When I received the following in power point presentation from my Texas-based friend Nii Oblie Armah, my initial thought was that it would be one of the numerous Internet jokes that are used to relieve office work of some of its tedium. Normally, I read some of them, pass on the relatively clean ones and get on with seeking the daily bread in an honest way. This was different. The headline showed that this purported to explain why poor countries are poor; the instinct to bin the thing was even stronger as I suspected that it was going to come over as all-American prescription for pulling oneself up by the bootstraps and all. Then as it rolled I began to read it. I dismissed out of hand as one more feeble and idle explanation for why we are poor and others rich. I argued to myself that the rich countries of this world are rich because they have exploited the other nations and made them poor. Historically, the countries that are now rich took from the poor countries gold, diamonds, timber, and all kinds of minerals and other natural resources. They even took human beings in the form of slaves to work for them. The process continues to this day even if the activities are different. Now, the rich countries ensure that they take natural resources from poor countries at prices dictated by the rich countries while selling finished products to the poor countries at prices determined by the rich countries. The historical process that has made us poor is well known. If we are minded so to do, we can even calculate the value of the wealth that has been stolen from say, Africa to Europe and the Americas over the past five hundred years. The fact that it will be a very large figure in any currency does not mean that it cannot be calculated. But what you are about to read challenged me to think about the things that cannot be calculated by which are the intangible building blocks of any viable enterprise. This is what it said: The difference between poor and rich countries does not lie in the availability of natural resources. Japan has limited territory of which 80 percent is mountainous, inadequate for agriculture and cattle raising but it is the world's 2nd largest economy. The country is like an immense floating factory, importing raw material from the whole world and exporting manufactured products. Another example is Switzerland which does not plant cocoa but has the world's best chocolate. In its little territory people raise and plant the soil in only four months of the year. They also produce the best quality dairy products. It is a small country that transmits an image of security, order and labour which has made it the world's strongest safe. Executives from rich countries who communicate with their counterparts in poor countries show that there is no significant intellectual difference. Race or skin colour is also not important. Immigrants labelled lazy in their countries of origin are the productive power in rich European countries. What is the difference then? The difference is the attitude of the people framed along the years by education and culture. On analysing the behaviour of the people in rich and developed countries, we find that the majority follow, the following principles in their lives: • Ethics as a basic principle • Integrity • Responsibility • Respect for rules and laws • Respect for the rights of other people • Strive to save and invest • Wil1for action (as opposed to talk) • Punctuality In poor countries only a minority of people lack natural resources or because nature was cruel to us. We are poor because we lack the right attitude. We lack the will to comply with and teach these principles of rich and developed societies. I get angry when people from the rich and industrialised countries who take the opportunity to take advantage of us at every turn begin to lecture us on corruption because corruption is not a Third World monopoly. Indeed, the corruption that is embedded in the economic arrangements in the north makes our variety a mere piffling detail. However, when you go through that list of nine "principles" in a sober manner you will understand that it is addressing all the negatives that we are inflicting upon ourselves and therefore preventing us from making progress even when we have what it takes to do so. Let us take Nigeria as a case in point. According to Crusade media, "during the last 25 years, Nigeria earned more than $300 billion in oil revenues, however, annual per capita income plummeted from $1000 to $390. Over two thirds of the population lives in abject poverty, a third is illiterate and 40 percent have no safe water supply." The country's elites bear most of the blame. As journalist Karl Maier, whose writings 'This House Has Fallen' has put it, Nigeria is a "criminally mismanaged corporation where the bosses are armed and have barricaded themselves inside the company safe". I use Nigeria because it is an extreme case and an easy example but our own country has to accept responsibility for letting down our youth because the promise of this country ought to have garnered a better return for the young people of this country. We may not have squandered US$400 billion as Nigeria's ruling elite are alleged to have done over the past 40 years, but that is because we don't have that kind of money. We have also squandered according to our size. Now, close your eyes and imagine the kind of country this would be if a majority of Ghanaians lived by those principles: say if we were led by instinctive ethical precepts (which in big English means doing what is right most of the time); being punctual; taking responsibility for what we do and for one another; obeying rules and laws and, above all, loving work. Imagine how much this country would change if, say, for one whole month no government official took ten per cent or kickbacks off contracts, no policeman extorted money from drivers, no traders deliberately overcharged their customers; no drivers broke traffic rules .... Now, wake up gently ... because this dream is getting too sweet. But it can be real if we can use culture and education to inculcate such principles in our daily lives. Ironically, these principles are no different from those taught by the religions to which most Ghanaians pledge allegiance. Somehow, we divorce the sermons from ourselves as effortlessly as a duck shakes off water. The challenge is to make this water stick. Source: Kwasi Gyan Apeteng/The Mirror Email: gapenteng@hotmail.com