Even the man in charge of organising the year's festivities agrees that the country isn't where it ought to be.

"The hopes of the early years have gone down the tubes and a substantial amount of that can be attributed to the clamping down of democracy and freedom right from the start," said Charles Wereko-Brobby, the chief executive of the Ghana@50 secretariat.

Ghana led the way to freedom, he said, then promptly led the way to the coups (Nkrumah was overthrown in 1966), economic mismanagement and corruption that has caused Ghana and the rest of the continent so much grief over the past 50 years.