Ghana’s leaders call it “partnership.” But history calls it something else. When a nation exports its young women to serve in territories still under European occupation, it is not progress—it is relapse. Behind the polished speeches and flag-waving diplomacy lies the same colonial pipeline: one that traffics not gold, but the daughters of the land.
The Government of Ghana has once again emerged on the global stage as the archetypal Magical Negro—that mythic figure expected to solve everyone else’s problems while perpetually incapable of solving his own. Ghana’s political class is eager to save others, but unwilling to save itself.
Now, the government proclaims it will “send trained nurses to the Caribbean country of Grenada to work in public hospitals and clinics.” According to the agreement between Grenada’s Prime Minister, Dickon Mitchell, and Ghana’s President, John Mahama, the initiative is “meant to help Grenada deal with a serious shortage of nurses and other caregivers.”
On paper, the gesture sounds noble—one nation helping another, one African people extending a hand to their kin in the Caribbean. Yet beneath this display of solidarity lies something far less admirable: the entrenched rot of poor governance and the illusion of moral virtue masking economic dependence. Before Ghana rushes to mend Grenada’s wounds, it might first look at its own—its crumbling hospitals, its underpaid nurses, its mothers dying on unpaved roads.
If Ghana trains more nurses than it can employ, why not expand its own healthcare system to absorb them? Why must every surplus of talent be exported? This is not economic genius—it is moral laziness disguised as pragmatism. To the bureaucrats in Accra, nurses are little more than commodities, shipped abroad like gold or cocoa, so long as the remittances keep flowing home.
This, too, is an old story. Once called the Gold Coast, Ghana was built to extract and export—first by European slave traders, then by colonial administrators, and now by postcolonial elites who mimic both. The resources have changed, but the model remains. Today’s export is no longer gold, but Ghana’s educated daughters.
And where are they sent? To Grenada—a nation still maintained under the shadow of American military and ideological occupation since 1983. The irony is staggering: Ghana, once the beacon of African independence, now lends its daughters to serve under the lingering influence of the very forces that once enslaved their foremothers.
To make this possible, Ghana leans once more on its inherited colonial infrastructure—the same arteries through which Europe once trafficked African women to the Caribbean. Only this time, the transaction comes with government contracts and development jargon. Progress, they call it.
Yet one must ask: why are these nurses—young women of childbearing age—being sent abroad to serve foreign populations while Ghanaian mothers die for lack of care at home? Why not send older nurses, or men? Why does the Ghanaian state barter away its daughters so eagerly?
Meanwhile, Ghanaian infants continue to die in understaffed clinics, and expectant mothers bleed to death on dirt roads. But the elites congratulate themselves, blinded by the narcotic of remittances and foreign praise.
When Ghana once needed doctors, Cuba trained them. When Ghana needed engineers, the Soviet Union educated them. The Cubans did not send their young women abroad for wages; the Soviets did not export their daughters as laborers. They built capacity, not dependency.
But Ghana’s ruling class learns nothing. Theirs is a government that mistakes motion for progress and servitude for service. They have repackaged the colonial export economy into a technocratic dream of “human capital mobility.” They call it empowerment. But in truth, it is the same old bondage, dressed in the language of global partnership.
Some habits, it seems, never die. Ghana remains a state organized for extraction—of minerals, of labor, and now, of its women. Its leaders preach “development” while practicing dependency; they speak of “sovereignty” while begging for applause from abroad.
What they call partnership, history calls subjugation. And what they call progress is, in truth, the latest chapter in the same long tragedy: a nation that once sought liberation, now content to export its own daughters for the illusion of success.
So how do we call the many Cuban doctors who come to Ghana to work in our hospitals?
Daniel Addo it’s surplus of these Cubans Professionals. Meaning Cuba is self Sufficient on health professionals.
“The Cubans did not export their young daughters to Ghana.” Did you read that part? If not, please take your time and read it carefully.
I don’t believe in nurses and doctors. Health is a matter of own sovereignty. Each one of us must know health and keep himself fit and sharp.
I think you may want to correct the part where you say Cuba did not send their medical people to Ghana.
I think the history of slavery is carrying too much weight in your argument. It is an emotive one but it does not propose what to do with the nurses we currently have that we cannot pay. Yes, in an ideal world, we would deploy their talents to aid our own needs but what do we do in the meantime? Keep them while not being able to pay them because slavery? Not exactly a solution to the real needs of the nurses.
The real question is what are you doing training nurses with tax payer money that you cannot employ inside your own deplorable healthcare system? What are you doing investing in frivolous activity as a nation?
Kofi Akakpo In addition, Cuba did not sent its daughters of childbearing age to Ghana, doctors or otherwise.
Narmer Amenuti I see the distinction you are trying to make now. Is that something you know or a belief? Basically, have you seen some data on this? Also, you have made a few statements about child bearing recently. Is that a particular interest of yours? Are you concerned about our demographics?
Narmer Amenuti we are on the same page about paying to educate skills you dont need. You are preaching to the choir in that respect. For instance, i think it makes more sense for country planning to rapidly develop and mechanize agriculture to subsidize the education of people in those fields, and to incentivize the best and brightest to go into that field.
Kofi Akakpo It seems we don’t disagree. That we both want the best for us! You are correct, “it makes more sense for country planning to rapidly develop and mechanize agriculture to subsidize the education of people in those fields, and to incentivize the best and brightest to go into that field.”
I am also concerned about the narratives of western institutions about African Population growth and how they need to “ensure” that Africa grows “sustainably.” They don’t hide their population control schemes for Africa. I have written several essays about their projections and why we should reject them.
And so I see sending “surplus” nurses from Ghana to Grenada as a problem first and foremost for the simple reason that the surplus nurse, sitting at home, and can’t find a job, is also usually a woman of childbearing age, who in addition to a job also wants a family. Why send her to Grenada? Meanwhile, Grenada is a US occupied territory, which means there are several single American men, mostly white boys there, in wait for what?
A country that cannot find anything for its daughters to do, but to “export” them, is worse than a failed state. It is a PIMP STATE.
Narmer Amenuti I don’t know about the pimp state moniker but I do agree that the demographic doom predictions are mostly understood now to be at the very least overstated. When one analyzes the sheer size of Ghana (larger than the entire UK for instance) and the availability of natural resources, we can definitely support much more than our current population. And indeed, demographics are strength as proven by the rise of China, Brazil, India, Indonesia etc. If we can manage our resources, those issues are all addressable.
Kofi Akakpo great suggestion. Why train what you cannot absorb? Why incentivize people into nursing with paid allowance when you cannot employ after their education?
Hhhhhmmmnnn, now the corrupt , incapable Leaders, unable to solve any problems or challenges ,,are doing SLAVE TRADING IN REVERSE. What a Tragedy!!!
This is just off the mark unfortunately. How are you going to describe those who’ve left the continent voluntarily to different climes apart from the Americas and Europe?
Plantation workers?
Also, what’s the point of keeping them in the country when most are still at home not utilising their acquired skills?
Papa Abakah Sorry, but you have not understood the essay. What has leaving “the continent voluntarily to different climes” got to do with the mass “export” of childbearing women to another country as charity?
Papa Abakah “what’s the point of keeping them in the country when most are still at home not utilising their acquired skills?” If the government of Ghana cannot figure out how to put little nurses to use in a country that obviously needs them then they have no business to be governing our country. They should quit now.
Dade Afre Akufu without the financial wherewithal (due to budgetary constraints), what would be the most pragmatic option?
Papa Abakah Is that the excuse? “Budgetary constraints so the government has to send nurses to Grenada to do Ashawo? And you support the government. I don’t. I want them to step down and let someone more capable than them do it. My guess is that they wont. Because they are incompetent thieves.
Exporting ADWAMANBO!
A nation that once led Africa to independence now exports its women for wages — and calls that leadership.
Ghana’s moral crisis is not poverty but pride — the belief that servitude, if well-branded, is the same as success.
While your article focuses on nurses, this issue is widespread and impacts all trained professionals, such as Doctors, Teachers, and IT professionals. It feels as though only Lawyers and Politicians have a secure future in Ghana. Consequently, the rest of us must look for “greener pastures” elsewhere, a difficult step that often disappoints when the promised opportunities don’t materialise. 🥹🙃🤨🧐.
You are correct. More correct than I am. I find the “export” of young women of childbearing age (trained nurses) to the “Sugar Plantations” of the Caribbean, still managed by European Men with guns and ammunition, emotionally charged. Why not encourage our older nurses, 45 years and older, if they are willing to serve that mission, to travel to Grenada instead? That way we can create the cap space to employ our young women here. So they can start their families here instead! So they will not fall to the wild radicalism of European men on a “Sugar Plantation”!