In this special live episode hosted on TwitterSpaces, we spoke to Bright Simons, a Ghanaian public policy advocate, President of mPedigree, a mobile telephony platform and Vice-President of Imani Africa, a think tank. Our discussion centred around the role of government and policy in Ghana and Africa and the controversial Ghanaian e-levy as a showcase for policy formation.
Bright backgrounds the interaction of the people and the state through an etymological flashback of the word ‘Aban' - the Twi word for Government which literally means a ‘Stone Fortress’ and how that view is true in our perception of the role of governments. He expands on the decline of patriotic discourse on policy towards more patronage politics over the last decade.
We uncover the lapses in the design of Ghana’s e-levy, one of the most debated policies in recent years, the absence of government awareness that has birthed a policy removed from the reality of the public and critique the projected economic value of the levy. He highlighted the 3 Cs of policy; crisis, consultation (the lack thereof), and confusion, as the framework through which African governments react to issues of the economy, and how they often lead to farcical policy creation.
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