Accra, Ghana, May 12, 2020//-The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has quickly swept through the cardinal points of the globe.
It began in last 2019 in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province in the People’s Republic of China and spreads its unfriendly wings across all parts of the world of which Africa is no exception.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a total of over 4 million confirmed cases of the deadly pandemic and over 283,000 deaths have been reported across the world as of 12 May 2020.
Therefore the deadly respiratory COVID-19 disease has become a human tragedy as well as an economic tragedy, threatening to erode the global economy gains.
It has prompted an unprecedented lockdown in Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Australia, Antarctica, and African continents with knock-on effects on all the sectors of the global economy: aviation, automobile, banking and finance, education, health, manufacturing, oil and gas, trade and investment, among others.
Amazingly, countries in Europe namely the United Kingdom (UK), Italy, Spain, France and Germany as well as the might United States (U.S) are the hardest hit of the pandemic.
While over 60,000 confirmed cases of the COVID-19 have been reported across the African continent, according to the latest data by the John Hopkins University and Africa Center for Disease Control on COVID-19 in Africa, As of May 12, 2020, the only country in Africa which has not recorded any case of the disease is Lesotho.
Additionally, 83, 000 to 190,000 people in Africa could die of the pandemic and 29 million to 44 million could get infected in the first year of the pandemic if containment measures fail, a new study by the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Africa revealed.
Capitalism is bad system
As results of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, the world is currently experiencing its largest humanitarian and economic crisis since the Second World War (WWII).
It is clear that the countries such as the US, UK, Italy, Spain, France and Germany which are the doyens of capitalism are the severely hit by the pandemic.
Most factories and companies built many years ago are reeling under the negative effects of the infectious pandemic in the countries mentioned above. Some of them are even collapsed during the draconian lockdowns to diffuse and contain the pandemic.
Health facilities in those countries are under-stretched to the point that some had to convert abandoned ships and factories into makeship healthcare facilities to take care of COVID-19 patients.
Additionally, millions of people in US, UK, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, among others have lost their jobs due to the pandemic. Similar cases have been reported across the work.
Specifically, most African governments including Ghana and South Africa which umbilical cords are tied to the West are also practicing capitalism. Which experts say could spell doom going forward.
According to Investopedia, capitalism is an economic system in which private individuals or businesses own capital goods.
The production of goods and services is based on supply and demand in the general market—known as a market economy—rather than through central planning—known as a planned economy or command economy, it explained.
The purest form of capitalism is free market or laissez-faire capitalism. Here, private individuals are unrestrained. They may determine where to invest, what to produce or sell, and at which prices to exchange goods and services. The laissez-faire marketplace operates without checks or controls, the Investopedia website added.
A Ghanaian Scientist and Engineer, Dr Bright Sogbey noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed capitalism as a bad system, stressing that the disease has brought the need for state intervention to the fore, but all the resources are in the hands of the private sector due to capitalism.
“The reality has come – now the state is helplessly acting a form of Socialism in a typical environment of Capitalism…where money resides in private hands as the State grabbles with what accrued from taxation to bring much needed social interventions in such trying times,” he said.
Dr Sogbey observed that the pandemic showed that technocrats are the best political leaders.
Advice
Dr. Sogbey posited that the lesson learnt from the COVID-19 experience is that industrialization without the state in the driving seat is tantamount to hopelessness as seen in typical capitalist countries such as USA, UK, etc.
Dr. Sogbey is therefore advising that Ghana could capitalize on the existing Legislative Instrument (LI) for Private Public Partnership (PPP) and partially nationalize the economy, by regaining majority shares in heavy/lucrative industries such as the oil and gas, mining, telecommunication, hospitality and others.
He proposes that for privately-owned companies in the strategic sectors, government should have a 51/49 percentage shares arrangement, while for the sold state-owned ones, there should be a 70/30 per cent share arrangement, with the State in the driving seat.
“PPP with the State in the driving seat, as it is now fighting the COVID-19, is the way forward. I, therefore, vehemently disagree with those of the view that the State has no business doing business,” he emphasized.
The Ghanaian scientist is therefore suggesting that the best economic and business recovery strategy for Ghana and countries across the world after COVID-19 would be to tilt towards partial socialism and also put scientists and engineers in the top hierarchy of the country’s politics.
Dr Sogbey who is also the President of Science and Technology Advocacy Renaissance for Africa and also the Leader of Industrial Solutions Group, National Nuclear Research Institute, Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, argued that China is reaping what they started sowing since the 1990s when they decided that unless one is an engineer, one cannot be President of the Republic of China.
According to him, research shows that until recently, eight out the nine top politicians in China, including even presidents were scientists and even at the local government level, while eight out of 10 political leaders are all technocrats with science and engineering background.
Dr. Sogbey believes that decision has placed China in a position to have a sharp focus on innovation to deal with very huge challenges like the COVID-19.
Ghana and other African countries must begin to consider the same strategy. “It is then that our troubles can be overcome,” he said.
By Masahudu Ankiilu Kunateh, African Eye Report
Email: mk68008@gmail.com
