Ghana Decides is a Blogging Ghana project funded by donor agencies through STAR Ghana, an NGO. It aims to use social media to sensitise the Ghanaian electorate on the impending elections. Their specific goals include (or have included):
1. Educating Ghanaian youth, especially those on social media about the upcoming elections
2. Increasing participation in the biometric voter registration exercise
3. Educating civil society and public institutions on the effectiveness of social media for social change
I was wondering if an organisation with the explicit mandate to be non-partisan was the best tool for achieving these goals in Ghana. There are two major political parties in Ghana. This means that every issue is viewed through a partisan lens, squeezing out audience for seemingly contrary discourse even if it could be reached by assuming a not-necessarily-partisan premise.
An example of such discourse would be the coverage of the Ferdinand O. Ayim memorial lectures and the ensuing analysis. Can one discuss such an event without venturing into politics? For any fruitful discussion to be made about the issues raised, I suspect we would need sober partisans with an understanding of the economic issues that were raised. Unless Ghana Decides wants to just report the news, which I don't think is their goal, any productive discussion of the lectures must be curtailed (and indeed it was, as evidenced by the sole bland comment, "Cool," on the discussion on their Facebook page after about six stories on the subject were posted) since the platform and the issues were inherently political. Hence, a fine opportunity to discuss the political-economic condition of the country was dashed because it was a partisan event.
On the issue of voter registration, what better way to mobilise the electorate than to get agents on the ground mobilising the youth in vans to the registration centres? If you were tasked with investing $5,000 in a project to get to get as many people who would otherwise not register as possible to register and you had the following two options, which one would you choose?
1. Give the money to Ghana Decides to continue their social media campaign of sharing videos and photos of people who have registered in order to motivate others to do same.
2. Give the money to NPP and NDC youth organisers to mobilise their base to register en masse at the various centres.
The latter option appears to me to be more promising than the former.
Anti-politics machines are known for their grandiose and noble goals (potential output), but their inefficiency in the mathematical and physical senses of work output being disappointingly low compared with the work input are often overlooked, because their goals are hard to criticise. Who would disagree with educating Ghanaian youth before the impending elections? Who would oppose giving funds to a non-partisan organisation to mobilise the citizenry to register for the elections?
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