Accra, Ghana//-The MTN Group Vice President for West and Central Africa, Ebenezer Twum Asante, has advised graduates not to allow procurement and permitting processes, among others to become their avenues for making money.
According to him, “procurement and permitting processes etc should not become your avenue for making money”.
Mr Asante made the call when he spoke at the University of Ghana, Legon Graduation ceremony for Post Graduate students on January 13th, 2022.
He said: “If we live above the fray, we should be proud of ourselves for emotional wealth. A corrupt mind cannot think and make optimal decisions”.
Mr Asante therefore advised them to focus their decent minds and energies productively and it will pay off in the end.
“Ethics is also about what you represent. Your big minds and voices must uplift and promote merit-based just society. Taking an active stance for gender diversity and participation, national cohesion eschewing familial bigotry be they partisan, ethnic, religious, old-school alliances, and others”, he added.
Inspire others positively
Mr Asante who is an alumnus of the University of Ghana challenged the graduating students to use their privilege of education to influence and inspire others positively.
“So no matter what you studied, I hope that you all go out from here to solve problems that add value”.
To do so, he said they must also be sober enough to appreciate that they cannot be islands to themselves because they operate in an ecosystem and not Ego-system with their degrees or letters.
An Ecosystem of work, human connectivity, food cycle, leveraged learning and global inter-dependency, Mr Asante told the graduates.
“The academic laurels attained today is one thing to demonstrate your potential, a really huge one but the impact you’d make out there will depend on how you apply yourself, work with others and indeed seek greater collaboration to get the best out of yourself and others. Please maintain the attitude to constantly learn and keep your sense of enquiry acquired from your studies active, not shut”.
In Ghana, just like other societies, people are battling with many problems which are being trumpeted every day.
These he mentioned include Poverty, Inequality, Unemployment, Global Talent competitiveness gap, Corruption, Governance and institutional malaise, poor sanitation, poor urban planning, Doing business issues, lowly industrialized non-diversified Economy, Climate Change, all resulting in low human development index.
Mr Asante observed that; “we define our problems by their symptoms but we can critically appraise and simplify for resolution through their deep root causes.
A rigorous Root-Cause-Analysis may reveal that the many, diverse, and multi-sectoral issues could actually converge at the yoke, a key part of what we are dealing with could be polemic really –Cultural yet Technological”.
Cultural because the generational problems created have lived with us for a long time, crystallized and have set their own unenviable standards, behaviours and attitudes”.
Endemic issues should be resolved smartly
“Technological because the endemic issues should be resolved smartly, with the force of scale and speed autonomously if we want to leapfrog. Take for instance the apex challenge of organizing the socio-economic system to make activities visible, traceable, to the smallest unit of society –individual and firm”.
Fundamental to that is a functioning Law and Order and dealing with underlying culture that inhibits same.
To this end, the current wave of resurgence in the Police Service under the leadership of IGP Dr George Akuffo Dampare must be applauded whilst we call for more pervasive transformation and institutional reforms, he said.
African Eye Report
