President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has reiterated his point that Ghana, and for that matter, all African countries must strive to move beyond aid.

According to him, seeking aid from the advanced economies won’t make the least developed countries developed.

Delivering the Keynote address during the 61st Independence Day celebration in Accra on Tuesday 6 March, Mr Akufo-Addo said: “But achieving our destiny requires a deliberate, qualitative change in all aspects of our lives; especially, in the structure of our economy, the nature of our infrastructure, the education of our young people and acquisition of skills and above all, in our attitudes and the holding firm to the values that define us.

“The change in our fortunes will only happen when our economy improves. Since I became President, I have been advocating a Ghana, indeed, an Africa Beyond Aid, and I am keen to have the support of all of us in this enterprise.

“Nobody needs to spell it out to us that the economic transformation we aspire to, will not come through Aid. We have been on this trajectory for most of the past sixty-one years and it has not happened.

“We are told there is Aide Fatigue, the taxpayer of the aid givers have a right to decide how their tax money is spent, the truth is that even if there were no aid fatigue there will be never enough aid to develop Ghana to the level we want, Aid was never meant to be what would bring us to a developed nation status of a developed nation.”