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We shall hold them accountable, to their children's children

He called me when he arrived in New York and gave me the address where he was staying that night. However, because of a previous engagement, I could not see him that evening. So, the following morning, at the height of the New York rush hour, I drove into the city from Connecticut to see him.  Over lunch, Baah Wiredu, the former Finance Minister, shared with me his desire to solve the problem of abusive contracting and corruption in how the government awarded contracts.  He was determined to do something about it and had complained about how a road construction contract given to a local chief was never honored.  His determination to do something about such abuses showed in his face and his obvious weight loss was a testament to the task he envisioned. The plan to roll out a set of initiatives to take on corruption began the day I walked into his office to help him map out his entire reporting structure in the ministry. Just a few minutes after we sat down, a man walked in to tell him
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Ghana, a country of our own

March 6, 2015 It is amazing the incredible amount of good tidings and hope that I am feeling on this day. Of course,  it is not by accident that this day also happens to be the day in history when we claimed a country called Gold Coast, after years of being ruled by those who were not of us, those who share little in common with our history and heritage. Ever since that fateful day, our country has struggled to find its identity in order to make a home we can all proudly call our homeland Ghana. There is much to be thankful for, much to be appreciated and much to be hopeful for. All 25million of us are here because this is where we belong. That conviction and a sense of our own country, however, has been shaken in the past few years and months as we've had to endure dark nights and daily bickering on issues that never used to separate us. The common bond which forms the fabric of our story from Dagomba to Ga, through Ashanti, Brong, and Ewe to Fanti and Nzima, is under strain be

MISRULE OF THE FEW - How the Oligarchs Ruined Greece


By Pavlos Eleftheriadis Just a few years ago, Greece came perilously close to defaulting on its debts and exiting the eurozone. Today, thanks to the largest sovereign bailout in history, the country’s economy is showing new signs of life. In exchange for promises that Athens would enact aggressive austerity measures, the so-called troika -- the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund -- provided tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans. From the perspective of many global investors and European officials, those policies have paid off. Excluding a one-off expenditure to recapitalize its banks, Greece’s budget shortfall totaled roughly two percent last year, down from nearly 16 percent in 2009. Last year, the country ran a current account surplus for the first time in over three decades. And this past April, Greece returned to the international debt markets it had been locked out of for four years, issuing $4 billion in five-year governm

How the Business World Has Been Transformed, From the Democratization of Capital to the Rise and Fall of Labor

WALL STREET JOURNAL REPORTS: LEADERSHIP 125 Years of Change in the U.S. Economy—and the Dow How the Business World Has Been Transformed, From the Democratization of Capital to the Rise and Fall of Labor By JOHN STEELE GORDON July 7, 2014 For the past 125 years, The Wall Street Journal has been covering the evolution of the American economic ecosystem and the businesses that make it up. It has thus chronicled the most extraordinary period of economic change and growth in world history. A DIFFERENT WORLD Indeed, the business world of 1889 today seems almost something from an alien planet. Offices were nearly totally masculine preserves. About the only jobs for women outside the home were as teachers, nurses and telephone operators. Almost all large corporations were run by members of the WASP establishment. Ledgers were mostly handwritten, as were most invoices and even many contracts. There were no standardized rules for keeping books, and almost no government regulation of busi

I give this speech on behalf of the President of Ghana

Ohene Aku Kwapong It is difficult to repair the pride of a nation that has unnecessarily been bruised and even more difficult to repair a lost trust when we all witness events that create unworthy news for us on the world stage.  So, I offer this speech which I believe a nation would have appreciated from its President. "My fellow citizens, I come to you this evening to thank you, on behalf of our cherished Blackstars, for the unqualified support you've shown them throughout the 2014 World Cup.  As your president, and on behalf of the nation, I also want to thank the team for giving us their best effort in representing Ghana.  We have asked the best of you and we appreciate what you gave. In the 2010 World Cup, the Blackstars made the country proud, lifting our expectations and our collective desire, as a nation, to take our rightful place on the international soccer stage. I know we can because we have a pool of 25 million Ghanaians to do this.  Unfortunately, the 2014 W

THE HUMAN FACTOR – WHY POOR LEADERSHIP IS DESTROYING OUR FORTUNES.

There is a general consensus that Ghana as a country is either heading in the wrong direction or getting just plain messed up.  Power crises and the persistent power outages that we thought belonged to decades gone are back, blatant corruption now are back with new schemes of supposed debt judgments, and the leaders we have are neither able to articulate a path forward nor deliver solutions that inspire confidence. Unfortunately, these perceptions have not just been with the current government but also with previous ones. My advice to the President of Ghana, if I had an opportunity to advise him today, will be to have the courage to reshuffle the cabinet and bring in Ghanaians, regardless of political affiliation, with substantial, relevant experience that will benefit him and his government. “Magnanimity does indeed accrue greatness to leadership"- our history of entrusting decision-making responsibilities to folks without relevant experience is destroying the country.  This is

It will be a mistake for Microsoft to appoint Alan Mulally as CEO.

It interesting that the same bunch of Wall Street analysts, majority of whom have never managed a business or have no deep experience in the industries they cover, are now advocating for Microsoft to appoint a guy from an automobile manufacturer as CEO of a technology company.  One of the lessons folks learn in business school about Mergers and Acquisitions is the incredibly high failure rates. However few fail to grasp the fact that a lot of companies erroneously turn to investment bankers with little or no operational experience to advise on their deals and hence no secret a lot fail.  In current Microsoft situation, again we have investment banking analyst with no operating experience in technology hawking the same bad advice.  Microsoft is a software company with well defined competencies in that space, but it is going up against Google, Apple, Samsung, and possibily Blackberry, all companies with younger and more visonary leadership able to deliver user experiences with produ