“President John Dramani Mahama will undertake an official two-country visit to Japan and Singapore aimed at deepening bilateral relations, expanding trade and investment links, and advancing cooperation on shared development priorities.
“In Japan, the President will attend the 9th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IX), where he will make a presentation at a plenary session on the Economy: Promoting Trade and Investment.
“President Mahama will deliver an address at a Ghana Presidential Investment Forum, showcasing Ghana’s investment opportunities and the Resetting Ghana agenda. He will also hold a series of bilateral meetings with key Japanese partners, including the President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), senior representatives of the Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO), and the Prime Minister of Japan, Shigeru Ishiba, to discuss trade, investment, technical cooperation, and infrastructure partnerships.
“Following his engagements in Japan, the President will undertake a three-day state visit to Singapore. The state visit will include a courtesy call on President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, a meeting with Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, participation in the Africa-Singapore Business Forum, and an address at an investment forum to present Ghana’s reform and investment priorities and strengthen private-sector linkages between Ghana and Singapore-based investors.
“The visits seek to attract investment, broaden market access for Ghanaian goods and services, mobilise technical and development cooperation, and bolster partnerships in technology, infrastructure, finance, and human capital development.
“The President and his delegation will leave Accra on Sunday, 17 August 2025”.
Some have speculated that on this trip, President John Mahama hired a jet that would cost Ghanaians a whopping $15,000.00 dollars an hour. I do not know the facts, and therefore cannot speak in verification of same. Whatever it is, I think that we can all comfortably agree that a trip to Japan, with a President and his delegation, moving to Singapore with the same numbers, would cost the state of Ghana a pretty penny.
President John Agyekum Kufuor once stated that we seem to know the cost of everything, and the value of nothing. I would bet all the prekese in Ghana that if I were to criticize Mr. Mahama about the number of trips he has undertaken since becoming president, some people would quote Kufuor back at me. But we should begin to ask; is our good fortune and development to be found in these foreign lands, or it lies somewhere nearer and closer to home?
I believe that it is a combination of the two, with more emphasis on the latter. Indeed, it would be unworldly, if not out rightly foolhardy to suggest that our leaders should stop engaging with other nations. No nation works like that.
But a nation’s real energy, quite apart from its natural resources, are the caliber of its people; and this is where, I believe, we are failing.
With the singular exception of Jerry John Rawlings, I think that most contemporary Ghanaian leaders have failed to recognize this fact. Worse, they have made no (adding ‘little or’ would just beg the question) effort to find that innate core within the Ghanaian that can be tapped for the development and advancement of the Ghanaian.
Ghana’s history is replete with the fact that they are an amazing and highly enterprising people. The ability to adapt, even in the face of the grind and poverty of their lives in recent times, is testimony to the fact that they can do amazing things if they are encouraged in the right direction. But all contemporary Ghanaian leaders have failed to recognize this fact, with the possible exception of Jerry John Rawlings.
So, there we are. Mahama will come back from Japan and Singapore, just as he has often come back from similar jaunts to wine and dine with the elites of the world.
We will hear a few fine statements made to the press at the airport. We will be bamboozled with a few photographs of investors the trip has been able to garner. But eventually, we will leave this trip too on the cesspool of fun at the expense of Ghanaians that failed to deliver any qualitative change in the lifestyles of the people who matter, Ghanaians.
(PERISCOPE DEPTH is a column published every Monday in the Daily Searchlight. This was dated 25th August, 2025).
