INTRODUCTION: WHY THIS ESSAY IS IMPORTANT NOW

Kwabena Bomfeh Jnr. The Republican Nationalist. I posit that, in the current development debate in Ghana, where figures, GDP growth rates and partisan point-scoring are the order of the day, Bomfeh takes us back to the moral foundations of the state.

His essay “Hunger, Poverty, Appetite and the Recurrent Self-Destruct Tendencies in Ghana: Toward Freedom and Justice for All in Equitable Development” is timely. It comes when Ghana Statistical Service data for Q3 2025 tells us 12.5 million Ghanaians, that is 38.1% of our people are food insecure, and 227,519 citizens live in a triple burden of food insecurity, multidimensional poverty and unemployment.

This reflection appreciates the author, not because of diagnosing the disease but naming it in a language that Ghanaians can feel. He does not hide behind jargon. He gives us honesty in operations.

2: THE WRITE-UP THESIS

The core argument is both elegant and chilling: The two human problems of Ghana are not beyond control:

Poverty is a lack of means, knowledge and capability.

Hunger is the desire for food, and when it is not satisfied, it becomes a third and more dangerous condition, called appetite.

Appetite, in Bomfeh’s definition, is “hunger magnified by memory of poverty.” It is the desperate, sensational desire that one should be satisfied at all costs, that one should never feel want again, even if others must go without.

Untamed appetite becomes justification for unbridled acquisition of power and wealth and for dominance. This is why we have the recurring self-destruct tendency. We destroy cocoa for gold. We pollute our own Pra and Ankobra rivers. We divert school feeding and fertiliser meant for our own children.

His powerful moral illustration is unforgettable: "Even among thieves, there is honour; you can steal from anyone but a fellow thief." Ghana, he argues, has broken even that base code of survival. We are robbing our own company called Ghana.

His conclusion is no less pointed: Provision can meet with poverty. Hunger can be satisfied with food. Appetite can be satisfied by principle alone. A starving man looks for food. The man of appetite wants to own the kitchen.

3: RELATION TO THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS ON POVERTYAND HUNGER

The essay by Bomfer is direct commentary on the promise of Agenda 2030.

SDG 1: No Poverty- end poverty in all its forms. Bomfeh adds texture to this aim by stressing that poverty is not just income. It is want of means and want of brain. The SDG target 1.4 and 1 is exactly what his data is pointing at: 50% of household heads without formal education are food insecure compared to 15% with tertiary education. Mean when they talk about equal rights to resources and capacity building. His call is to make freedom economic land security, irrigation, storage, market information. Localisation of SDG 1.

SDG 2: Zero Hunger aims to end hunger and achieve food security. Bomfeh looks beyond calories to show the gender and geographic injustice of hunger, with female-headed households at 44.1% insecurity, above 80% where children are underweight, Upper West and North East most affected while Oti improved from 23.8% to 18.4% through focused investment. This corroborates SDG 2.1, 2.3 on smallholder productivity and 2.c on food price volatility but with a Ghanaian empirical face.

Most importantly, by adding Appetite, Bomfeh explains why SDG 1 and 2 are stalling: not for lack of resources, but for lack of restraint among those who manage resources.

4: LINKING THE WORK TO HUMAN SECURITY: FREEDOM FROM FEAR ANDFREEDOM FROM WANT

The traditional Human Security paradigm rests on two pillars: Freedom from Fear and Freedom from want. Essence, Bomfeh’s essay is about both.

Freedom from Want is the farmer in Upper West who can till but cannot store his tomatoes, the mother who does not know where the next meal comes from. And these 12.5 million food-insecure citizens of Bomfeh are exactly the people who do not enjoy this freedom.

Appetite is the killer of freedom from fear. When ballot boxes are stolen, contracts are inflated, lands are degraded for illegal mining, and institutions including the judiciary are weakened, citizens live in fear, fear of arbitrary power, of polluted water, of justice delayed. The essay illustrates how unbridled appetite for power breeds fear, which in turn reproduces want.

His call for FREEDOM AND JUSTICE as a compass is a call for human security in its deepest sense: freedom to live without want, and freedom to live free of fear from those who hoard.

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE 1994 UNDP HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT ONHUMAN SECURITY

The 1994 UNDP Human Development Report led by Mahbub ul Haq changed the definition of security from territorial security to people centred security. It proposed seven components of economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community and political security.

That report has again been validated again by Bomfeh, 31 years later:

Economic and Food Security: His triple burden cohort (food insecure + multidimensionally poor + jobless) is precisely the UNDP’s warning that job and income insecurity breed food insecurity.

Environmental Security: The pollution of the Pra and Ankobra for gold is a classical example of environmental insecurity that threatens health and livelihoods.

Political and Personal Security: The snatching of ballot boxes and diversion of school feeding is an affront to political security and personal dignity.

Community security breaks down when a community that felt excluded excludes others more violently.

“Human security is preventive,” in the view of UNDP. Bomfeh shows what happens when prevention fails. We begin to eat our seed instead of planting it. His three solutions economic freedom, distributive justice, institutionalised conscience are precisely what the 1994 report meant by early prevention through equitable development.

6: CONNECTING THE WORK TO AMARTYA SEN’S DEVELOPMENT ASFREEDOM

It appears to me that: No book sheds more light on Bomfeh's essay than Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom (1999).

Sen argues that development is not growing GDP but expanding substantive freedoms the capabilities to lead lives people have reason to value. Sen argues that poverty is not income poverty, but capability deprivation.

BOMFEH OPERATIONALISES SEN IN GHANAIAN TERMS:

1: Sen’s capability deprivation is poverty as ‘want of knowledge, thought and capability’.2: Hunger as anxiety about the next meal is what Sen calls unfreedom, the lack of freedom to be fed.3: The dangers of a dominance based on appetite: the extension of the freedom of a few by the contraction of the freedom of the majority (Sen).

Sen argues that famine doesn’t occur in functioning democracies with a free press and accountability because the rulers have to respond.

Bomfeh’s data shows that in the absence of accountability, hunger persists. He is demanding what Sen calls “protective security” and “transparency guaranties”, the institutions that make freedom real, when he demands that we publish fertiliser allocations by district, publish EPA sanctions, protect whistleblowers and ensure justice protects the smallholder as fast as the investor.

Bomfeh: Freedom is more than political speech. It is pure Sen: the freedom of a farmer to own land securely, the freedom to irrigate, the freedom to have access to storage. Freedom is both the end and the means of development.

7: CONTRIBUTIONS TO DEVELOPMENT DISCOURSE IN AFRICA

Four important contributions of Bomfer’s essay are:

a) A Moral Vocabulary for Political Economy: Africa’s discourse frequently imports terms like “resource curse” and “rent-seeking.” Bomfeh provides indigenous moral vocabulary – want, yearning, appetite – that ordinary people understand and can discuss at the lorry station and in the palace.

b) Linking Micro and Macro Self-Destruction: He links the farmer who destroys his own soil to the politician who destroys national institutions. They are both driven by the same short term craving. This provides a powerful alternative to theories that blame only elites or only citizens.

c) Evidence-Based Nationalism: He is not a nostalgic Republican Nationalist. He uses GSS data to demonstrate that equitable, geographically just policy works, citing the Oti. This is patriotic responsibility, not patriotic slogans.

d) Restoring the Ethical State. Bomfeh argues that in a continent where many states are judged as weak or failed, the state first fails ethically, when conscience goes quiet and shame disappears. To rebuild the state from within is to institutionalise conscience through laws fairly enforced.

8: WHY STAKEHOLDERS NEED TO READ AND ACT

This essay should be compulsory reading for stakeholders as it reframes peace, security and development as indivisible:

For Policymakers and Parliament: It warns that blanket national programs in politically safe areas actually exacerbate insecurity. You have to read it to understand why targeting the 227,519 triple-burdened citizens with integrated LEAP + school feeding + NHIS + skills, is not charity but security policy.

Judiciary, CHRAJ, EPA, Minerals Commission: It says in the absence of consequence, appetite increases. You impose sanctions, you enforce reclamation. That is how you restore even thieves' honour, let alone judicial honour.

Traditional Leaders and District Assemblies: Land is the root of self destruction. Your stewardship must protect the farm that feeds for decades, over the pit that feeds for months.

For Development Partners, NGOs and Academia: it requires that we measure not just growth but human security freedoms and gendered vulnerability of female headed households.

For Citizens, Youth and Media: It invites us to see that development is not done to us by the government but it is done by us when we refuse to steal from our own enterprise.The simplest way to read and ignore this essay is to choose to keep eating our seed corn.

9: THANK YOU, SIRKwabena Bomfeh Jnr. deserves profound commendation for his intellectual courage and clarity.

You have rejected the low road of partisan blame. You've taken the more difficult route of moral diagnosis. You disciplined your terminology, you argued in parables and statistics alike, and ended not in despair, but in a choice.

You have pulled our national motto off the wall as decoration and put it on the table as a working tool. You've reminded a generation that freedom without accountability is an invitation to corruption, and justice without swiftness is an invitation to hunger.

As the Republican Nationalist, your voice is unique, critical and committed. Critical of our self-destruction, committed to the Republic that belongs to all.This is an essay Ghana needed.

CONCLUSION:

Bomfeh’s essay reminds us that more gold will not lead to an equitable development. Gold cannot feed a child when the river that waters her food is polluted for gold.It will arrive when we make freedom economic and justice distributive and swift, when we tame appetite with principle in the aggregate.

The UNDP warned in 1994 that human security is indivisible. In 1999, Sen taught that development is freedom. The SDGs pledged in 2015 to leave no one behind. Bomfeh in 2026 tells us why we are still leaving 38.1% behind because we have not yet governed our appetite.

Until we learn to sow our seed in justice we cannot reap in freedom. But when we do, as Bomfeh promises, all will eat and development will at last be for all.

Thank you Kwabena Bomfeh Jnr. for giving us not just an essay, but a mirror and a compass.

PEACE, LOVE AND HARMONY

THE TERRITORAL COMMANDER OF THE CARANAH DEFENCE FORCES,WILDERNESS OF ZIN, CARANAH

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