Monday, September 21, 2009

The "National Cake"

Having a professional interest in words, I probably pay more attention to their choice in all sorts of communications. That's why something has been bothering me for a few days now.

The first time I read the phrase "the national cake" in connection with Ghana was on Minister of Information Ms. Zita Okaikoi's profile on Facebook.

I am the Minister for Information- Ghana. A young and active Lawyer born in Accra, I believe in Social Democratic ideals as the bedrock on which the national cake and development can be equitably distributed for all Ghanaians.

Her starting a page on Facebook elicited mixed comments, and I am not about to discuss her choice here. What I find deeply disturbing is the inference one can naturally and, worse, often unconsciously, draw from her describing our country as a "cake" that is to be "distributed" to all.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but cakes are not part of our daily diet and we mostly eat them in festive occasions. When was last time you shared cake with a large crowd? At a wedding, a birthday party maybe? I bet you prepared for the occasion, knowing that there would be food aplenty and everybody would be in a jolly mood, stuff themselves with delicacy, have a great time, and it will be an all-round carefree and enjoyable day.

Let's think about it again. If Ghanaians are to receive shares of the "national cake", doesn't it mean that Ghana is all but a big free-for-all buffet, where everybody is welcome to stuff their face for free? Isn't it what the audience will remember of the figure of speech?

After much pondering, I told myself, let's not make a huge issue of a single phrase. Surely, this will have slipped from an aide's pen unbeknownst to Minister of Information Ms. Zita Okaikoi. This cannot be an official stance.

I therefore researched the phrase "national cake" in relation to "Ghana", using a very popular Internet search engine. I couldn't believe it when I got more than 45,000 hits. Browsing the various hits, I zoomed in on the official Ghana government website. There again, I got far more hits than I was comfortable with: 45 occurrences of "national cake" on our government's website alone. I then narrowed the search to "john atta mills speech "national cake"

In a Daily Graphic article reposted on the Ghana government website on 20 April 2009, our President is reported to have given assurances of a permanent free-for-all atmosphere in Ghana:

The President gave the assurance that he will ensure that the national cake is shared fairly and equitably among all Ghanaians, adding that no region will be sidelined in that regard.

“We want to make sure that this country gives back to its people the investment they made in us,” he emphasised.

He said the people of the Volta Region deserved better and that it is fair that they demand their fair share of the national cake.


In another write-up posted on the same Ghana government website (undated), the author, implicitly endorsed as the voice of the government, by mere dint of being published there, writes:

To reduce poverty there is the need to rally behind the current NDC administration to make its promise of a “Better Ghana” a reality in order that the poverty level is significantly mitigated. Every individual must have a renewal of mind characterized by repentance towards bribery and corruption. This is the only way to ensure a fair share of the national cake among Ghanaians and ensuring equitable distribution of justifiable infrastructural development devoid of “kalabule” from any quarters.
In politics as in other jobs where communication is key, each word should be weighed carefully before being uttered, or written. Surely, our President, as well as our Minister of Information, being lawyers, are aware of the importance of each word. Conveying the notion that our country fellows are to receive more forcefully than they are to serve sounds very wrong to me. Encouraging the Ghanaians on this path seems particularly wrong today, with Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah's selfless qualities being extolled publicly and privately.

Political communication practitioners should work carefully at impressing desirable values into the population's minds, and should actively refrain from slips of the tongue (or the pen) capable of having severe and lasting consequences. Political communication is about working on the minds of the audience, with and without them realising it, to mould their mindsets and thoughts for them to, collectively, behave in the desired way. Being careless about the choice of words can, obviously, result in muddling the message irretrievably.


Founder's Day

Today is a holiday in Ghana. Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the great visionary and first president of independent Ghana, would be 100 today, had he lived.

So many things have been written everywhere about Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah that I won't add yet another hagiography saluting the great man.

A great man he certainly was. He had an acute sense of what Ghana and Africa needed, and he was determined to make it happen regardless of the cost to him. A dreamer he was, but -and that is what made him so peculiar- a do-er he was too. If two words can sum up what he was and what he stood for, they would be: a patriot and a visionary. He worked relentlessly at achieving what he considered his beloved country, and his continent, needed.

Now, I am more than a little disappointed that we decided to honour the great man with yet another holiday. Here was a man whom we recognise as instrumental in whatever significant progress Ghana made in the twentieth century. Here is the mastermind behind the very idea of African Unity, whom we implicitly and explicitely celebrate already with the African Union Day.

Today, our country, and Africa in general, is not visibly nearer to being a developed country than it was when Dr Kwame Nkrumah died 37 years ago. The engine is stalled. It sputters now and then, but never roars anymore and we are not going anywhere fast, or -some would argue defeatedly- at all.

Yet, our deciders found it fitting to offer us yet another day of sitting around omo tuo and a beer, or [insert your preferred holiday food and chilled beverage] all day. This, in itself, sadly shows their lack of vision.

Tomorrow again, omo tuo digested and beer-induced burps squelched, we'll sit and stretch our hands, hoping others will lend us money and foreigners will come and invest in our country.

What if, instead of flattering a very human tendency to laziness and carelessness, our deciders, driven by a real vision for their country, had launched a nation-wide selfless, community-serving activity? Plant a tree, clean the beaches, clean the street gutters,... There are so many things that need to be done to improve our lives, our environement and our country, and it seems so sadly strange that we should celebrate such a pro-active person as Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah by doing... NOTHING.

Wake up, my dear country fellows! your country won't develop without your participation, on foreign loans and foreign investment only. Stop selling it cheaply for yet another day of idleness and sweetness of life.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Expatriate Ghanaians should behave as ambassadors of their country

This morning I spent a little time reading the press online, and one article caught my attention and got my blood boiling fiercely within seconds. Its title was:

Ghana says thanks to Randolph Y for old sneakers


Excuse me if I appear to be spitting in the broth, but how pathetic is this?

Hand-downs are not new (no pun intended) but this is pushing it a bit too far. If we like to stretch out our hands so much, couldn't we at least come up with a more dignified and more efficient way of channelling these probably well-meaning and sincere people's charity? Or am I being overly touchy? Beggars can't be choosers, they say. I believe we don't have to be beggars. Let's put together decent proposals. Those of us who have lived in developed countries all know that Westerners with a genuine desire to help less developed countries abund, but most have no idea what the actual needs are or how to proceed. Let's help them help us efficiently, if we really want their help.

The issue, as I see it, is that those of us who live abroad, no matter why they left their country (most of them to further their studies and acquire a valuable international work experience), should not forget that in the country where they chose or happen to reside, they are Ghana. For most people they meet day in, day out, they are as close an experience of the real Ghana as they will ever get. Whatever they say, do, like, or dislike, will be taken at face value as emblematic of what Ghana says, does, likes, or dislikes.

Projecting an image of undignified beggars, taking with bent knees and bowed head a few pairs of used sports shoes to help their country develop, is all wrong for a variety of reasons, but mainly because:

  1. they convey the idea that GHANA is so poor a pair of second-foot shoes will actually make a difference;
  2. they confirm the already far too widespread prejudice that GHANA (and Africa) has neither ability nor will to look at any kind of bigger picture;
  3. they are not using the fine education they suffered so much to acquire to put up decent proposals, using their in-depth knowledge of their host country to present development projects in a way that is understandable, acceptable, dignified, and enticing.
This all boils down to the basic issue with underdevelopment: we have to change our mindset. Stop believing we cannot do better than begging. Stop believing any help is better than no help at all. Stop acting for today's chop money without consideration for the bigger picture.

Obi mfiri εsono akyi nkɔbɔ aserewa boɔ.
One does not leave an elephant to throw stones at a sunbird.
(Don’t permit a small thing to lose you a large one.)

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Turn your perceived disavantages to advantage

Deε n’ani akyea na ɔhwε toa mu:
The one who has crooked eyes looks into a bottle
(Some disadvantages can be turned to advantage)


One of the objections I hear most when encouraging people to work towards their own success, whatever success means to them (it does NOT have to be money), has to do with being somehow handicapped and hence, being bound to fail.


Nation-wide, individuals and –worse– public figures blame “the government” or “our poverty” for their lack of success. I’m not here to apportion blame, and will rather concentrate on these perceived weaknesses that we can turn to advantage.


I’m jobless: you have time to do things other people can’t, or won’t. That’s a definite and immediate advantage. Look around. Identify a successful person you want to emulate. Offer them to do something for them, even menial tasks, so that you can observe them, day in, day out, and pick some of their values, routines, habits, that explain their success and that you can make yours.


I’m broke: some jobs don’t require lots of capital. Plus, capital is not only money. It is land, manpower, skills… You may have one of several of these assets and don’t value them. You may procure some or several of these for free, and neglected to do so. Think about it again. Thinking is free. Don’t leave any stone unturned. What do you have to lose?


I am skill-less: nobody is skill-less. Think about what makes you believe you are skill-less. What is this specific skill that you wish you had and makes you think so low of yourself? Do you really need to acquire it? If so, devise a way of acquiring it but then, after careful analysis, maybe you don’t absolutely need it. Which other skills do you possess that you could turn to profit (again, this is not all about money, profit can be a lot of other things)? The world is diverse and would be severely unbalanced if everybody had the same set of skills. Just because you admire someone who has a certain set of skills doesn’t mean that you won’t ever be whole until you acquire them. Concentrate on what you do best and improve your skills in this area. Quality doesn’t remain ignored long. If you excel at what you do (know-how) and work at making it known (selling your skills) with integrity, looking at the long-term rather than trying to make quick chop-money for today, you’ll be on the path to lasting success, you’ll have self-respect and attract other people’s respect too.


There are numerous other reasons someone can give for not succeeding. For each one of them, be it lack of physical strength, neighbours' ill-will, or peer/family pressure, you need a revolution of the mind. Quit avoiding obstacles (usually by doing nothing, for fear of something worse than the current nothing-ness happening to you), and work towards using them as stepping stones. This is the way forward: change your mindset from one of impotence and dejectedness to one of proactive, positive and constructive thought.


Proverbs are full of insight and excellent principles. We tend to only see the negative aspects of tradition and it's often considered as a hindrance to 'progress'. Not so. Again, this is all a matter of how your mind is set. You are on a course to success, and you'll want to use wisdom from different sources to get you there.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

After everything has been said and done...

I'm not much attracted to celebs as a rule. In fact, I tend to find it slightly ridiculous to almost worship a mere human being for their looks, art or even their brains. That is to say how much I suffered through the demise of Michael Jackson, then Barack Obama's visit to Ghana, trying to avoid an overdose of tributes, laudatory comments and what I see as downright craze.

Despite my disinclination to follow the crowds, and although I am probably one of the very few people in Ghana who didn't buy the newspapers this week and didn't watch a single minute of Obamania on the tube, I read with interest Mr Obama's speech to the Ghanaian Parliament.

One sentence stands out:

Africa’s future is up to Africans.


After everything has been said about the need for international aid, the right to compensation for the harm done by slave traders centuries ago, the unfairness of the terms of contemporary global trade, etc., time has come for a change: let's DO something about our future. Mr Obama promised that the US of A will help those of us who work at their own, their country's or the continent's development, but the first step has to come from us:

"these things can only be done if you take responsibility for your future."


These are the two sentences I want to remember of Mr Obama's visit to Ghana. I hope that beyond the craze around the event, our rulers, lawmakers, as well as the ordinary people of Ghana will ponder over this speech and find in it the necessary inspiration to take things in our hands and build our own prosperous future.

Everything has been said. Let's do something about it now.

Monday, June 22, 2009

The Augean Stables can and will be cleaned

Yesterday I read two articles and found them very interesting, all the more so since they were about the same small and seemingly un-newsworthy district of Bongo, abutting Burkina Faso, in the Upper East Region, itself the last but one region of Ghana both in terms of size and of population.

The first article to catch my attention explained how the local Directorate of Education took the bold step of striking against those teachers who disgrace their job by resorting to absenteeism, lateness and drunkenness during school hours. The sanctions apportioned included suspended salaries and demotions.

Another article also dated Sunday, 21 June 2009 focussed on communal labour and how the Presiding Member of the Bongo District Assembly intended to make people's participation in communal labour mandatory and again, apportion sanctions for those who wouldn't do their share for the common good of the society.

If the first initiative has already had practical results, with 24 teachers already found lacking and sanctioned accordingly, the second one seems to be still a project.

The fact that officials in this far away (from the capital) district of one of the northernmost regions of Ghana decide to make these bold steps almost at the same time renewed my belief that the moment has not come yet and never will come to throw in the towel.

Corruption, lack of morals, and lack of civic-mindedness are widespread human flaws, which does not mean they should be accepted and left to flourish. Quite the contrary.

That Mr. Francis Agyeere, District Director of Education, in the first case, and Mr. Emmanuel Nsoh Atindana, Presiding Member of the Bongo District Assembly, in the latter case, have taken such bold steps to clean their local version of the Augean Stables is highly commendable. That each of them, in his own area of responsibility, decided to tackle the seemingly formidable task before them is extremely encouraging. These two gentlemen and, I believe, a lot of others, love their country, are dedicated to making it the best within their means and areas of resoponsibility, and started acting upon the vision they had of how the situation should be and will be, if tackled in an appropriate and efficient manner.

Despite the many valuable heads of cattle we keep there, we left our stables get so filthy that a lot of fainter-hearted people than Heracles will abandon the idea of cleaning them as impossible. That's what we all do when we decide that despite the many fine people inhabiting our country, we -each one of us being a steward of the common property- neglect it for so long that the ills and rots of corruption, laziness, lack of morals and of civism creep in and pile up so high that we would rather sit and weep on our wasted riches than tackle the task of cleaning and buffing and shining it anew.

Please read or re-read the story of the Augean Stables and how Heracles cleaned them,

not only using his great strength, but using his brain to plan this challenge.
Please think about our own Augean Stables, start planning how you can clean them, put the plans into practice, and persevere.

Like the mythical Heracles, we can and, with perseverance, ambition and foresight, we will clean our stables of the muck and turn stinking waste into a fertilizer for all the surrounding fields.

Monday, June 15, 2009

The way forward: believe

For the few decades since I started scrutinizing the way Africa and, notably, Ghana, has been doing in terms of development, one thing struck me repeatedly: a substantial share of the people, from all walks of life, rich, poor, educated, uneducated, urban or rural, don't really seem to believe their continent, their country or themselves can achieve anything close to Western success. A few of them profess they don't want Western-style development, but most acknowledge their yearning for the kind of comforts it gives. Yet, most of them seem to find normal that Africa should be persistently lagging behind all the other continents in terms of basic needs like food, health, and education.

Henry Ford is said to have coined the sentence:

"Whether you believe you can or you can't, you're right."

Let's give it a little thought: how can we really expect to achieve anything, small or big, if we don't believe we will? Doesn't it make perfect sense that the first step to any achievement is how much we believe we will achieve it?

Take the Roman Empire. Yea, right, that was long ago, and only touched the Mediterranean fringe of our continent. Yet, around two thousand years ago, this city-state had visionary leaders, individuals who believed what they couldn't see, who had a vision so compelling that they actually moved thousands of people (and mountains) to make their vision come true. They built bridges on such mighty rivers as the Rhine. Stone-covered roads, laid on proper foundations, ran to every corner of the empire, allowing trade to prosper (and taxes to be generated). Where human settlements needed more water than the local resources supplied, they built channels to carry water from elsewhere to where it was required. Emperor Claudius even had a tunnel built through the hills to carry water from a lake into Rome. Sometimes though a valley could lie in between the place from where the water came and where it needed to go. Here the Romans simply constructed bridges for the channel to cross the valley: these were named aqueducts and can still be seen today.

What was possible around two millennia ago certainly should be much more easily achievable today. Reading about the bridges Julius Caesar built in 10 days for the first, "a few days" for the second, on the river Rhine in 55 and 53 BC respectively, I cannot help thinking about remote areas like our Ghanaian Afram Plains, however aptly dubbed "the food basket of the country", for example, where teachers refuse to go because the district is only accessible by canoe; where people die en route to the nearest hospital (by canoe too); where helpless farmers lose the most fertile lands they've been farming for generations to foreign investors and are made to abandon farm work in mid season because of the uncertainty on whether whatever is grown there still does belong to them or to the foreign investor.

What did the Romans have, two millennia back, that we don't have today?

  • They had skilled and ingenious engineers. So do we. The Ghanaian universities are considered among the best in West Africa; American students travel to Ghana for their year abroad programme; Ghanaian students attend universities everywhere in the world and learn about state of the art techniques and technologies.
  • They had cheap manpower. Ghana has a lot of unemployed and underemployed youth. Hands are plenty. Lots of them lack direction, leadership, a civic mind, and dedication to a task the achievement of which they could proudly claim to have contributed to. With proper channelling of all these youthful energies, there is little that cannot be achieved in the interest of the nation.
  • They had enormous willpower, driven by extraordinarily influential leaders, so compelling it trickled down to the confines of the empire, to the most remote military, administrative and tax outposts and officers (by the way, yes, they had taxes: a steady supply of money that kept increasing the more they made every region of the empire accessible and able to trade; feeding and funding more infrastructure works).

Leaders. Visionaries. Far-seeing people, who believe their vision is achievable if only they put their minds to it.

Of the whole array of assets the Romans had, the lack of visionaries seems to be the one obstacle hindering Ghana's progress. What we have, mostly, is rulers; stewards, at best; but leaders and visionaries are yet to emerge.

Visions are what electoral promises should be made of. Once a government is voted in, some of these promises tend to fade off and get conveniently forgotten, swept under the rug, even retracted. In the name of "realism", we tend to accept quite easily that promises are routinely broken, that what looked like blindingly bright visions during the campaigns was only wool being pulled over the eyes of the voters, and that few of the promises which led people to vote for a candidate will ever materialise. What it proves is that we, the citizens, as well as the would-be leaders, never truly believed in what we were promised or promising.

We, the citizens, but also the people "at the top", need non-partisan, impartial log-keepers of the government's programme and achievements. This post is published today on www.promisestoghana.com, which, in essence, is such a logbook. I can only commend the excellent initiative, the admirable dedication, and the huge work behind this website. Long life to it, and thanks for making this wonderful tool available to us.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Efficient communication

Today I read an article that gave me a lot of food for thought. It was about something very dear to my heart: the availability of basic infrastructure to all. By "infrastructure", I mean roads and electricity, but also schools, health services, and hygiene (tap water, waste removal, etc.).

I was therefore quite glad to read about small town water projects sponsored by DANIDA in certain parts of the very underserved Kwahu North (Afram Plains) District, namely Memkyemfre and Kayere near Donkorkrom.

The following:
At Memkyemfre, the [Eastern Regional] Minister [Mr. Samuel Ofosu Ampofo] urged the community members to take good care of the project because it was constructed with other people's money. (1)

prompted me to write this post.

Indeed, it is very commendable that foreign aid organisations help underserved communities have access to clean water. However, the catch in aid is that it comes from outside, is brought, built, donated by people the local community never set eyes upon before the project and will probably never see again after its completion, and communication of the kind shown here only serves to reinforce the alien nature of the effort. There is no local ownership of the project.

What is it all about? For something to work at the grassroots level, that is, where it is needed and will hopefully be used, it must be appropriated by said community. Reminding the recipients that someone else paid for it may have been said with the best intentions. Surely, the honourable Minister wanted to impress on the community how important it is to take good care of a gift. However, this kind of utterance can very well have the very unwanted effect of people never considering it as theirs.

What do we do with things that don't belong to us? The best case scenario is that we keep it very carefully so that if and when the rightful owner comes, s/he find it almost as s/he left it. If need be, we will guard it and prevent everybody from touching it out of fear of it being spoiled.

The other scenario is that we won't care about something that cost us nothing, we'll use and abuse it and when it's spoiled, either we will revert to our previous makeshift ways, or we will go and demand that the donor repair or change it.

Empowerment is what we need to make real progress. Empowerment is about including the local community at every step of the project, from collecting ideas about the actual needs and the best place to install the infrastructure, to constructing the project, learning how to regulate its use, and how to maintain and service it.

Empowerment is the opposite of making the community stand in awe on the sidelines. Empowerment is not tantamount to being ungrateful. Empowerment is about using this aid as a stepping stone for community improvement. Being grateful doesn't mean that you have to go back to the donor again and again when you need something else. The best show of one's gratitude is to be able to display that one can use what is being donated effectively and incorporate it into one's array of tools to go farther and achieve bigger, longer-term goals.

It is unfortunate that this communication seemed rather to aim at glueing the community to a specific point in time (aid) instead of a continuum called 'community development'. Development is a dynamic, evolutionary process. We won't achieve anything of substance if we keep waiting for aid to come to us, no matter how warm our demonstrations of gratefulness are whenever we receive such aid.

(1) Ofosu Ampofo Inspects Small Water Projects, By Samuel Opare Lartey, Afram Plains, Donkorkrom. - The Ghanaian Times, Projects/Developments, Wed, 13 May 2009

Friday, May 22, 2009

Please define "top"

This morning I read an article on this Top UK Security Firm visiting Ghana to help solve our problems with drugs and other violent crime.

Like a lot of people in Ghana interested in public interest news, I heard on the radio and read that

Government's efforts at fighting the narcotic drug menace and illegal armed trafficking received a boost on Tuesday as officials of Yahuda Security Management Consulting, a top United Kingdom security firm arrived in Accra to assist national security agencies. They would discuss with national security officials wide-ranging security matters, international trade in drugs including cocaine, illegal arms, armed robbery and links to possible terrorism.(1)

The situation in Ghana has become a matter of concern for all patriots and we can only be glad that this administration decided to give it its full attention. I could only regret in passing that these experts had to be brought in from the UK instead of Ghana training her police force to international standards and giving them the means to accomplish their mission successfully.

What woke me up seriously today was another post on the Internet revealing that this "Top United Kingdom Security Firm" appeared officially out of the blue only two days ago. Indeed, a search on the UK Companies House's website revealed to this vigilant citizen (and I was able to verify it) that this "top" firm was only registered on May 20, 2009.

Let's be serious for a minute. This is a company that did not exist only two days ago. The Companies House's website shows when there has been a change of name or restructuration, so it's unlikely that this company existed under another name or legal form before May 20, 2009 without it appearing on this website. How could the President of Ghana or any person of his entourage, while on an official visit to the UK last week, have met representatives of this company, and based on what compelling information did such representatives convince their interlocutor that their company was ideally positioned to help Ghana in this very sensitive job of getting rid of drugs and violent crime, let alone terrorism?

The CEO of this startup (which is the most positive designation I can imagine for such a firm) is a Mr Tetteh, so I suppose he is a Ghanaian living in the UK. Why he didn't register in Ghana instead of the UK is not very clear. Since the company was non-existent when he allegedly met the President or a member of his entourage, he could easily have chosen to register in Ghana (paying taxes to the mother country is a nice civic gesture too).

My hypothesis (and I'm sorry it's the only one that comes to mind right now) is that it sounds so much better, richer and more impressive to say "Top UK Security Firm" than "Ghanaian team with international credentials" (they do have credentials, don't they? Has anybody checked this? Has the Ghanaian High Commission in London done its homework on this?). The unsavoury underlying idea is that UK is key, and "top" only reinforces the obvious: an obscure UK outfit tops a Ghanaian one any day. Sad, very sad.

We, members of the public and taxpayers, are supposed to say wow, and ahhh, and clap our hands in ravishment of being graced with a Top UK Security Firm coming to solve our problems, while this story has all the makings of yet another scam to rob the taxpayer of their money in the form of obscure fees and kickbacks going to line nicely the pockets of whoever engineered this umpteenth trick that is being played at Ghana's expense.

Whether one wants to give this administration the benefit of the doubt and believe that they were merely gullible (and sloppy, for not having checked this company's existence), tricked by the all powerful "UK" rattle being waved in front of their collective nose, or this administration is as guilty as others before it of giving precedence to their own pockets before Ghana's interests while giving a leg up to a member of the Ghanaian Diaspora, this story is very disappointing. We, as a country, need to urgently change our mindsets so that we serve Ghana first, for the greater good of all. Only then will we earn international and self-respect, and bring real lasting, sustainable change to our country's situation which so far was a "fate", but can and will become a "destiny".


(1) Top UK security experts arrive in Ghana - GNA, Accra, May 19, 2009

Friday, May 08, 2009

Let's not grow Jatropha

One thing makes me wonder if we ever learn from our mistakes or ever will: why on earth would our mature, seasoned and thoughtful leaders want to embrace the new biofuel fad with so much enthousiasm?

One of the reasons why the developed countries decided to look for alternative sources for their much needed fuel was to reduce their dependency from imported oil products. Let's not be naive and believe the first and foremost reason was concern for the well-being of our planet. We'll continue to consume till we drop, collectively. Or till the planet suffocates completely. This cynical view is what the worldwide, globalized economy relies upon.

So why would Ghana be so urgently interested to grow biofuel plants now, when oil is being found in the Ghanaian waters every other week, or so it seems? Even if this booty is finite, won't it at least buy us a little time? Why welcome with so widely open arms President Lula of Brazil's project of growing sugar cane on a massive scale in Ghana to produce biofuels, when Ghana imports every single cristal of sugar she uses in food and beverages?

When people (scientists and environmentalists) started being critical about using crops fit for human consumption to make fuel (like corn, sugar cane, and soy beans, for example -- but we had already bought into this wonderful project Lula painted in so flattering colours for us), Jatropha curcas was touted as the 'miracle' wonderplant that would grow where nothing else thrives and even fertilize the soil where it grew.

Where the shoe pinches, is that
it’s already clear that, while jatropha can indeed grow on lands with minimal water and poor nutrition, “if you plant trees in a marginal area, and all they do is just not die, it doesn’t mean you’re going to get a lot of oil from them.” (...) “If you grow jatropha in marginal conditions, you can expect marginal yields,” says Vincent Volckaert, the Africa regional director for D1.(1)
Are we back to the main argument of the anti-biofuel crowd? Oh yes, we are right there: the whole problem is that food crops will be displaced to allow large multinational companies to use prime land for biofuels.

This is not just a bitter fantasy of progress-adverse or eternally disgruntled people. The new biofuel wave is already lapping against our agricultural lands. Tens of thousands of acres are being requested (and obtained) by big companies --none of them Ghanaian-- in Ghana.

Their argument that
only land not needed for food crop production would be used for the cultivation of jatropha(2)
is a severe insult thrown in the collective face of the more than 20 million of Ghanaians (2000 census figure), since

the country imports almost everything it eats. The country produces only 21% of its rice and about 42% of its maize requirements.(3)

Considering these figures, it is extremely difficult to understand exactly what can be deemed "land not needed" and based on what criteria large tracts of it were allocated to these projects.

The modern, globalized economy and its wizards tell us to stop fretting about growing our own food and to import whatever we need. It will be provided to us (nevermind the price, in terms of monetary cost or destroyed livelihoods to local farmers), as long as we grow what we are told to grow, sell it abroad as a raw material and take gratefully whatever price the buyer will condescend to give us. Does it ring a bell? It's not surprising: We've been doing that since colonial times and 52 years after we won our "independence", we are still begging to eat.

Let's use the newly discovered oil to buy us time to turn around our mentalities; to change the way we use our lands; to feed our fellow citizens --and especially our kids-- with healthy, plentiful, locally produced food; to educate them to be able to stand tall and face suppliers and buyers alike on a more equal footing, especially psychologically and morally; to learn how to use state of the art technologies so that Ghana can produce and process herself what she needs, including in terms of alternative energy, instead of giving up her heritage for lack of any ability to exploit it profitably.
Obi bεma wo a, nte sε woama wo ho.
If someone says that they will give you something, it is not like providing for yourself (Self-sufficiency is best). (4)

(1) Hailed as a Miracle Biofuel, Jatropha Falls Short of Hype, by Jon R. Luoma
(2) & (3) Indian companies also enter biofuel business in Ghana, by Emmanuel K. Dogbevi
(4) Bu Me Bε - Proverbs of the Akans, by Peggy Appiah, Kwame Anthony Appliah, Ivor Agyeman-Duah

Friday, April 24, 2009

Spintex Road at Rainbow: shoddy work again?

Following-up with the Spintex Road works... I went yesterday and was surprised to see that the works were over and the road open to all types of vehicles. Here it what it looks like, seen from opposite Housemart.


On the face of it, there is nothing but reasons to rejoice: job completed fast, brand new road. Looking closer, though, one can notice that the surface gravel is very thin indeed and the laterite beneath is already beginning to show through.


One can see other weak points which may yield soon too:


Note that the resurfacing exercise was completed less than a week ago. The same methods as previously were used: very sparse scattering of gravel, then sprinkling of liquid tar. The picture below shows the method, as seen from the side of the road:


Last week, I expressed doubt about the treatment of where this new section transitions with the older one. I am afraid this part will erode fast. This is what it looks like now:

Lastly, I was surprised to see that the storm drains, which were built a few months ago, have been hammered down in several places. I reckon the reason is to make the flow of rainwater drain quicker, but I question the method:

I will keep following up on these works. I hope I'm wrong and the road will last. I'm afraid it won't, though, since the method used was the same that didn't work only a few months ago.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Countrywide "loss of electricity supply", a/k/a "lights off"

I've been monitoring the electricity issue for a few days now and finally found an article published online a mere 4 hours ago by modernghana.com.

It transpires from this that the power cut sustained Monday night was not local, not even affecting the whole of Accra, but countrywide.

GRIDCo (I haven't been able to identify a website for this company) apparently issued a statement on Tuesday afternoon, explaining the event as
an explosion in equipment used for measuring power flows and a resultant fire outbreak, which affected other nearby equipment.

This led to the loss of all generating units and some transmission lines within the National Power System(1)
Better late than never. We now have an explanation. We are also warned of more power cuts to come:
GRIDCo has requested the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to reduce supply to consumers in Accra by 50 MW in order to prevent overloading on the two operating lines to the Achimota substation.(2)
Although the specifics are not disclosed, chances are that we'll have staggered cuts for an undetermined period of time, that is, while
GRIDCo is working around the clock to restore the line to service within the shortest possible time(3)
What about the power cut of last Friday/Saturday? A mere dress rehearsal? Are we to understand that there are 2 different issues: this accident, which GRIDCo felt inclined to communicate about, albeit quite late, and other "regular" power cuts?

(1), (2) & (3) "Ghana Grid explains widespread power outage in Accra, Tema"; modernghana.com, April 22, 2009

A very loud silence

This morning I bought Daily Graphic and The Statesman, thinking I would find some mention of the long power cut we suffered Monday night, either in the form of an article or of a press release published by VRA, ECG, or whomever is supposed to be in charge. No such thing.

Instead, the first page of Daily Graphic showed in caps and bold, white on black letters:
Energy sector needs $10bn (to finance initiatives in next 5 years, says minister)
I won't waste too much time asking why dollars, when we have our own cedi. Yes, the cedi erodes every day but still, it's our currency, the one in which most of the audience of this paper earns a living and makes expenses day in, day out.

The article, which continues on page 3, describes what the Energy Minister, Dr Joe Oteng-Adjei, disclosed to members of the media yesterday.
Dr Oteng-Adjei noted that the vision of the energy sector was to assure universal access and choice of modern energy forms to all Ghanaians, which was intended to be achieved by 2020.

He said the ministry also envisioned a sector that would contribute significantly to national revenue and economic growth by becoming a net exporter of oil and power by 2012 and 2013.(1)
That every Ghanaian will have access to energy by the year 2020 is commendable. There is no doubt it will help development tremendously. Exporting power as soon as 2013 is excellent news too. What I don't quite get is how this will be achieved in less than 4 years. More specifically, how the country's power generation capacity will be almost trebled so fast.
He said at the inception of the new government in January, the installed operational power generation capacity in the country was 1,810 megawatts

The objective of the government, he said, was to achieve a target of 5,000 MW of installed power generation capacity in the medium term, as that level of capacity would enable the country to supply adequate power to meet growth in national electricity demand and also for export to neighbouring countries.(2)
I would rise and applaud at such wonderful news if I were not bothered by a terribly pedestrian question: where will the money come from? To understand this point better, let's get back to the beginning of the article:
He said while the government would continue to inject funds into the sector when available, a major policy shift was to encourage energy sector institutions to raise a substantial portion of their capital investment requirements on their own without recourse to the government.(3)
That gives me pause. "When available"... In clear, there is no definite budget earmarked for that project, and energy sector institutions will get whatever surplus, if any, there is when everything else is taken care of. "On their own"... The balance of this indefinite amount granted by the government has to be procured on the market. What these few lines seem to mean, to me, is that there is close to no money at all to execute this "vision". Isn't it pure wizardry?

It won't escape the reader that this meeting was held the very morning after the latest night-long power cut which, I'm told, affected most of the ATMA (Accra Tema Metropolitan Area); yet, not a single word was said about it. Is there a consensus about not asking uncomfortable questions (the blatant failure of our system to provide uninterrupted, quality power would definitely come like a fly in the ointment of this extremely attractive picture of Ghana in only 3-4 years time)? Or are people of the media avoiding to state the obvious, routine, "normal" situation of highly unreliable power supply?

This is scary. We, as a country, seem to find it "normal" that we don't have power for 10 or 20 hours on end. We, as a country, as exemplified by the people of the media, our Minister of Energy, and the communications people of VRA, ECG and maybe GRIDCO (they do have communications people, don't they?), in this instance, have already resigned ourselves to unreliable supply, appalling service, and non-existent communication. This string of deceptively good news, and the way they are reproduced indiscriminately in the media, is all the more shocking and saddening.

(1), (2), (3) Daily Graphic, Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Lights off = Development off

This morning, my better half (currently in Britain) told me to listen to a programme titled Nana Online, on a Ghanaian Internet-based radio: http://www.hotdigitalradio.com/. One of the topics was the power cuts we've had over the last few days and, notably, last night, which seems to have affected all the ATMA (Accra and Tema Metropolitan Area).

I wish I could have listened to it myself, but unfortunately Vodafone (ex GT Broadband) has been playing up and with my nerves for the last few days. This morning I spent almost two hours on phone with their hotline and, from terribly unstable, my connection went down altogether. Well, this is another topic, albeit not totally unrelated to my concern(s) of today.

In my area (Baatsonaa), the electricity first went off at 6.30pm yesterday evening, to come back one hour later. I had only started rejoicing when it went off again and we went to sleep in the dark. Light came back fleetingly at some point (I'm not sure if it was once or twice) during the night, then back on for good at 4am this morning.

As readers may remember, this was not the first long powercut this 'season' (although I certainly hope there is no such thing as a powercuts season like we have a rainy season).

Last Friday and again last night, I checked the time when electricity went off and came back on and noticed that it is cut off on the hour or half hour and is put back on likewise. Sharp. I therefore think we are not dealing with random, unscheduled cuts, the kind that could occur in case of material breakdown.

A quick visit to VRA's ("Four Decades of Reliable Power Supply") and ECG's websites show that neither company felt they owed consumers any explanation. It's remarkable, indeed, that neither has a "Press Releases" section. They are not communicating and don't seem to have any intention of communicating anyway.

The feedback message I left on ECG's website last Sunday is unanswered so far.

Beside the sheer annoyance of these powercuts, the lack of communication, the disregard for the consumer, my concern is the following:
How can any country develop without reliable electricity and water?
Individuals are all affected, to various extents, by the lack of electricity or its unreliability. The lack /unreliability of electricity means lack of fridges, freezers, fans, etc., or their short life span, due to power surges or brownouts; the same goes for lighting devices, which break, fuses blow, etc. The consequences in terms of individual development are several:
  1. People lose their household appliances and therefore their investment, and are in fact made poorer by this persistent situation;
  2. The lack or inefficiency of various conservation means lead to food spoilage, reduces the amount available per person -leading to hunger for the poorer- and exposes everyone, from the newborn baby to the elderly, to various digestive disorders, illnesses, and death;
  3. Light-lessness means that schoolchildren and students cannot study as much as they may want or need, or have to do so in exceedingly difficult conditions.
The impact on the economy at large is many sided: loss of opportunities, loss of investment, loss of workdays, need to tie-up investments in an alternative power supply (generator) which is expensive to run too, failure to attract investment, inability to run a company reliably, to keep the costs of production competitive internationally, etc.

"Electricity for all" and the "Right to electricity" are slogans sweet to the ear. Realistically, we seem to be very far from achieving the first; and little more than a handful of idealists believe in the second.

I believe that money is not the main issue. The easiest explanation is that we suffer because we are poor. However, I think it is only part of the explanation. We suffer because we lack vision. We suffer because we lack a holistic approach. We suffer because we don't really believe, deep down, that things can be otherwise. That we can deal with our problems. That it is up to us to define where we want to be in 10, 20, or 50 years from now and to devise a path to reach this target. Then we'll work all the more happily and relentlessly that we'll have taken our future in our own hands, for a change, and above all b-e-l-i-e-v-e that we are able to succeed.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Water at last!

Rain started this week. I don't know if there is a relationship between the rains and mains water, but I had the lovely surprise this morning, while tapping my tank gently (a habit formed over months of dryness of taps and ordering of trucks to provide for this essential of life), to realise that it was full!

This seems trivial, but it is the first time since December 2008 that my tank fills from the mains.

I should not even have to mention it. Water supply should be a given. Especially when you pay your bills on time every month. Whenever I forget, I find the following statement on the next bill (a GHS40 (GBP18.91, USD27.97, EUR21.45) lump sum):
"Pay at once to avoid disconnection"
Can you see the irony in this?

Powerless

I know this will not help the opinion a few of my readers have of me. Yes I'm Don Quixote in drag and keep exposing things everybody else knows are "the way things are done here". I am fully aware of this too, actually. What I don't and sincerely hope I won't accept in my lifetime is that they are "normal" or that I (or anybody else) should live with it, put up with it, resign myself to it.

This week was marked by two events:
  • the onset of the rainy season: we've had three downpours since last Monday, which is good news as far as I am concerned, since Ghana is very much an agricultural country.
  • the onset of what I hope is not a season of long powercuts.
"Lights off" have taken a dramatic turn with cuts lasting anytime between two and twenty (yes, 20!) hours. The Daily Graphic publishes every day an update of the level of water in Akosombo dam. My understanding is that the lower the level, the more conservation we need to tide us over till the rains come to increase the level again, the idea being that we don't want to run (completely) dry in the meantime. Since I haven't bought the papers lately, I set out to find the information online.

VRA (Volta River Authority), whose
primary function is to generate and supply electrical energy for industrial, commercial and domestic use in Ghana
indeed have a website where they publish daily updates of the water level in the dam. As of yesterday, April 18, 2009, the level was said to be 257.34ft, versus 248.13ft on the same day last year. The minimum operating level being 240ft, it seems that we are still above it and in better shape than last year at the same period. How comes, then, that we suffer such protracted cuts?

Since the VRA's website includes neither a "press releases" page nor any public interest notice about interruption of supply forecasts, I went on to the ECG (Electricity Company of Ghana) website, since the company's mission is
[to] provide quality electricity sevices to support economic growth and development in Ghana
in the hope that they would provide information as to why we should put up with the inconvenience. I was disappointed again. The website seems mostly to be there to inform the consumers about the various rates and ways they can pay their bills. In fact, ECG seems to devote quite a lot of time and energy to make sure that we, the consumers, perform our part of the contract, while their concern for their own performance appears far less obvious.

I found a page called "Feedback" where I posted the following:
Dear Sirs,

I am writing to express my concern with the protracted power cuts sustained this week in my neighbourhood (Baatsonaa, Accra). In particular, the whole area has been without light between 7pm Friday 17 April 2009 and 3pm Saturday 18 April 2009.

Could you please explain the reason for these power cuts and whether we should prepare to face more interruptions of supply in the foreseeable future?

Thank you for your prompt reply.

Yours faithfully,

E3AYO
I hope it won't come too much as a shock if I tell you I won't hold my breath waiting for their reply. Any website where the current date is stated as
Monday, October 19, 2009
is highly suspicious of being manned by incompetent and/or negligent people.

A last word: ECG's stated vision is
"To be among the leading Electricity Distribution Companies in Africa in terms of Quality, Safety and Reliability."
I only wish. Actually, I'm not really interested to know how ECG fares in comparison with other African electricity distribution companies. I just want reliable light.

Ghana road works

Someone who read my previous post about roads in Ghana asked me whether I was visiting Ghana for the first time. No sir! I think he meant that I should know by now that this is "the way it works here" and that I should be "reasonable" and stop complaining about it or fighting the situation. With due respect, I think this gentleman was as wrong as one can be. Yielding to warped reasoning or practices is the worst thing one can do. In my opinion, a concerned citizen's duty is to denounce what doesn't work and expose the harm corrupt persons, at all levels, are doing to this country.

So, at the risk of being considered naive, I will keep commenting when I come across bent practices.


Yesterday I took the small section of Spintex Road I described in a previous post and saw people and machines hard at work. I didn't have my camera with me and had to take pictures with my mobile phone, hence the lesser quality of today's pictures, for which I apologise.


Grey gravel was being spread out and packed down. My laywoman question is whether one shouldn't be more consistent about it, especially at both ends of the section being reworked. Won't this part be weaker if not strictly delimited, the depth of gravel the same as on other sections of the road and the packing as strong as elsewhere? I'm just thinking alout here. As I said, I don't know a thing about road surfacing.


In several places, the laterite soil could be seen through the gravel. Won't this lead to foreseeable structural weaknesses later on?

Finally, and sometimes I feel like laughing it off, storm drains were put in place several months ago and when the soil was spread out, both laterite and grey gravel were pushed in the drains, filling them in parts, and several labourers were busy shoveling them out. Doing and undoing is still working and I understand they are paid by the day. As far as they are concerned, whatever the job is, it's still paid work.

Last night we had a very big rain again. I wonder how far the labourers had gone into freeing the drains from soil and gravel and what this section of the road looks like now. I'll try and make time to go and have a look today, if my (untarred) street is passable.

More comments and pictures soon!

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Clean water for all: the impossible challenge?

Ghana, and Accra in particular, is said to be filthy. Having travelled in many West and Central Africa countries, I can say that relatively speaking, the situation is not that bad. But then, nobody wants to compare themselves with the worst situation possible and anybody seeking self-improvement should set ambitious aims and work out a plan to achieve them gradually. The same goes for countries.

I am always a bit uneasy about recommending the masses to apply basic principles of hygiene when I know full well that tap water is not a given in this country and even not in its capital city. Contrary to our honoured Vice-President Mahama, I don't think Accra's filth is a laughing matter:
Vice President Mahama, making a joke about the level of filth in Ghana, ...(1)
This widespread filth is a public health hazard, Mr Vice-President. I think it's unfortunate that you find it funny.


My main topic today was however not rubbish collection (or the lack of) but a related hygiene-threatening concern: the lack of running water in Accra. According to the operating company itself (Aqua Vitens Rand Ltd (AVRL), a private company contracted by Ghana to manage the distribution of water), the network was never designed to supply the Accra Tema Metropolitan Area (ATMA) as it is now.
First, average water supply in ATMA is about 82 million gallons per day from Weija and Kpong Treatment Plants. In contrast, demand is over 150 million gallons per day, which leaves a deficit of nearly 70 million gallons per day, even in the best of times.(2)
This means that even working at capacity, tap water production can only satisfy about half of the demand. That is, "in the best of times" which, as we all know, are not a daily occurrence.


The operating company goes on to explain that they are not the only ones to blame for the acute shortage we witness day in, day out in Accra:

When there’s a mere five-minute power-cut, it takes at least five hours to restore water flow. Therefore the impact of these occurrences on water supply is enormous.(3)

How many five-minute power cuts have you suffered since, say, December 2008? I chose this December 2008 mark because it is when I started buying water every week for my household. We haven't heard or seen the water flow at all from mid-December 2008 till March 2009. Since then, we have had two days with water flowing from the mains. If this explaination is right and is not just a diversion exercise engineered by AVRL, it means that each tiny power cut sends us five hours back in the queue at the pump, figuratively speaking. Since I've read this press release a few months ago, I've been more attentive to power cuts and noted that, on average, we've had 2-3 cuts a day, of 2 to 20 minutes usually, sometimes up to 6 hours.


The implications of this persistent shortage are several. The first one is that our youth spend an inordinate amount of time fetching water. I am sure you noticed the youth with 4 empty containers is wearing school uniform shorts. Energies that could be much better used doing something productive or improving their education are wasted every day.

The second one is that there is no way hygiene can prevail when it is so expensive (not only in financial terms, but also in terms of time and energy spent) for people to procure enough water to wash their hands as much as is recommended, have water available to flush toilets, wash and rinse the dishes properly and thoroughly, etc.


Another scandal is that even public hospitals experience water shortages. AVRL maintains that they provide continuous supply to public health facilities, and that any shortage is due to the hospitals' installations themselves.

“AVRL does not ration water to Korle Bu due to the strategic importance of the hospital,” Nana Yaw Barnie, communications officer for AVRL’s Accra-West Region.

“The water problem at Korle Bu on Monday was caused by the hospital’s difficulty in pumping water from its own private water reservoir to the various blocks,” he said.

“When AVRL supplies water to Korle Bu, it first goes into a reservoir from where the hospital itself pumps to the locations it deems appropriate. This has always been the practice,” Barnie said. “And on Monday there was enough water in the hospital’s reservoir.”(4)
I had occasion to visit the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, where newborns in need of intensive care are treated) at Korle Bu in February, 2008 and saw Polytanks sitting in the corridor leading to it and orderlies filling buckets from these tanks to supply NICU. Due to personal painful moments, the idea didn't occur to me to take pictures of the scene.

Reading AVRL's press release, though, it seemed to me that this problem was restricted to Korle Bu teaching hospital. I'm therefore surprised to read that an association of Indian women in Accra felt necessary to donate a water tank to another public health center at Ridge.
The president of the association, Mehek Mohanani, during the presentation, said the group paid a visit to the hospital sometime ago and realized that the water reservoir serving the Unit was not adequate.(5)
Certainly if the water supply had been continuous and adequate no such charitable deed would have been necessary?

Our country wants to develop and leave behind the "least developed nation" status to become an "emerging country", and even one of the new "tigers" of the 21st century. We cannot seriously hope to achieve this without being able to ensure proper sanitation for all. Health issues are and will continue to be in the foreseeable future one of the factors that impede development.

I sincerely hope this new administration will give health and sanitation a serious look and deal with the most pressing issues. Let's stop joking about our future and work at achieving our development goals.

According to the UN Millennium Development Goals initiative,
Promote hand-washing and treatment of home drinking water.
and
Prevent and provide effective treatment of pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria and other infectious diseases.(6)
are part of MDG 4, Reduce child mortality. Poor quality water (the kind we buy by the gallon in the absence of filtered tap water) is one of the most important factors in diarrhoea and kills numerous babies, children and even adults. Others are made weak by it and cannot work as much as needed towards the improvement of their individual situations and that of Ghana in general.

Ghana is committed to the achievement of the MDGs. Clean water and hygiene for all are an intrinsic and necessary part of her success in that area.

A last word. I've just discovered that AVRL launched a call centre. I am not sure whether every person paying a monthly bill without receiving a drop of water should call them until they perform their part of the contract. Click here to read their press release.


Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Ghanaian road safety


Road safety has been a big topic in the Ghanaian news lately. Part of the many people expressing opinions blame it on the disregard of drivers for the road regulations and the state of repair of their vehicles, while others point to the dismal state of the roads to explain, at least partly, the many accidents we seem to read about in the papers every day. I think both claims are perfectly valid.


On April 2, 2009, I mentioned, in a post elsewhere, a specific section of Spintex Road that was recently resurfaced with a handful of gravel and a drizzle of liquid tar:
There is a stretch on Nungua link (the part of 'Spintex' between Coca Cola and Nungua junction) where potholes are a permanent fixture. What's funny (not so funny) is that they are not always the same. Heavy vehicles come now and then, scrap the surface, pack it down and about 3 weeks ago even sprinkled gravel and sparingly poured what looked like liquid tarmac on the gravel. It lasted all of 3 days and we are back with holes getting bigger and bigger and the red soil showing through the 'tarmac' (who are you kidding? I assure you the whole resurfacing was not more than 1/3 of an inch deep). Navigating through and around potholes is an art that requires concentration and the shortest lapse can send you into the car coming from the other way. Not mentioning the reflex action of flooring it once you are back on a half decent surface.

We all have dozens of similar examples. Is it really a deliberate policy to resurface roads in this very "temporary" manner? Or is there a budget for a decent resurfacing and after everyone even remotely involved has taken what they consider their rightful share this was all what remained for the work proper?
Last week, this section was cordonned off and traffic was diverted to allow for more "improvement" works.


As you may know, we had our first rains of the season in Accra yesterday and guess what: yesterday, this section (cordons removed) was back to its previous bumpy unsurfaced state. I am sorry I didn't take pictures of "before" and "after" but will go today and keep taking pictures, say every week, to monitor the situation. I don't exactly know where to post them in order to alert whomever can really have an impact. Any suggestion is welcome.

Today, surprise: heavy vehicles at work, again. I would be enthousiastic if I hadn't seen them several times over the last 18 months with no lasting results.


On a more positive note, I found myself stranded in Aflao yesterday after night fall and had to join a big bus (50+ seats) to Accra. It took us 5 solid hours, via the Keta road (the more direct road via Akatsi being a 50km nightmare) and many road blocks. I was impressed at how prudently and safely the driver behaved and abode by road regulations. Good behaviour is not very newsworthy but I felt only fair to mention it.

The following gives me no reason to rejoice though: I'm sorry to report that the driver and mate seemed to have to give something at every single road block on the way.