Governor Guggisberg Foundation Lectures and Seminars

Dr Felix Geoffrey Nimoh, PhD Governor Guggisberg North-South Foundation Lecturer

The Graduate Programme is resourced from separate training partnership agreements with two universities. One of the universities is in the North (UK) and the other is in the South (Ghana). The Programme is applying these higher education partnerships to promote a North-South Economic Development Dialogue. We have accordingly instituted the Governor Guggisberg Foundation Lectures and Seminars. Guggisberg was the first British Governor (and the first European governor) to draw up and implement a development plan in modern African history. Though his initiative was soon followed by the other governors, none of them was able to achieve the high degree of success as he did.

Guggisberg created a path that connected the development of the physical and social infrastructure of a developing country (in ways that accrued money to the Government for investment) to a good programme of nation-wide education, and from there to set the stage for the economic and social transformation of the country.

Governor Guggisberg's reform measures encountered very stiff opposition from within and without the country, because it was the time when the doctrines of the classical economists such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Sir Alfred Marshall, Professor Pigou (of balanced budget) held the sway. For example, to go contrary to the popular doctrines and establish a development programme through deficit financing was unheard of in the pre-Keynesian times.

Yet, within a matter of eight years of his administration (1919-27), Governor Guggisberg had done so much as an individual to establish an educational foundation that changed every other aspect of the economic and social life of Ghana forever.

Are there any lessons to learn from the efforts and courage of Governor Guggisberg to assist the North-South Economic Development Dialogue?

ACTION

E-mail icdsabcd@aol.com for dates and registration

Some Readings on Guggisberg

Kimble, D. (1963) A Political History of Ghana: The Rise of the Gold Coast Nationalism 1850 - 1928. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Whitehead, C. (1982) Education in British Colonial Dependencies 1919 - 1939: A Re - Appraisal In Education in the Third World (ed.) Watson, K. Croom Helm, London & Canberra.