Ghana’s president slammed for taking IMF loan yet asking Africa to stop ‘begging’ the West

Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo cannot call on African leaders to stop begging from the West while he is doing the same, said former Nigerian senator, Shehu Sani, in response to Akufo-Addo’s recent advice to African leaders against “begging” from the West.

“If we stop being beggars and spend African money inside the continent, Africa will not need to ask for respect from anyone, we will get the respect we deserve,” the Ghanian leader said in his remarks during the opening of the US-Africa Leaders’ Summit held in Washington, DC, December 13-15. “If we make it prosperous as it should be, respect will follow.”

Sani juxtaposed Ghana’s current economic engagement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with the president’s remarks that came on the day that the IMF agreed to give Ghana a $3 billion loan to alleviate an unprecedented economic downturn in the West African country. “Ghana’s President is collecting IMF loan with the right hand and using the left hand to warn African Governments against begging the west for money,” Sani’s tweet read.

With inflation at over 50%, Ghanian currency, the cedi, worth half what it was last year, fuel prices doubling and debt payments gobbling up more than half the government’s revenues, Ghana has been battling its worst economic crisis in decades. The West African country signed a $3 billion bailout deal with the Washington-based international lender in a bid to shore up public finances, but economic stability is still a way off. Once applauded as a rock of economic stability and security in a region plagued by coups and jihadist wars, Ghana has steadily lost investor confidence. Like much of the continent, Ghana slowly emerged from the pandemic only to face the fallout of the Russia-Ukraine war and the surge in fuel and food costs.