Ghana Chief calls for end to poverty - buys $4.7m holiday mansion

As we made our way to work this morning, through the streets of Accra, traffic lights out, dodging potholes and veering past the maimed and legless beggars, the BBC radio featured a story about Ghana’s Ashanti King, the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II.

Specifically, that the regional king, once a council worker in the UK, now on his throne in Kumasi, has just bought a GBP3million (USD $4.723m) holiday home on 22 acres in England.



By this stage I should just laugh. I have been in Africa long enough to see that the old adage “absolute power corrupts absolutely” is alive and well. I have witnessed unfathomable poverty and watched while African leaders fill Swiss bank accounts with billions and buy fleets of private jets.

The funny thing is that this time, like all the others, I am not numb enough. I still think it is pathetic and disgusting. I haven’t learned.

In October, VSO (a UK voluntary agency that works in Ghana) touted a story about the Asantehene and how he was dedicated to reducing poverty.

About how he was determined to tackle the endemic problem in his region and across the country as a whole.

As the BBC reporter described the stables and lavish swimming pool as well as the full cinema room in his new abode, I couldn’t help but wonder how many lifetimes of earnings of hundreds of thousands of poor Ghanaians would equal such a purchase.

So here are a couple calculations:

The nominal GDP per capita in Ghana is $698 (or GBP443)

This means that it would take the average Ghanaian about 6,770 years to amass such an amount.

Or to look at it a bit differently, the Asantehene could forfeit his splurge on the holiday home, and cover 6,770 of his citizens annual wages...

The Asantehene has talked a lot about targeting education, with a focus on making it more accessible and of a higher quality.

I wonder if he considered this (source):

$10 will pay for a healthcare insurance policy for a child and his or her caregiver for 1 year

$25 will pay for school fees for 1 child for 1 year

$200 will purchase 150 textbooks for 30 children for 1 academic year

$500 will pay for antiretroviral therapy (ART) for 1 child for 10 months

As his majesty walks the cold marble corridors of his new mansion, someone should let him know:

189,000 Ghanaian children could have attended school for a year with that amount; children who otherwise have no means to go.

23,615 textbooks could have been donated to needy Ghana schools

9,445 Ghanaian children could have had a better quality of life, with antiretroviral therapy for a year.



As he sips tea with global royalty, I hope he hesitates before begging for donations to aid his impoverished country, lest he burn his tongue and bite his lip at the perversion of it all.

Child Witches Plague Ghana

Sometimes when I’m sitting at my modern desk, in my air-conditioned office, sipping a Diet Coke and writing e-mails to colleagues and clients around the globe, I’m inclined to forget that just outside my window lurks a world caught up in many ways in ancient and crippling beliefs.

Sometimes the headlines of the day for Accra catch my attention and bring the reality of the clash of worlds and cultures to a resounding crescendo.

Today’s headline did the trick: ‘Mother Goes To Jail For Whipping Daughter With Wire’. The story goes on to explain that a mother in Accra had beat her 5 year old daughter to the point where she was bleeding profusely all over her body – and the reason given was that the little girl was a witch. Seriously.

We're not talking the pointed hat, long black haired, wart on chin witch of Halloween fame, no - we're talking the unwarranted, unfettered prosecution of unassuming, poor, innocent people.

Modern Ghana is a place that witchcraft, or certainly the belief in witchcraft, is rampant. The belief forms a strong part of the cultural milieu in Ghana. Despite the work of missionaries over the centuries, despite the global village where such ideas are exposed as being ignorant and backward… witches are alive and well and apparently all over Ghana in the form of small children and poor elderly women.

Just Google the words ‘Ghana’ and ‘witch’ to see what is really going on.

Northern Ghana is home to over 10 massive witch camps – each housing up to 1000 people – the majority of these are young children. Soak that in. THERE ARE STILL WITCHES CAMPS IN GHANA IN 2010. All of these people have been banished from their villages for all sorts of crimes, including allegedly killing people who died from ‘mysterious illnesses’.

Some estimate that there are over 10,000 identified witches in the country.

Abuse and denial of basic human rights is the norm in these camps. As pariahs of society, none of these people can depend on the social catchments that the poor majority depend on – no one wants to help. And there is no recourse for these people either, since none of their crimes can be proven or disproved. An accusation is all it takes.



I found an interesting article written last week by Ghanaian journalist Caesar Abagali, where he compares the witchhunting in Ghana 2010 to the Salem witchhunts in the USA in the 1690’s. Ghana, there is a long way to progress if this is where we are at.

The bottom line is that in both cases, the fear of the masses is/was able to run rampant, and people accused and convicted without legal trials, as long as the accused were poor and powerless.

In both cases, the culture of the time, allowed for ignorance to prevail over science and reason, and many opportunists with charisma jumped on the wagon to stir up the fear and public sentiment. The result is that innocent and vulnerable people are victimized – and to a tragic extent.

Education and empowerment on a massive scale are the only solution. But sadly, it’s not only in the impoverished Northern villages where the ignorance exists – today’s story of that poor little girl in Accra attests.

When I lost my son to a mysterious 3 day illness some years ago in Accra, in our grief and disbelief, some of his Ghanaian relatives insisted that a curse had been raised, by way of finding a reason… And I’m sure that many a witchdoctor made his share of money off that fear, in claiming to exert revenge on the person, the witch, who caused this horrific event.

As usual – none of this ever helps the children. Not those we’ve lost, nor those who live under the wrath of adult ignorance. Ghana, what does this say about us?



To borrow the lyrics from Barry Manilow:

I am your child
Whatever I know, I learn from you
Whatever I do, you taught me to do
I am your child
And I am your chance
Whatever will come, will come from me
Tomorrow is won, by winning me
Whatever I am, you taught me to be
I am your hope,
I am your chance,
I am your child

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....

Exposing corporal punishment in Ghana schools hits a sour note

Yesterday in my response to an article on the virtues of Ghanaian schools, (or lack thereof), I received quite an earful/screenful from Anonymous.

I took a step back, digested his/her comments (highlighted below):

"I have read the article you quoted and to be frank your posting is much more biased and highly exaggerated in comparison.

In your hasty attempt to rebutt an article which, I suppose, does not conform to your idea of "Ghanaian education", you intentionally come up with half-truths and complete falsehoods to justify your entrenched perception.

That is a shame!

I am a Ghanaian. I, like many Ghanaian children, received my elementary and secondary education in an unimaginably poor rural area of Ghana, but I had a good foundation which enabled me to gain admission into an ivy-league college in the States.
We may not have had the very best of what money could buy, but certainly we did not recieve an inferior education judging by my grades in class.
It is totally false to claim that "students are not asked to write 'in their own words' about topics they read".In fact, we were taught never to copy from others but submit our own independent work every time.
Since when has teaching children to keep their environment clean become an abuse? In America, they have the money to hire peple to take care of the schools' environment, in Ghana the children help to clean. There is nothing superior about the American approach.
At least, we are not confronted with the issues of shootings and violence in many of the schools in the west. And the reason for that, if you care to know, is:Ghanaian children are taught to respect authority and not fear them,as you claimed.
Reading your post will not help the reader, because it is not only full of exaggerations, but outright antagonistic in nature.

Have a nice day!"

And then I came to the conclusion that my experiences and observations have not been imagined or exaggerated. Nor am I the only one to observe the things I noted. I realise that exposing the harsh truths about what really goes on in Ghanaian schools is something that many Ghanaians (especially those abroad)are not happy about at all.

There is a perception among many westerners that corporal punishment is negative, despite the circumstances, and therefore the truth of it being at the core of the Ghanaian school system is something often breezed over or brushed under the carpet.

I was then alerted to another article called "Ghana's School of Hard Knocks", in the Epoch Times, dated earlier this year, which could be considered biased by my anonymous reader, as this is written by a Canadian who teaches in Ghana, with a stepson attending school here. It's worth a read. Here is an excerpt:

" From the first moment of junior kindergarten, at the tender age of four, the cane enters the life of Ghana's school children. How else can teachers manage with classes ranging from 40 (the smallest I've heard) to 62? Teachers, breathe deeply.

The environment in schools is punitory. If a class does poorly on an exam, all the students may be caned. If a child's clothes aren't neat, his nails aren't trimmed, or he comes to school without a handkerchief, he may be caned. If he is late, it's the cane for sure.

" Having taught school here, I quickly noticed that the children are addicted to the cane. Without one in your hand, they feel it unnecessary to listen to you. They are like convicts in a prison, going wild when the guards are off the range.

I have noticed that children here often lie to avoid the harsh punishment. There is no emphasis on "goodness for goodness sake," or on internalizing moral reasoning—the moral code is governed by the cane. I worry that this focus on external may be the tiny seed from which corruption springs, and the popular idea that "if you're not caught, it wasn't wrong."


The trouble is that her observations are not false - I can relate to most examples she gives.

The question becomes whether corporal punishment is truly as bad as westerners believe, whether it hampers education and self confidence in children, whether it instills fear and develops the habit of lying, whether it is wrong morally and tramples the human rights of vulnerable children ... not whether it in fact occurs daily in Ghanaian schools. That answer is a resounding YES.

Corporal punishment and lack of teacher training in Ghana not to be idealised

I read an interesting article today by an American grant consultant, called 'Ghana offers some lessons in discipline, teacher quality', where he compares Ghanaian schools with those in Iowa, USA. With children having passed through both the public and private school systems here in Ghana, I found the lighthearted and naive assumptions and conclusions of the author to be disturbingly superficial.

The intention of the article was to stress both discipline and higher educational standards for the folks back home, but to praise both of these aspects of the Ghanaian educational system, without placing them in their context, with all their pitfalls, is also a dangerous stand to take.

There is a passing comment about the paddle that is present in the corner of every classroom. This American author would be no doubt suing the school board if his children were beaten with any of the implements used commonly in Ghanaian schools for ‘discipline’. He glances over what would be considered by western standards as a culture of child abuse in the educational system across Ghana.

Children are caned on a daily basis. The acts of indiscipline warranting the caning include being part of a class of 52 children, where one or two have not completed their homework or memorized a certain passage to perfection. My own son attended a semi private Ghanaian school for five years and came home with welts, having been beaten for this very reason, despite having completed the tasks himself.

When I confronted the teacher and principle I was told his skin was too soft and hence marks were left, and they could not be blamed for that. There is no guilt or shame among educators in Ghana for beating children. It is an integral part of the curriculum and culture. Students from as young as five years old are tasked daily with chopping grass with machetes and cleaning out gutters on the school compound. This again would amount to using children for manual labour by American standards, and again, not completing these tasks to the teacher’s satisfaction also attracts stiff beatings. The respect he commended in classrooms can be rather attributed to fear. Students may call their elders ‘Sir’ and “Ma’am’ but unlike the system in the west where often teachers are close mentors, in Ghana teachers and students have a relationship closer to dictator and servant.

I also came across an interesting article on the TimesOnline site, "African cane tames unruly British pupils". A teacher is interviewed at a Ghanaian school, "Children must be taught. You don’t sit down and discuss directions with a child – you tell them where to go,” he said. "Children are beaten for misbehaving or failing to do home-work, but not for poor results".

One of the students sent from the UK by his immigrated parents, Sienam, admitted that he had been caned “many, many times” by his teachers in Ghana. “Any time you do something you know you shouldn’t do or step out of line, you get caned.” It is the reality of the system.

Secondly, with regard to curriculum, the Ghanaian standard is modeled after the British system of the 1950s and 60s. The author must have seen on his many visits to Ghanaian schools, some of these textbooks taken directly from 1950s editions from the UK. The focus is on memorization and many times regurgitation. Essays which evoke the child’s imagination are not part of curriculum, and students are not asked to write ‘in their own words’ about topics they read about. What results, as a close American friend of mine teaching at the University of Legon currently experienced, is that 50 out of 60 students will submit THE EXACT SAME PAPER. She is now at a loss as to what recourse to take. I am not sure that American schools should encourage a return to this type of learning, when the school systems in the west have intentionally moved away from these methods, after realizing children gain irreplaceable skills by applying their knowledge outside textbooks.

I have yet another concern regarding the author’s assessment of the quality of teachers in Ghanaian schools. Constantly during my son’s five years at a prominent and well respected Ghanaian elementary school, I was shocked by the lack of basic grasp of English grammar amongst the teachers. They constantly marked wrong grammar as correct or even worse, corrected proper grammar with complete mistakes. The problem was not concerning only one teacher but many, and I can guarantee it is not an isolated problem with this particular school. The average pay for an elementary school teacher in Ghana is less than $200 per month, which does not attract the most talented pool. The wages and living conditions in the rural schools are even worse, meaning these schools suffer an even worse fate in terms of their faculty.

Kofi Annan, illustrated in the article as a typical example of the products of Ghanaian education, is the child of Ghanaian Royalty, having graduated from the then highly elite boarding school ‘Mfantsipim’ back when the British system resembled the contemporary curriculum of the day in the UK, is definitely not representative of the average Ghanaian child, with comparable opportunities. Especially in today’s Ghana.

In fact, he states that education is ‘mandatory’ in Ghana, and indeed it may be, but the reality on the ground is that the streets are lined with children hawking goods during school hours, and estimated figures are closer to 60% of urban children are actually attending school on a regular and consistent basis. The rural areas are nowhere near this figure. Many villages have no schools to attend, let alone the money for the fees.



Though I do agree it’s a good idea to get people in western countries with developed economies to stand up and re-evaluate their school systems and the lack of respect among the youth of today, I don’t believe that exonerating the educational system in a poor country like Ghana, with it’s lack of infrastructure and a culture of corporal punishment, is fair in the context given.