An exercise in speculation

Having been paid for the last 20+ years to read the fine print in big contracts, this writer believes she has a fairly good grasp of how they are written and of the different loopholes less-than-honest negotiators can exploit for their own interests.

Although people from every country of the world could find similarities with contracts that made the headlines in their own motherland, this write-up is by no means intended to vilify anybody or any specific country without proof. Indeed, we don't have any proof and would only like to attract the attention of the general public to risks of unpatriotic behaviour embedded in such big contracts.

Let's take, for example, the theoretical example of a relatively small country ordering several aircraft; contracting with a foreign security company to rid itself of the drug trafficking menace; buying state-of-the-art surveillance equipment to better monitor telephone usage; contracting the building of tens of thousands of houses; or building a monorail.

The theoretical careful reader of these news, having at heart to educate him/herself as much as possible on the affairs of his/her country, would have researched the foreign contractors and established that they were nonexistent; created a mere few days before the deal was discussed; without any identifiable track record of prior achievements; or so seriously indebted that their continued existence would be a matter of concern.

This theoretical careful reader would wonder whether the relatively small country officials did even ten minutes research into the foreign contractors to ascertain the feasibility of the contracts. Surely, a company that doesn't exist, or was formed three days before the deal, or that is crippled by debt would find it difficult to perform, wouldn't it? Surely, that much would be obvious to the least educated person, let alone high government officials, wouldn't it?

Like yours truly, this theoretical careful reader has been reading every single word of thousands of contracts and agreements over a 20-year span and knows a bit about the terms of conditions usually included in such instruments.

Considering the most plausible answers to this theoretical careful reader's above-mentioned questions, the next question would be: why sign anything if you know or suspect the contract can't possibly be performed?

There comes the loophole we alluded to earlier on. It's very boilerplate wording, very neat, and shouldn't be seen as anything sinister if the signatories' intentions were pure. Our experience is that whenever a deal is struck, and in order to secure the order for the contractor who will have spent money to put up a proposal, then will have to spend more to hire extra workforce and, generally speaking, make provisions to begin performance at the appointed date, all contracts include a provision which in effect says that if, at this point, you renege on your word or for any reason rescind your commitment to this agreement, you will owe the supplier penalties to cover their expenses and general inconvenience. These penalties are often a percentage of the contract price. The higher the price, the higher the penalty.

And in this theoretical string of seemingly senseless and impossible deals, what if the officials were signing in full knowledge of their co-contractors' dubious history or prospects? What if they even were in cahoots with them to share the spoils once the deals reach the headlines, there is public outcry, and the Parliament refuses to confirm the deals or rescinds them? What if pocketing a percentage of these penalties were the main motivation behind these so-called miracle deals (after a few weeks in the limelight and self-aggrandizement)?

Although this is all purely theoretical, the concerned, careful citizen may want to think about it and ask their government to provide verifiable background information on all the contractors entrusted with helping to build their country's development. Although nobody in their right mind would hope this theory to prove true, the concerned citizens of any country of the world would certainly do a service to the motherland by demanding that the standards of disclosure be improved.

Of the relevance of school teachings

One thing that strikes me as odd is that most students seem to memorise lessons just to get a "pass" mark at the next test and then hurry to forget all about the notions learned, instead of finding practical uses for them in their daily lives.

Although I didn't enjoy my years of studying management for various reasons, I did grab a few notions I keep using to this day and made them so much part of my everyday reasoning that I seldom stop and think "hey, that useful bit? I learned it formally in school 20+ years ago and see how it comes handy now again!"

Now that I hear a lot about the relevance of what is taught (or rather, the lack of it) in schools everywhere and in Ghana in particular, I've decided to give it a serious and organised thought and pick at the most useful habits, ways of analysing a problem and dealing with everyday situations I can trace back to what was, I can assure you, a very dull period of my life. I intend to write a series of posts which I hope will help give students motivation to look beyond the next test and the grades they need to get a "pass" in the subjects they're studying to detect what materials have the potential of being lifelong props for their whole thought system.

The last two posts (First come, first served and Project Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) and Gantt charts) are the first in this series. Please keep coming to this blog and see what's new here and how old school teachings can be useful in your everyday life.

Project Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) and Gantt charts

Although this business management technique seems to be slightly more difficult to comprehend than the previous one (First come, first served), it actually makes the management of tasks and organisation of work much simpler.

Let's start with a general definition of PERT:

"PERT is a method to analyze the involved tasks in completing a given project, especially the time needed to complete each task, and identifying the minimum time needed to complete the total project."

Simply put, make a list of things to do to bring about a desired result, and how long each of them will take. This is something each one of us can and should do, be it in our personal or professional lives, in order to get a clearer idea of steps to our goal and predictable speed of achievement.

Let's draw a table where Column 1 would be titled "Task", Column 2 "Duration", Column 3 "Prerequisite."

Once this table is complete, we will want to get a better, graphical idea of the timeline and tasks that can or should be run concurrently. An exemple follows.

We'll then draw a network diagram, also called Gantt chart (developed by a Mr. Gantt), described by Wikipedia as follows:

"A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule. Gantt charts illustrate the start and finish dates of the terminal elements and summary elements of a project. Terminal elements and summary elements comprise the work breakdown structure of the project. Some Gantt charts also show the dependency (i.e. precedence network) relationships betweek activities. Gantt charts can be used to show current schedule status using percent-complete shadings and a vertical "TODAY" line as shown here. "

For simple projects, a piece of paper, a pencil and an eraser will be good enough. For more complex situations, there are numerous software which will help you draw a chart from organising next Sunday's festive lunch to developing a new airplane. You may try your hand at one for free here. Another interesting source is here. These are not recommendations and I don't endorse either of these companies or their products. These suggestions are inserted only for illustration purposes.

Although PERT and Gantt are old news in most of the world, they still provide robust project management methods. I'm sure trying them will open you to a whole new world of possibilities and make previously insurmountable projects a collection of streamlined, easy to manage smaller tasks.

Readers, I will appreciate your feedback here. Please let me know whether you think this article opened new possibilities for you and how you intend to use them. Conversely, if you don't think these suggestions useful, please let me know why, and what would be a better way of tackling project management in your line of business.

First come, first served

In an attempt to provide constructive suggestions to improve customer service, which some would agree is rather lacking here, I will offer here short posts describing principles that can be applied easily in all areas of business, be it in street hawking, trading, or utility hotline management.

The first of them is "First Come, First Served". Wikipedia explains it as:

"a service policy whereby the requests of customers or clients are attended to in the order that they arrived, without other biases or preferences. The policy can be employed when processing sales orders, in determining restaurant seating, on a taxi stand, for example. In Western society, it is the standard policy for the processing of most queues in which people wait for a service."

It seems to me that applying this principle strictly will help bring more order in most businesses, relieve the operators and attendants of the headache of conflicting priorities and alleviate the public's frustration.

Readers, I would like to get your opinions on this. Do you think it a good idea? If not, why? And what would you suggest instead?

Commenting is not complaining

A very long absence, due to my doubts about how useful it is to discuss everyday topics in this blog or anywhere else, when more often than not commenting on situations is considered disgraceful complaining.

I've therefore decided to give it another try, this time with what I believe could be workable suggestions. Exposing an issue AND suggesting improvements. Time will tell if it works. Readers, I thank you in advance for your constructive criticism.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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?