The Dean of Academic Affairs of the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College, Prof. Vladimir Antwi-Danso, has noted that African countries could attain the vision of integration amongst themselves by utilizing opportunities such as political union, economic union, common market, customs union and free trade.
He mentioned bad governance, lack of trait transformational leaders, high dependence of Africa Union on European countries for funding, instability, and many others, as some of the factors that have contributed to the economic woes of the African continent.
Delivering a public lecture on the theme, “New Opportunities for Economic Integration in Africa in the Era of Ultra-Nationalist Movements in Europe and North America”, Prof. Antwi-Danso observed that global nationalism was as a result of unresolved colonial mistakes, post-cold war realities, failure of multi-culturalism, political economy of integration and the cost of multilateralism and rise in unilateralism.
He touched on global disintegration and the burning desire for some cities to secede from countries, citing several examples to back his argument, including Catalonia to secede from Spain, Scotland from the United Kingdom, California from the US, Hong Kong from China, amongst others. He added that “the intensification for such desires in the 21st century has little to do with geo-politics and much more to do with what Dani Rodrick has termed the ‘Trilemmas of Globalization”.
Prof. Antwi-Danso averred that “the failure of Global liberalism, spiced with the hiccups in Global governance and exacerbated by failures of the integration is to be blamed for the current situation”. He said Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Boko Haram were the two terrorist organisations which occupy 60% of the world casualties.
According to him, Boko Haram was one of the dangerous terrorist group in the world. Giving statistics obtained in 2014, he revealed that the number of attacks by Boko Haram was 453, resulting in 6,634 deaths and 1,742 injuries. On ISIS, he disclosed that the number of atrocities was 1,071 out of which 6,073 deaths were recorded. He also revealed that had it not been the timely intervention of his outfit, some three Ghanaian young ladies would have joined ISIS. “About a month ago, my outfit had to halt some three girls in Bawku who were going to work for ISIS,” he said.
Prof. Antwi-Danso said terrorist organizations doled out a lot of money to their recruits, disclosing that even a cook earns about $ 250 a day and those at the war front earn around $ 640 a day. He singled out Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, as the only head of state with trait of transformational leader who had turned the fortunes of his country. He, therefore, called on other African leaders to emulate the Rwandan leader.
The lecture was chaired by Dr. (Lawyer) K. Addo Tuffour, a Senior Lecturer at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS).
