Document Type

Thesis

Disciplines

5.6 POLITICAL SCIENCE, 5.8 MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS

Abstract

This multidisciplinary study explores Ghana’s public diplomacy and PR activities in its quest to attract foreign investment, diaspora direct investment, tourism and to promote trade for economic growth and development. Public diplomacy, nation branding and public relations have been effective tools for countries seeking to engage foreign publics and diasporas to achieve specific foreign policy objectives, such as economic development. This study examines how Ghana engages targeted foreign publics and diasporas to achieve specific foreign policy goals. It argues that public diplomacy and public relations practices can effectively achieve foreign policy objectives when well harnessed and strategically planned from Ubuntu and rhetorical PR perspectives. The study is underpinned by Ubuntu and rhetorical PR theory frameworks. Exploring the topic through these frameworks, particularly Ubuntu, adds a dimension that challenges Western-based literature on public diplomacy and PR. It employs a qualitative approach, combining 30 semi-structured interviews and document analysis as the primary data sources to explore the area under investigation. The study used thematic analysis to analyse the data collected in NVivo. Three major themes were developed based on the research questions and objectives. Each theme, with its subthemes, is discussed in separate chapters of the study (Chapters 4–6). Each of these chapters uses a practical case study of Ghana’s public diplomacy and PR campaigns to illustrate and situate the findings (themes) in a real-world context. The findings indicate that Ghana is endowed with a rich and diverse set of public diplomacy, PR, nation branding and diaspora engagement instruments, including cultural diplomacy, democratic credentials, and political stability. However, Ghana has not effectively leveraged most of these tools to advance its national interest in economic development. This led the study to identify several challenges facing Ghana’s public diplomacy and diaspora engagement activities. The findings revealed that the country lacks a national public diplomacy and nation branding framework, as well as a designated body to lead and coordinate its nation branding and public diplomacy campaigns. While the country has rich public diplomacy instruments, it has placed less emphasis on sports diplomacy. Diaspora apathy toward the state-diaspora relationship (diaspora diplomacy) is also high due to several factors, including poor consular services provided by many of Ghana’s overseas missions. The study calls for establishing specific public diplomacy and nation branding bodies, as well as national strategic frameworks. This aims to achieve well-coordinated, strategic foreign public engagement by increasing foreign investment, tourism, and trade. It proposes Ghana’s ‘Ubuntu public diplomacy’ as a model for an alternative approach to engaging foreign publics, grounded in Ubuntu’s principles and values.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21427/kd4s-9z37

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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