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My hometown Abetifi in Ghana is one of the most beautiful and wealthy cities in Ghana, with a moderate and attractive climate all year round. It is sad and a shame to see a Chinese in the Abetifi bank as “Boss” simply because he had built a school building for some town from his successful business.
For a very small price reported as less than $ 5,000, the Chief has granted unlimited rights to cut down the trees and take huge amounts of land for mining and other businesses, as the Chinese see it! This is very serious!
In response to criticism, the Chief gave an audio explanation that was posted on an Abetifi Global Forum that we created. Now that this news has been posted on Ghanaweb and has gone global, as a senior member and leader, I hereby edit the answer that I posted yesterday on the forum.
I have listened to Chief Abetifi’s explanation and understand why, and that this has been done in other parts of Ghana. However, no educated man should accept that! We as Africans were tricked in the 13th to 19th centuries into selling our own people as slaves and eventually dominated by Europeans who colonized our people and took our minerals and other reserves for free in exchange for bottles of schnapps and whiskey. Today we say Enough already !! We are no more naive! Not! Our land and natural resources on earth and under the earth have value!
Our corrupt presidents and their families simply expect the wrath of the people.
When our own people abroad send goods and cars home, the government collects duties and taxes, sometimes up to 50-150% of the declared value of the cars. How much of that gets to Abetifi or Kwahu? The Kwahus think they are rich and vote en masse for a party as the favorite; But is development in Kwahu proportional to its wealth? Not!
Ghana’s cities and districts need written laws, just as the central government has laws. These laws should include land tax laws and real estate on land, that is, residential and commercial buildings. The Kwahus have also trained lawyers. Let’s put them to work! Being custodians of the land does not imply that the chiefs own the land. Not!
After 63 years of Independence and sending our children abroad to learn, there should be some knowledge about how other nations manage their resources, peoples and nations that we can adopt for our own survival. Today most of these bosses are well educated, some even lawyers. There is no excuse to sell our lands to foreigners in exchange for small gifts for the Chiefs! Not!
Africa is poor because we have not been able to value our land and our resources and elected and unelected leaders, greedy and selfish, educated, seem to think only of themselves and their families. It is time to change! It is time to learn that the land belongs to all the people! God did not assign any power or individual to the lands except by the brute force of man or patapaa. Modern reasoning must reign.
If a man builds a factory or business on, say, 2 acres of land (about 16 parcels), simple laws might involve:
1. Land alone attracts a sales price and taxes. That in Ghana is for the Chiefs only. However,
2. There is an annual tax on construction, called a property tax.
– Residential: this could be 1% of the building’s value per year. A typical building can attract, say, 4,000 per year or 333 per month, the same as a water fee in places like East Legon in Accra.
– For commercial rates, this could be calculated as cedis per usable building area per year (see article by J. Bishop-Henchman):
“In fiscal year 2010, state and local governments (in the US) collected $ 441.6 billion in property taxes, representing 23.5 percent of state and local self-source income.”
“,, By heavily taxing commercial and industrial property to benefit residential property, state and local governments are doing just that.” (J. Bishop-Henchman)
That is the formula that modern nations use. This idea of turning foreigners into Chiefs of “Progress” or Nkosoo smells more of giving them power and respect for the taxes that we should be collecting rather than a gift from them. Not! If the construction of a school building costs 300,000 Ghs, perhaps the taxes on logging, factory production or residential / commercial building would be much more than that.
It’s time for our educated bosses to learn some modern tricks of the global game of nations and survival of peoples.
Local government:
I have published many articles over the years on the need for democratic elected municipal / district and regional governments to collect taxes and responsibilities for the needs of the local population. For selfish reasons, all the leaders of the Fourth Republic, from Jerry Rawlings to JA Kufuor, Atta Mills, John Mahama and Nana Akufo Addo, have chosen to ignore the need to formalize and elect local leaders. Nor have all of them managed to define the role of the bosses. Time to do that.
All modern democratic nations do that! Britain saw the wisdom after the Glorious Revolution of 1498 and allowed an elected Parliament as they have done today. It is time for Ghana to learn how to do that.
The procedures and formula I posted on the forum is simply this:
How to create a CITY COUNCIL:
(the beginning of democracy)
In the research and work that I did, which led to a presentation I made at a meeting in Adabraka in 2007, we as people
1. Having to call a meeting and discuss the merits of the City Council.
2. Have an interim president or committee take nominations of candidates for the council and write a brief constitution and bylaws. The Charter and Constitution empower the Council to find ways to generate income for projects and needs of the city. Your powers and limits, salaries and managerial requirements for the accounts, etc. can be detailed. (Some of us with knowledge of US or UK land and property laws can help you do this.)
3. On the day of the meeting, vote and announce who the council members and the mayor are.
4. Publish this in the National Gazette.
In conclusion, I can say that Ghanaian land in each community can be worth billions of dollars. It remains for us as a people to use the knowledge we have accumulated in the post-independence era, especially the public knowledge and experience of our people who have lived abroad, and learn how to create wealth on our own lands!
Let’s stop waiting for wealth to come from outside, as our presidents and local bosses seem to be doing by selling our land cheaply.
Dr. Kwaku A. Danso
President and Co-founder of the Ghana Leadership Union (GLU).
Writer’s books:
Leadership concepts and the role of government in Africa: the case
from Ghana (2007, XLibris)
LIFE IS WAR: A letter to the nephews and nieces and loved ones behind on how to be successful using your mind (Page Publishing, 2017)
