AFRICA AND THE MILLENNIUM GOALS

OF BRANDING GHANA AND THE MILLENNIUM GOALS

The Ghanaian Times Tuesday September 21, 2010

By Cameron Duodu

QUOTE: In the five years since the Guardian first visited the Klutsey family, Hannah has grown into a beautiful five-year-old. Neighbours say she is a lively girl.

However, the family's living standards have not improved. They now have electricity, but still share a one-room hut. "This is not good for family life. How can we still be living in a single room with our children, some of whom are no longer kids, but adolescents?" Benjamin asks.

They still have no sanitation, not even a pit latrine. Their staple diet is akple, a meal made from cassava and corn, which Mary also sells from a stand outside their home. "Meat is too expensive for us. We can't afford that luxury," she said.

At Christmas, they eat chicken and rice, but sometimes lunch is just a piece of bread. To supplement their diet, local children hunt rats. On the day the Guardian visited, thick black smoke billowed from nearby bushes where a dozen children had set fires to force the animals from their holes. One of the boys was Samuel, Hannah's 10-year-old brother. "It's good meat," he said, pulling the skin from a dead rat.

Hannah's eldest brother, 15-year-old Alfred, is already working, although he has not finished school. He proudly shows off the Manchester United jersey he bought with money earned on building sites.

But his spending is a source of irritation for Mary, who reminds Alfred that school term is about to start but the family do not have enough money to pay his outstanding exam fees. "That's my immediate headache," she said.
Mary hopes she "will one day own a big convenience shop", a business she thinks will help transform her family's economic situation.

Her husband, on the other hand, wants the government to support his farm with subsidised fertilisers and farming implements.
"The crops are not doing well, because the rains have not been regular this season," he said as he dug up a cassava root. "This will do for dinner," he said. "We thank God we have something to eat today ... tomorrow will take care of itself." UNQUOTE

In the next few days, a lot of words will be heard at the UN – once again – about the “millennium goals for development” in Africa.

At the Gleneagles (Scotland) summit of the G8 (Group of Eight rich industrial nations) in 2005, the G8, spurred on by the United Nations, followed up earlier promises and made stirring pledges about what they would do to try and to eliminate poverty, disease and illiteracy from the poor nations of the world, especially, Africa.

Five years on, none of the pledges looks as if it will be fulfilled. Mr Jeffrey Sachs, professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University (who is also a special adviser to United Nations Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals), says the most important pledge of all the G8's promises was the Gleneagles one which stated that by 2010, they would increase annual development assistance to the world's poor by $50bn, relative to 2004.

Half of the increase, or $25bn per year, would go to Africa, the G8 said.

“The G8,” says Mr Sachs, “fell far short of this goal, especially with respect to Africa. Total aid went up by around $40bn rather than $50bn, and aid to Africa rose by $10bn-$15bn per year, rather than $25bn. The properly measured shortfall is even greater, because the promises that were made in 2005 should be adjusted for inflation.

Re-stating those commitments in real terms, total aid should have risen by around $60bn, and aid to Africa should have risen by around $30bn.
In effect, the G8 fulfilled only half of its promise to Africa – roughly $15bn in increased aid rather than $30bn.”

Ironically, Mr Sachs points out, much of the overall G8 increase in aid, “went to Iraq and Afghanistan, as part of the US-led war effort, rather than to Africa.” (It looks as if as far as the US is concerned, if you want it to increase aid to you, then you should allow yourself to be invaded!)

But in all seriousness, what Mr Sachs reports is no less than a sleight of hand being perpetrated by the G8. He writes:
“Since the G8 was off track in its aid commitments for many years, I long wondered what the G8 would say in 2010, when the commitments actually fell due.

In fact, the G8 displayed two approaches. First, in an ‘accountability report’, … the G8 stated the 2005 commitments in current dollars rather, than in inflation-adjusted dollars, in order to minimise the size of the reported shortfall.

“Second, the G8 … simply did not mention the unmet commitments at all. In other words, the G8 accountability principle became: if the G8 fails to meet an important target, stop mentioning the target – a cynical stance, especially at a summit heralded for ‘accountability’.

“The G8 did not fail because of the current financial crisis. Even before the crisis, the G8 countries were not taking serious steps to meet their pledges to Africa. This year, despite [a] massive budget crisis, the UK government has heroically honoured its aid commitments, showing that other countries could have done so if they had tried.”

If Africa had another $15bn-$20bn per year in development aid in 2010, as promised, (says Mr Sachs) with the amounts rising over future years (also as promised), millions of children would be spared an agonising death from preventable diseases, and tens of millions of children would be able to get an education.”

What this means to everyone in Africa is that we must realize, even more forcefully than before, that we are our own saviours and that we a number photographed by the newspaper should bring enormous pressure on our governments to stop spending money on stupid things while our children are dying from curable diseases, or from sheer malnutrition.

I wrote a column recently about how silly it was to spend precious money to hold a conference to “brand Ghana.” I am sure whoever paid for that conference will be shocked to hear that while hot air was being spewed about “branding” Ghana, a real bit of Ghana ‘branding” was being done in a village away from the air-conditioned conference halls of Accra, for the LondonGuardian newspaper.

The paper sent someone to go and have a look at how a child born five years ago in Ghana – one of a number the paper had selected from across Africa to follow up and see how they would be faring in succeeding years – was growing. This is part of what the paper’s reporter found:

“Hannah Klutsey ran from her family's single-room house with tears in her eyes. A mouthful of bread had lodged in her throat and her eyes were bloodshot and bulging.

“‘Mummy, water!’" she shouted as she struggled to swallow. Her mother, Mary, dropped the bundle of firewood she had carried into the dusty compound and rushed to the huge plastic water pot in front of their ramshackle kitchen.

“She came back with a plastic cup of water, which Hannah gulped down. Only later, when the youngster was recovering on her mother's knee, did they notice the mosquito larvae at the bottom of the cup: half a dozen wormlike creatures writhing in the water.

"The pot must have been left open for mosquitoes to lay eggs in the water," said Mary, whose immediate concern was that her only daughter, who had recently recovered from severe skin rashes, could fall ill again. "She survived her recent sickness by miracle: another illness could kill her," said Hannah's father, Benjamin, said as he emptied the contaminated water from the giant pot.

“There is no running water in Kpobiman, the poverty-stricken community outside Accra in which Hannah and her family live. Like most of their neighbours, the Klutseys use water from a shallow borehole. Others are forced to draw water from stagnant pools, where germs and parasites are abundant.

"The water is so bad you can't imagine this community is just a stone's throw from the city," Jeleelah Quaye, the local assembly representative, said.

“In the past year, more than 300 residents, both children and adults, have contracted buruli ulcer, a waterborne disease causing skin lesions and deformities. Four people have died, Quaye said.

“In the five years since the Guardian first visited the Klutsey family, Hannah has grown into a beautiful five-year-old. Neighbours say she is a lively girl.

“However, the family's living standards have not improved. They now have electricity, but still share a one-room hut. "This is not good for family life.

How can we still be living in a single room with our children, some of whom are no longer kids, but adolescents?" Benjamin asks. They still have no sanitation, not even a pit latrine. Their staple diet is akple, a meal made from cassava and corn, which Mary also sells from a stand outside their home. "Meat is too expensive for us. We can't afford that luxury," she said.

….“Hannah’s father]… wants the government to support his farm with subsidised fertilisers and farming implements. "The crops are not doing well, because the rains have not been regular this season," he said as he dug up a cassava root. "This will do for dinner," he said. "We thank God we have something to eat today ... tomorrow will take care of itself."

As those who attended the “branding” Ghana conference were sitting down to a fine, balanced meal, the proper “brand Ghana” was what was on show to the Guardian. That is what the world will read about Ghana, not some expensively-purchased advertisement or “advertorial” from which advertising agencies collect huge commissions.

Such “branding efforts” are worthless, in the face of the evidence that reputable journalists find and report about our country.

If we want Ghana to be admired, then we must provide all our villages with potable water.

We must make sure that children who go to school are not driven out if they have no money for school fees.

We must eradicate the environmental hazards that produce malaria. And we must build effective and efficient health centres, where our people can go and get good medical attention when they fall sick.

That is the only way in which we can brand Ghana credibly. Everything else is hot air.