Switzerland is a small, landlocked country with barely 8.8 million people, no oil reserves, no gold mines of global scale, and no vast cocoa plantations. Yet its economy stands as one of the most admired in the world, with a GDP approaching $977 billion and a per capita income of over $110,000.
It is a country whose strength was never in what lay beneath its soil but in the discipline, precision, and seriousness of its people and leadership. Today, it ranks among the top five nations on the Global Competitiveness Index, outperforming much larger, resource-rich countries that continue to blame everything but themselves for underdevelopment.
The Swiss didn’t wait for natural resources. They mastered the science of adding value to everything they touched. They built world-class industries in pharmaceuticals, finance, manufacturing, and food processing. They transformed vocational education into a strength. And perhaps nothing tells the story better than Nestlé, the food and beverage giant that was founded in the small Swiss village of Vevey in 1866.
Vevey, with a population of just around 20,000 people, is home to a company with a 2023 turnover of $101.54 billion. A single private company from a small lakeside town generating more revenue than the entire GDP of Ghana, which stood at $80 billion in 2023.
This is not just ironic. It is shameful.
Ghana grows the cocoa. Our children risk snake bites and chemical exposure on cocoa farms. Our roads are destroyed by the trucks that cart the beans away. And yet the real wealth is made in Vevey, not in Axim, Goaso, or Nkawkaw. We have all the raw materials, but lack the machinery, the strategy, and most importantly, the mindset to transform them into wealth.
Instead of building institutions and infrastructure to match the resources we are blessed with, Ghana continues to drift, caught in cycles of short-term politics, shallow leadership, and an education system that still separates theory from real-world application. Our universities compete in rankings but produce graduates unfit for our own job market. Meanwhile, Switzerland, whose universities are less globally flashy, focuses on training people who build companies like Nestlé, Novartis, and Rolex.
What exactly are we doing?
We cannot eat our excuses forever. Blaming colonialism or trade injustice may explain our past, but it cannot define our future. Countries like Switzerland are proof that a nation can be small, resource-poor, and still rule the world in value creation if it gets serious.
It is time Ghana stops glorifying potential and starts demanding performance. We have land. We have people. We have raw materials. What we lack is discipline, foresight, and the will to build systems that work beyond election cycles.
We do not have a resource curse. We have a leadership curse and, more seriously, a mindset crisis.
Until we learn to think like the Swiss, we will continue to farm wealth and watch it board planes to other nations.
It’s not too late, but the clock is ticking.
