Government Asks Creative Industry to Perform Jesus’s Miracle With 84 Pesewas

JoyNews Research says Ghana allocates just 0.084% of government expenditure to the creative industry—84 pesewas from every GH¢1,000—while expecting the sector to generate about US$5 billion annually. The national funding model therefore appears to be based on Jesus feeding 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish, except the creative industry has received less than the price of either fish.

Artists, filmmakers and cultural institutions will assemble like the biblical crowd while officials distribute the 84 pesewas and wait for multiplication. Every musician may take a crumb, every theatre company a scale from the fish, and every filmmaker enough remaining faith to finance principal photography. Once everyone has been funded, twelve baskets of foreign exchange are expected to remain.

The original miracle did involve Jesus, a detail the budget has treated as an optional implementation requirement. Ghana’s creatives must perform the multiplication themselves, without divine powers appearing anywhere in the allocation. If they produce US$5 billion, government can confirm that miracles are a sustainable financing mechanism. If they fail, the sector may be told it lacked creativity, faith or the discipline to divide 84 pesewas among 5,000 people.

This is satire. The source story is real; the conclusions have been faithfully misinterpreted.