Isn’t it the failure to reform global trade that is the main hurdle for Ghana and other poor countries?
Trade reforms may indeed be welcomed by poor countries, but without solving the underlying problem of low productivity – and in Ghana’s case very little manufacturing in the first place – trade reforms will never put producers in poor countries on an equal footing with the big players. As Kwame Agyapong argues in the full version of Damned by Debt Relief, trade reform is all very well but “what have we got to trade”? Unfortunately, pro-poor conditionalities and low horizons permeate discussions of trade reform just as they do discussions of development and growth. Whether it is the romantic calls to protect subsistence farming from the threat of world trade or the celebration of the miserable benefits of FairTrade, criticisms of global trade deepen the orthodoxy of “poverty reduction” and celebrate primitively-produced goods. Treating the developing world as a farm offers little prospect for serious development.
