The Ghana that Kwame Nkrumah set on a path of success has not run aground in the hands of its successive leaders, Dr Ishmael Yamson of Yamson and Associates has said.

Speaking at a Business Roundtable organised by his consultancy in Accra on Wednesday, 31 May, Dr Yamson said: “At independence, we all remember Nkrumah had greater ambitions … and I saw Ghana as poised to take over the world, poised for the future. And then we found oil in 2011 and everybody thought that Ghana was going to take off, poised to take off. How did we fare last year? The ship has run aground and that’s your country, from being aspirational, having great hopes, having great ambition to now going round begging and borrowing money like we have never seen anywhere.”

“We have not been entrepreneurial in our outlook, in our thinking, in our ambitions, in our actions …” Dr Yamson asserted.

According to him, Ghana has not received the desired benefits from the mining of gold since independence.

“We have been producing cocoa for how many years? We have been producing gold for how many years? Now, in fact, gold has become a curse because it is because of gold that all the galamsey and all our water bodies are being destroyed,” the business consultant told Class91.3FM’s Benjamin Akakpo on Wednesday, May 31 at the roundtable.

Citing an example, the former board chairman of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) said Vietnam, which used to be a war-torn country, has managed to identify key areas to boost its economy.

Vietnam, Dr Yamson said, identified tea and few other products and developed a value chain for the product.

He said Vietnam uses fish, leather and its natural resources for its benefit, adding that they “didn’t sit back like Ghana does by producing and selling things raw”.

“They moved the products through different stages and have created “a huge industry and a chain at which level value is added [to the raw products]”.

Dr Yamson has, therefore, challenged stakeholders to think entrepreneurially because that is the only way economic growth can be achieved.

The fourth edition of the annual Business Roundtable is on the theme: Making Ghana Entrepreneurial.

The programme is being held at the Golden Tulip Hotel in Accra and meant to explore how Ghana can become prosperous.

Speakers will use the opportunity to examine how government, policy makers, regulators, and the public sector can become entrepreneurial in their approach to the business of government and how they can, through the creation of a sustained enabling operating environment, effectively facilitate entrepreneurship by the private sector, the social sector, and other stakeholder institutions in Ghana.

It will also provide the opportunity for all the stakeholders to examine how they can become more entrepreneurial, more agile, and better able to assess risks; competitively leverage opportunities in the environment and become less dependent on political patronage.

Speakers at event include former rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Professor Stephen Adei; businessman Dr Daniel Mackorley, founder and leader of the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC), Dr Mensa Otabil; Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta, Chair of Yamson and Associates Dr Ishmael Yamson, CEO of Dream Oval Derrydean Dadzie, and a host of other distinguished persons.