THE CONTRIBUTION OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF GHANA
INTRODUCTION
Project management as a management discipline underpins much economic activity. In industries as diverse as pharmaceuticals, software and aerospace, projects drive business. And in the public sector, it is effective project management that translates politicians' promises of new roads, schools and hospitals into gleaming new constructions that improve everyday life.
The development of Ghana
Successive Ghanaian governments pursued various models of economic development throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s. In the immediate post independent era of the early 1960s, Ghana’s economic development objectives were geared towards the ‘Big Push’ primary economic policies. These revolved around: a major investment effort; an industrialization drive; increased import substitution; processing of commodities and minerals previously exported in their raw form; and direct state participation in leading areas of the economy. The 1970s ushered in a policy of increased ‘Ghanaianisation’ or indigenisation with specified industrial activities reserved for state participation, Ghana-foreign ownership, and exclusive Ghana ownership, among others. The early 1980s saw the liberalization of the Ghanaian economy and the encouragement of foreign investments. All these approaches, however, fell far short of expectations and the failures were exacerbated by adverse terms of trade, falling commodity prices, and crippling debt by the mid-1980s. The failure of the various economic models and the severe strains exerted by external forces, in tandem, had contributed in no small measure to Ghana’s dire socio-economic condition: a depressed economy; massive unemployment; high levels of inflation; capacity under-utilisation; dependence on primary commodity exports; and low productivity. The challenge for development