Why Uganda is not Ghana…or is it why Ghana isn’t Uganda?

A few days ago, I was reacquainted with Ghana, as a guest of the good people of ICT Policy Centre for Eastern and Southern Africa (CIPESA), in Ntinda. CIPESA has become an Africa leader in this internet freedom space and you can be sure they didn’t pick Ghana by fluke.

An awful lot has changed – for the better – in Ghana since my last call.
But first, as I waited for the flight to Accra, a group of Ghanaians were sitting in front of me in the airport lounge. They were wonkish types, but the only woman among them sounded particularly clever, and worldly.

I really sat up to eavesdrop their conversation when she said in the “low season”, Ghana imports tomatoes and, throwing her hands up in exasperation, “even mangoes from Panama”, she said.
In Accra, I could begin to figure why that was so. It was the result of a version of President Yoweri Museveni’s much-debated “immunisation dilemma” that arose from his famously long TV address to the nation three weeks ago.

His presentation was clumsy, but Museveni was right that when you succeed in things like immunisation, more children get to live into adulthood. That means you will have more young people for whom you have to create jobs and opportunities.
The controversy stemmed from the fact that the way Museveni put it, it came across like he was saying young people should be grateful they were immunised and lived, and shouldn’t ask much more of his government.

Ghana too has a related issue. Its middle class has grown dramatically and more sophisticated, and as fewer people remain on the land to grow food and climate change ravages agriculture in West Africa and the Sahel, the food deficit grows.
If I were a Uganda government strategists listening to those Ghanaians in the lounge, I would be thinking, “rather than revive Uganda Airlines as a passenger airline, perhaps it’s wiser to think of a cargo service instead that would fly agricultural produce to Ghana and other places in West Africa at prices lower than Panama can”.
But that is probably the easier bit of this. The rest is about how peoples think.

On September 15, Ghana opened a new terminal at Kotoka International Airport. It’s swanky, alright, with all basic tech. But that’s not why it stands out. It does because it is not so “Third World” in its logic.
It’s pretty much like arriving at Heathrow in London or Charles De Gaulle in Paris. Unlike Entebbe, you can park at the very entrance, and get through two doors without a security check, then directly to the check-in counters. The issue of how many times passengers have to “undress” for security checks has become defining for travel, with enlightened airports trying to keep it to just one.
The securitariat in places like Uganda, Kenya, and Rwanda will still run you through two checks. So why is Ghana different?

Well, Ghana places very high in the Africa democracy rankings, and holds acrimonious, but in the end, fairly benign elections.
After tough man Jerry Rawlings considerably modernised its economy and set it on the path to democracy, and stepped down, John Kufour’s New Patriotic Party (NPP), defeated his ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) in 2001.
Rawlings ruled from Osu Castle, a part of which used to be slave quarters. I went to see the place, though I couldn’t be allowed into his old crumped office. Working from there, helped feed his populist rage, and burnish his radical credentials.

Kufour decided he would build a new presidential palace, but he lived at his posh home. Apart from NDC’s John Atta Mills, who replaced Kufour (died prematurely in office in 2012) and used parts of it for Sunday prayer, no other Ghanaian leader has used Osu Castle since Rawlings.
Ghana’s current president Nana Akufo-Addo comes from a very wealthy and distinguished political lineage, and his home – where he lives – makes the vast presidential palace look middling.
In highly securitised nations, where the president crossing town every day to and from his office is a bother, this Ghanaian arrangement might not work. But one can see the benefit of having a separation. For starters, it means official visitors to State House will never get to see the president’s favourite aunt from the village roaming the gardens in her lesu.

But it also seems that a president who lives in his home, and only goes to State House to work, can never confuse the two, and think that State House is his, as seems to be the case in Uganda.
But in Ghana’s case, the even more critical thing is that they have arrived at a point where the people who become presidents, have homes that are better than the presidential palace before they run for office.
Next week, we shall look at how Ghana arrived at this point, and what leaf Uganda can pick from them.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is the publisher of Africa data visualiser Africapedia.com and explainer site Roguechiefs.com.

Twitter@cobbo3