Aid for Africa: End the Sick Cycle

When is everyone going to address the elephant in the room when it comes to the failure of aid to Africa?

African government regimes!!! The blatant corruption and flagrant disregard for their citizens is appalling, but what is worse is the complete lack of accountability when it comes to the shoveling of aid money directly into the coffers of these self serving governments, by the West.

Luckily Wikileaks did not spare Africa or the farse of the aid efforts in it’s recent exposures. In fact, some disturbing specific examples of how aid money goes into private pockets was highlighted.

British taxpayers should take a keen interest in the fact that over GBP20 million has been siphoned off of aid funds destined for peace keeping efforts in Sierra Leone and education in Kenya. Top ministers instead bought hordes of plasma televisions, rifles and thousands of other luxury items. Meanwhile the poor get poorer.

The most frustrating aspect of this story is that DfiD, the UK government’s development funding wing, is fully aware of the thefts, and believes that it is ‘within reason’. Within reason?! Is this what we have come to expect, rather nonchalantly from African leaders?

Isn’t that assumption inherently racist? Why do Bono and Bob Geldof spend hours in front of cameras in the West, appealing to the guilt in all of us, and expect zero accountability on the part of those who have the power in Africa?!

It is a blood boiling shame that aid has never had the aim of ending poverty or helping the powerless. It is an industry, a game that is played in huge nauseating circles, and success is measured in how many millions are spent on new Land Cruisers for the actual projects, and whether that number is higher than what the minister took for his private jet or holiday home abroad…. Germany recently took a stand, and held back their annual Euro200 million funding to the UN backed Global Fund Aids, TB and Malaria after a massive corruption scandal.

Given this sick cycle of corrupt fund transfers, I was pleasantly surprised to meet a representative in Ghana last week from the Acumen Fund. When I sat down at our pre-arranged lunch meeting, I had my suspicions, and expected another naïve, uninformed, overly trusting aid worker type, with a typical message of aid as the answer to Africa’s woes. Instead, I was intrigued and impressed. The Acumen Fund are a non-profit money lending organization that holds their recipients fully accountable for the loans they receive, and they are expected to repay over time, plus interest.

Finally, an idea that gives African entrepreneurs the respect they deserve, discourages the culture of begging and weeds out those who are just looking for another hand out.

The Acumen Fund has been extremely successful with this model in East Africa and India for years, and is just feeling the waters in Ghana. This will definitely be a new concept in a country which depends so heavily on grants and funding and even remittances from their citizens abroad.

One of Acumen’s success stories involves a Tanzanian who’s business plan was to manufacture bednets (to prevent malaria), which had previously been imported 100% from Asia. Currently 7000 women are employed in his factories – jobs which didn’t exist before – and he has fully paid back his loans with interest. He produces over 20 million nets a year and has become one of the largest employers in the region.



The money is always reinvested in new business plans. The Fund doesn’t stop there however, they recognize that due to the culture of poverty and hand outs, Africa has been left behind in entrepreneurial terms, and as such they recognize the need to train and mentor the business people they decide to support. This means the chance of success is far higher, and both parties stand to gain out of the partnerships.

These are the kinds of stories Africa needs. Not the headlines full of despots and dictators, rolling in dollar bills, burping, caviar breathed, and being fanned by servants, while the masses writhe like maggots in the shanty huts surrounding the palaces.

Aid must been seen for the cancer it is, and obliterated.

I just hope that more of the world starts to look at Africa and Africans as they would any other business partners. Able, accountable and ambitious.

Bad Dogs and Johnny Paul Tireless

The streets of Freetown...

Welcome sign at Lungi International Airport. Apparently Sierra Leone has a Secretariat dedicated to 'attitudinal and behavioral change'...


A custom designed gate on the streets of Freetown.


Typical 'sidewalks' crumbling - people are quite adept at dodging the cement chunks and gutter openings...


The royal statue at the gates of my hotel, the Kimbima... (one of the newer and better hotels that touts itself as a 5 star)


Piled and rotting rubbish and the threat painted on the wall, warning people not to piss here...


More rubbish and graffiti.


A teddy bear sale above the gutter on a main street sidewalk. So cute! Just wondering who in Freetown has the funds, time or energy to buy used plush toys from the roadside...



A typical glimpse of a family house compound. I love all the colours. Laundry, buckets, pots, cups, people, all parts of the busy whole.


Avocado seller.


Childhood in many parts of Africa is about hard work and co-parenting can start by age 5. Here a big sister carries her sibling on the long walk to school.


The mobile phone companies signs provide decoration across the country in many villages. Fresh coats of pain are offered to poor and dilapitated buildings, at the cost of free advertising for the Cellco...


Love the name of this business...


Waterloo Street.



A bunch of guys ... lots of waiting around.


More 'free' paint jobs for tired walls...


Lots of corrugated tin structures...


Amerikin Enterprises...





Growth, Togetherness, Happiness. The promises of yet another mobile phone operator.

Gone gone gone, she been gone so long...

I've been gone so long. I feel as if I'm sheepishly crawling back into this space to see if I'm still welcome. If someone will throw tomatoes or old shoes at me... I'm ducking.

Waiting...

Phew! Ok I see I'm safe. Well my excuse is that life has been happening in a big way. Some experiences that are beyond the world of blogging and far closer to the world of book/screenplay that have come my way...

But also I have traveled and though I had no Internet connection, I did write about the experience and I share it here:


Notes from a business trip in Sierra Leone…

A simple three day business trip to Sierra Leone is basically anything but that. The 2 hour flight becomes an 8 hour journey, since once you arrive in the country, you discover the airport is across a large body of water from the capital city…

My last visit involved boarding an ancient Russian helicopter to get the last leg across. Back then, the helicopter was run by a shady little company called Paramount Airlines. The beast was at least 40 years old, struggled to move, and held it’s passengers like captives, with all the luggage in the middle and rough benches around the perimeter. There were tiny round windows with no glass, which was a good thing because the heat inside was literally unbearable. The few wafts of breeze through the windows kept us going… All said, the journey from the airport to Freetown was about 10 minutes, but those were terrifying… Two years ago they crashed for the final time and that very day, the pilots and all staff closed up the offices and left the country. Their signboards still line the streets to Freetown…



I was pleasantly surprised this time though, climbing aboard the helicopter at Lungi airport. It was obviously bought over from the UN when they evacuated a few years ago, and was a significant step up from the ancient beast.

There are two other methods of reaching the mainland from the airport but the chances of all options being operational at the same time are slim to none. The hovercraft takes about 45minutes, the ferry can take 5 hours, the speed boats only 25 minutes, but they bash along on the waves, and have been known to run out of gas half way…
So I braved the helicopter, which is now only a 7 minute journey on a professional looking craft, with airline seats, luggage compartment in the back, and headsets to block out the noise. Luxury!

But the improvements in Sierra Leone since my last visit seem to have ended there. On arrival.



There was some sort of a commotion in the lobby as I arrived. My attention was quickly pulled from the rusting airconditioners outside, and the dark wood paneling that choked the small lobby, by the reactions of the staff. Having seemingly woken from their working trance, they all gathered around the tiny elevator at the far end of the room.

In their signature broken English, I pieced together that all the back and forth was about the elevator being stuck and some poor sod being stuck inside.

The men in the lobby, some cleaners, some guards and various other hangers-on, all gathered around the old metal door with some large object and began to pry it open. There was a lot of noise, rough banging and eventually the door was sufficiently damaged, and pulled aside on an unnatural angel. Inside, a white man’s chubby, hairy calves were revealed, along with a tote bag hanging down with the words “London Museum” visible. The floor of the elevator car had jammed half way between the two floors.

One man ran for a chair from behind the reception desk and was met with hesitation and resistance by the lady who had no interest in having her seat be used in a rescue effort. She was supposed to be checking me in, but apparently had no interest in that either.

Eventually the man was pulled, twisted and finally’ born’ like a red pudgy newborn, feet first out the bottom of the elevator door, a bit shaken but still with a witty comment for the staff, “I’ll be taking the stairs from now on!”.

This is the type of scene that plays in my head at every African hotel I’ve been to. This is the worst nightmare that has had me climbing 14 stories continually up and down to my room in Nairobi, Kenya on a 4 day trip – getting exercise by sheer circumstance… There are the persistent power outages and the general African lack of maintenance that render elevators a no-go area for me.



My colleague had brought me supposedly to ‘one of the new hotels’ but NOT the one that I’d been booked into, that actually had it’s own website and had been reviewed on Tripadvisor. That was too good to be true. Turns out there are a myriad of NGO and church conferences going on in town this week – surprise, surprise… and hence the lack of rooms.

So, for $130 a night, I got the Kimbima Hotel, a building overlooking the ocean, which claims to be a 5 star hotel but still manages to look like a dismal depressing dungeon…



The place literally looks as if it were built without an architect, by 10 rival groups of 7 year olds, each group trying their best to mismatch what had been done by the group before. No door closes properly, many staircases lead to nowhere, windows lead onto walls, and columns, trellises, tiles and all are installed on angles. Electricity sockets are not straight, doors are not straight, stairs are nor straight nor are each the same height. Uniformity and straight lines are not concepts in building here. There are cement, wood and tile surfaces with various patterns, paneling and interlocking bricks and all can be found in one room or one area.

There is mold in the hallways, in the rooms, in the chairs. I hope it’s not in the sheets.

This morning I came out of my room and met the cleaning crew. They’d swept up all the creatures of the night and managed to tip hundreds of wellfed cockroaches onto their backs. As I descended the 7 stories down to the breakfast room, I passed many twitching roaches, each having lost this one little battle, surrounded by yesterdays’ dust and crumbs…



On the beach though - you can’t help but have positive thoughts. The promise if each new wave as it laps the shore is infinite. I took a long walk down the beach, after learning the president had announced a new holiday, one day in advance, in the middle of my 3 day trip…



In Ghana, though we live in a coastal town, there is no serene beach, no long luxurious stretch of mother nature’s cool white sand to play in. All the patches of sandy coastline are divided up between hotels and various communities that would rather use it as a toilet than construct latrines…

So I love this about Freetown. There is a gorgeous stretch of beach, just a walk from the hotels. It’s just beyond the huge UN Peace Keepers compound that was a hive of activity only a few years ago. It stands empty now. I hear they left everything in tact when they moved out. Every airconditioner, TV set, fridge. A local guy is now renovating it, apparently with the aim of converting it into a hotel. I can only imagine what changes will be made…

Walking along, as I dig my toes in the sand, I pass the remnants of cafés that boomed with music, patrons, cocktails… dotting the boardwalk along the beach in the UN days. Even the American movie Blood Diamond alluded to the hedonistic bar scene that existed.
Now, there are only crumbling reminders. The bleached wood chairs and tables, in varying stages of disrepair, with rust stains, like blood pouring from their wounds, these are the carcasses of the false economy that ran Freetown. When the UN left, the bar scene died. The prostitutes now circle at night, their eyes are wild and desperate. I watch them, younger and younger, circling the fewer prey…

I come to a dilapidated gazebo on the beach. On the sides are painted warnings, “No Weapons Allowed” with rudimentary drawings of rifles with big red X’s over them. This was a disarmament stand during the war. It’s a reminder that this beach held much more than waves and cocktails and party goers, not so long ago.

I’ve been told they’ve sent many of the ex-child soldiers off to Afghanistan and Iraq to do menial labour jobs. This is considered good as they will return with some money in their pockets. I’m not sure how true this is, but what about the legacy in their minds? In their violent and vacant hearts?



Back at the hotel, as I climb the dusty path to the long winding road along the bay, I can’t help notice the hundreds of dogs I pass. All are sleeping, spread carelessly across the dusty rocky ground. They lie in the paths of cars and pedestrians, a symbol of the despair around them. Each house along my path leads down to the water. They should be prime real estate! Instead, they are unpainted, half built or half torn down structures, with squatters sitting in the exposed rooms, washing their few tattered clothes and stringing them across the unkempt yards, blowing in the breeze like captive birds…

Haiti Rant 2

Haiti remains at the centre of the global media frenzy – what with the aftershocks and the dismally slow rollout of the aid distribution plan.

The celebrity pop show of who's giving and playing benefit concerts is growing and spreading like a hollywood rumour.

Even Ghana is hosting an aid concert for Haiti this weekend.

Well meaning individuals across the world, on blogs and Twitter and every social media imaginable are spreading the word to donate.

But sadly, despite the many millions who have actually reached out financially, aid is just not getting to the places it needs to be. Not fast enough. Not fairly or equitably. The port is demolished, the roads have crumbled, the airport is a crippled fortress. The security forces guard the wares..

CNN explains today that, "International aid contributions have totaled hundreds of millions of dollars, but relief agencies working in Haiti say transportation bottlenecks have slowed the delivery of food, water and medicine to survivors".



The longer the aid supplies remain in warehouses, undistributed, the more violence will erupt and a very ugly side of Haiti will peer it's ugly head through the tragedy. Rule of law, which balanced so precariously before the earthquake is now hanging by a thread. Looting is rampant. An estimated 3000 dangerous criminals have escaped the defunct Port au Prince prison...

In 2008 Haiti was rocked by deadly food riots when the price of food had risen exponentially.



Rioters shot UN peace keepers and looted shops…

Fast forward to January 2010 in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake. UN and US Military officials guard warehouses and truckloads of aid. They are afraid to enter certain areas. They fear for their lives.

The predictable is happening.

Sky News reporter in Port Au Prince explained yesterday that:

“ The distribution of their food away from the depot remains piecemeal, dangerous and chaotic.
I travelled to the Port-au-Prince slum of Solidad, following a single aid truck packed with plastic bags of essentials. The slum hard men rode on the roof and side-runners of our car - without their agreement we would have found it hard to get in; we would not have got out with our car, gear or wallets.



Even as they tried to deliver the food, hundreds swarmed around the truck, forcing the doors open and stealing the aid. Punches and shouting and chaos. They abandoned the plan. Speeding away with Sky cameraman Adam Murch still on the roof. They decided to go back in darkness and try again. They told me not to come."

Violence, like a rabid cancer is bubbling and threatening to overflow into the desperate streets. The line will be blurred between the helpers and those with plenty. The aid workers may be seen as the enemy in a situation where there is no visible enemy, but the victims are plentiful.

Meanwhile, the shameless scam artists out of Nigeria and around the world have been quick to seize the opportunity to take advantage of those who would give. There are countless scams on the Internet, sprung up in the aftermath of the quake, with fake charity organizations and impersonations of genuine agencies, asking people to use Western Union to send donations.

The pockets of the criminals are filling, while the terror of hunger and desperation threaten to throw Haiti even further into a hopeless abyss.

And all the while, the media has ensured that there will be video and stills of the carnage. And we can only sit behind our TV screens and watch.

Haiti Rant

When there is a disaster, everyone jumps on the humanitarian bandwagon. The current aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti is a glaring case in point. Brangelina have held a news conference to pledge their support...



According to the BBC, the relief efforts are more large scale than for any other disaster in history. The UN has asked for $562m in aid monies to help the country over the next 6 months.

People are desperate and dying. The media is assaulting the world with the gory images of bodies and mangled survivors.



What cold-hearted wretches would not see the humanitarian aspect of this disaster, and reach out in whatever way they could, to assist?

What the world neglects, because it’s too accusatory, is the reality of what led to a disaster of this scale. Accountability is thrown out the window with the first picture of an injured or orphaned child on the side of the road.

The fact that Haiti often tops the list as the world’s most corrupt country has not been big news during this crisis. Of course it hasn’t – we are busy trying to save innocent lives, and get the basics of food and water to a desperate population.

But after the dust has settled, will the same people who are gathering the millions to pump into Haiti, be as concerned as to how it’s spent and where it goes?

Will they investigate the fact that, according to seismologists, the death toll in the earthquake will reach figures of over 50,000, “in large part because of corruption and resulting shoddy construction practices in the poor Caribbean nation”. Port au Prince is possibly one of the worst constructed cities on earth. It has been called 'a disaster waiting to happen." And then it did. Who is surprised? Whose responsible?

The relief efforts are being hampered at every turn by the lack of resources, machinery, supplies in the country. People are dying!

When do those in power in a country like Haiti become accountable for the well-being of the people? How can the fact that buildings were put together under corrupt deals, with inferior materials and design, be overlooked?

Would the carnage have been so widespread if the city was properly planned and buildings complied with regulations? The answer is no…

If the same fate had befallen a city in the developed world, would there not be massive legal implications for the building companies, the government? We all know there would.

Why is it, that the world has no expectations from, or respect for the leaders of the developing world? Why is it that aid from outside must flow without reservation into countries where the governments are notorious for their extravagant wealth at the expense of the basic needs of their people?

This issue nags at me. In Africa I’m surrounded by emergencies. Disaster characterizes the daily lives of over half the people on this continent. The governments continue to syphon the lion’s share of the countries’ resources, while the masses live in squalor, without access to healthcare, education, roads, water and electricity.

Why are people looting and shooting and running wild? The people have been desperate and ignored for a long time before the earthquake hit.



An earthquake is only the icing on the crumbling cake of corruption that has ruined so many nations.

An earthquake brings the cameras and heart wrenching stories. It brings out the motherly instinct in all of us.



But it hides and therefore condones the shameful behavior of the people in charge, who, through every corrupt deal, have sealed the fate of so many of the innocents.

And in a few months time when the media has forgotten about Haiti and turned it’s sensationalist eye to another of the world’s new and exciting disaster zones, who will ask where the relief monies have gone? Who will be benefitting? How extravagantly will the presidential palace be rebuilt at the expense of new hospitals, schools and basic housing?

Why would it be handled any differently than it ever has before…

(Photo of Haiti BEFORE the earthquake)

Bars for Canada, Bikes for Ghana, Bucks for Cadbury

I love a feel good, help-the-world, tree-hugger type story. I love a good creamy, rich, sinfully sweet bar of chocolate too. So I should be impressed that Cadbury Canada partnered with Cadbury Ghana and the Bicycle factory, to donate 5000 bicycles to needy children in Ghana.

The campaign ran through the summer this year in Canada. All you had to do was buy a Caramilk or Dairy Milk or Dentyne gum etc. and send in the UPC code. For every hundred codes, Cadbury donated one bicycle, until the number reached 5 thousand.

Here’s the feel-good commercial that accompanied the campaign.



Instead of feeling inspired though, I was disturbed by the following:

1. Can we assume Canadians had an altruistic motive in participating? Come on, they only had to buy a chocolate bar. Hardly seems like selfless sacrifice…

2. Cadbury’s (the confection division of Cadbury Schweppes) revenue last year was over USD $5 Billion. I estimate the cost of this promotion for them to be about USD $225,000 or roughly twenty two thousand times less than their profits. Hardly seems like a HUGE sacrifice on their part either really.

3. Therefore this smells like a MASSIVE promotion for the Cadbury brand at little cost, and I’m not sure what impact.

4. My other concern is with the implications of the advert. They show the ‘African child’ using the bicycle as the following:

a. An ambulance – This is pathetic and sad but true. By showcasing this, Ghana is forced to admit that there is no healthcare in rural areas, and kids with bicycles will be expected to carry ill people to far off hospitals. The unimplied but more disturbing issue is the complete lack of facilities that will be awaiting them when they arrive.

b. A water truck – Hello! What happened to the millions and millions of wells donated and dug by the hundreds of NGOs over the years? Again, Ghana admits there is no safe drinking water for miles upon miles… and a kid on a bicycle is the answer????!!!!

c. A school bus – well as Canadians, the first thing that should strike us is the complete and utter lack of safety depicted here. The video shows 4 people on one bicycle – with a toddler sitting in the front basket, completely unharnessed. Over the untarred roads of rural Ghana. I guess it’s the assumption that if you can get 4 kids to school whatever way possible, then you’ve done your part – throw safety out the window, afterall they’re only African kids who would have had to walk anyway… There is no inference in this advert that of the small percentage of rural kids who actually go to school, most can expect to spend half their time labouring on their 'teachers' farms...

So thanks Canadians for eating more chocolate, making Cadbury richer and helping Africa by asking 5000 lucky juvenile recipients to solve Africa’s massive problems with bicycles!!!

Cadbury has been under fire recently for exploitative fair trade marketing, so it’s no wonder they are aiming to boost their reputation as a caring community oriented company.

According to Toyin Agbetu, head of Education and Social policy at Ligali, “Cadbury has a long history of exploitative behavior in Ghana. It was formed in England by the Quakers in 1900 and moved to what was then called the ‘Gold Coast’ in 1907. Its rampant abuse of the system of colonial enslavement in order to extract the best quality cocoa beans made the company the huge profits it enjoys today.”

What exactly constitutes fair trade status? In Cadbury’s case, they have agreed to pay $150 per tonn of cocoa above the minimum market price.

I posted a recent advert Cadbury’s released, promoting their fair trade brand of chocolate from Ghanaian cocoa. Agbetu points out that the advert alone “is likely to have cost more to make than their ‘social premium’ (of $150 per tonn) could generate in usable revenue each year.”

Sorry Brett - I tried to get positive about this one. It's great the kids got some bikes, but if you ask me, Cadbury's got a whole lot more out of the deal. And Canadians got to feel good about splurging on chocolate. Hmmmm.

Toilet Politics, Oil and the Malibu Mansion

I was going to write the other day, on World Toilet Day – which was on Thursday. Not because I wanted to highlight the sad reality that a vast number of people on the continent where I live have no access to proper sanitation, including toilets…

I was going to write on that day because I heard, on the same BBC radio broadcast, another story about yet another massively rich, corrupt African stashing his billions abroad.

In other news, yesterday I heard the flabbergasting news that the EU is donating $1 BILLION to Nigeria, to help with corruption…

HUH? To help WITH corruption. Why does stuff like this still surprise me?
Right. A bit of background…

In the first story, our reluctant hero is Mr. TN Obiang, the Minister of Forestry and Agric. (and the son of the President) of Equatorial Guinea.

His country is the third richest in oil in Africa, just below Angola and Nigeria. There is a tiny population of half a million people. In 2007, the government sold USD$4.3 Billion in oil. Yet 90% of the 500,000 inhabitants live on less than a dollar a day.

This leaves quite a few billion for the government guys…

The news story goes on to explain that Mr. Obiang travels freely between his little country and the USA, to his Malibu Mansion, commonly carrying millions in cash each time he enters the states(normally punishable by a 5 year prison term), despite supposed laws in the states that deny entry to corrupt foreign officials. He keeps quite a few millions in bank accounts in America as well.



These laws are enforced, when it comes to guys like Mugabe – Zimbabwe’s tyrannical despot.

Why the double standard then?

Oil. And America’s interest in it.

Which brings us to the second story. The EU working with the Nigerian government, globally renowned for corruption, by offering them USD$1 Billion to assist…

Other African countries are up-in-arms about the choice of this massive donation to the richest oil country in Africa, eighth richest oil country in the world.

But that is the point really.

Oil. And the EU’s interest in it.

In the BBC story, the reporter asked so many of the questions I was squirming in my seat, itching to ask.

“Why Nigeria? With it’s vast oil reserves and billions in annual income from oil?”

“With the Nigerian government’s dismal track record for corruption, surely the EU is somewhat concerned that the funds will not be used as per their intended aim?”

etc. etc. etc.

The answers from the EU press officer were wishy-washy, non-committal. No surprise.

What makes my blood boil is that the bleeding heart Americans and Europeans don’t put all these facts together.

NGO’s grow and collaborate and fundraise, and promote guilt and scrape like finger nails on the thin raw skin of western conscience, to help, help, help! These helpless Africans.

Meanwhile the Western governments condone, concede, support and feed into the corruption.

When Mr. Obiang is welcomed at LAX, whisked over to his Malibu mansion in the stretch limo, darkened windows, cool aircon and refreshments in the back seat, there is a directly proportionate mass of slum dwellers back home, robbed of the basics of sanitation, housing, education, clean water, electricity. Babies are born and die the next day in a pool of their mother’s blood where the midwife couldn’t save their lives in the corrugated iron shack amid the thousands in a shanty.

I read further that despite his official salary of $6000 per month, he bought his mansion for $26million cash. Plus three Bugatti Veyron sports cars at £1.2million each.

The proceeds from just one of these cars would have bought enough mosquito nets for every child in his country, where malaria is the number one childkiller.

So the next time a campaign to end poverty in Africa comes my way, I’ll give them the address of T N Obiang in Malibu. I doubt he’s given yet.

Failed hero - Oprah's school continues to abuse young vulnerable girls

Oprah’s infamous South African School in the news again for a sex scandal…. Just makes me wonder… as I do… why the Hollywood heavy hitters get involved in all these ‘aid’ and good will projects by throwing heaps of money at the problems and taking snapshots for the press with semi-starving, but eternally grateful looking poor kids – when they are clearly in over their heads. There are cultural and systematic problems of epic proportions that they could not hope to understand when they ‘reach out’ in their naïve self congratulatory efforts to raise the quality of life of the poor in the ‘developing world’.

Oprah Winfrey has quite an impressive CV – according to her wiki profile, she is an American television presenter, media mogul and philanthropist. Her internationally-syndicated talk show is the highest-rated talk show in the history of television. She is also an influential book critic, an Academy Award nominated actress, and a magazine publisher. She has been ranked the richest African American of the 20th century, the most philanthropic African American of all time, and was once the world's only black billionaire. She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world.

And yet, the most important philanthropic project of her life is an absolute disaster. Since it’s inception, the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for girls, has been riddled with scandal and controversy.

What Oprah hoped would be a leading school in the country, with state of the art facilities, at a cost of $45m, has been exposed as a shady den of sexual misconduct both by matrons, charged in late 2007 with various indecent acts on the students, and now the students themselves.

Yes, I’m on Oprah’s case again. I covered the earlier story in 2007 with my usual skeptical perspective, but this new scandal just throws the whole concept up into the light once more.

Oprah can be, and definitely has proven herself, as the hero of middle class women in developed countries who stress about their self esteem, yoga vs. pilates, low fat or low carb, and what book to read next.

Time has proven that despite her supposedly valiant efforts, she CANNOT be the hero of the poorest, most vulnerable girls in the world, who live halfway across the globe - who’s problems range from possible starvation, lack of water and electricity and the Aids epidemic - to physical, sexual and mental abuse in a crumbling increasingly corrupt country with a dubious future. Even the walls around her bright Academy couldn't protect them....

In the name of Love? U2 takes it a step too far

I stumbled upon a well written blog today, from NYU called Aid Watch. They actually have an objective perspective, which is quite refreshing.

Scrolling down I came upon this:



Album cover from a recent compilation with the following inscription below it:

"Not sure what to make of this, so I just state the facts: an African-American record producer arranged to have well-known African singers do U2 songs for this album. U2 obviously had to sign off on an album in which Africa thanks U2 with U2 songs, due to copyright laws, and in fact the producer thanks U2 band members." There is a great debate in the comments section below it, which can be accessed here.

I think it's pathetically self indulgent for the U2s of this world to gloss over the issues facing Africa, to glorify themselves and pretend to be making any sort of a
difference. Aid has not been working for decades and there are many reasons for it. Bono was not an economist last time I checked, but he knows that being the poster child for Aid to Africa has revamped his popularity as a pseudo mother Teresa of the popular media, and now he's taken it even further with this new album of African singers doing U2 songs in commemoration of their valiant efforts.

Well Bono, since you asked, Yes you've disappointed me and left a bad taste in my mouth.

GHANA: This Week in Aid...

Well it seems there is no end - the floodgates are open and the Aid money continues to pour into Ghana. I think I will try to keep a running tab of publicly announced International donations to Ghana...

For the week of March 8th, 2009, donations covered by the mainstream media are as follows:

1. Spain donates $44.4m for the 'socio-economic development of the country' with no specific projects or areas in mind. Looks like a windfall for the new Government. What will be the accountability and follow up of the allocation of nearly fifty million US dollars??

2. Japan continues to fund Ghana, this week through a grant of $3.5m, under the loose title 'Multi Donor Budget Support' - again no specific projects targeted...

3. The Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA)has today signed a 'loan' agreement for $6m with the government of Ghana 'at a gala' in Cairo. No doubt there was no expense spared in sending the government delegates from Ghana to the event... This money is targeted at "financing Radiotherapy and Nuclear Medicine Treatment Services project". That is pretty ambitious considering we are talking about a country where the main government hospital has troubles with rats chewing newborns sleeping on the floors in the maternity wards, due to the fact there are not enough beds...

That comes to a grand total of approximately $53million this week. I would expect that in a year or even 6 months we should be reading articles about how these monies have been put to good use, and full transparency about the allocation of the funds, and ultimately the success of the projects, measured through benefits to the citizens of Ghana.

Are you holding your breath?

Stay tuned...

Bono, Angelina and the Hollywood Causes Brigade - Watch Out!

Finally a voice is being heard, speaking out against Aid to Africa, and against the trivialization of Aid through the Hollywood circuit. And this time people will listen because it is an African voice. I read with interest in the Sunday Times Magazine a few weeks ago, and again last week about the upcoming release of the book ‘Dead Aid’ by Zambian Lawyer Dambisa Moyo. Some out there in the blogosphere, like Africa Unchained also highlight the issues, and wrote THIS excellent post highlighting Moyo's point of view. Angel at Woman Honor Thyself has a pretty strong view as well... have a read!

I have been sounding off for years about everything from the pathetic Aid campaigns headed up by ‘Bono and the league of Hollywood Heros’ to the MAC AIDS fund, with spokespeople L’il Kim and Mary J. Blige, and the warm fuzzy feeling it gives girls to buy $20 fire engine red lipstick for their crazy boozy nights on the town, while still feeling like they’ve done their bit to ‘help the poor in Africa’.

All my cynicism is highly disregarded as the jaded perspective of a long term expat, and the complicated issues are glossed over by most. The truth is that Aid does not work. It is an industry that perpetuates itself with no end and no solution in sight. I am so happy that an African scholar has vocalized the issues and hasn’t been shy to point the finger at the culprits as well as looking at viable solutions for Africa – from within.

Below is an interview and an excerpt from Moyo’s interview with the New York Times:



Q: As a native of Zambia with advanced degrees in public policy and economics from Harvard and Oxford, you are about to publish an attack on Western aid to Africa and its recent glamorization by celebrities. ‘‘Dead Aid,’’ as your book is called, is particularly hard on rock stars. Have you met Bono?
A: I have, yes, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last year. It was at a party to raise money for Africans, and there were no Africans in the room, except for me.

Q: What do you think of him?
A: I’ll make a general comment about this whole dependence on “celebrities.” I object to this situation as it is right now where they have inadvertently or manipulatively become the spokespeople for the African continent.

Q: You argue in your book that Western aid to Africa has not only perpetuated poverty but also worsened it, and you are perhaps the first African to request in book form that all development aid be halted within five years.
A: Think about it this way — China has 1.3 billion people, only 300 million of whom live like us, if you will, with Western living standards. There are a billion Chinese who are living in substandard conditions. Do you know anybody who feels sorry for China? Nobody.

Q: Maybe that’s because they have so much money that we here in the U.S. are begging the Chinese for loans.
A: Forty years ago, China was poorer than many African countries. Yes, they have money today, but where did that money come from? They built that, they worked very hard to create a situation where they are not dependent on aid.

Q: What do you think has held back Africans?
A: I believe it’s largely aid. You get the corruption — historically, leaders have stolen the money without penalty — and you get the dependency, which kills entrepreneurship. You also disenfranchise African citizens, because the government is beholden to foreign donors and not accountable to its people.

Q: If people want to help out, what do you think they should do with their money if not make donations?
A: Microfinance. Give people jobs.

Q: You just left your longtime job as a banker for Goldman Sachs in London, where you live. What did you do there, exactly?
A: I worked in the capital markets, helping mostly emerging countries to issue bonds. That’s why I know that that works.

Q: Which countries sought your help?
A: Israel, Turkey and South Africa, primarily.

Q: Why didn’t you get a bond issue going in your native Zambia or other African countries?
A: Many politicians seem to have a lazy muscle. Issuing a bond would require that the president and the cabinet ministers go out and market their country. Why would they do that when they can just call up the World Bank and say, “Can I please have some money?”

Q: I keep reading about a new crop of African presidents who are supposedly free-market guys, including Rupiah Banda, the president of Zambia.
A: There are lots who are nominally free market, but they haven’t been aggressive about implementing those policies.

Q: What do your parents do?
A: My mother is chairman of a bank called the Indo-Zambia Bank. It’s a joint venture between Zambia and India. My father runs Integrity Foundation, an anticorruption organization.

Q: For all your belief in the potential of capitalism, the free market is now in free fall and everyone is questioning the supposed wonders of the unregulated market.
A: I wish we questioned the aid model as much as we are questioning the capitalism model. Sometimes the most generous thing you can do is just say no.

UNinvolved in Africa

Whenever I see a great photo or picture of any kind on the Net I download it, thinking, I'm going to write a great post one day and that will be the accompanying photograph/picture/comic etc...

Last night I almost lost my whole blog in a procedure I'll explain another time, when my nerves have calmed... But what it made me realise was that I have a great database of interesting pics and I thought I'd just post them from time to time, whether or not there's great text to accompany them.

Today's submission - a photo - probably photoshopped, on a funny site called FAIL...

It speaks for itself really.

Ghana gets a gold medal in hypocrisy

I’m sure I’m going to develop the reputation of being a negative person – what with all my rants about Ghana and Africa in general.

This is not true, as Ghana has hosted me and shaped my life for over a decade and there have been countless experiences I would not change for the world. But it just never ceases to amaze me what goes on here from a political and economic perspective, while the governments of the developed world and the International Aid community turns a conveniently blind eye.

A recent article on the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation site, highlights the appalling decisions made by the government, with regard to public funds. The article is simply called “Ghana spends $1.4million on gold medals”. No catchy title needed. The story even raised eyebrows at BBC.

How, you might ask, can a country that solicits for and attracts billions of dollars in Aid every year from governments and NGOs globally, turn around and frivolously spend over one million dollars to honour some local ‘VIPs’??!! They were 18 carat gold medals, no less...

Aha – welcome to Ghana. Our outgoing president (elections to be held later this year), honoured himself at last week’s ceremonies with a $65,000 gold medallion….
A fellow blogger in Ghana, the ever positive and inspiring Kajsa, recently blogged about this story directly after a story about how Ghana is making changes in the health care system, to facilitate free maternity care for all. It would seem to balance this story out…

But if you look closely, you’ll discover that the free healthcare initiative is being sponsored by the British government, to a tune of $42 million pounds. How do the British taxpayers feel – seeing both these stories in juxtaposition? Why should the British government feel a sense of responsibility and care when the Ghanaian government cannot demonstrate this same level of concern for their own citizens by sacrificing, even once, and putting their money where their mouths are. As elections are coming up, the empty promises of the political campaigns are at an all time high.
Besides the fact that the Ghanaian government is not somehow accountable to it’s people, with it's reckless spending in the face of the abject poverty suffered by the majority, there is the other persistent question….

If Ghana was named The Gold Coast in the past and remains Africa's second largest exporter of gold, why on earth would they have to import these gold medals at such a ridiculous price tag in the first place??

Ghana exports unprocessed gold. The processing and refining into the profitable gold bars is all done outside it's borders.

Had the governments of the past or present in Ghana been forward thinking, perhaps the country would have supplied their own medals, and been bringing in $millions$ today in orders for gold medals from other frivolous spending governments…

Maybe they would even spend some of the profits on social welfare projects... but that is the Ghana of fantasy for now...