Vice-President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has urged Africa to relinquish the mindset of impossibility in favour of the mindset of possibility, in order for the continent to leapfrog its development and become a global pillar.
Delivering his keynote address as guest of honour at Harvard University’s Africa Development Conference, Dr. Bawumia identified the continent’s continued reliance on ineffective systems as the bane of the continent’s economic growth and development.
The Vice President said the status quo remains because the continent has, for many years, not broken the “shackles of impossibility mindsets”.
“The truth is that while African countries are politically free, we still have a mindset that is shackled by the experience of 500 years of slavery and colonialism,” Bawumia said.
“For the longest time, we have not believed in ourselves. The dominant mindset is one of impossibility,” he “told conference participants in the United States of America over the weekend.
Addressing issues stifling the African continent’s economic growth, Dr. Bawumia stated that over-reliance on raw materials rather than human capital development, as well as a lack of effective systems such as an identity system, property addressing system, massive financial exclusion, and manual delivery of public services, are major contributory factors to Africa’s stalled progress.
Dr. Bawumia stated that in order to address these fundamental system challenges, Africa must embrace the Fourth Industrial Revolution and, equally importantly, break the impossibility mindset, which he claims is a major impediment to Africa’s progress.
“Our generation needs to break the shackles of the impossibility mindset and embrace the mindset of possibility. It is time for us to figure out the best ways to be masters of our destiny, chart our own path and develop on our own terms. It is possible!”
Bawumia has led Ghana’s successful digitalization drive to address some of the fundamental system challenges he discussed at the Conference. In pursuit of Ghana’s digital transformation agenda, he has, faced his own challenges with “impossibility mindsets,” and has frequently spoken about how pessimists attempted to stymie and discourage many of the successful digital innovations he led.
