Watching the watchman from Ghana: The case of agenda 2063

The Agenda 2063 framework document is the basis for Africa’s long term socio -economic and integrative transformation. It has a list of 12 flagship projects and programs that have to be implemented within the first ten year period of 2014 - 2023. The paper explores the correlation between the awareness of Ghanaians and the monitoring of the African Union Commission Agenda 2063 first ten-year flagship programs and projects and established a negative product-moment linear correlation coefficient which statistically established that Ghanaians are not aware of and do not monitor the Agenda2063 first ten-year flagship programs and projects.


Introduction
The African Union Commission (AU) on the occasion of its golden jubilee in May 2013 set a vision spearheading the decolonization process and affirmed that the Africa continent is re-dedicating herself to the attainment of the Pan African vision of an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens who represents a dynamic force in the international development arena. In furtherance, the Golden Jubilee Summit of the Union (GJSU) came up with a solemn declaration in areas covering social and economic development, integration, democratic governance, peace and security amongst others as the planks of the vision. In order to make the solemn declaration a reality within the context of the AU vision, the GJSU directed the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), The Planning and Coordinating Agency (PCA), the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) to prepare a continental 50-year developmental agenda document titled Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want, as the framework document which is the basis for Africa's long term socio-economic and integrative transformation. It has a list of 12 flagship projects and programmes that have to be implemented within the first ten year period of 2014 -2023. The 12 flagship projects and programmes are the first in a series of five ten year plans over the fifty year horizon forming the basis for the preparation of medium term development plans of member states of the AU are presented in Table 1. 6. The African Passport and free movement of people: Transforming Africa's laws, which remain generally restrictive on movement of people despite political commitments to bring down borders with the view to promoting the issuance of visas by Member States to enhance free movement of all African citizens in all African countries by 2018.
7. Implementation of the Grand Inga Dam Project. The optimal development of the Inga Dam will generate 43,200 MW of power (PIDA) to support current regional power pools and their combined service to transform Africa from traditional to modern sources of energy and ensure access of all Africans to clean and affordable electricity.
8. The Pan-African E-Network. This involves a wide range of stakeholders and envisages putting in place policies and strategies that will lead to transformative e-applications and services in Africa; especially the intra-African broad band terrestrial infrastructure; and cyber security, making the information revolution the basis for service delivery in the bio and nanotechnology industries and ultimately transform Africa into an e-Society. 9. Silencing the guns by 2020. Ending all wars, civil conflicts, gender based violence and violent conflicts and prevent genocide. Monitor progress through the establishment and operationalization of an African Human Security Index (AHSI). 10. Africa Outer Space Strategy aims to strengthen Africa's use of outer space to bolster its development. Outer space is of critical importance to the development of Africa in all fields: agriculture, disaster management, remote sensing, climate forecast, banking and finance, as well as defence and security. Africa's access to space technology products is no longer a matter of luxury and there is a need to speed up access to these technologies and products. New developments in satellite technologies make these very accessible to African countries. The Brazzaville meeting on aerial space technologies underlines the need for appropriate policies and strategies in order to develop regional market for space products in Africa.
11. Establishment of a single African air transport market: This flagship Programme aims at delivering the single African air transport market to facilitate air transportation in Africa.
12. Establishment of the African financial institutions: Establishment of the Continental Financial Institutions aims at accelerating integration and socio-economic development of the continent, as they are important institutions when it comes to the mobilization of resources and management of financial sector.
Six years into the implementation of the Agenda 2063 plan in 2019, had Ghana as AU member state implement these flagship projects and programmes? Are Ghanaians conversant with the AU Agenda 2063 first flagship programmes and projects within ten years spanning 2014-2023? The purpose of the current paper is to explore the correlation between the awareness of Ghanaians in monitoring the AU Agenda 2063 first ten year flagship programmes and projects. The organization of the paper can now be outlined. The next section briefly adumbrates the theoretical issues within which the empirical analysis is couched, followed by a section detailing the statistical methodology used, and sections describing the data and empirical model respectfully. This is followed by the empirical variable section. The penultimate section contains a discussion of the empirical results and is followed by a concluding section.

Theoretical Issues
The AU in 2013 resolved to have an economic developed continent by the year 2063. Economic development however is an elusive concept as a major difficulty in comparing theories of economic development is that two authors writing on the subject seldom mean the same thing (Shearman 1972). On the African continent, there is not a uniform development landscape as a result of colonisation which had led many of the states on the continent becoming states with little or very weak institutions inherited after independence. Little or no progress of developing these institutions have been made in the post-independent era. Colonisation promoted different types of policies which created different sets of institutions. At one extreme, European powers set up the 'extractive states' exemplified by Belgian colonisation of Congo where they did not introduce much protection for private property, nor did they provide checks and balances against government expropriation. The main purpose of the extractive state was to transfer as much of the resources of the colony to the coloniser, (Acemoglu, et.al. 2001).
Realising these state of affairs and determined to build strong institutions on the African continent, the AU Agenda 2063 first ten year flagship programmes and projects strongly thrives on the back of the New Institutional Economics (NIE) development paradigm championed by Douglas C. North (1995) which describe the relevance of NIE for development practitioners, and the writings and ideas of Jeffrey David Sachs, an economist and Professor of Sustainable Development at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs in the United States of America who as of 2017 serves as special adviser to the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres on the Sustainable Development Goals (2015), which comprise a set of 17 global goals adopted at a UN summit meeting in September 2015, and that of Joseph Eugene Stiglitz postulations. The appointment of Joseph Eugene Stiglitz, a major theorist of NIE, as chief economist of the World Bank from 1997-2000, also reflected the influence of NIE on the Bank's policy. During his spell as the chief economist of the World Bank, the bank begun to define itself as a 'knowledge bank', whose responsibility was to gather and disseminate information transparently on a global scale (Lepenies, 2008). NIE attempts to incorporate a theory of strong institutions into public administration and management. It is a deliberate attempt to make neoclassical social economics more 'realistic'. Neoclassical social economic theory assumed that information flows freely between actors in competitive markets and that, as a result institution do not matter. In contrast, NIE postulates that information is distributed asymmetrically (asymmetrical information) and that market transactions come at a cost (i.e. the cost of gathering information or transaction cost). Consequently, institutions have to be formed to reduce these costs (Lepenies, 2008). NIE core argument is that institutions provide the mechanisms whereby rational individuals can transcend social dilemmas and economise on transactions cost (Bates 1995:29). Social dilemmas are situations in which the choices made by rational individuals yield outcomes that are socially irrational. Since the 1990s, NIE has had a tremendous impact on development and social policies. This can be demonstrated by tracing out the obvious influence that NIE has had on the World Bank World Development Report (WDR) 1999/2000 Entering the 21 st Century, which summarised the lessons learned from the previous 50 years of global development policy. One lesson plainly read: 'Institutions matter' (World Bank 1999:1), (Lepenies, 2008).

Statistical Methodology
Respondents awareness of the existence of the Agenda 2063 document first ten year flagship programmes and projects ceteris paribus, will generate a positive linear correlation between monitoring the AU Agenda 2063 and its flagship programmes and projects. A negative correlation of less information and awareness of the existence of the AU Agenda 2063 document and its first ten year flagship programmes ceteris paribus, leads to the otherwise scenario and generates a negative linearity statistically. This is pursued by first estimating the coefficient of determination which is given as: The total variation of Y is defined as This is the sum of the squares of the deviations of the values of Y from the mean − Y can be written as: The first term on the right of equation (2) is called the unexplained variation, while the second term is called the explained variation because the deviations − − Y Y est have a definite pattern, while the deviation − − est Y Y behave in a random manner. The ratio of the explained variation to the total variation is called the coefficient of determination. If there is zero explained variation, this ratio is zero. If there is zero unexplained variation, this ratio is 1. In other cases, the ratio lies between 0 and 1. The ratio is always nonnegative and is denoted by 2 r . The quantity r , called the correlation coefficient is given by: (3) and varies between -1 and +1. The + and -signs are used for positive linear correlation and negative linear correlation, respectively. r is a dimensionless quantity; that is it does not depend on the units employed and is independent of the choice of origin. If a linear relationship between two variables is assumed, equation (3) becomes: which automatically gives the proper sign of r , is called the productmoment formula and clearly shows the symmetry between X and .

Data
Given the absence of a national scale data of the awareness of monitoring the implementation of the Agenda 2063 first ten year flagship programmes and projects by Ghanaians, this paper collected detailed information to generate a micro-level dataset to investigate the awareness of sampled Ghanaians on the implementation of Agenda 2063 first ten year flagship programmes and projects which is in the sixth-year of implementation in 2019. Students in University of Education, Winneba randomly administer the survey on the awareness of the AU Agenda 2063 first ten year flagship programmes and projects to adults across the regions of Ghana in 2019. A restriction placed on the adults for this paper is that they must have had a formal education. Of the 110 surveys sent out, 107 were completed and returned. A high number were returned because the students prior contact had been made. An adult is defined as a Ghanaian who is 18 years or older and is not a student as at the time of survey. 2 respondents were excluded as there could not provide appropriate responses.

Empirical Model
An empirical model of respondents awareness of the AU Agenda2063 document and the monitoring of its first ten year flagship programmes and projects are expressed as: RA = f (Ag2063, flgshpg). Where RA refers to respondents awareness, Ag2063 refers to the Agenda 2063 document, and flgshpg refers to the Agenda 2063 first ten year flagship programmes and projects.
The expectations are that: ∂RA/∂Ag2063 < 0, ∂RA /∂ flgshpg < 0. This is interpret to mean that as the years goes by, respondents (Ghanaians) will forget about the Agenda 2063 document and will not be able to monitor the implementation of the AU Agenda2063 first ten year flagship programmes and projects during the remaining four years left for the completion of the AU Agenda2063 ten year flagship programmes and projects in 2023.

EMPIRICAL VARIABLES
The determination of the product moment linear correlation coefficient relationship between respondents awareness of Agenda 2063 document and the monitoring of its first ten year flagship programmes and projects in 2019 which ends in 2023 is the key concern. The explanatory variables used for the determination are now described in turn in Table 2.

Discussion of Empirical Results
The estimated product moment linear correlation coefficient relationship between respondents awareness of Agenda 2063 document and the monitoring of its first ten year flagship programmes and projects in 2019 is presented in Table 3. The product moment linear correlation coefficient ( r ) estimated using STATA 14 indicated by the pairwise correlations of respondents (Ghanaians) awareness of the existence of the Agenda 2063 document and the monitoring of its first ten year flagship programmes and projects in 2019 indicates a negative linear correlation. The correlation coefficient between respondents monitoring of the Agenda2063 first ten year flagship programmes and projects is significant at the 0.05 percent conventional level. This is explained to be that 0.05 (squared of -0.228) percent are monitoring the AU Agenda 2063 first ten year flagship programmes and projects or if you take 100 Ghanaians 95 of them are not monitoring the Agenda 2063 first ten year flagship programmes and projects spanning 2014-2023. There is also a negative linear correlation between respondents (Ghanaians) awareness of the existence of the Agenda 2063 document but it is not significant at the 0.05 percent conventional level. Only 3 out of 100 Ghanaians are aware of the Agenda 2063 document obtained as the (squared of -0.179) leaving majority of 97 percent in the dark about the AU Agenda 2063 document.

Conclusion
Monitoring progress towards the AU Agenda 2063 document and its first ten year flagship programmes and projects requires the AU member states to continuously monitor and investigate targets set at national levels to achieve the collective goals. This is what the paper has sought to do using micro-level data. The main limitations of this paper conclusions stem from the paucity of research designed to answer only the respondents awareness and monitoring of the Agenda 2063 and its first ten year flagship programmes as a whole, and falls short to examining whether they are aware and monitor each of the twelve first ten year flagship programmes and projects of the AU Agenda 2023 which ends in 2023. These limitations can only be overcome with greater research intensity and remains the focus of future research.

Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.