Our nation's many problems notwithstanding, compared to many nations in Africa, Ghana is a real paradise. It is a veritable beacon of hope in the continent.
Caught in a massive traffic jam on Easter Monday that stretched all the way from White Cross - three minutes by car along the Mallam-Kasoa highway after crossing the bridge over the River Densu - to the Bortianor junction traffic lights near the old police barrier, I was struck by the many happy young people singing and clapping their hands exuberantly, in jam-packed minibus, after jam-packed minibus. Ditto jam-packed taxi, after jam-packed taxi.
Most of them were on their way to the beach resorts at Bortianor. Their zest for life was palpable. Their happiness, infectious. Your average Ghanaian works hard and plays hard. This is an aspirational society in which citizens constantly seek to better their lot. Long may it remain so.
And the fact that in the African context, this is a relatively prosperous country, despite its many difficulties, was evidenced by the many new saloon cars and SUV's inching their way forward, after every few minutes of waiting, in the heavy traffic - their occupants cocooned in air-conditioned comfort.
As in other parts of Accra, many new buildings have sprung up in the area - including a privately-owned specialist hospital, a plethora of banks, a pizza restaurant and a Silverbird cinema complex.
A €256,885 Ghanaian private-sector credit facility from the Italian government has given a new lease of life to the refurbished Phastor concrete products factory at the entrance to Sampah Valley, near the turning I took to get me back home to McCarthy Hill again - just before the Bortianor junction traffic lights.
Yet, anyone who has ever watched and listened to the endless negativity that is standard fare for current affairs discussion programmes on television and the many FM radio stations in Ghana, would find it hard to believe that the doom-filled talking-heads who take part in those programmes, actually live in the same country with those fun-loving young merrymakers on their way to the seaside on Easter Monday.
Watching those happy younger generation Ghanaians - lucky to have been born, and to have grown up, in a free and peaceful society in Africa - enjoying themselves, I could not help but think of the senseless killings in strife-torn places like the Central African Republic, South Sudan and areas in Nigeria that have suffered from the unspeakable cruelty of Boko Haram, and contrasting that with the high-spirited young fellow citizens enjoying their Easter Monday holiday trip to the beach in our stable multi-party democracy.
We tend to take a lot for granted in Ghana. It is true that many families are going through hard times. That unfortunate situation results partly from the effects of the cyclical nature of trade between interdependent national economies in an era of globalisation. The optimism and good-natured fun-seeking of the younger generations shows their confidence in Ghana's future.
The nation's long-suffering middle-classes, keen to protect the value of their expensive homes and sheltered lifestyles in gated communities, act as ballast. Their moderating influence (vital to protecting their diversified investment portfolios) will contine to keep the country stable.
Members of our political class (from across the spectrum) would be wise to end their negativity and focus their energies instead on working hard to create the conditions that will ensure a prosperous future for our homeland Ghana.
A little less high-level corruption amongst our ruling elites would also be welcomed by all Ghanaians. Ditto less pointless ruling-regime propaganda and more attention paid to the task of fixing the hobbled economy - brought low by reckless government spending during the 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections, and the 70% of total tax revenues paid to a mostly-unproductive public-sector workforce.
Above all, Ghanaians expect those in leadership positions in their country, to commit themselves to ensuring that Ghana continues to be peaceful and remains an African paradise. They must not fail us in that regard. A word to the wise...
Wednesday, 23 April 2014
Monday, 21 April 2014
Build High-Capacity Wood Pellet Biomass Power Plants In Ghana
It has become increasingly difficult for ordinary households to put up with the never-ending power outages and escalating electricity prices in Ghana. The people of Ghana definitely deserve better. Their patience is wearing thin by the day. Literally.
Whether the problems are systemic, or result from sabotage by anti-regime elements working in the power sector - who are apparently doing the bidding of their political paymasters: according to the conspiracy theorists in our midst - the power sector's deficiencies need tackling. This is the 21st century, is it not?
Ghana cannot grow its economy and create jobs without reliable and sufficient electricity. That is why our ruling elites need to be a tad more imaginative in their approach to resolving the problem of inefficient electricity provision for domestic and industrial usage in our country.
Faced with the spiralling cost of oil to fire its power plants - and in the absence of a more reliable source of natural gas - one wonders why the geniuses who manage the Volta River Authority (VRA) are not following the example of those who manage the Drax coal-fired power plant near the UK town of Selby.
In April 2013, one of the Drax power plant's generating units, was converted to biomass. Wood pellets are shipped across the Atlantic from the U.S. as feedstock for the converted biomass unit. That is an example wood pellet exporters from Ghana could emulate right across Europe - and help strengthen our currency in the process.
By 2016 the Drax power station will have a total of three units running exclusively on biomass. The coal-fired Drax plant supplies 7 percent of the UK's electricity. When it converts the total of 3 biomass plants by 2016, the Drax plant will burn 7 million tonnes of wood pellets a year.
If the VRA also had biomass power plants using wood pellets, could plantations of fast-growing trees like teak not be planted up and down Ghana, by District Assemblies, in partnership with private-sector entities, to supply pellets to those biomass power plants - creating a valuable supply-chain footprint over much of rural Ghana?
And would that not create worthwhile jobs for tens of thousands of unemployed young people across the Ghanaian countryside: who could drive trucks; legally fell trees with chainsaws in plantation thinning exercises; operate mobile wood pellet machines onsite in tree plantations; sun-dry wood pellets; etc. - and also generate funds for development projects in cash-strapped district assemblies up and down Ghana?
The governent ought to float part of its 100 percent shareholding in the VRA on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) - and use the interest-free cash raised in the IPO to build biomass power plants.
That will be a more sustainable business model for the public-sector power generating utilities in an age of high oil prices and unreliable natural gas supply sources.
And at a time when hard-pressed electricity users in Ghana are fed up with ever-increasing power tariffs, it will lead to lower electricity prices and more reliable power generation by the VRA.
We need to start planning for the construction of high-capacity wood pellet biomass power plants in Ghana. Today, not tomorrow. It is a perfect type of renewable energy for Ghana.
And now that global climate change is negatively impacting our country, it is a low-carbon, clean-development power-sector business model, which makes a great deal of sense for a largely agricultural country such as ours. One hopes our hard-of-hearing ruling elites will listen to good advice, offered freely, for patriotic reasons, for once. A word to the wise...
Whether the problems are systemic, or result from sabotage by anti-regime elements working in the power sector - who are apparently doing the bidding of their political paymasters: according to the conspiracy theorists in our midst - the power sector's deficiencies need tackling. This is the 21st century, is it not?
Ghana cannot grow its economy and create jobs without reliable and sufficient electricity. That is why our ruling elites need to be a tad more imaginative in their approach to resolving the problem of inefficient electricity provision for domestic and industrial usage in our country.
Faced with the spiralling cost of oil to fire its power plants - and in the absence of a more reliable source of natural gas - one wonders why the geniuses who manage the Volta River Authority (VRA) are not following the example of those who manage the Drax coal-fired power plant near the UK town of Selby.
In April 2013, one of the Drax power plant's generating units, was converted to biomass. Wood pellets are shipped across the Atlantic from the U.S. as feedstock for the converted biomass unit. That is an example wood pellet exporters from Ghana could emulate right across Europe - and help strengthen our currency in the process.
By 2016 the Drax power station will have a total of three units running exclusively on biomass. The coal-fired Drax plant supplies 7 percent of the UK's electricity. When it converts the total of 3 biomass plants by 2016, the Drax plant will burn 7 million tonnes of wood pellets a year.
If the VRA also had biomass power plants using wood pellets, could plantations of fast-growing trees like teak not be planted up and down Ghana, by District Assemblies, in partnership with private-sector entities, to supply pellets to those biomass power plants - creating a valuable supply-chain footprint over much of rural Ghana?
And would that not create worthwhile jobs for tens of thousands of unemployed young people across the Ghanaian countryside: who could drive trucks; legally fell trees with chainsaws in plantation thinning exercises; operate mobile wood pellet machines onsite in tree plantations; sun-dry wood pellets; etc. - and also generate funds for development projects in cash-strapped district assemblies up and down Ghana?
The governent ought to float part of its 100 percent shareholding in the VRA on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) - and use the interest-free cash raised in the IPO to build biomass power plants.
That will be a more sustainable business model for the public-sector power generating utilities in an age of high oil prices and unreliable natural gas supply sources.
And at a time when hard-pressed electricity users in Ghana are fed up with ever-increasing power tariffs, it will lead to lower electricity prices and more reliable power generation by the VRA.
We need to start planning for the construction of high-capacity wood pellet biomass power plants in Ghana. Today, not tomorrow. It is a perfect type of renewable energy for Ghana.
And now that global climate change is negatively impacting our country, it is a low-carbon, clean-development power-sector business model, which makes a great deal of sense for a largely agricultural country such as ours. One hopes our hard-of-hearing ruling elites will listen to good advice, offered freely, for patriotic reasons, for once. A word to the wise...
Wednesday, 16 April 2014
Let Us Save Remainder Of Akyem Abuakwa's Natural Heritage
One of the tragedies of our time, is the destruction of so much of the natural heritage, of Akyem Abuakwa, in Ghana's Eastern Region.
Much of that destruction, has occurred as a result of an unholy alliance, between a syndicate of wealthy rogues engaged in illegal gold mining (galamsey) and illegal logging, and a number of hypocritcal individuals amongst the progeny of the pre-colonial traditional ruling elites in the area.
President Mahama surveyed the area from the air recently, when he flew from the Afram plains to Akyem Abuakwa, in a Ghana Air Force helicopter. So shocked was the President, by the environmental degradation he witnessed that he later told a public gathering at Kyebi that the area he saw from the air, had to be the galamsey capital of Ghana.
Instead of being offended by the verbal description of an unpleasant reality that confronts visitors to Akyem Abuakwa daily, today, those of us who love the upland evergreen rainforest in the Atewa Range, must accept that there has been massive degradation of the natural environment in Akyem Abuakwa - and that we must take active steps to repair that damage.
We must also not forget that we are ranged against powerful, cunning and ruthless adversaries. An example of what we face is the outrageous story of how the clever and dissembling promoters of Solar Mining Company bought respectability, and got away with the company's illegal mining activities, by reversing into a then bankrupt
Kibi Goldfields.
Kibi Goldfields is apparently owned by Ambassador Budu Saaka - who was appointed as an ambassador by the late President Mills. 10 percent of its shareholding is said to be in the hands of the traditional authorities of Akyem Abuakwa. Such is the incestous nature of our byzantine system.
The question is: how did a bankrupt gold mining company hold on to its concession for so many years without it ever being cancelled and withdrawn - and has Kibi Goldfields paid its reclamation bond upfront since Solar Mining Company became a "co-operator" and revived it phoenix-like: and in such carpetbagger fashion?
Kibi Goldfields' environmental impact assessment document, which Solar Mining Company submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the co-operating conspirators' behalf, is a study in garnished-mendacity and barefaced cheek, cooked up by gifted Kweku Ananse storytellers.
They presented its readers with a falsehood: an airbrushed picture of an environment consisting largely of marginal land and badly degraded forests in which gold mining could be carried out in good conscience. Yet, the reality is that Kibi Goldfields is actually engaged in the rape of valuable land in the forest-belt providing vital ecosystem services for most of southern urban Ghana.
And the destruction even extends to ecologically sensitive areas, with the designation Globally Significant Biodiversity Area (GBSA) - which hold the headwaters of three major river systems: the Birim, the Ayensu and the Densu. Those three important rivers provide the drinking water supply of many towns and cities across southern Ghana, including Accra, the nation's capital.
Today, as we speak, Solar Mining Company's wealthy owners, who grew wings when the price of gold spiked to dizzying heights, are busy terrorising poor cocoa farmers in Saamang and its environs, who refuse to allow their farmlands to be taken over for gold mining - allegedly with the active connivance of district-level officialdom: threatening withdrawal of funding for local development projects if they don't relent.
Luckily, their cause is being championed by the anti-mining NGO, WACAM, which has taken Solar Mining Company to court on their behalf, with legal assistance from the Centre for Public Interest Law (CPIL).
Few in Ghana know the area as well as some of us do. And as someone whose family has owned a total of 14 square miles of a freehold parcel of upland evergreen forestland in the Atewa Range since 1921, I do know for a fact that in as far as areas around the world that have the designation Globally Significant Biodiversity Area (GSBA) are concerned, parts of Akyem Abuakwa could actually be described as global ecological-blackspots of wanton environmental degradation. And it is of apocalyptic proportions, if truth be told.
It is a pity that it never once occurred to the genuises in charge of media relations at the presidency, to organise a helicopter trip around Akyem Abuakwa for the Ghanaian media, to enable them take aerial photographs and record video footage of the destruction wrought by the unfathomable greed that drives the selfish individuals whose ruthless quest for gold has caused so much harm to Akyem Abuakwa's natural heritage.
It is only when that is done that Ghanaians will be able to decide the truth for themselves - after viewing the shocking aerial photographs and video footage - about the exact scale and egregious nature of the destruction caused by illegal gold mining and illegal logging in Akyem Abuakwa.
It is still not too late for that to be done, incidentally. The world must know the truth about the brutal gang-rape of Mother Nature in Akyem Abuakwa. It is only such openess that will shame the hypocrites profiting from what is an unspeakable and abominable crime against humanity.
What those who object to the description of the area as the galamsey capital of Ghana need to understand, is that it is simply a call for action from all those who want to use the natural heritage of Akyem Abuakwa to develop and grow a sustainable green economic alternative to the illegal gold mining and illegal logging that goes on daily in Akyem Abuakwa.
The Atewa Range upland evergreen rainforest could become a national park and world-class eco-tourism destination providing valuable jobs and micro-entrepreneurial opportunities for thousands of local people - and serve as an important living laboratory for field-study trips by academic researchers from around the globe.
Let us focus on that goal - and at a time when global climate change is impacting our country negatively, work hard to save the remainder of Akyem Abuakwa's natural heritage. The Dutch government has promised to provide US$2 million to help turn the Atewa Forest Reserve and the slopes around it into a national park - if all mining is banned from the area.
The time to act is now. This is no time to be engaging in pointless shouting matches about the scale of the destruction wrought by illegal gold miners and illegal loggers in Akyem Abuakwa. The truth of the matter, is that the widespread environmental degradation caused by those funding the galamsey operations and illegal logging, can be seen by all who visit the area - with the exception of the visually challenged. It is time we united to save what is left of Akyem Abuakwa's natural heritage. A word to the wise...
Much of that destruction, has occurred as a result of an unholy alliance, between a syndicate of wealthy rogues engaged in illegal gold mining (galamsey) and illegal logging, and a number of hypocritcal individuals amongst the progeny of the pre-colonial traditional ruling elites in the area.
President Mahama surveyed the area from the air recently, when he flew from the Afram plains to Akyem Abuakwa, in a Ghana Air Force helicopter. So shocked was the President, by the environmental degradation he witnessed that he later told a public gathering at Kyebi that the area he saw from the air, had to be the galamsey capital of Ghana.
Instead of being offended by the verbal description of an unpleasant reality that confronts visitors to Akyem Abuakwa daily, today, those of us who love the upland evergreen rainforest in the Atewa Range, must accept that there has been massive degradation of the natural environment in Akyem Abuakwa - and that we must take active steps to repair that damage.
We must also not forget that we are ranged against powerful, cunning and ruthless adversaries. An example of what we face is the outrageous story of how the clever and dissembling promoters of Solar Mining Company bought respectability, and got away with the company's illegal mining activities, by reversing into a then bankrupt
Kibi Goldfields.
Kibi Goldfields is apparently owned by Ambassador Budu Saaka - who was appointed as an ambassador by the late President Mills. 10 percent of its shareholding is said to be in the hands of the traditional authorities of Akyem Abuakwa. Such is the incestous nature of our byzantine system.
The question is: how did a bankrupt gold mining company hold on to its concession for so many years without it ever being cancelled and withdrawn - and has Kibi Goldfields paid its reclamation bond upfront since Solar Mining Company became a "co-operator" and revived it phoenix-like: and in such carpetbagger fashion?
Kibi Goldfields' environmental impact assessment document, which Solar Mining Company submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the co-operating conspirators' behalf, is a study in garnished-mendacity and barefaced cheek, cooked up by gifted Kweku Ananse storytellers.
They presented its readers with a falsehood: an airbrushed picture of an environment consisting largely of marginal land and badly degraded forests in which gold mining could be carried out in good conscience. Yet, the reality is that Kibi Goldfields is actually engaged in the rape of valuable land in the forest-belt providing vital ecosystem services for most of southern urban Ghana.
And the destruction even extends to ecologically sensitive areas, with the designation Globally Significant Biodiversity Area (GBSA) - which hold the headwaters of three major river systems: the Birim, the Ayensu and the Densu. Those three important rivers provide the drinking water supply of many towns and cities across southern Ghana, including Accra, the nation's capital.
Today, as we speak, Solar Mining Company's wealthy owners, who grew wings when the price of gold spiked to dizzying heights, are busy terrorising poor cocoa farmers in Saamang and its environs, who refuse to allow their farmlands to be taken over for gold mining - allegedly with the active connivance of district-level officialdom: threatening withdrawal of funding for local development projects if they don't relent.
Luckily, their cause is being championed by the anti-mining NGO, WACAM, which has taken Solar Mining Company to court on their behalf, with legal assistance from the Centre for Public Interest Law (CPIL).
Few in Ghana know the area as well as some of us do. And as someone whose family has owned a total of 14 square miles of a freehold parcel of upland evergreen forestland in the Atewa Range since 1921, I do know for a fact that in as far as areas around the world that have the designation Globally Significant Biodiversity Area (GSBA) are concerned, parts of Akyem Abuakwa could actually be described as global ecological-blackspots of wanton environmental degradation. And it is of apocalyptic proportions, if truth be told.
It is a pity that it never once occurred to the genuises in charge of media relations at the presidency, to organise a helicopter trip around Akyem Abuakwa for the Ghanaian media, to enable them take aerial photographs and record video footage of the destruction wrought by the unfathomable greed that drives the selfish individuals whose ruthless quest for gold has caused so much harm to Akyem Abuakwa's natural heritage.
It is only when that is done that Ghanaians will be able to decide the truth for themselves - after viewing the shocking aerial photographs and video footage - about the exact scale and egregious nature of the destruction caused by illegal gold mining and illegal logging in Akyem Abuakwa.
It is still not too late for that to be done, incidentally. The world must know the truth about the brutal gang-rape of Mother Nature in Akyem Abuakwa. It is only such openess that will shame the hypocrites profiting from what is an unspeakable and abominable crime against humanity.
What those who object to the description of the area as the galamsey capital of Ghana need to understand, is that it is simply a call for action from all those who want to use the natural heritage of Akyem Abuakwa to develop and grow a sustainable green economic alternative to the illegal gold mining and illegal logging that goes on daily in Akyem Abuakwa.
The Atewa Range upland evergreen rainforest could become a national park and world-class eco-tourism destination providing valuable jobs and micro-entrepreneurial opportunities for thousands of local people - and serve as an important living laboratory for field-study trips by academic researchers from around the globe.
Let us focus on that goal - and at a time when global climate change is impacting our country negatively, work hard to save the remainder of Akyem Abuakwa's natural heritage. The Dutch government has promised to provide US$2 million to help turn the Atewa Forest Reserve and the slopes around it into a national park - if all mining is banned from the area.
The time to act is now. This is no time to be engaging in pointless shouting matches about the scale of the destruction wrought by illegal gold miners and illegal loggers in Akyem Abuakwa. The truth of the matter, is that the widespread environmental degradation caused by those funding the galamsey operations and illegal logging, can be seen by all who visit the area - with the exception of the visually challenged. It is time we united to save what is left of Akyem Abuakwa's natural heritage. A word to the wise...
Thursday, 10 April 2014
Time To Review All Ghana's Oil Agreements
Ghana needs to take a leaf from the book of the government of President Alpha Conde of Guinea - by taking a fresh look at all the oil agreements it has entered into thus far.
President Alpha Conde's government set up a committee - shortly after it came to power as Guinea's first democratically elected regime - to examine all mining agreements, entered into by previous regimes. In its final report, the committee recommended the cancellation of an agreement between the regime of the late military ruler of Guinea, President Lansana Conte, and BSG Resources, a company owned by Beny Steinmetz, the Israeli billionaire.
Incredibly, that agreement granted two iron ore mining concessions for deposits worth billions of dollars, beneath the Simandou mountains, to BSG Resources. During the committee's investigations, it came to light that the agreement was obtained, as a result of the payment of bribes to a number of influential individuals, including Mamadie Toure, the late President Conte's wife, by intermediaries of Beny Steinmetz.
BSG Resources sold 51℅ of the huge Simandou mountains iron ore deposits for US$2.5 billion to Vale of Brazil - after reportedly investing US$165 million in exploration of the area.
Most of the evidence against BSG Resources was gathered by the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), during investigations into the affairs of Frederick Cilins, an associate of Beny Steinmetz - who was being investigated by the FBI for breaching the foreign corrupt practices act. The FBI passed the information on to the Guinean government committee.
Cilins apparently paid US$3 million to Mamadie Toure in 2006. She also signed a contract to receive a further US$5 million in 2010. It is astonishing that massive iron ore deposits worth billions of dollars, and the exploitation of which could yield valuable revenue that could be used to improve the lives of ordinary people in Guinea, were handed over a foreign entity - because a small group of powerful and greedy individuals in a corrupt African regime received a few million dollars as bribe money.
It is to the eternal credit of President Alpha Conde that this egregious rip-off of the people of Guinea has now been reversed.
If only our ruling elites were equally as nationalistic and honest - and moved swiftly to demand a review of the rip-off oil agreements between Ghana and foreign oil companies: which the vast majority of ordinary people believe were fraudulently obtained as a result of the payment of bribes to a few dishonest, selfish and greedy Ghanaians.
As we all know, the late President Mills turned down the offer of a bribe, from the executives of an American oil company, who called on him at the Osu Castle - then Ghana's seat of government. So we can put two and two together - and draw our own conclusions.
It is an indictment of our ruling elites that over a thirty-year period, out of oil and gas deposits worth some US$160 billions, all that Ghana will receive is a paltry US$20 billions.
Yet, Ghana is a nation that is desperate to find money to fund the provision of affordable housing for the not-so-well-off amongst its people; pay for the expansion and modernisation of its infrastructure; as well as provide free healthcare, and free education from kindergarten to tertiary level, for its people.
Meanwhile, over the same thirty-year period, foreign oil companies will receive some US$140 billions - after investing no more than US$15 billion between them at the most.
How can that be - and why are our hard-of-hearing ruling elites still not taking active steps to end this monstrous and abominable rip-off? It is intolerable that inimical oil agreements, deliberately entered into by a few Ghanaians because it benefited them personally, are being allowed to stand - when the nation is in such dire financial straits. And we must not forget that Ghana also has a mountain of debt to pay off.
Do our ruling elites not realise that production-sharing agreements that give Ghana 70℅, and 30℅ to the foreign oil companies, could fund the transformation of Ghana into a prosperous African equivalent, of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia - and end the unimaginable hardship being endured by ordinary people in Ghana?
The time has now come for Ghana to review all the oil agreements it has entered into, to date. The foreign oil companies must understand that no African democracy will survive if poverty remains the lot of ordinary people for decades. Revenues from the exploitation of our nation's oil and gas deposits must pay for ordinary people's share of the democracy-dividend. Period.
The foreign oil companies need to take a long-term view, and accept that new production sharing agreements giving Ghana 70% of those US$160 billions that its oil and gas deposits are worth, will be fair to all parties - and in their own interest too. As sure as day follows night, if they do not end their greedy ways, a Colonel Gaddafi-type leader will eventually emerge in Ghana - and tear up all those inimical rip-off oil agreements and impose new ones on them: to popular acclaim. A word to the wise...
President Alpha Conde's government set up a committee - shortly after it came to power as Guinea's first democratically elected regime - to examine all mining agreements, entered into by previous regimes. In its final report, the committee recommended the cancellation of an agreement between the regime of the late military ruler of Guinea, President Lansana Conte, and BSG Resources, a company owned by Beny Steinmetz, the Israeli billionaire.
Incredibly, that agreement granted two iron ore mining concessions for deposits worth billions of dollars, beneath the Simandou mountains, to BSG Resources. During the committee's investigations, it came to light that the agreement was obtained, as a result of the payment of bribes to a number of influential individuals, including Mamadie Toure, the late President Conte's wife, by intermediaries of Beny Steinmetz.
BSG Resources sold 51℅ of the huge Simandou mountains iron ore deposits for US$2.5 billion to Vale of Brazil - after reportedly investing US$165 million in exploration of the area.
Most of the evidence against BSG Resources was gathered by the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), during investigations into the affairs of Frederick Cilins, an associate of Beny Steinmetz - who was being investigated by the FBI for breaching the foreign corrupt practices act. The FBI passed the information on to the Guinean government committee.
Cilins apparently paid US$3 million to Mamadie Toure in 2006. She also signed a contract to receive a further US$5 million in 2010. It is astonishing that massive iron ore deposits worth billions of dollars, and the exploitation of which could yield valuable revenue that could be used to improve the lives of ordinary people in Guinea, were handed over a foreign entity - because a small group of powerful and greedy individuals in a corrupt African regime received a few million dollars as bribe money.
It is to the eternal credit of President Alpha Conde that this egregious rip-off of the people of Guinea has now been reversed.
If only our ruling elites were equally as nationalistic and honest - and moved swiftly to demand a review of the rip-off oil agreements between Ghana and foreign oil companies: which the vast majority of ordinary people believe were fraudulently obtained as a result of the payment of bribes to a few dishonest, selfish and greedy Ghanaians.
As we all know, the late President Mills turned down the offer of a bribe, from the executives of an American oil company, who called on him at the Osu Castle - then Ghana's seat of government. So we can put two and two together - and draw our own conclusions.
It is an indictment of our ruling elites that over a thirty-year period, out of oil and gas deposits worth some US$160 billions, all that Ghana will receive is a paltry US$20 billions.
Yet, Ghana is a nation that is desperate to find money to fund the provision of affordable housing for the not-so-well-off amongst its people; pay for the expansion and modernisation of its infrastructure; as well as provide free healthcare, and free education from kindergarten to tertiary level, for its people.
Meanwhile, over the same thirty-year period, foreign oil companies will receive some US$140 billions - after investing no more than US$15 billion between them at the most.
How can that be - and why are our hard-of-hearing ruling elites still not taking active steps to end this monstrous and abominable rip-off? It is intolerable that inimical oil agreements, deliberately entered into by a few Ghanaians because it benefited them personally, are being allowed to stand - when the nation is in such dire financial straits. And we must not forget that Ghana also has a mountain of debt to pay off.
Do our ruling elites not realise that production-sharing agreements that give Ghana 70℅, and 30℅ to the foreign oil companies, could fund the transformation of Ghana into a prosperous African equivalent, of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia - and end the unimaginable hardship being endured by ordinary people in Ghana?
The time has now come for Ghana to review all the oil agreements it has entered into, to date. The foreign oil companies must understand that no African democracy will survive if poverty remains the lot of ordinary people for decades. Revenues from the exploitation of our nation's oil and gas deposits must pay for ordinary people's share of the democracy-dividend. Period.
The foreign oil companies need to take a long-term view, and accept that new production sharing agreements giving Ghana 70% of those US$160 billions that its oil and gas deposits are worth, will be fair to all parties - and in their own interest too. As sure as day follows night, if they do not end their greedy ways, a Colonel Gaddafi-type leader will eventually emerge in Ghana - and tear up all those inimical rip-off oil agreements and impose new ones on them: to popular acclaim. A word to the wise...
Wednesday, 2 April 2014
Humble Advice To The Hon. Mahama Ayariga
Ghana's minister for information and media relations, the Honourable Mahama Ayariga, appears to be out of touch with the realities faced by ordinary people in Ghana. And Ghana is not alone in having such out-of-touch politicians in government. Unfortunately, they exist throughout Africa.
Yet, seldom has the need for selfless, visionary and competent leadership, been of more urgency in Africa. With global climate change making a complete nonsense of weather patterns, and endangering crop yields, populations across Africa have become increasingly vulnerable - as food security is threatened throughout the continent.
For many in Africa, the future looks bleak - as the major food producing regions across the world are also being impacted negatively by global climate change: and crop yields fall there too. It will lead to high prices globally for major staples such as rice, wheat and corn.
Against that backdrop, it is important for politicians in Ghana to offer honest leadership that understands clearly that ordinary people's individual experiences, in cost-of-living terms, as they struggle daily to survive, inform their view of the state of the national economy - not statistics churned out by clever politicians to support Alice-in-wonderland-claims about the state of the econony.
What your average citizen wants, is to live in a nation in which affordable healthcare is available countrywide - and that has an economy that provides jobs, which enable them to house, clothe and feed their families; educate their wards; pay their bills; and save for the future.
No amount of statistics bandied about by politicians to support claims that the economy is doing well, when it is not the case in the real everday world, will convince ordinary people - if their individual experiences clearly tell them that they are facing hard times.
The Hon. Mahama Ayariga and those Ghanaian politicians - across the spectrum: as the opposition New Patriotic Party also has its fair share of such individuals too - who think like him, must never forget that.
If the Hon. Mahama Ayariga wants to help the ruling party - that he is such a prominent member of - he must think up initiatives that will help alleviate poverty in rural Ghana.
With respect, for his information, an example that will enable his government create jobs and wealth, in much of rural southern Ghana, is the use of coir-fibre from coconuts to produce high-value high-density binderless boards, in local factories, for the building and packaging industries - both for domestic markets and for export.
Such initiatives, not propaganda and sophistry, will save his party from defeat in the 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections.
The Hon. Mahama Ayariga can ask the ministerial team at the ministry of trade and industry to get the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI), and the Building Research Institute (BRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), to collaborate with the Wageningen UR of Holland's research team headed by Dr. Jan van Dam, to replicate its ecocoboard project in the Philipinnes, in the Ellembelle District - as well as other coconut-growing districts in southern Ghana.
It is a perfect rural poverty-alleviation and wealth-creation initiative - that is bound to give his party enough votes in rural Ghana to enable it win the 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections comfortably. In a nation full of wide-awake citizens - fed up with having to make never-ending sacrifices for the common good, but seldom receiving any tangible benefits in return - dissimulating about the national economy will definitely not win his party those crucial elections, which will determine the future direction of our homeland Ghana. A word to the wise...
Yet, seldom has the need for selfless, visionary and competent leadership, been of more urgency in Africa. With global climate change making a complete nonsense of weather patterns, and endangering crop yields, populations across Africa have become increasingly vulnerable - as food security is threatened throughout the continent.
For many in Africa, the future looks bleak - as the major food producing regions across the world are also being impacted negatively by global climate change: and crop yields fall there too. It will lead to high prices globally for major staples such as rice, wheat and corn.
Against that backdrop, it is important for politicians in Ghana to offer honest leadership that understands clearly that ordinary people's individual experiences, in cost-of-living terms, as they struggle daily to survive, inform their view of the state of the national economy - not statistics churned out by clever politicians to support Alice-in-wonderland-claims about the state of the econony.
What your average citizen wants, is to live in a nation in which affordable healthcare is available countrywide - and that has an economy that provides jobs, which enable them to house, clothe and feed their families; educate their wards; pay their bills; and save for the future.
No amount of statistics bandied about by politicians to support claims that the economy is doing well, when it is not the case in the real everday world, will convince ordinary people - if their individual experiences clearly tell them that they are facing hard times.
The Hon. Mahama Ayariga and those Ghanaian politicians - across the spectrum: as the opposition New Patriotic Party also has its fair share of such individuals too - who think like him, must never forget that.
If the Hon. Mahama Ayariga wants to help the ruling party - that he is such a prominent member of - he must think up initiatives that will help alleviate poverty in rural Ghana.
With respect, for his information, an example that will enable his government create jobs and wealth, in much of rural southern Ghana, is the use of coir-fibre from coconuts to produce high-value high-density binderless boards, in local factories, for the building and packaging industries - both for domestic markets and for export.
Such initiatives, not propaganda and sophistry, will save his party from defeat in the 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections.
The Hon. Mahama Ayariga can ask the ministerial team at the ministry of trade and industry to get the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI), and the Building Research Institute (BRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), to collaborate with the Wageningen UR of Holland's research team headed by Dr. Jan van Dam, to replicate its ecocoboard project in the Philipinnes, in the Ellembelle District - as well as other coconut-growing districts in southern Ghana.
It is a perfect rural poverty-alleviation and wealth-creation initiative - that is bound to give his party enough votes in rural Ghana to enable it win the 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections comfortably. In a nation full of wide-awake citizens - fed up with having to make never-ending sacrifices for the common good, but seldom receiving any tangible benefits in return - dissimulating about the national economy will definitely not win his party those crucial elections, which will determine the future direction of our homeland Ghana. A word to the wise...
Sunday, 30 March 2014
Threat To Ghana's Cocoa Industry From Ukraine
Author's note: This piece was meant to be saved as a draft, and posted on 1/4/2014 - but due to a mix-up, it was inadvertently posted today, alas - making it the world's first 2014 1st April opinion piece, as it were. A thousand apologies all round. Please read on, in the traditional 1st April spirit, so to speak:
Ukrainian presidential candidate, Mr. Petro Poroshenko, the billionaire chocolate king of Ukraine, who is tipped to win the upcoming 25th May, 2014, presidential election in Ukraine, is apparently planning to collaborate with Monsanto to produce GM frost-resistant cocoa beans in Ukraine.
Apparently Mr. Poroshenko, whose company Roshen, is Ukraine's biggest chocolate manufacturer, believes that he will be able to do so within two years. And his ambition is to become the world's biggest producer of cocoa beans - with an annual production rate of some 5 million metric tonnes.
The curious thing, is that the president of the Ivory Coast, President Alhassan Quattara, is said to be looking forward to assisting Mr. Poroshenko to produce GM cocoa beans in Ukraine. As a producer of high quality cocoa beans, Ghana must read the writing on the wall - Poroshenko's GM cocoa is a harbinger of things to come.
To counter the threat posed by the Poroshenko-Monsanto GM cocoa beans alliance, those charged with overseeing Ghana's cocoa industry, must act swiftly to end the baleful influence and power of the vested interests, which supply synthetic fertilisers and pesticides to cocoa farmers. It is they whose stranglehold on the Ghana Cocoa Board's (COCOBOD) purchases of inputs for cocoa farmers, makes it impossible for suppliers of organic fertilisers and natural pesticides, to sell their products in Ghana.
To secure the long-term future of the cocoa industry in Ghana, the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) must take steps to ensure that Ghana becomes the world's biggest producer of certified organic cocoa beans. Strategically, that is the most effective way to counter the threat posed by Poroshenko's ambition to grow GM frost-resistant cocoa beans in Ukraine.
The threat Poroshenko poses is real. And his GM frost-resistant cocoa, which grows in temperate regions, idea, is not as outlandish as it sounds. Let us carve out a niche as the world's biggest producer of certified organic cocoa beans to neutralise him. One hopes the powers that be will be up to the task ahead - and act now above all. Not tomorrow - when it will be way too late.
They have a powerful ally in the Latvian company BioDeposit - whose range of organic agricultural inputs could help Ghana produce 1 million metric tonnes of certified organic cocoa beans on a regular basis. They could repeat the miracle they have wrought for coffee farmers in East Africa here too - and help boost the production of certified organic cocoa beans in Ghana in record time. Ghana must counter the threat to its cocoa industry from Ukraine. Now. Not tomorrow. A word to the wise...
Ukrainian presidential candidate, Mr. Petro Poroshenko, the billionaire chocolate king of Ukraine, who is tipped to win the upcoming 25th May, 2014, presidential election in Ukraine, is apparently planning to collaborate with Monsanto to produce GM frost-resistant cocoa beans in Ukraine.
Apparently Mr. Poroshenko, whose company Roshen, is Ukraine's biggest chocolate manufacturer, believes that he will be able to do so within two years. And his ambition is to become the world's biggest producer of cocoa beans - with an annual production rate of some 5 million metric tonnes.
The curious thing, is that the president of the Ivory Coast, President Alhassan Quattara, is said to be looking forward to assisting Mr. Poroshenko to produce GM cocoa beans in Ukraine. As a producer of high quality cocoa beans, Ghana must read the writing on the wall - Poroshenko's GM cocoa is a harbinger of things to come.
To counter the threat posed by the Poroshenko-Monsanto GM cocoa beans alliance, those charged with overseeing Ghana's cocoa industry, must act swiftly to end the baleful influence and power of the vested interests, which supply synthetic fertilisers and pesticides to cocoa farmers. It is they whose stranglehold on the Ghana Cocoa Board's (COCOBOD) purchases of inputs for cocoa farmers, makes it impossible for suppliers of organic fertilisers and natural pesticides, to sell their products in Ghana.
To secure the long-term future of the cocoa industry in Ghana, the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) must take steps to ensure that Ghana becomes the world's biggest producer of certified organic cocoa beans. Strategically, that is the most effective way to counter the threat posed by Poroshenko's ambition to grow GM frost-resistant cocoa beans in Ukraine.
The threat Poroshenko poses is real. And his GM frost-resistant cocoa, which grows in temperate regions, idea, is not as outlandish as it sounds. Let us carve out a niche as the world's biggest producer of certified organic cocoa beans to neutralise him. One hopes the powers that be will be up to the task ahead - and act now above all. Not tomorrow - when it will be way too late.
They have a powerful ally in the Latvian company BioDeposit - whose range of organic agricultural inputs could help Ghana produce 1 million metric tonnes of certified organic cocoa beans on a regular basis. They could repeat the miracle they have wrought for coffee farmers in East Africa here too - and help boost the production of certified organic cocoa beans in Ghana in record time. Ghana must counter the threat to its cocoa industry from Ukraine. Now. Not tomorrow. A word to the wise...
Friday, 28 March 2014
The Panacea For Resolving Ghana's Economic Challenges That Its Politicians Never Mention
President Mahama is reported to have stated recently that Ghana will have to keep on "borrowing" money to modernise and expand its infrastructure. And in a public lecture a few days ago, a leading member of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr Bawumia, also outlined a raft of measures that he says ought to be taken to arrest the fall of the Ghana cedi and improve the national economy.
The extraordinary thing is that virtually all the members of our nation's political class know the perfect solution to our nation's economic challenges - yet it has never once been mentioned by any of them in public: Ghana sits atop of oil and gas deposits worth some US$160 billions - enough money to guarantee living standards for all of Ghana's citizens, akin to that enjoyed by the citizens of oil-rich nations such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and for generations to come.
Those US$160 billions worth of oil and gas deposits belong to the sovereign people of Ghana - from whom it has been snatched by the employment of fraudulent agreements deliberately entered into by a few of their elected leaders.
The foreign oil companies whose use of sleight-of-hand tactics secured them those oil and gas deposits, worth some US$160 billions, are not impoverished entities - and neither are any of their shareholders poverty-stricken individuals facing imminent famine. Ghana must reclaim its birthright from them. Period.
Renegotiated oil agreements that are fair and guarantee that the bulk of those US$160 billions will accrue to Ghana, will neither be financially catastrophic, nor an end-of-the-world-tragedy, for those foreign oil companies and their shareholders. So why are Ghana's leaders not moving to end an egregious injustice - which denies us cash to fund the transformation of our country into a developed nation, and prosperous society, from our own resources?
The question the good people of Ghana ought to ponder is: if those elected leaders who signed those rip-off agrements had a fiduciary duty to ensure that the bulk of those US$160 billions would accrue to the Republic of Ghana and its citizens, but failed to do so - because entering into rip-off- agreements beneficial to foreign oil companies benefited them personally - why are President Mahama and Dr. Bawumia not protesting loudly and demanding that those agreements must be renogotiated: so that proceeds from the sale of Ghanaian oil and gas can be used to modernise and expand our infrastructure, as well as pay off Ghana's mountain of debt?
Oil agreements guaranteeing Ghana the bulk of those US$160 billions of oil revenues will enable Ghana to establish a sovereign wealth fund - to provide income for the period when the oil and gas deposits are depleted. It will also enable Ghana to provide free education from kindergarten to tertiary level for all Ghanaians with the aptitude to study. That will guarantee us a skilled workforce that is world-class and competitive.
It will also enable the state to provide good quality housing for all Ghanaians who cannot afford to build or buy their own homes, and empower them to acquire their own homes - through social housing schemes in which paid-rent goes towards the total cost of purchasing a property. It will enable those who ordinarily would not be considered for mortgages to purchase their own properties.
And we will also have access to some of the world's best public-sector healthcare facilities nationwide, if we had our fair share of God-given natural resources that actually belong to Ghanaians and their nation, to fund the building of those healthcare facilities.
The panacea for overcoming the challenges preventing the transformation of the national economy, and the evolution of Ghanaian society into an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia, is to renegotiate all the existing rip-off oil agreements that presently only benefit the foreign oil companies - and sign new ones giving Ghana full ownership of all its oil and gas deposits: and guarantees it the bulk of the proceeds from the commercial exploitation of those oil and gas fields.
As things currently stand, over a thirty-year period, all that Ghana will receive out of those US$160 billions, will be a paltry US$20 billions. How can that be - when the total outlay the foreign oil companies will make to obtain the remaining US$140 billions, will probably be less than US$10 billions? Incredible.
They must take us for the biggest fools on the surface of the planet Earth - which is why when the industry best practice is to build double-hulled floating production storage and offloading vessels (FPSO), the foreign oil companies operating off our shores opted for a single-hulled one, and will commence building a second one soon. Heaven help our coastal fishing communities, should an FPSO vessel in Ghanaian waters spring a leak.
It is time members of Ghana's political class addressed this all-important issue: for it is the panacea for resolving the challenges preventing the transformation of our national economy. It is only when the issue has been satisfactorily dealt with that Ghanaians will be able to enjoy some of the highest standards of living in the world. And so to use local parlance, in view of all the above, one humbly says to President Mahama and Dr. Bawumia: "Gentlemen, over to you, Joe Lartey". A word to the wise...
The extraordinary thing is that virtually all the members of our nation's political class know the perfect solution to our nation's economic challenges - yet it has never once been mentioned by any of them in public: Ghana sits atop of oil and gas deposits worth some US$160 billions - enough money to guarantee living standards for all of Ghana's citizens, akin to that enjoyed by the citizens of oil-rich nations such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and for generations to come.
Those US$160 billions worth of oil and gas deposits belong to the sovereign people of Ghana - from whom it has been snatched by the employment of fraudulent agreements deliberately entered into by a few of their elected leaders.
The foreign oil companies whose use of sleight-of-hand tactics secured them those oil and gas deposits, worth some US$160 billions, are not impoverished entities - and neither are any of their shareholders poverty-stricken individuals facing imminent famine. Ghana must reclaim its birthright from them. Period.
Renegotiated oil agreements that are fair and guarantee that the bulk of those US$160 billions will accrue to Ghana, will neither be financially catastrophic, nor an end-of-the-world-tragedy, for those foreign oil companies and their shareholders. So why are Ghana's leaders not moving to end an egregious injustice - which denies us cash to fund the transformation of our country into a developed nation, and prosperous society, from our own resources?
The question the good people of Ghana ought to ponder is: if those elected leaders who signed those rip-off agrements had a fiduciary duty to ensure that the bulk of those US$160 billions would accrue to the Republic of Ghana and its citizens, but failed to do so - because entering into rip-off- agreements beneficial to foreign oil companies benefited them personally - why are President Mahama and Dr. Bawumia not protesting loudly and demanding that those agreements must be renogotiated: so that proceeds from the sale of Ghanaian oil and gas can be used to modernise and expand our infrastructure, as well as pay off Ghana's mountain of debt?
Oil agreements guaranteeing Ghana the bulk of those US$160 billions of oil revenues will enable Ghana to establish a sovereign wealth fund - to provide income for the period when the oil and gas deposits are depleted. It will also enable Ghana to provide free education from kindergarten to tertiary level for all Ghanaians with the aptitude to study. That will guarantee us a skilled workforce that is world-class and competitive.
It will also enable the state to provide good quality housing for all Ghanaians who cannot afford to build or buy their own homes, and empower them to acquire their own homes - through social housing schemes in which paid-rent goes towards the total cost of purchasing a property. It will enable those who ordinarily would not be considered for mortgages to purchase their own properties.
And we will also have access to some of the world's best public-sector healthcare facilities nationwide, if we had our fair share of God-given natural resources that actually belong to Ghanaians and their nation, to fund the building of those healthcare facilities.
The panacea for overcoming the challenges preventing the transformation of the national economy, and the evolution of Ghanaian society into an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia, is to renegotiate all the existing rip-off oil agreements that presently only benefit the foreign oil companies - and sign new ones giving Ghana full ownership of all its oil and gas deposits: and guarantees it the bulk of the proceeds from the commercial exploitation of those oil and gas fields.
As things currently stand, over a thirty-year period, all that Ghana will receive out of those US$160 billions, will be a paltry US$20 billions. How can that be - when the total outlay the foreign oil companies will make to obtain the remaining US$140 billions, will probably be less than US$10 billions? Incredible.
They must take us for the biggest fools on the surface of the planet Earth - which is why when the industry best practice is to build double-hulled floating production storage and offloading vessels (FPSO), the foreign oil companies operating off our shores opted for a single-hulled one, and will commence building a second one soon. Heaven help our coastal fishing communities, should an FPSO vessel in Ghanaian waters spring a leak.
It is time members of Ghana's political class addressed this all-important issue: for it is the panacea for resolving the challenges preventing the transformation of our national economy. It is only when the issue has been satisfactorily dealt with that Ghanaians will be able to enjoy some of the highest standards of living in the world. And so to use local parlance, in view of all the above, one humbly says to President Mahama and Dr. Bawumia: "Gentlemen, over to you, Joe Lartey". A word to the wise...
Tuesday, 25 March 2014
Creating An Entrepreneurial Culture In Ghana
Ghana's younger generations remain the country's best hope for the future. If our nation is to prosper, we must do everything we can, to create opportunities for younger generation Ghanaians. I have come across some extraordinary young people over the years. And it is such brilliant individuals who restore my faith in Ghana.
A major source of frustration for many young Ghanaians is the lack of funding for projects. Perhaps if some of Ghana's IT-savvy younger generations looked abroad for partnerships with other young people, to exploit the many opportunities they see around them, they could achieve some of the goals they set themselves.
Nations like Finland encourage their younger generations to seek partnerships overseas. It helps Finnish exports, creates jobs and increases Finland's GDP. Ambitious young businesspeople in Ghana could find partners and funding by applying to the Finnfund: http://www.finnpartnership.fi.
If the ministerial team at Ghana's ministry of trade and industry wants to help create wealth in rural Ghana, the minister and his deputy, must encourage the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) to partner the Netherlands' WageningenUR team, led by Dr. Jan van Dam, which helped the Philippines develop the production of coir ecoboards, in a project funded by the United Nations Common Fund for Commodities (CFC) and the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).
The NBSSI, the Building Research Institute (BRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Rural Enterprises Project (REP) could seek funding from the African Development Bank, the CFC and the FAO, to collaborate with Dr. Jan van Dam's WageningenUR team, to replicate their Philippines coir-based ecoboards project in the western, central and eastern regions of Ghana.
Coir fibre-based ecoboards are strong and binderless - a perfect high-quality green substitute, for wood-based boards, for the building and packaging industries, in a nation with depleted forests: that is now being negatively impacted by global climate change. It is an agro-industrial undertaking with a massive job-creating footprint - that also has huge export potential.
The production of binderless ecoboards by private entrepreneurs in those three regions will be a boon for the regions' hard-pressed coconut farmers - and create wealth as well as spawn a lasting entrepreneurial culture in that part of rural Ghana through its value-chain. We must consciously create, nurture and sustain an entrepreneurial culture in Ghana if we are to prosper as a people. One hopes Ghana's political class will make that a key goal of theirs when elected to power. A word to the wise...
A major source of frustration for many young Ghanaians is the lack of funding for projects. Perhaps if some of Ghana's IT-savvy younger generations looked abroad for partnerships with other young people, to exploit the many opportunities they see around them, they could achieve some of the goals they set themselves.
Nations like Finland encourage their younger generations to seek partnerships overseas. It helps Finnish exports, creates jobs and increases Finland's GDP. Ambitious young businesspeople in Ghana could find partners and funding by applying to the Finnfund: http://www.finnpartnership.fi.
If the ministerial team at Ghana's ministry of trade and industry wants to help create wealth in rural Ghana, the minister and his deputy, must encourage the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) to partner the Netherlands' WageningenUR team, led by Dr. Jan van Dam, which helped the Philippines develop the production of coir ecoboards, in a project funded by the United Nations Common Fund for Commodities (CFC) and the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).
The NBSSI, the Building Research Institute (BRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Rural Enterprises Project (REP) could seek funding from the African Development Bank, the CFC and the FAO, to collaborate with Dr. Jan van Dam's WageningenUR team, to replicate their Philippines coir-based ecoboards project in the western, central and eastern regions of Ghana.
Coir fibre-based ecoboards are strong and binderless - a perfect high-quality green substitute, for wood-based boards, for the building and packaging industries, in a nation with depleted forests: that is now being negatively impacted by global climate change. It is an agro-industrial undertaking with a massive job-creating footprint - that also has huge export potential.
The production of binderless ecoboards by private entrepreneurs in those three regions will be a boon for the regions' hard-pressed coconut farmers - and create wealth as well as spawn a lasting entrepreneurial culture in that part of rural Ghana through its value-chain. We must consciously create, nurture and sustain an entrepreneurial culture in Ghana if we are to prosper as a people. One hopes Ghana's political class will make that a key goal of theirs when elected to power. A word to the wise...
Friday, 21 March 2014
Ghana Must Use Innovation To Empower Its State-Owned Utility Companies
As a people, if we want to overcome the problems that confront us, we must learn to innovate our way out of our difficulties.
The state-owned utility companies in Ghana could make themselves more efficient and profitable through innovation.
In addition to being a bulk purchaser and distributor of power, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), for example, could turn itself into a renewable power company - opening up a whole new income stream for itself - and help its customers cope with power outages at the same time, by studying and replicating the business model of the U.S. renewable energy company, SolarCity.
SolarCity provides electricty to its customers by installing solar power systems in their homes. SolarCity keeps ownership of the solar power systems it installs, and charges customers monthly fees for the electrcity those solar power systems generate.
That business model eliminates the initial-cost barrier that prevents your average householder from opting for solar power systems. The ECG is used to partnering private entities to deliver services to its customers - the installation of smart prepaid meters being an example. My humble suggestion is that it replicates SolarCity's business model.
It could either invite SolarCity to partner it to replicate its business model here, or use it in a partnership with Deng Limited, which sells solar power systems in Ghana. The leasing companies in Ghana could finance the solar power systems for the partnership. That will enable households countrywide to have solar power systems. The excess power they generate could be credited to their accounts with the ECG - and lower their monthly electricity bills.
The Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), could also use innovation to make itself more efficient. That efficiency will lower its costs - which it could pass on to its customers. Why does it not use the nano-tech filtration system pioneered by the UK company, Lifesaver Systems? Surely, a filtration system that eliminates the use of expensive chemicals in producing safe drinking water for public consumption makes sense?
They could also partner Lifesaver Systems to sell their nano-tech filtration systems to bottled water producers - and ensure that consumers will get pure and safe water no matter which brand of bottled water they purchase in Ghana. A definite boon for the health of bottled water consumers nationwide.
Above all, the time has come to empower the state-owned utility companies financially, by partially privatising them on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE). It will enable them raise interest-free funds to renew their plant and equipment. We have the shinning example of the hugely successful partially state-owned oil marketing company, the Ghana Oil Company Limited (GOIL) to guide us, do we not? One hopes the sector ministers in charge of the state-owned utility companies will take note of all the above - and act. A word to the wise...
The state-owned utility companies in Ghana could make themselves more efficient and profitable through innovation.
In addition to being a bulk purchaser and distributor of power, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), for example, could turn itself into a renewable power company - opening up a whole new income stream for itself - and help its customers cope with power outages at the same time, by studying and replicating the business model of the U.S. renewable energy company, SolarCity.
SolarCity provides electricty to its customers by installing solar power systems in their homes. SolarCity keeps ownership of the solar power systems it installs, and charges customers monthly fees for the electrcity those solar power systems generate.
That business model eliminates the initial-cost barrier that prevents your average householder from opting for solar power systems. The ECG is used to partnering private entities to deliver services to its customers - the installation of smart prepaid meters being an example. My humble suggestion is that it replicates SolarCity's business model.
It could either invite SolarCity to partner it to replicate its business model here, or use it in a partnership with Deng Limited, which sells solar power systems in Ghana. The leasing companies in Ghana could finance the solar power systems for the partnership. That will enable households countrywide to have solar power systems. The excess power they generate could be credited to their accounts with the ECG - and lower their monthly electricity bills.
The Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), could also use innovation to make itself more efficient. That efficiency will lower its costs - which it could pass on to its customers. Why does it not use the nano-tech filtration system pioneered by the UK company, Lifesaver Systems? Surely, a filtration system that eliminates the use of expensive chemicals in producing safe drinking water for public consumption makes sense?
They could also partner Lifesaver Systems to sell their nano-tech filtration systems to bottled water producers - and ensure that consumers will get pure and safe water no matter which brand of bottled water they purchase in Ghana. A definite boon for the health of bottled water consumers nationwide.
Above all, the time has come to empower the state-owned utility companies financially, by partially privatising them on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE). It will enable them raise interest-free funds to renew their plant and equipment. We have the shinning example of the hugely successful partially state-owned oil marketing company, the Ghana Oil Company Limited (GOIL) to guide us, do we not? One hopes the sector ministers in charge of the state-owned utility companies will take note of all the above - and act. A word to the wise...
Sunday, 16 March 2014
Is Ghana An Oil-Rich Nation Facing Penury?
Precious few Ghanaians are aware that their country sits atop of oil and gas deposits worth some U.S.$160 billions. And at a time when so many of them are experiencing hard times, one wonders what ordinary people in Ghana would do, were they to discover, that over a 30-year period, Ghana will receive only a paltry U.S.$20 billions out of those U.S.$ 160 billions - because their ruling elites signed what are said to be some of the worst oil agreements in modern history.
Incredibly, under that unspeakable abomination of an oil agreement - the royalty/tax system - the foreign oil companies are investing less than U.S.$10 billions, to lay their hands on U.S.$140 billions worth of Ghanaian oil. Unbeknownst to our ruling elites, Tullow Oil was happy to sign a production-sharing agreement with the Canadian oil company, Africa Oil, to work its Kenyan concession - so why don't they sign one with Ghana too?
The tragedy for our nation, is that we are losing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to improve and expand our infrastructure from our own resources, because a few clever individuals deliberately signed agreements that gave away wealth that can transform our nation - and give its citizens one of the highest standards of living in the world. The question we must ponder is: ultimately, do the ordinary people of Ghana, in whom sovereignty lies, not have the right to repudiate those inimical agreements that a few greedy and selfish officials signed - because it was in their own interest to do so?
Why should we accept this one-sided outrage, when our nation's circumstances could change dramatically - for the better - if Ghana had a fair share of those U.S.$160 billions? The government of Ghana must persuade the oil companies that it is in their own long-term interest to accept that the present agreements are untenable - and that they must be replaced with production sharing agreements in which Ghana gets 70 percent, whiles 30 percent of the proceeds go to the oil companies, whenever oil is lifted.
If that were the case today, and a production sharing agreement was in place, we would not be an over-leveraged nation beholden to tightfisted and canny bankers in China, but would rather have the wherewithal to transform our nation into an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia - blessed with well-equipped hospitals in every district capital; have free education from kindergarten to tertiary level for the younger generations; have well-designed and well-built housing in well-planned new green cities that millions of ordinary people could afford to purchase houses in.
Were the situation, in which an oil-rich nation and its citizens face penury, because a few selfish and greedy individuals signed what are inimical agreements with foreign oil companies, to persist, it could lead to the demise of Ghanaian democracy - and the emergence of a Colonel Gaddafi-type leader: who will tear up those inimical agreements. Under King Idris 1, Libya's oil deposits benefited the king personally, and the foreign oil companies: not the Libyan people and their nation.
That is why Gaddafi became a hero to Libyans when he overthrew King Idris in 1969. An African democracy that fails to produce ordinary citizens' share of the democracy dividend, faces a shaky future - as poverty and democracy do not make good bedfellows. Our hard-of-hearing and self-seeking ruling elites, who take a lot for granted, have failed to grasp this.
Ghanaians - particularly the younger generations - are an aspirational people.
They want to live as well as the ordinary people of oil-rich nations such as Dubai, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia do. And why not? It is instructive that all the above-mentioned nations have service agreements (a 'type' of production sharing agreement in which the foreign oil company does not have an equity stake in the oil and gas deposits, but is paid for funding and bearing the risk involved in exploration and production) in place for players in their oil and gas industries.
One hopes that the foreign oil companies now busy ripping Ghana off will come to understand that Ghanaians will not remain passive about those one-sided agreements forever - especially as their nation faces penury despite sitting atop of oil and natural gas deposits worth some U.S.$160 billions. They had better watch out - Solomon Kwawukume's book ("Ghana's Oil and Gas Discoveries: Towards Maximum Benefits") is reaching many of the younger generations: and they feel scandalised to learn that their ruling elites foolishly agreed to give away their birthright in opaque transactions, without consulting the people of Ghana. A word to the wise...
Incredibly, under that unspeakable abomination of an oil agreement - the royalty/tax system - the foreign oil companies are investing less than U.S.$10 billions, to lay their hands on U.S.$140 billions worth of Ghanaian oil. Unbeknownst to our ruling elites, Tullow Oil was happy to sign a production-sharing agreement with the Canadian oil company, Africa Oil, to work its Kenyan concession - so why don't they sign one with Ghana too?
The tragedy for our nation, is that we are losing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to improve and expand our infrastructure from our own resources, because a few clever individuals deliberately signed agreements that gave away wealth that can transform our nation - and give its citizens one of the highest standards of living in the world. The question we must ponder is: ultimately, do the ordinary people of Ghana, in whom sovereignty lies, not have the right to repudiate those inimical agreements that a few greedy and selfish officials signed - because it was in their own interest to do so?
Why should we accept this one-sided outrage, when our nation's circumstances could change dramatically - for the better - if Ghana had a fair share of those U.S.$160 billions? The government of Ghana must persuade the oil companies that it is in their own long-term interest to accept that the present agreements are untenable - and that they must be replaced with production sharing agreements in which Ghana gets 70 percent, whiles 30 percent of the proceeds go to the oil companies, whenever oil is lifted.
If that were the case today, and a production sharing agreement was in place, we would not be an over-leveraged nation beholden to tightfisted and canny bankers in China, but would rather have the wherewithal to transform our nation into an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia - blessed with well-equipped hospitals in every district capital; have free education from kindergarten to tertiary level for the younger generations; have well-designed and well-built housing in well-planned new green cities that millions of ordinary people could afford to purchase houses in.
Were the situation, in which an oil-rich nation and its citizens face penury, because a few selfish and greedy individuals signed what are inimical agreements with foreign oil companies, to persist, it could lead to the demise of Ghanaian democracy - and the emergence of a Colonel Gaddafi-type leader: who will tear up those inimical agreements. Under King Idris 1, Libya's oil deposits benefited the king personally, and the foreign oil companies: not the Libyan people and their nation.
That is why Gaddafi became a hero to Libyans when he overthrew King Idris in 1969. An African democracy that fails to produce ordinary citizens' share of the democracy dividend, faces a shaky future - as poverty and democracy do not make good bedfellows. Our hard-of-hearing and self-seeking ruling elites, who take a lot for granted, have failed to grasp this.
Ghanaians - particularly the younger generations - are an aspirational people.
They want to live as well as the ordinary people of oil-rich nations such as Dubai, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia do. And why not? It is instructive that all the above-mentioned nations have service agreements (a 'type' of production sharing agreement in which the foreign oil company does not have an equity stake in the oil and gas deposits, but is paid for funding and bearing the risk involved in exploration and production) in place for players in their oil and gas industries.
One hopes that the foreign oil companies now busy ripping Ghana off will come to understand that Ghanaians will not remain passive about those one-sided agreements forever - especially as their nation faces penury despite sitting atop of oil and natural gas deposits worth some U.S.$160 billions. They had better watch out - Solomon Kwawukume's book ("Ghana's Oil and Gas Discoveries: Towards Maximum Benefits") is reaching many of the younger generations: and they feel scandalised to learn that their ruling elites foolishly agreed to give away their birthright in opaque transactions, without consulting the people of Ghana. A word to the wise...
Saturday, 15 March 2014
How An Iconic American Brand's Local Franchise-Holders Are Exploiting Ghana's Byzantine System
For the past three years, I have followed a court case, in which a woman who nearly died after ingesting a world-famous soft drink, is suing the local franchise-holders of an iconic American corporate brand, in an Accra High Court.
Until the Centre for Public Interest Law (CPIL) took up her case, after the lady in question had dismissed the original lawyer who had been handling her case, the case was going absolutely nowhere - a practical demonstration of the perfidy and obfuscating-power of the said bottling company.
I took an interest in the case, because I happen to know the lady in question, and can vouch for her character. An upright and law-abiding ctitizen, I have known her for over twenty years. She is an honest, hard-working and responsible lady running a small business, who would never make false allegations against anyone.
The idea that a company that bottles the products of a global soft-drinks giant, which is a quintessential American corporate brand, can fall into the hands of ruthless and wealthy individuals, prepared to use their wealth and the influence it brings them, to exploit our byzantine system to get away with a plethora of egregious examples of sharp practice, such as the importation of raw materials that are near their sell-by date, to manufacture products that make consumers ill when ingested, and also exploit their workers on top of that, is intolerable.
My hope is that the judge who is hearing the case will deliver a judgement that imposes punitive sanctions, including monetary compensation of the Ghana cedi equivalent of at least US$1millions, for the plaintiff, plus costs, on the defendants - so that they will come to understand that our nation is not some Banana Republic, in which wealthy and ruthless foreigners are above the law.
No groups of individuals must think that they can come into our country to run businesses that manufacture products that make consumers ill, disable some and kill others, and escape punishment - with the covering-up help of a small army of professionals, including lawyers and healthcare professionals, providing them with a cloak of invincible-impunity.
Above all, my prayer - on what is World Consumer Rights Day - is that the global headquarters of the said iconic American corporate brand, will conduct a forensic audit into the entire operations of their local franchise-holders' Ghanaian bottling plant - and ensure that going forward, corporate good governance principles will underpin the entire value-chain of an entity whose owners are abusing the power a world-famous American brand enables them to wield. A word to the wise...
Until the Centre for Public Interest Law (CPIL) took up her case, after the lady in question had dismissed the original lawyer who had been handling her case, the case was going absolutely nowhere - a practical demonstration of the perfidy and obfuscating-power of the said bottling company.
I took an interest in the case, because I happen to know the lady in question, and can vouch for her character. An upright and law-abiding ctitizen, I have known her for over twenty years. She is an honest, hard-working and responsible lady running a small business, who would never make false allegations against anyone.
The idea that a company that bottles the products of a global soft-drinks giant, which is a quintessential American corporate brand, can fall into the hands of ruthless and wealthy individuals, prepared to use their wealth and the influence it brings them, to exploit our byzantine system to get away with a plethora of egregious examples of sharp practice, such as the importation of raw materials that are near their sell-by date, to manufacture products that make consumers ill when ingested, and also exploit their workers on top of that, is intolerable.
My hope is that the judge who is hearing the case will deliver a judgement that imposes punitive sanctions, including monetary compensation of the Ghana cedi equivalent of at least US$1millions, for the plaintiff, plus costs, on the defendants - so that they will come to understand that our nation is not some Banana Republic, in which wealthy and ruthless foreigners are above the law.
No groups of individuals must think that they can come into our country to run businesses that manufacture products that make consumers ill, disable some and kill others, and escape punishment - with the covering-up help of a small army of professionals, including lawyers and healthcare professionals, providing them with a cloak of invincible-impunity.
Above all, my prayer - on what is World Consumer Rights Day - is that the global headquarters of the said iconic American corporate brand, will conduct a forensic audit into the entire operations of their local franchise-holders' Ghanaian bottling plant - and ensure that going forward, corporate good governance principles will underpin the entire value-chain of an entity whose owners are abusing the power a world-famous American brand enables them to wield. A word to the wise...
Thursday, 6 March 2014
Why The Media Should Back Pharmaceutical Industry Regulatory Authorities In Ghana
Today, I am sharing a culled New York Times article by Gardiner Harris, entitled: "Medicines Made in India Set Off Safety Worries", with readers.
One hopes that those media houses in Ghana that usually back wealthy wrongdoers in the Ghanaian business world's pharmaceutical sector, when industry regulators sanction such wrongdoers, will read this eye-opening article, and turn over a new leaf - by resolving that, going forward, they will thoroughly investigate all allegations of non-compliance with pharmaceutical industry regulations, made by the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), against players in the industry.
Most of the pharmaceutical manufacturing companies in Ghana are reputable and ethical companies that strive to maintain the highest standards. However, there are a number of such companies, which cut corners and collude with dishonest overseas pharmaceutical manufacturers, to import fake and untested drugs into Ghana.
When such unethical practices come to the notice of the FDA, and the regulator moves to sanction errant drug importers, for the common good, the media in Ghana must openly back the FDA, if their own investigations confirm the regulator's claims - for the FDA is only acting in the public interest in such cases to save lives: by preventing fake and untested drugs from being sold in Ghana. Please read on:
One hopes that those media houses in Ghana that usually back wealthy wrongdoers in the Ghanaian business world's pharmaceutical sector, when industry regulators sanction such wrongdoers, will read this eye-opening article, and turn over a new leaf - by resolving that, going forward, they will thoroughly investigate all allegations of non-compliance with pharmaceutical industry regulations, made by the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), against players in the industry.
Most of the pharmaceutical manufacturing companies in Ghana are reputable and ethical companies that strive to maintain the highest standards. However, there are a number of such companies, which cut corners and collude with dishonest overseas pharmaceutical manufacturers, to import fake and untested drugs into Ghana.
When such unethical practices come to the notice of the FDA, and the regulator moves to sanction errant drug importers, for the common good, the media in Ghana must openly back the FDA, if their own investigations confirm the regulator's claims - for the FDA is only acting in the public interest in such cases to save lives: by preventing fake and untested drugs from being sold in Ghana. Please read on:
Wednesday, 5 March 2014
That Our Leaders Might Have The Wisdom To Let Ghana And Her People Prosper
On 6th March, 2014, Ghana will enter its 57th year, as an independent and sovereign African nation-state. As a people, we have come a long way and made much progress, since the end of the colonial era. Much more needs to be done - but we can be proud of ourselves for maintaining the unity and stability of our nation.
It is instructive, that after successfully freeing itself from the yoke of British colonial occupation of its territory, on March 6, 1957, Ghana still remains a beacon of hope in Africa.
A peaceful and thriving multi-party democracy, with a vibrant and vociferous media, Ghana's pluralistic society is unique in Africa. It has evolved into a cultural melting-pot, in which virtually every extended family clan, in the land, is made up of a mix of family members from different tribes, who are united by marriage and blood ties.
A mostly-tolerant and welcoming people, Ghanaians live in an aspirational society that sets great store by material success. It is this widespread desire to be successful that makes Ghanaians pull back from anything that will tip their nation over the precipice, whenever a political crisis occurs. It has kept Ghana politically stable - despite the brinkmanship of its mostly self-serving political class.
One's prayer for our homeland Ghana, as it enters its 57th year of nationhood, is that it will be blessed with a ruling elite that is wise and understands the need for sustainable development that ensures a better quality of life for all Ghanaians.
Going forward, one hopes that our leaders will not allow vested interests to force them to reverse policies that benefit the greatest numbers of the Ghanaian populace. Above all, let them initiate policies that will help harness the boundless energy, and tap the undoubted creativity, of younger generation IT-savvy Ghanaians.
And at a time when global climate change is negatively impacting our country, and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, one hopes that foolish and shortsighted decisions, such as the environmentally irresponsible act, of permitting coal-fired power plants to be built in Ghana, will never again be foisted on the ordinary people of our country, by the clueless amongst our nation's ruling elites.
Let our leaders also have the wisdom to create conditions for wealth-creation in rural Ghana, for example, by encouraging private-sector entities to utilise the cutting-edge molecular breeding technology of the U.S. biotech company, San Diego-based SGB - which has enabled the Jetropha 2.0 plant to be domesticated. It yields significantly more seeds than its wild cousins.
The adoption of the fruits of SGB's DNA sequencing technology, will enable Ghana to have the capacity to develop a biodiesel industry, which supplies jet fuel to the international aviation industry - by getting unemployed people in rural Ghana to grow SGB's high-yielding jetropha 2.0 hybrid seedlings, on marginal land, as well as on land degraded by illegal gold mining and logging, to produce biodiesel from jetropha seeds.
And were our leaders to launch a nationwide initiative for private-sector companies and farmer co-ops to grow coconuts in plantations, the humble coconut tree could supply rural factories along the coast, and throughout the southern half of Ghana, with coconuts for the manufacture of a cornucopia of products - including coir fibre-based ecoboards, coconut milk, virgin coconut oil and powdered coconut milk (to name but a few).
That will create jobs galore and wealth in rural Ghana, would it not?
As Ghanaians throughout the world celebrate their nation's 57th independence anniversary on 6th March, 2014, the prayer of the citiizenry, is that their leaders will have the wisdom to create conditions that will enable Ghana to become a prosperous nation - whose citizens, particularly the younger generation, benefit from economic growth that is underpinned by a sustainable and green ethos. Amen.
It is instructive, that after successfully freeing itself from the yoke of British colonial occupation of its territory, on March 6, 1957, Ghana still remains a beacon of hope in Africa.
A peaceful and thriving multi-party democracy, with a vibrant and vociferous media, Ghana's pluralistic society is unique in Africa. It has evolved into a cultural melting-pot, in which virtually every extended family clan, in the land, is made up of a mix of family members from different tribes, who are united by marriage and blood ties.
A mostly-tolerant and welcoming people, Ghanaians live in an aspirational society that sets great store by material success. It is this widespread desire to be successful that makes Ghanaians pull back from anything that will tip their nation over the precipice, whenever a political crisis occurs. It has kept Ghana politically stable - despite the brinkmanship of its mostly self-serving political class.
One's prayer for our homeland Ghana, as it enters its 57th year of nationhood, is that it will be blessed with a ruling elite that is wise and understands the need for sustainable development that ensures a better quality of life for all Ghanaians.
Going forward, one hopes that our leaders will not allow vested interests to force them to reverse policies that benefit the greatest numbers of the Ghanaian populace. Above all, let them initiate policies that will help harness the boundless energy, and tap the undoubted creativity, of younger generation IT-savvy Ghanaians.
And at a time when global climate change is negatively impacting our country, and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, one hopes that foolish and shortsighted decisions, such as the environmentally irresponsible act, of permitting coal-fired power plants to be built in Ghana, will never again be foisted on the ordinary people of our country, by the clueless amongst our nation's ruling elites.
Let our leaders also have the wisdom to create conditions for wealth-creation in rural Ghana, for example, by encouraging private-sector entities to utilise the cutting-edge molecular breeding technology of the U.S. biotech company, San Diego-based SGB - which has enabled the Jetropha 2.0 plant to be domesticated. It yields significantly more seeds than its wild cousins.
The adoption of the fruits of SGB's DNA sequencing technology, will enable Ghana to have the capacity to develop a biodiesel industry, which supplies jet fuel to the international aviation industry - by getting unemployed people in rural Ghana to grow SGB's high-yielding jetropha 2.0 hybrid seedlings, on marginal land, as well as on land degraded by illegal gold mining and logging, to produce biodiesel from jetropha seeds.
And were our leaders to launch a nationwide initiative for private-sector companies and farmer co-ops to grow coconuts in plantations, the humble coconut tree could supply rural factories along the coast, and throughout the southern half of Ghana, with coconuts for the manufacture of a cornucopia of products - including coir fibre-based ecoboards, coconut milk, virgin coconut oil and powdered coconut milk (to name but a few).
That will create jobs galore and wealth in rural Ghana, would it not?
As Ghanaians throughout the world celebrate their nation's 57th independence anniversary on 6th March, 2014, the prayer of the citiizenry, is that their leaders will have the wisdom to create conditions that will enable Ghana to become a prosperous nation - whose citizens, particularly the younger generation, benefit from economic growth that is underpinned by a sustainable and green ethos. Amen.
Sunday, 23 February 2014
Give Tax Incentives To Ghanaians In The Diaspora Establishing Businesses In Ghana
The remittance of various sums of money back home to family members and friends, by Ghanaians in the Diaspora, ensures the survival of millions of Ghanaians.
Those sums of money sent to friends and family, by Diasporans, are also an important source of foreign exchange for our national economy - which is why the government must do more to encourage Ghanaians living abroad to invest in Ghana.
The story of a hardworking and wealthy Ghanaian-American couple, who live and work in the U.S., which I have intimate knowledge of, ought to be a case-study for the managers of our national economy.
They have set up a warehousing and logistics company in Ghana, to offer off-road heavy equipment transfer trucks (some capable of carrying even the over 72-tonne Abrams tank used by the U.S. military), which are designed to literally go anywhere - be it through desert, muddy terrain or flooded areas - to deliver loads.
Thus far, they have shipped three of those specially designed off-road go-anywhere trucks to Ghana. Alas, the increase in levies and taxes on imported vehicles, has forced them to halt any further shipments of trucks to Ghana.
The question is: why does the government of Ghana not provide tax exemptions for Ghanaians in the Diaspora, who want to set up businesses in Ghana?
The couple in question, had plans to build warehouses, a workshop to service their fleet of off-road go-anywhere trucks, and build hostels, hotels and houses on plots they own in prime areas of Accra and Kumasi - in a land portfolio valued at over some US$10 millions.
It is a real pity that such high net worth Diasporans are not targeted by the Ghana Investment Promotion Authority (GIPA). They could make a huge difference to Ghana's economic outlook - creating jobs galore and contributing to our GDP significantly.
If the couple in question had tax exemption for their warehousing and logistics business, for example, they could bring in as many as twenty trucks, by the end of this year - as well as a similar number of trailers and low-loaders.
Surely, the time has come to give tax exemptions to Ghanaians in the Diaspora, who want to set up businesses in Ghana? That Diasporan couple in the U.S., alone, could have provided hundreds of jobs for: drivers; mechanics; masons; carpenters; architects; advertising companies; lawyers; surveyors and sundry consultants - at a time when such opportunities for employment are few and far between. Pity.
One hopes that the powers that be will consider giving tax exemptions on plant and equipment, imported into Ghana, for use by the businesses of Ghanaians in the Diaspora, in the next budget.
Diasporans with businesses in Ghana are long-term investors who are here for the long haul - and won't flee when things get tough in the real economy, from time to time: unlike your average foreign investor seeking short-term gains in emerging markets.
If properly supported, by being given tax exemptions for plant and equipment imported into Ghana for their businesses, Ghanaians in the Diaspora - who collectively are worth their weight in gold - could easily become the backbone of our national economy: poviding hundreds of thousands of jobs and capital for investing in long-term projects. A word to the wise...
Those sums of money sent to friends and family, by Diasporans, are also an important source of foreign exchange for our national economy - which is why the government must do more to encourage Ghanaians living abroad to invest in Ghana.
The story of a hardworking and wealthy Ghanaian-American couple, who live and work in the U.S., which I have intimate knowledge of, ought to be a case-study for the managers of our national economy.
They have set up a warehousing and logistics company in Ghana, to offer off-road heavy equipment transfer trucks (some capable of carrying even the over 72-tonne Abrams tank used by the U.S. military), which are designed to literally go anywhere - be it through desert, muddy terrain or flooded areas - to deliver loads.
Thus far, they have shipped three of those specially designed off-road go-anywhere trucks to Ghana. Alas, the increase in levies and taxes on imported vehicles, has forced them to halt any further shipments of trucks to Ghana.
The question is: why does the government of Ghana not provide tax exemptions for Ghanaians in the Diaspora, who want to set up businesses in Ghana?
The couple in question, had plans to build warehouses, a workshop to service their fleet of off-road go-anywhere trucks, and build hostels, hotels and houses on plots they own in prime areas of Accra and Kumasi - in a land portfolio valued at over some US$10 millions.
It is a real pity that such high net worth Diasporans are not targeted by the Ghana Investment Promotion Authority (GIPA). They could make a huge difference to Ghana's economic outlook - creating jobs galore and contributing to our GDP significantly.
If the couple in question had tax exemption for their warehousing and logistics business, for example, they could bring in as many as twenty trucks, by the end of this year - as well as a similar number of trailers and low-loaders.
Surely, the time has come to give tax exemptions to Ghanaians in the Diaspora, who want to set up businesses in Ghana? That Diasporan couple in the U.S., alone, could have provided hundreds of jobs for: drivers; mechanics; masons; carpenters; architects; advertising companies; lawyers; surveyors and sundry consultants - at a time when such opportunities for employment are few and far between. Pity.
One hopes that the powers that be will consider giving tax exemptions on plant and equipment, imported into Ghana, for use by the businesses of Ghanaians in the Diaspora, in the next budget.
Diasporans with businesses in Ghana are long-term investors who are here for the long haul - and won't flee when things get tough in the real economy, from time to time: unlike your average foreign investor seeking short-term gains in emerging markets.
If properly supported, by being given tax exemptions for plant and equipment imported into Ghana for their businesses, Ghanaians in the Diaspora - who collectively are worth their weight in gold - could easily become the backbone of our national economy: poviding hundreds of thousands of jobs and capital for investing in long-term projects. A word to the wise...
Saturday, 22 February 2014
If Iran Wants Ghana's Cocoa Let Them Build A Cocoa Processing Plant Here
Apparently, Iran wants to buy cocoa beans from Ghana. If our leaders were wise, they would ask the Iranians to build a cocoa processing plant in Ghana instead, to export its products to Iran.
Why allow Iran, which says it is a good friend of Ghana's, to join the long list of nations that prefer to import raw materials from Ghana, instead of setting up factories here to process raw material such as cocoa beans and create jobs, add to our GDP and enable our nation to enjoy an overall positive trade balance - rather than helping to perpetuate the neo-colonial structure of our economy?
The government must not make the same mistake that was once made when a delegation of businesspeople - apparently including some even prepared to build a factory here to process cocoa beans, as their Plan B, if their request was refused - came from Malaysia to discuss the purchase of cocoa beans from Ghana.
The Malaysians got exactly what they wanted, and departed with an assuarance of direct access to Ghana's famed cocoa beans - forever freeing them of the tyranny of the international cocoa market's speculators (such as Amajaro's Anthony Ward). Yet, they came prepared to build a cocoa processing plant in Ghana, to export its products to Malaysia - a positive outcome that would have led to a win-win situation for both nations. Pity.
As much as possible, we must discourage the export of raw materials from Ghana, and point those who want to import raw materials from our country, to set up processing plants here instead. In the long-term, it is the only way to prevent our currency from becoming worthless.
Such a policy will provide young Ghanaians with jobs. And if a law is passed that requires such investors to have local partners, or float shares on the Ghana Stock Exchange after a given period, it will also keep some of their profits in Ghana too.
Let us build mutually beneficial relationships with nations that profess to be our friends - instead of forever remaining globalisation's hewers of wood and drawers of water. Iran is welcome to as much of Ghana's cocoa beans as it wants - if it builds processing plants here to export what they produce for use by its confectionary industry. One hopes the hard-of-hearing geniuses who rule our nation will pay heed to this humble suggestion. A word to the wise...
Why allow Iran, which says it is a good friend of Ghana's, to join the long list of nations that prefer to import raw materials from Ghana, instead of setting up factories here to process raw material such as cocoa beans and create jobs, add to our GDP and enable our nation to enjoy an overall positive trade balance - rather than helping to perpetuate the neo-colonial structure of our economy?
The government must not make the same mistake that was once made when a delegation of businesspeople - apparently including some even prepared to build a factory here to process cocoa beans, as their Plan B, if their request was refused - came from Malaysia to discuss the purchase of cocoa beans from Ghana.
The Malaysians got exactly what they wanted, and departed with an assuarance of direct access to Ghana's famed cocoa beans - forever freeing them of the tyranny of the international cocoa market's speculators (such as Amajaro's Anthony Ward). Yet, they came prepared to build a cocoa processing plant in Ghana, to export its products to Malaysia - a positive outcome that would have led to a win-win situation for both nations. Pity.
As much as possible, we must discourage the export of raw materials from Ghana, and point those who want to import raw materials from our country, to set up processing plants here instead. In the long-term, it is the only way to prevent our currency from becoming worthless.
Such a policy will provide young Ghanaians with jobs. And if a law is passed that requires such investors to have local partners, or float shares on the Ghana Stock Exchange after a given period, it will also keep some of their profits in Ghana too.
Let us build mutually beneficial relationships with nations that profess to be our friends - instead of forever remaining globalisation's hewers of wood and drawers of water. Iran is welcome to as much of Ghana's cocoa beans as it wants - if it builds processing plants here to export what they produce for use by its confectionary industry. One hopes the hard-of-hearing geniuses who rule our nation will pay heed to this humble suggestion. A word to the wise...
Thursday, 20 February 2014
Ghana's Power Sector Utility Companies Must Be More Creative
Instead of piling on yet more agony for electricity users in Ghana, by constantly reviewing their tariffs upwards, the power-sector utilities must be more creative in running their businesses. One of the excuses often used to justify higher tariffs, is that it will enable the power sector utilities modernise their plant and equipment.
The question Ghana's overtaxed and overburdened population would like the Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCO), the Volta River Authority (VRA), the Bui Power Authority (BPA) and the Electricity Corporation of Ghana Limited (ECG) to ponder is: to obtain more funds why don't they ask the government of Ghana to offload 40 percent of its shares in all the state-owned utility companies in the power sector on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), and use the interest-free capital thus raised, to modernise their plant and equipment?
Secondly, why don't they use cutting-edge ideas to make their businesses more efficient entities? For example, would the VRA and the BPA not produce power more cheaply, if they built mega-windfarms off Ghana's shores in partnership with global class-leading Chinese giant-windpower-plant manufacturing companies, and used the U.S. company Hydrogenics' power-to-gas technology to supply gas to their thermal plants? They can inspect an example in Germany: the commercial power-to-gas plant in Falkenhagen operated by E.On and Swissgas (commissioned on 28/8/2013).
Let them ask the genuises who rule us to invite Hydrogenics' top brass to Ghana to discuss such a project with them. Perhaps they could persuade the American government's Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) to pay for one in the next compact with Ghana, which addresses the country's inadequate power generating capacity.
And would the ECG too not make money, as well as save power generated by the VRA and BPA, whiles helping to cut down electricity bills for their customers, if it partnered Deng Limited and adopted the innovative U.S. solar energy company SolarCity's business model: installing solar power systems - which the partnership would own, not the customers on whose roofs they will be installed - and charged customers a fixed monthly sum for the solar power produced?
Ghana's power-sector utility companies must lower their production costs by becoming more efficient. That can be achieved through innovativation - not endlless tariff increases in a nation with an overtaxed population such as ours. Enough is enough. A word to the wise...
The question Ghana's overtaxed and overburdened population would like the Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCO), the Volta River Authority (VRA), the Bui Power Authority (BPA) and the Electricity Corporation of Ghana Limited (ECG) to ponder is: to obtain more funds why don't they ask the government of Ghana to offload 40 percent of its shares in all the state-owned utility companies in the power sector on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), and use the interest-free capital thus raised, to modernise their plant and equipment?
Secondly, why don't they use cutting-edge ideas to make their businesses more efficient entities? For example, would the VRA and the BPA not produce power more cheaply, if they built mega-windfarms off Ghana's shores in partnership with global class-leading Chinese giant-windpower-plant manufacturing companies, and used the U.S. company Hydrogenics' power-to-gas technology to supply gas to their thermal plants? They can inspect an example in Germany: the commercial power-to-gas plant in Falkenhagen operated by E.On and Swissgas (commissioned on 28/8/2013).
Let them ask the genuises who rule us to invite Hydrogenics' top brass to Ghana to discuss such a project with them. Perhaps they could persuade the American government's Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) to pay for one in the next compact with Ghana, which addresses the country's inadequate power generating capacity.
And would the ECG too not make money, as well as save power generated by the VRA and BPA, whiles helping to cut down electricity bills for their customers, if it partnered Deng Limited and adopted the innovative U.S. solar energy company SolarCity's business model: installing solar power systems - which the partnership would own, not the customers on whose roofs they will be installed - and charged customers a fixed monthly sum for the solar power produced?
Ghana's power-sector utility companies must lower their production costs by becoming more efficient. That can be achieved through innovativation - not endlless tariff increases in a nation with an overtaxed population such as ours. Enough is enough. A word to the wise...
Wednesday, 19 February 2014
Time To Pull Together
It says a lot about the characters of Professor Mike Ocquaye and Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom that unlike many in the parties opposing the ruling National Democratic Congress regime of President Mahama, they have not sought to make political capital out of the crisis of confidence the country's economy is currently experiencing. Clearly, they care about Mother Ghana, and worry about the plight of the ordinary people of our country.
They have shown, by the positive statements they have made about resolving the difficulties facing Ghana - highlighted by the falling value of the Ghana cedi - that they are mature politicians who are morally fit to lead our nation. This is no time to exploit the crisis facing our nation. What Ghana needs now are politicians who are men and women of goodwill - not those for whom politics is a dirty game in which one kicks one's fellow human beings when they are down.
Responsible politicians must put aside personal ambition and party advantage at times like this. This is a time when we must pull together as a people and work hard to resolve our economic difficulties. It behoves those who are now in power, and those who oppose them and want to replace them in governing Ghana, to be more responsible in their utterances and actions. We must all contribute to solving the problems facing Ghana. Let us pull together - for we sink or swim together. A word to the wise...
They have shown, by the positive statements they have made about resolving the difficulties facing Ghana - highlighted by the falling value of the Ghana cedi - that they are mature politicians who are morally fit to lead our nation. This is no time to exploit the crisis facing our nation. What Ghana needs now are politicians who are men and women of goodwill - not those for whom politics is a dirty game in which one kicks one's fellow human beings when they are down.
Responsible politicians must put aside personal ambition and party advantage at times like this. This is a time when we must pull together as a people and work hard to resolve our economic difficulties. It behoves those who are now in power, and those who oppose them and want to replace them in governing Ghana, to be more responsible in their utterances and actions. We must all contribute to solving the problems facing Ghana. Let us pull together - for we sink or swim together. A word to the wise...
Tuesday, 18 February 2014
Ghana Should Partner Ryanair To Set up A Pan-African Low-Cost Carrier
A young acquintance of mine observed recently that he had the distinct impression that our hard-of-hearing politicians never learn from past mistakes made by their predecessors in office. And how right he is.
When Ghana Airways was deliberately killed off, to enable its assets to be bought cheaply by a well-connected few during the Kufuor-era, yet another group of influential individuals, then profiting mightily from President Kufuor's golden-age-of-business-for-a-favoured-few, also spotted an opportunity to milk Ghana dry - and Ghana International Airlines (GIA) was born.
Alas, both airlines were plagued by not-so-good management - and endless interference by politicians in their operations. That never-ending meddling by politicians doomed both airlines - leading to their demise.
It is said that our rulers today also dream of setting up a national airline. The genius who is the sector minister whose ministry has responsibilty for the airline industry, is apparently about to appoint "a transaction advisor" (who might or might not take advantage of Mother Ghana), to help the government take the necessary steps to enable it realise its goal.
Well, one hopes that for once, the national interest - as opposed to the greedy ambitions of a powerful few - will guide the regime currently in power, as it goes about the business of setting up a new national carrier. Hmm, Ghana - eyeasem o.
If the government wants to get it right this time round, here are a few tips from a humble old man who loves Ghana passionately: to begin with, let them secure bilateral air agreements with all the member-states of the African Union.
That will give them considerable leverage in any negotiations for a partnership agreement with a potential partner - as it delivers a one-open-sky across the continent for the partnership.
Let them also remember that an airline offering point-to-point travel between major cities across the continent meets a vital need in today's Africa - which is why any airline offering safe air travel across Africa has bright prospects.
And whatever it does, the current government must ensure that the business model of the new national carrier, will be the low-cost model. If they want an airline in which the government of Ghana has a stake, and that will be efficiently run as well as profitable, then let them invite Ryanair's Michael O'Leary to Accra for talks about a partnership between Ghana and Ryanair to set up a pan-African airline, offering safe and well-maintained aircraft to satisfy the wanderlust bug that seems to have infected so many of the continent's fast-expanding middle-classes - leading them to crisscross the continent in search of business and pleasure.
Mr. O'Leary (whom they can reach through Tullow Oil's founder, Idan Heavey, a fellow Irishman) will make a perfect partner for Ghana. He must be made aware of the fact that his great rival, Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, Easyjet's founder, is setting up a pan-African airline, Fastjet, using the low-cost model. There is no question that a partnership between Ryanair and Ghana, will take a huge chunk of the passenger traffic from Europe and north America to Africa and vice versa - if the low-cost business model is adopted by the partnership.
Above all, we will have the opportunity to honour sister nations across the continent, by naming the partnership's aircraft after them - generating priceless goodwill for the partnership. Well, one hopes that the Hon. Dzifa Attivor will pay heed to one's two-pesewa widow's-mite contribution to the nation-building effort - by opting for the low-cost business model for the new national airline, whenever it is established. A word to the wise...
Wednesday, 12 February 2014
Why Every Member Of Ghana's Parliament Who Loves The Nation Must Read Solomon Kwawukume's Book - "Ghana's Oil: Towards Maximum Benefits"
In 1965 a book entitled, "Neocolonialism, The Last Stage of Imperialsm", was published by Ghana's president at the time, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. So alarmed were the Western powers by its contents that they resolved to remove President Nkrumah from power.
Their fear was that the book's contents would undermine their interests in Africa. They therefore had to make sure that the pan-Africanist politician who authored it did not remain in power, to spread its race-uplifting and liberating message across the continent - and implement policies based on it in his native Ghana.
Solomon Kwawukume's book, "Ghana's Oil and Gas Discoveries: Towards Maximum Benefits", ought to be required reading for every patriotic Ghanaian - particularly the younger generation.
In a sense, it is just as influential in what it seeks to do, as Nkrumah's "Neocolonalism, The Last Stage of Imperialism" - open the eyes of its readers and enable them foil the greedy ambitions of those malevolent foreign interests that seek to exploit Ghana's oil and gas deposits, with very little benefit to its people.
It is amazing that 49 years after the publication of "Neocolonialism, The Last Stage of Imperialism", our ruling elites are still allowing our resources to be exploited for returns far less than they are actually worth, by foreign corporations - because it benefits them personally.
A bill has just come before Ghana's Parliament - the Petroleum (Exploration and Production) Bill, 2013 - for passage into law. If passed into law as it stands, it will allow foreign oil companies to do to Mother Ghana what the foreign gold mining companies have done to her over the years: gang-rape her.
Each member of Parliament ought to read Mr. Solomon Kwawukume's "Ghana's Oil and Gas Discoveries: Towards Maximum Benefits" before agreeing to permit what will in effect amount to giving away a total of some US$160 billions in assets belonging to the people of Ghana, to foreign oil companies.
Yet, for this bonanaza, those foreign oil companies are investing less than US$10 billions in production costs, to exploit those selfsame assets. Ghana's share of those US$160 billions is a paltry US$20 billions - and, now, thanks to that inequitous bill, soon, we will also be stumping up our share of costs too: the financial equivalent of a time-bomb that will cripple our nation in the not too distant future, as sure as day follows night.
When the first Europeans came to our shores centuries ago in search of gold, our leaders at the time accepted worthless bric-a-brac in exchange for valuable gold. Members of Ghana's Parliament must not make the same mistake in 2014 - by sanctioning this wheeze to deny Ghanaians what is rightfully theirs.
The question our members of Parliament must ponder is: if Tullow Oil was happy to sign the kind of production agreement it did with the Canadian oil company Africa Oil to exploit its Kenyan concession, why would it balk at signing a similar one with Ghana?
Food for thought for our ruling elites - who seldom do any thinking when it comes to protecting the national interest: what benefits the majority of Ghanaians at any given point in time. The citizens of Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia wouldn't live as well as they do today, if their leaders were as deliberately ignorant as our leaders have been, in utilising their oil and gas deposits, would they?
In considering the Petroleum (Exploration and Production) Bill, 2013, members of Ghana's Parliament ought to remember that posterity will never forgive them for selling Ghana short at a time of extreme national need with their eyes fully open. If they want to be on the right side of history in this matter, let them read Solomon Kwawukume's "Ghana's Oil and Gas Discoveries: Towards Maximun Benefits". Hmm, Ghana - eyeasem o - asem ebeba debi ankasa!
Thursday, 6 February 2014
Time To Make The GWCL A More Efficient Entity
Perhaps the time has now come for the government of Ghana, to consider selling some of its shares in the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), to the general public, in an IPO, to enable the company raise interest-free funds for its operations and expansion projects, across the country.
The shining example of the hugely successful partial privatisation of GOIL, the state-owned oil marketing firm, shows how allowing ordinary people and private-sector institutional investors to buy shares in state-owned entities on the GSE, can transform the fortunes of such companies, in dramatic fashion.
The discipline of listing on the GSE will force the management of the GWCL to become more focused on making the company a going concern that responds to the needs of its customers - instead of continuing to remain a financial basket-case providing cushy sinecures for a mostly-unproductive workforce with archaic work practices.
It is totally unacceptable that it takes so long for the company to attend to and repair burst pipes along its distribution-pipeline network. Surely, there ought to be timelines with completion dates within which such repairs should be carried out?
The GWCL must make the improvement of its supply of treated water to customers across the country a priority. It is only when that happens and water is supplied on a reliable and sustainable basis nationwide that it can justify asking its biggest corporate customers such as Coca-Cola, the breweries and other manufacturing companies to switch to using prepaid meters.
And what is the point of asking customers to pay their water bills at various banks, if those payments are sometimes not immediately transferred to the GWCL's accounts, and consequently not reflected in the bills sent out to its customers, even months afterwards, one wonders? That is simply unacceptable in today's Ghana - in which banks are networked and cash transfers between accounts virtually instantaneous.
Water is life. To ensure public health in Ghana, the entity responsible for the nation's drinking water supply, ought to be a more efficiently run company, providing a reliable service nationwide. Let the powers that be take steps in that direction via the GSE swiftly. Now. Nothing else will do in a nation that aspires to be the gateway to Africa. A word to the wise...
The shining example of the hugely successful partial privatisation of GOIL, the state-owned oil marketing firm, shows how allowing ordinary people and private-sector institutional investors to buy shares in state-owned entities on the GSE, can transform the fortunes of such companies, in dramatic fashion.
The discipline of listing on the GSE will force the management of the GWCL to become more focused on making the company a going concern that responds to the needs of its customers - instead of continuing to remain a financial basket-case providing cushy sinecures for a mostly-unproductive workforce with archaic work practices.
It is totally unacceptable that it takes so long for the company to attend to and repair burst pipes along its distribution-pipeline network. Surely, there ought to be timelines with completion dates within which such repairs should be carried out?
The GWCL must make the improvement of its supply of treated water to customers across the country a priority. It is only when that happens and water is supplied on a reliable and sustainable basis nationwide that it can justify asking its biggest corporate customers such as Coca-Cola, the breweries and other manufacturing companies to switch to using prepaid meters.
And what is the point of asking customers to pay their water bills at various banks, if those payments are sometimes not immediately transferred to the GWCL's accounts, and consequently not reflected in the bills sent out to its customers, even months afterwards, one wonders? That is simply unacceptable in today's Ghana - in which banks are networked and cash transfers between accounts virtually instantaneous.
Water is life. To ensure public health in Ghana, the entity responsible for the nation's drinking water supply, ought to be a more efficiently run company, providing a reliable service nationwide. Let the powers that be take steps in that direction via the GSE swiftly. Now. Nothing else will do in a nation that aspires to be the gateway to Africa. A word to the wise...
Monday, 3 February 2014
Remove Taxes On Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Companies In Ghana As Soon As Practicable
Ghana's pharmaceutical industry has great potential. It could become a major foreign exchange earner for our country. It is therefore crucial that whatever can be done by the government, to make the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector of our economy, globally competitive, is done.
Tax exemptions for plant and raw materials, for factories producing drugs for hospitals and pharmacies locally, and for export to sister nations in West Africa (and elsewhere in the continent), is one of the ways the government can help make such pharmaceutical companies competitive.
Another measure that will help the pharmaceutical industry in Ghana thrive, is to increase the number of drugs restricted for local production only, from the current 14. Locally produced drugs are often of the highest quality - and enable the public to have access to safe medicines: a real boon in a world awash with dangerous counterfeit drugs.
No matter how strapped for cash government might be, the new taxes imposed on pharmaceutical manufacturers in Ghana, must be removed as soon as practicable. They will stifle the industry unnecessarily - and lead to some workers losing their jobs. Yet, the industry could be a leading source of drugs for many nations in Africa.
In order to have a positive balance of trade, and if our currency is to stop losing its value against other currencies, the enterprise Ghana definitely needs to export more than it currently does. If a conducive environment is created for the sector, leading pharmaceutical companies such as Ernest Chemists, Kinapharma and LaGray could all help increase the volume of Ghana's exports - and create jobs galore for younger generation Ghanaians.
Imposing taxes on the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector is counterproductive, and in the long-term, definitely not in the national interest. It is said that health is wealth. Companies producing medical drugs in Ghana are key partners in making this a nation with a healthy population.
For that reason, the government would be wise to remove all the newly-imposed taxes on Ghana's pharmaceutical manufacturing industry. And, swiftly. A word to the wise...
Tax exemptions for plant and raw materials, for factories producing drugs for hospitals and pharmacies locally, and for export to sister nations in West Africa (and elsewhere in the continent), is one of the ways the government can help make such pharmaceutical companies competitive.
Another measure that will help the pharmaceutical industry in Ghana thrive, is to increase the number of drugs restricted for local production only, from the current 14. Locally produced drugs are often of the highest quality - and enable the public to have access to safe medicines: a real boon in a world awash with dangerous counterfeit drugs.
No matter how strapped for cash government might be, the new taxes imposed on pharmaceutical manufacturers in Ghana, must be removed as soon as practicable. They will stifle the industry unnecessarily - and lead to some workers losing their jobs. Yet, the industry could be a leading source of drugs for many nations in Africa.
In order to have a positive balance of trade, and if our currency is to stop losing its value against other currencies, the enterprise Ghana definitely needs to export more than it currently does. If a conducive environment is created for the sector, leading pharmaceutical companies such as Ernest Chemists, Kinapharma and LaGray could all help increase the volume of Ghana's exports - and create jobs galore for younger generation Ghanaians.
Imposing taxes on the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector is counterproductive, and in the long-term, definitely not in the national interest. It is said that health is wealth. Companies producing medical drugs in Ghana are key partners in making this a nation with a healthy population.
For that reason, the government would be wise to remove all the newly-imposed taxes on Ghana's pharmaceutical manufacturing industry. And, swiftly. A word to the wise...
Saturday, 25 January 2014
Was Davos A Wasted Opportunity For President Mahama & Ghana?
An old wag I know, was apoplectic that the opportunity this year's World Economic Forum, at the Swiss resort town of Davos, presented Ghana, to finally take on the foreign gold mining interests that have (to quote him) "ripped Ghana off for centuries", on a global platform, was wasted - because the geniuses around President Mahama, who advise him on such matters, failed him miserably.
Well, safe to say that actually, the multinational corporations mining gold here are a relatively recent phenomenon, there are some who will say that he is right, of course. For such Ghanaians - who trace the quest for gold from our shores in exchange for worthless bric-a-brac by foreign commercial interests to the 15th century - to go to Davos at this time of year, and figuratively throw up one's arms in despair, and complain to the world that a sovereign nation once ruled by President Nkrumah, is being dictated to by foreign mining interests, really is bad form.
Although a tad uncharitable, perhaps they are also spot on in arguing that it shows the calibre of some of the people around the President, who advise him on such matters: closed-minded provincials who haven't the faintest idea how to use such occasions to raise Ghana's image and make powerful friends for her.
In their view, instead of lamenting to the world, President Mahama should have used the platform offered by Davos, to condemn those greedy gold mining entities, which have a take-everything-in-sight-and-give-nothing-back-in-return relationship with our country, in no uncertain terms - for their unparalled greed and ruthless disregard for the well-being of Ghanaian democracy and the welfare of ordinary people in our country.
How do they expect Ghana to remain a stable democracy if development does not take place - because sharks like them will not pay their fair share of taxes? Are we not talking about actual-earned-profits, from actual-revenue-flows from a given period of unprecedented spikes in gold prices, that took their earnings to stratospheric heights, I ask? So why the mealy-mouthed excuses?
Did it not occur to the President's advisors that Davos offered Ghana the perfect opportunity to tell the world about the disgraceful pollution of the Ghanaian countryside by those tight-fisted gold mining companies - to an extent that would have landed the executives of those mining companies in jail in the EU and elsewhere in the developed world, to a man, had the scale of the poisoning of vast swathes of the Ghanaian countryside occured there?
The President could then have gone on to tell their shareholders, after informing the world of the apocalyptic destruction of ecosystems across our country wreaked by runoff from mountains and ponds of toxic tailings, for example, that there and then, he was directing his minister of finance to ensure that Ghana's fair share of the vast profits those gold mining companies made when the price of gold reached historic heights, was extracted from them.
The pure-nonsense-on-bamboo-stilts notion that because the price of gold has now fallen, they are unable to pay the windfall tax, is one that ought to be rejected - because they would never dare make such a preposterous claim to the tax authorities in the US, the EU, Australia and Canada. Who do they expect to clean up the mess they will leave behind - as sure as day follows night - after extracting all the gold they can?
From that viewpoint, could it not be argued that Ghana is better off leaving the gold in the ground - and that they are therefore welcome to depart our shores if they so wish: after meeting all their statutory obligations (including fair redundancy packages, properly funded employee pension schemes and fully paid-up reclamation bonds)?
A documentary film to show the crimes against humanity that their poisoning of soils and rivers in Ghana represents, could have been shown at Davos - something that would have pricked the conscience of the institutional investors with shareholdings in those selfish gold mining companies: who would have been horrified by that harrowing evidence of the true cost of their dividends, and of the magnitude of the perfidy of those gold mining companies operating here as if they were above our laws, and arrogantly refusing to share their windfall profits with their hapless victim, Mother Ghana.
Far from scaring off investors, President Mahama would have been given a standing ovation - by the selfsame people who, as we are all aware, now roundly and routinely condemn the greed and callousness of bankers in the US and the EU. What a wasted opportunity for, amongst many other positive examples, telling the world about the many opportunities in Ghana for renewable (especially solar) energy and IT companies to invest in our national economy. Pity.
Well, safe to say that actually, the multinational corporations mining gold here are a relatively recent phenomenon, there are some who will say that he is right, of course. For such Ghanaians - who trace the quest for gold from our shores in exchange for worthless bric-a-brac by foreign commercial interests to the 15th century - to go to Davos at this time of year, and figuratively throw up one's arms in despair, and complain to the world that a sovereign nation once ruled by President Nkrumah, is being dictated to by foreign mining interests, really is bad form.
Although a tad uncharitable, perhaps they are also spot on in arguing that it shows the calibre of some of the people around the President, who advise him on such matters: closed-minded provincials who haven't the faintest idea how to use such occasions to raise Ghana's image and make powerful friends for her.
In their view, instead of lamenting to the world, President Mahama should have used the platform offered by Davos, to condemn those greedy gold mining entities, which have a take-everything-in-sight-and-give-nothing-back-in-return relationship with our country, in no uncertain terms - for their unparalled greed and ruthless disregard for the well-being of Ghanaian democracy and the welfare of ordinary people in our country.
How do they expect Ghana to remain a stable democracy if development does not take place - because sharks like them will not pay their fair share of taxes? Are we not talking about actual-earned-profits, from actual-revenue-flows from a given period of unprecedented spikes in gold prices, that took their earnings to stratospheric heights, I ask? So why the mealy-mouthed excuses?
Did it not occur to the President's advisors that Davos offered Ghana the perfect opportunity to tell the world about the disgraceful pollution of the Ghanaian countryside by those tight-fisted gold mining companies - to an extent that would have landed the executives of those mining companies in jail in the EU and elsewhere in the developed world, to a man, had the scale of the poisoning of vast swathes of the Ghanaian countryside occured there?
The President could then have gone on to tell their shareholders, after informing the world of the apocalyptic destruction of ecosystems across our country wreaked by runoff from mountains and ponds of toxic tailings, for example, that there and then, he was directing his minister of finance to ensure that Ghana's fair share of the vast profits those gold mining companies made when the price of gold reached historic heights, was extracted from them.
The pure-nonsense-on-bamboo-stilts notion that because the price of gold has now fallen, they are unable to pay the windfall tax, is one that ought to be rejected - because they would never dare make such a preposterous claim to the tax authorities in the US, the EU, Australia and Canada. Who do they expect to clean up the mess they will leave behind - as sure as day follows night - after extracting all the gold they can?
From that viewpoint, could it not be argued that Ghana is better off leaving the gold in the ground - and that they are therefore welcome to depart our shores if they so wish: after meeting all their statutory obligations (including fair redundancy packages, properly funded employee pension schemes and fully paid-up reclamation bonds)?
A documentary film to show the crimes against humanity that their poisoning of soils and rivers in Ghana represents, could have been shown at Davos - something that would have pricked the conscience of the institutional investors with shareholdings in those selfish gold mining companies: who would have been horrified by that harrowing evidence of the true cost of their dividends, and of the magnitude of the perfidy of those gold mining companies operating here as if they were above our laws, and arrogantly refusing to share their windfall profits with their hapless victim, Mother Ghana.
Far from scaring off investors, President Mahama would have been given a standing ovation - by the selfsame people who, as we are all aware, now roundly and routinely condemn the greed and callousness of bankers in the US and the EU. What a wasted opportunity for, amongst many other positive examples, telling the world about the many opportunities in Ghana for renewable (especially solar) energy and IT companies to invest in our national economy. Pity.
Friday, 24 January 2014
Resolve GWCL's Production Unit's Labour Dispute Quickly
It is intolerable to hear that soon hospitals, schools, factories and homes across the cities of Accra and Tema, might be without treated water, as a result of the cessation of production, occasioned by an unresolved dispute, between the Ghana Water Company's (GWCL) production unit's management and workers. Apparently, the workers have threatened to down tools, if management does not accede to their demands.
The question is: why should a dispute over the discontinuation of overtime payments and a reduction in workers' perks (the distribution of bags of rice and cooking oil), inconvenience millions of law-abiding residents of those two major cities? The provision of treated water has public health implications when it is disrupted for an extended period, does it not, I ask? Why pile on yet more misery - at a time when hapless Ghanaians are being asked to pay increased tariffs for treated water?
Enough is enough. Workers of state-owned utility companies providing what are essential services to the general public, must not be allowed to continue holding Ghanaians to ransom, with such impunity. It is time legislation banning strikes by public-sector employees, whose pay takes up as much as 70 percent of total national revenue, was enacted by Parliament.
The GWCL's production unit's management must resolve this particular dispute quickly and avert a halt in the production of treated water for distribution to the residents of Accra and Tema. If they fail to do so, they will be failing Mother Ghana - and for their information, there will be painful consequences for all of them.
The minister for works, housing and water resources would be wise to keep an eye on this potential human tragedy and PR disaster for the government of which he is such a prominent member, and make sure that it is resolved swiftly. A word to the wise...
The question is: why should a dispute over the discontinuation of overtime payments and a reduction in workers' perks (the distribution of bags of rice and cooking oil), inconvenience millions of law-abiding residents of those two major cities? The provision of treated water has public health implications when it is disrupted for an extended period, does it not, I ask? Why pile on yet more misery - at a time when hapless Ghanaians are being asked to pay increased tariffs for treated water?
Enough is enough. Workers of state-owned utility companies providing what are essential services to the general public, must not be allowed to continue holding Ghanaians to ransom, with such impunity. It is time legislation banning strikes by public-sector employees, whose pay takes up as much as 70 percent of total national revenue, was enacted by Parliament.
The GWCL's production unit's management must resolve this particular dispute quickly and avert a halt in the production of treated water for distribution to the residents of Accra and Tema. If they fail to do so, they will be failing Mother Ghana - and for their information, there will be painful consequences for all of them.
The minister for works, housing and water resources would be wise to keep an eye on this potential human tragedy and PR disaster for the government of which he is such a prominent member, and make sure that it is resolved swiftly. A word to the wise...
Wednesday, 22 January 2014
Let Us Reach Out To Those Under Severe Stress - We Could Be Saving Their Lives
Stress in the frenetic-paced world we live in today is unavoidable for most working people. It is also a fact that many young people in our country are dying early deaths from stress-related conditions - such as stroke, heart attack and high blood pressure. There is a need for awareness-creation campaigns to get Ghanaians to understand the importance of striking a good work/quality-of-life balance in their lives.
That campaign to get Ghanaians to adopt balanced and healthy lifestyles could be taken up by the media in Ghana - as a collective effort to help prevent preventable deaths: such as the tragic demise of Komla Dumor in faraway London. It is clear from the messages that he is said to have sent to some of his former colleagues at Joy FM, that Komla Dumor was under tremendous stress and overworking himself.
In our determination to be successful individuals, we must not sacrifice our health on the high-alter-of-achievement, regardless of the cost to our personal well-being. The wise old Akan saying, "Onipa ebeyebi, na wanbeye ninyinaa", is something that must guide each one of us. Alas, the world will not stop when we die - and since we are not indispensable beings in the overall scheme of things, we will be quickly replaced, were we to die in harness.
We must all learn to ask for help when we are unable to cope with the stress we come under, when executing tasks assigned to us at work. It is neither a sign of weakness, nor failure, to seek help in managing work-related stress. Perhaps Komla Dumor would still be alive today, if he had been advised to put his health and personal well-being ahead of carrying out assignments for the BBC World Service, even when he was at the point of complete exhaustion physically.
Above all, we must reach out to others, when we sense that they might be under severe stress, and need help in coping. Having seen what it can lead to, in the case of Komla Dumor, we could actually be saving someone from certain death, by so doing.
That campaign to get Ghanaians to adopt balanced and healthy lifestyles could be taken up by the media in Ghana - as a collective effort to help prevent preventable deaths: such as the tragic demise of Komla Dumor in faraway London. It is clear from the messages that he is said to have sent to some of his former colleagues at Joy FM, that Komla Dumor was under tremendous stress and overworking himself.
In our determination to be successful individuals, we must not sacrifice our health on the high-alter-of-achievement, regardless of the cost to our personal well-being. The wise old Akan saying, "Onipa ebeyebi, na wanbeye ninyinaa", is something that must guide each one of us. Alas, the world will not stop when we die - and since we are not indispensable beings in the overall scheme of things, we will be quickly replaced, were we to die in harness.
We must all learn to ask for help when we are unable to cope with the stress we come under, when executing tasks assigned to us at work. It is neither a sign of weakness, nor failure, to seek help in managing work-related stress. Perhaps Komla Dumor would still be alive today, if he had been advised to put his health and personal well-being ahead of carrying out assignments for the BBC World Service, even when he was at the point of complete exhaustion physically.
Above all, we must reach out to others, when we sense that they might be under severe stress, and need help in coping. Having seen what it can lead to, in the case of Komla Dumor, we could actually be saving someone from certain death, by so doing.
Sunday, 19 January 2014
A Tribute To Komla Dumor
It is a measure of the high esteem in which he was held in his native
Ghana, that so many ordinary people were stunned to hear Komla Dumor had
died suddenly, in his London home - and were saddened by the unwelcome news. Many Ghanaians felt a sense of pride that he
anchored the BBC World Service's flagship African programmes.
Komla Dumor's unalloyed patriotism, contrasted sharply with the mean-spirited partisanship of the many Lilliputians, who tried to fill his gigantic shoes, after he left Joy FM for the BBC - as was his quiet self-confidence a world away from their tiresome and loquacious self-importance (not to mention their irritating pretentiousness).
One of the few Ghanaian journalists of his generation that I respected, I admired him for his professionalism, and wrote a number of articles to congratulate him, for some of the award-winning work he did whiles at Joy FM. Indeed, I often thought of him as ministerial material - and hoped that one day he would be a member of a Ghanaian government made up of honest technocrats who would put the national interest ahead of party advantage and personal ambition.
Having reached the pinnacle of his career by joining the BBC World Service, little did one know that he would streak across the firmament brightly and briefly like a shooting star, and disappear for good, so early in his life. At this tragic moment, our thoughts are with his wife and children in London - and his extended family clan in Ghana. Komla Dumor, who opened doors for many in African journalism, will be sorely missed throughout the continent. Komla, dua eni amanehunu - and may your soul rest in peace.
Komla Dumor's unalloyed patriotism, contrasted sharply with the mean-spirited partisanship of the many Lilliputians, who tried to fill his gigantic shoes, after he left Joy FM for the BBC - as was his quiet self-confidence a world away from their tiresome and loquacious self-importance (not to mention their irritating pretentiousness).
One of the few Ghanaian journalists of his generation that I respected, I admired him for his professionalism, and wrote a number of articles to congratulate him, for some of the award-winning work he did whiles at Joy FM. Indeed, I often thought of him as ministerial material - and hoped that one day he would be a member of a Ghanaian government made up of honest technocrats who would put the national interest ahead of party advantage and personal ambition.
Having reached the pinnacle of his career by joining the BBC World Service, little did one know that he would streak across the firmament brightly and briefly like a shooting star, and disappear for good, so early in his life. At this tragic moment, our thoughts are with his wife and children in London - and his extended family clan in Ghana. Komla Dumor, who opened doors for many in African journalism, will be sorely missed throughout the continent. Komla, dua eni amanehunu - and may your soul rest in peace.
Sunday, 12 January 2014
Ghanaian Politicians Must Abandon Plan To Mine Bauxite In The Atewa Range
I was flabbergasted when I heard Ghana's minister for communications, the Hon. Dr. Omane Boamah, who was once a deputy minister at the ministry of environment, science and technology, talking about an integrated aluminum industry in Ghana, utilising the bauxite deposits in the Atewa Range, on Peace FM's Kokrokoo morning show - at a time when global climate change is impacting the Ghanaian countryside so negatively.
It made one wonder the kind of advice senior civil servants who advise our elected leaders, give to government ministers. No one who has any knowledge of the importance of the Atewa Range's role as watershed for the three major river systems that most of southern urban Ghana depends on for its drinking water supply - the Densu, Birim and Ayensu rivers - will fail to foresee the catastrophe that will befall our nation, were bauxite mining to take place in the Atewa Range. Yet, we have a senior government minister saying such things, at a time of global warming - and at a time when urbanisation is taking place, at such pace, that soon a majority of Ghanaians will live in the urban areas of our country. Incredulous - and extremely worrying, indeed.
Ghanaian politicians - from across the spectrum - must understand clearly, once and for all, when invoking his name to justify their lack of original thinking in such matters, that Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah would never have mooted the idea of using the bauxite deposits in the Atewa Range, to establish an integrated aluminum industry in Ghana, had the world been faced with climate change, at the time he ruled Ghana. The welfare of the masses of the Ghanaian people, and the well-being of society, underpinned his vision for Ghana - not GDP growth at any cost.
Instead of such shortsighted folly, faced with the harsh realities of global climate change, President Nkrumah would have abandoned his plan to set up an integrated aluminum industry in Ghana, and rather suggested to Guinea that it could partner Ghana, to set up a West African integrated aluminum industry - in which the aluminum plant in Ghana would be fed with Guinea's abundant bauxite: in a win-win
value-adding-partnership for both nations. Let today's politicians seek such a partnership with Guinea for an integrated aluminum industry that benefits both nations and the rest of the sub-region too.
To protect it, the whole of the Atewa Range must be turned into a national park. The economic future of the areas with human settlement in the Atewa Range lies in eco-tourism, not bauxite mining that will lead to the destruction of the watershed of the major river systems that supply most of urban southern Ghana with its drinking water - a disaster that will lead to a hell-on-earth existence for millions, including residents of Accra, Ghana's capital.
The time has now come for Ghana's shortsighted politicians to finally drop the absurd idea of mining bauxite in the Atewa Range. At a time of global climate change it is a reckless, irresponsible and very dangerous idea. Our politicians must do some original thinking for once, in this instance. They cannot toy with the lives of Ghanaians. This is a vital human-survival and quality-of-life matter that will impact the welfare of present and future generations of our people negatively, were the wrong decision to be taken. At a time of global climate change, Ghana's politicians must abandon the disastrous plan to mine bauxite in the Atewa Range, for good - as its terrible consequences will be irreversible. A word to the wise..
It made one wonder the kind of advice senior civil servants who advise our elected leaders, give to government ministers. No one who has any knowledge of the importance of the Atewa Range's role as watershed for the three major river systems that most of southern urban Ghana depends on for its drinking water supply - the Densu, Birim and Ayensu rivers - will fail to foresee the catastrophe that will befall our nation, were bauxite mining to take place in the Atewa Range. Yet, we have a senior government minister saying such things, at a time of global warming - and at a time when urbanisation is taking place, at such pace, that soon a majority of Ghanaians will live in the urban areas of our country. Incredulous - and extremely worrying, indeed.
Ghanaian politicians - from across the spectrum - must understand clearly, once and for all, when invoking his name to justify their lack of original thinking in such matters, that Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah would never have mooted the idea of using the bauxite deposits in the Atewa Range, to establish an integrated aluminum industry in Ghana, had the world been faced with climate change, at the time he ruled Ghana. The welfare of the masses of the Ghanaian people, and the well-being of society, underpinned his vision for Ghana - not GDP growth at any cost.
Instead of such shortsighted folly, faced with the harsh realities of global climate change, President Nkrumah would have abandoned his plan to set up an integrated aluminum industry in Ghana, and rather suggested to Guinea that it could partner Ghana, to set up a West African integrated aluminum industry - in which the aluminum plant in Ghana would be fed with Guinea's abundant bauxite: in a win-win
value-adding-partnership for both nations. Let today's politicians seek such a partnership with Guinea for an integrated aluminum industry that benefits both nations and the rest of the sub-region too.
To protect it, the whole of the Atewa Range must be turned into a national park. The economic future of the areas with human settlement in the Atewa Range lies in eco-tourism, not bauxite mining that will lead to the destruction of the watershed of the major river systems that supply most of urban southern Ghana with its drinking water - a disaster that will lead to a hell-on-earth existence for millions, including residents of Accra, Ghana's capital.
The time has now come for Ghana's shortsighted politicians to finally drop the absurd idea of mining bauxite in the Atewa Range. At a time of global climate change it is a reckless, irresponsible and very dangerous idea. Our politicians must do some original thinking for once, in this instance. They cannot toy with the lives of Ghanaians. This is a vital human-survival and quality-of-life matter that will impact the welfare of present and future generations of our people negatively, were the wrong decision to be taken. At a time of global climate change, Ghana's politicians must abandon the disastrous plan to mine bauxite in the Atewa Range, for good - as its terrible consequences will be irreversible. A word to the wise..
Thursday, 9 January 2014
Let Us Leverage Continent-Wide Goodwill For Ghana To Boost Exports And Create A Jobs Galore
One is often baffled by the fact that our nation's ruling elites seldom see striking bilateral relationships with all the nations in sub-Saharan Africa, as an effective means of boosting Ghanaian exports across the continent - and giving younger generation Ghanaians the opportunity to interact with citizens of sister African nations: each one of which Ghana must have free-trade and visa-free agreements with.
Naturally, to ensure that such visa-free travel does not become a means for Ghanaian criminals to extend their footprint-of-crime to sister nations that our nation has such agreements with, and vice-verse, all nationals entering both nations must immediately report to the immigration and national police authorities, to have their fingerprints and DNA samples taken. They must also be required to provide a verifiable address they will stay at throughout their trip, with the proviso that they must inform the authorities each time they change accommodation.
The incredible energy one feels when out and about in urban Ghana, needs to be harnessed. If we had a visa-free agreement and tariff-free trade relations with Rwanda, for example, could young Ghanaian entrepreneurs not end up making the traditional northern smock for men a top fashion item in that nation?
If such agreements existed between us and other sister African nations, could some enterprising young seamstress not set up a fashion house with an Angolan partner - and employ Ghanaians to sew kaba-and-slit apparel for Angola's fairest damsels, I ask? Ditto the brilliant young jewelry designers who work with gold in chic parts of urban Ghana? And could companies like GCB and SIC not become African giants by opening subsidiaries across the continent?
As a result of tariff-free bilateral trade agreements with each of the member states of the African Union (AU), Ghana's wonderful world-beating dark chocolate produced by the Cocoa Processing Company, could indeed become a favourite across Africa. Kasapreko's assorted drinks, Special Ice mineral water, the products of GIHOC Distilleries, to mention a few of Ghanaian industry's finest, are all world-class products that could become household names in nations across Africa - if we had a bilateral tariff-free trade agreement in place with each AU member-state. Ghana must breathe new life into such existing agreements with that in mind - and sign new ones where none exist today.
Ghana must not wait for a continental common market to come into being before making pan-African trade a pillar of its economic transformation. Whiles we await an African common market, let us use bilateral tariff-free trade agreements to gain entry into the markets of all the members of the AU: regional free-trade areas notwithstanding. Our nation has tremendous goodwill across Africa, as a result of the impact of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah's activism for the pan-African cause, during his years in power in Ghana. Let us leverage that goodwill to boost our export trade and create a jobs galore in our country into the bargain. A word to the wise...
Naturally, to ensure that such visa-free travel does not become a means for Ghanaian criminals to extend their footprint-of-crime to sister nations that our nation has such agreements with, and vice-verse, all nationals entering both nations must immediately report to the immigration and national police authorities, to have their fingerprints and DNA samples taken. They must also be required to provide a verifiable address they will stay at throughout their trip, with the proviso that they must inform the authorities each time they change accommodation.
The incredible energy one feels when out and about in urban Ghana, needs to be harnessed. If we had a visa-free agreement and tariff-free trade relations with Rwanda, for example, could young Ghanaian entrepreneurs not end up making the traditional northern smock for men a top fashion item in that nation?
If such agreements existed between us and other sister African nations, could some enterprising young seamstress not set up a fashion house with an Angolan partner - and employ Ghanaians to sew kaba-and-slit apparel for Angola's fairest damsels, I ask? Ditto the brilliant young jewelry designers who work with gold in chic parts of urban Ghana? And could companies like GCB and SIC not become African giants by opening subsidiaries across the continent?
As a result of tariff-free bilateral trade agreements with each of the member states of the African Union (AU), Ghana's wonderful world-beating dark chocolate produced by the Cocoa Processing Company, could indeed become a favourite across Africa. Kasapreko's assorted drinks, Special Ice mineral water, the products of GIHOC Distilleries, to mention a few of Ghanaian industry's finest, are all world-class products that could become household names in nations across Africa - if we had a bilateral tariff-free trade agreement in place with each AU member-state. Ghana must breathe new life into such existing agreements with that in mind - and sign new ones where none exist today.
Ghana must not wait for a continental common market to come into being before making pan-African trade a pillar of its economic transformation. Whiles we await an African common market, let us use bilateral tariff-free trade agreements to gain entry into the markets of all the members of the AU: regional free-trade areas notwithstanding. Our nation has tremendous goodwill across Africa, as a result of the impact of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah's activism for the pan-African cause, during his years in power in Ghana. Let us leverage that goodwill to boost our export trade and create a jobs galore in our country into the bargain. A word to the wise...
Tuesday, 7 January 2014
Africa Needs Peace And Stability In Order To Prosper
No African who is a pan-Africanist, will fail to be worried and saddened, by the unfortunate violence breaking out in places like South Sudan and the Central African Republic. What today's Africa needs is peace and stability in order to develop and prosper - not senseless tribal and religious conflict.
Harrowing photographs of displaced fellow Africans, seeking refuge in United Nations compounds in South Sudan, and traumatised Nigerians huddled together in small groups at the arrivals hall of Nnamdi Azikwei international airport in Abuja, after being evacuated from the Central African Republic, are an indictment of the ruling elites of both nations.
Their selfish disregard for the welfare of their people, and the well-being of the societies they dominate in such brutal fashion, is shocking and reprehensible. This is the 21st century information age - not the Dark Ages. No tribe in the continent is superior or inferior to another. And genetically we are the same people more or less.
The African Union (AU) must do all it can to ensure that mediation efforts now underway to end the violence in both nations meet with success. It is unacceptable that ordinary people anywhere on the continent have to experience such abominable and unspeakable acts of violence, because of the failings of their leaders. What Africa needs is peace and stability - to enable it develop and prosper. We must rid the continent of selfish, narrow-minded and violence-prone leaders for that reason.
Harrowing photographs of displaced fellow Africans, seeking refuge in United Nations compounds in South Sudan, and traumatised Nigerians huddled together in small groups at the arrivals hall of Nnamdi Azikwei international airport in Abuja, after being evacuated from the Central African Republic, are an indictment of the ruling elites of both nations.
Their selfish disregard for the welfare of their people, and the well-being of the societies they dominate in such brutal fashion, is shocking and reprehensible. This is the 21st century information age - not the Dark Ages. No tribe in the continent is superior or inferior to another. And genetically we are the same people more or less.
The African Union (AU) must do all it can to ensure that mediation efforts now underway to end the violence in both nations meet with success. It is unacceptable that ordinary people anywhere on the continent have to experience such abominable and unspeakable acts of violence, because of the failings of their leaders. What Africa needs is peace and stability - to enable it develop and prosper. We must rid the continent of selfish, narrow-minded and violence-prone leaders for that reason.
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