In spite of Mrs. Mary Chinery-Hesse’s statement that Ghanaian intellectuals should not to shy away from discourses of national import, she had earlier challenged them to use languages which Ghanaians will understand. Her experience with policy-makers and the booming Accra-based consultants has taught her that sometimes one cannot understand the language they use. Factor in the mass of Ghanaians who do not read and spea English and you’ll calculate the implications on Ghana’s progress.

Despite the relevance of her observations, Chinery-Hesse, Chief Advisor to President John Kufuor, has missed one crucial thing; the exclusion of Ghanaian norms, values and traditions in policy-making, bureaucratizing, intellectualizing, and philosophizing about Ghana’s progress. In The Political Foundations of Development: The Case of Botswana, Scott A. Beaulier (of Mercer University, USA) and J. Robert Subrick (George Mason University, USA) argue that unlike other sub-Saharan African states, Botswana has prospered, for the past 25 years running, by successfully appropriating its norms, values and traditional institutions in the country’s progress.

Unlike in Botswana, Ghanaian norms, values, and traditions are yet to be reflected decisively in national discourse. In any country, you gauge how well its elites participate in national discourses by their involvement in the mass media. Chinery-Hesse thinks that they “consider the sharing of information through the media as demeaning of high academic achievement.” Pretty heartbreaking, but she is right and the reasons may be varied.

In response to my article, Awakening Suppressed Traditional Institutions, a respondent wrote, “Publishing in obscure outlets and that makes you a 'thinker?' What credible publication do you have to your credit?” What an intellectual ceiling! The sense here is that Ghanaian elites should not publish in the country’s mass media because they are mediocre and do not count in the country’s progress. This affects national discourse and the development process in terms of critically diagnosing the inadequacies within the development process.

Chinery-Hesse is aware of this missing link in Ghana’s progress and advises intellectuals and professionals with knowledge on issues of national importance not to shy away from the discourse, despite the demeaning climate. "By shying away to join the silent majority of docile listeners, they leave the scene for those who might not be knowledgeable to fill the vacuum. They should neither feel shy to participate in this manner nor consider the sharing of information through the [mass] media as demeaning academic achievement,” says Mary Chinery-Hesse.

Apart from fear of politicking by the increasingly divisive political atmosphere and politically charged media houses, some Ghanaian intellectuals desist from participating in national discourse via the mass media for fear of some moral and disciplinary flaws in the society. "You want to write comments on some issues disturbing Ghana but the responses are normally insults,” a professor at a Canadian university told me. 

Dr. George Amponsem, Ghanaian-Canadian economist and a Toronto-based business consultant for International Business Machines (IBM) says that during the earlier days of Ghana’s most popular web site, www.ghanaweb.com, a good number of Ghanaian intellectuals such as Dr. George Ayittey and Dr. Kofi Ellison, used to write pressing national issues for the website.In the course of time, they fizzled out! Why? The insults were too much.

Chinery-Hesse's policy-making and consultant circles should consider how the sharing of information through the mass media by the intellectual is stifled by an atmosphere that is demeaning.