Inside Out

INSIDE OUT

This book is both an autobiography and memoirs from my 10-year attachment to the Ministry of Finance as a Technical Advisor. It is a narration of my personal and professional experience in life. I have written it in the hope that the experiences recounted here will be of interest and will indeed contain lessons for a wide variety of readers, The book has been written with several audiences in mind. For the youth who are contemplating the future, the book recounts a circuitous and challenging route to the places where I found myself eventually and reinforces the idea that the drivers of success are dreams, hard work and readiness to be different. The book is also meant to introduce the inner workings of government to the general reader who may not have been exposed to government. The main idea I wish to convey is that government operations are not that tidy and that there are many challenges that confront decision makers and administrators on a daily basis. Therefore, there is a lot to do to improve the workings of government in order to improve policy making and implementation. To experts in the financial sector, the book catalogues the key milestones in the development of the financial sector in the last 25 years or SO, a period during which I was fortunate to have been at the vanguard of many of the financial sector development initiatives in Ghana. The book has embedded in it, a broad picture of the
evolution of the financial sector showing the inflection points and the thinking that went into the key policy decisions. To students of finance, I have tried to provide an introduction to some major financial transactions such as issuing an Eurobond, derivatives trading and privatizations and showed how they are applied in the management of the financial affairs of the country. Typically, memoirs are written by people who have held high political office. In the United States, memoir writing by high level appointees is a time-honored tradition. Memoirs have been written by presidents, presidential hopefuls and first ladies. As a collection of memories, this book may indeed be called memoirs although I am not writing it from a high political office. My hope is that others, especially those who have held high political office will be encouraged to do same. For Ghana to develop rapidly in order to meet the aspirations of its people, the systems and processes for managing the development effort must be clearly understood, regularly evaluated and refined in order to maximize efficiency and effectiveness. This is enhanced if Ghanaians who have acquired such experience share their knowledge and experience. Memoirs cannot be written without mentioning names and recognizing the key roles that many individuals played in the narrated events. I have made every effort to double check the facts of the key narrations including crosschecking facts with individuals who are prominent in the memoirs. I apologize in advance for all residual errors and omissions.

Author: Sam Mensah