Ghana enjoys enviable status as beacon of democracy in Africa – Minister

Ghana flagsMr Alhassan Azong, Minister of State in-charge of Public Sector Reform, on Thursday observed that Ghana enjoys an enviable status as beacon of democracy in Africa and had demonstrated it through maturity over the two decades.

The Minister, who was speaking at a day’s sensitisation workshop organised in Accra on Ghana’s Open Government Partnership (OGP), said the opportunity to help show the way to open and effective governance  was provided when Ghana signed to join the OGP in September 2011.

He noted that the decision was borne out of Ghana’s zeal for the promotion of democracy and good governance demonstrated through existing provisions enshrined in the 1992 Constitution.

The OGP is a multi-stakeholder initiative that aims at securing concrete commitment from governments to their citizenry to promote transparency, empower citizens fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.

The Public Sector Reform Secretariat (PSRS) was assigned to serve as the Secretariat of the National Steering Committee.

Mr Azong said with the view to ensure that the core ideals, policies and rules of partnership between Government and civil society organisations (CSOs) established by the Global OGP were upheld, representatives from Government and the CSOs were encouraged to participate and contribute ideas for the preparation of the Action Plan.

“Ghana’ s Action Plan was produced with support from the World Bank and presented at the International OGP forum in April this year,” he said.

He stated that in accordance with the process of multi-stakeholders consultations agreed by the OGP member countries, consultations were held with full participation of invited participants from Government and CSOs.

The Minister announced that Ghana is preparing its “Inspiring Story” from the extractive industry sector to be presented at the forth-coming OGP meeting in London next month.

“Ghana has also been invited to join five working groups on Open Data, Extractive Governance, Freedom of Information, Legislative Openness and Fiscal Transparency at the forum,” he said.

Mr Azong expressed the need to consolidate the efforts from the institutions whose works are critical to the thematic areas to feed into the broader picture of progress.

Mr Pethuel K. Dunyo, Deputy Director in-charge of Research at PSCS, said the OGP was built on four pillars of commitment; namely, transparency, citizen participation, accountability, and technology and innovation.

He said the implementation of Ghana’s OGP Action was a collective responsibility, particularly the organisations that have direct responsibility for implementing specific actions.

Mr Dunyo urged stakeholders to come on board.

Currently, the OGP countries have increased from the original eight countries to 60  including six African countries.

Source: GNA

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