<<Print>>

Dear All, As those of you who live, or follow events, in Ghana know already, the Armed Forces of our young republic want to start an investment holding company so they can go into businesses such as footwear, pharmaceuticals, and garments. From what they tell us the military plans to own 40% of this holding company, with a Czech company, introduced as a "strategic partner", owning the remaining 60%. There is remarkable unanimity across the political and intellectual elite in support of this new focus for our struggling, under-equipped, Armed Forces. When the idea was first broached we at IMANI reacted with concern about the viability and desirability of this development. Having put our views as best as we could we felt that our work as a public interest research organisation was done. We are returning to the subject with the report below because we are now convinced that the broad support for the announced military plans was procured through misconceptions and limited information. While we do not intend to make a campaign out of this, we feel nevertheless strongly impelled to correct the misconceptions that are in the public domain so that if public opinion continues to support the military industrial holding idea it shall be doing so fully aware of the hard facts. We expect this to be our last comment on the issue. We leave the rest to public opinion, the conscience of the political leadership, or either fails to posterity.