Too xenophobic and not competing for talent
In an article titled The Saga of the Returnee /Expatriate, the author, Frank Borteye, berates various Ghanaian attitudes.
He complains about laziness, envy, self imposed barriers to success, and especially, a bad attitude towards Ghanaians who became rich.
He writes about an urge to ’scheme and plan to pull the person down or discredit his wealth’. According to Borteye, Ghanaians would rather work for an abusive foreigner than for a Ghanaian.
This might all be true, and writing that article might be a useful thing to be doing, but it amazes me that he, who himself worked and made money as ‘a foreigner’ in the West, nonetheless seems to have a problem with foreigners in Ghana. Statements like “the Lebanese, Chinese, and Indians will take our birthplace” are pretty xenophopic, and what’s more, wrong - they contribute to Ghana’s economy and provide jobs.
One only needs to look at London, to see the prosperity and colour foreigners bring. People who migrated seem to have far more motivation and balls than the average local, so they tend to make things happen.
Even in London, business leaders are continuously begging for more skills. Africa is nowhere in the global race for skills - it doesn’t even have the psychological capability to acknowledge that it needs to compete in this race.
The author seems capable of joining a pro-imigration march in the US, but wanting to keep Ghana for the Ghanaians. When you go down the comments section at the bottom of that article, you see some far more shameless
xenophobia.
One of the comments:
“Wherever on earth the Indians are there are problems because they are clannish, racist and exploitative.They are not a good people. Ghanaians should follow Idi Amin`s example. Yes, the Ghanaian government should seize the assets of Indians, Chinese and Lebanese and deport them. These people are parasites.”
Xenophobia is also a major problem in SA, where Somalis were attacked in the past week.
