Ghana:Do we have to vote for NDC and NPP in 2012?

By Lord Aikins Adusei Previous presidential and parliamentary elections had always been a contest between the ruling National Democratic Congress and the opposition New Patriotic Party with minor parties such as Convention People’s Party and PNC playing the role of king makers. There is no doubt that the 2012 elections will be a contest between NDC and NPP and many in the country who are very passionate of NDC and NPP will go heaven and earth to defend them even to death whether or not they have access to water, electricity, jobs or not. However it is abundantly clear that these two major parties which have ruled Ghana for most of her 52 years of independence have woefully underperformed and have failed to deliver Ghanaians from the tentacles of poverty. In short these parties have shown beyond all reasonable doubt that they do not care about the plights of Ghanaians. NDC ruled Ghana for 8 years and NPP has also done the same but did any of them help to make Ghana a developed country? Did any of them solve the unemployment and housing problems in Ghana? How about electricity, education and health? Look at the poor nature of roads in Ghana. Do we deserve that? Can Ghanaians recall anything extraordinary that the NDC did before it was replaced by the NPP in 2000? Or anything remarkable that the NPP did before it was replaced by the NDC in 2008? And since taking office more than one year ago has the NDC done anything tangible to alleviate the suffering of Ghanaians? Any person who has been to Europe, Asia or America can say for sure that both major parties have not done much for Ghanaians. Look at the state of Ghana's manufacturing sector. What do we produce? Close to nothing. What do we do with the cocoa that we produce? Don't we export the raw beans for peanuts? How about the gold and the diamond and the many minerals we mine? Aren't they exported to Switzerland and Dubai before Ghanaians go there to buy the wedding rings and bracelets to sell to us? Computers, cars, mobile phones, fridges are made in Europe, Japan and the US and they are affordable there but Ghanaians cannot buy common chocolate even though the vital raw material which is cocoa is produced here. And the same is true about gold and diamond. We cannot buy products made from them even though they are mined right here. Look around yourself and see if any of the goods you see are made in Ghana. I mean the mobile phones, computers, televisions, cars and all the flashy things that Ghanaians are crazing for. It is sad to note that almost all the raw materials needed to build these phones, cars, plasma TVs, camcoders, satellite dishes are obtained from Ghana and other African countries. Has the NDC or the NPP helped us to build any of these things? No. The reason why we are unable to convert these rich natural resources into finish goods to benefit ourselves is the poor manner in which the NPP and NDC have managed our country. Don't forget it is government that must take the initiative, provide the necessary environment and policy direction and resources for a strong manufacturing sector to take root. Look at the policies of both major parties and see if they can even put Ghana on the level of Korea, Taiwan or Hong Kong in the next 20 years. Ghanaian business men and women are frequenting Dubai and China importing every good you can think of. Investigate to find out how the Chinese and the Koreans did it and whether any of the parties can help Ghana do the same. Didn't the NPP throw the NDC Vision 2020 Document that was supposed to make Ghana a middle income country into a dust bin? And do you think the NDC is going to implement Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy II (GPRS II) prepared by the NPP? This is the politics that has brought us no development but unemployment, poverty, hunger, misery and hopelessness and divisions. So do they care, I mean NPP and NDC and do we have to vote them in 2012? Look at the state of Ghana's infrastructure: energy, roads, harbours, telecommunication, health, education, rail system, market and airport. What are the records of the two major parties on infrastructure? Have they been able to add anything to what Dr. Nkrumah built? Haven't they even neglected the few that Nkrumah built to decay? If you think I am not making any point just look at the state of our railway sector. Most of the tracks have been left to rot to the extent that there are no train services in many parts of the country which once relied on that vital means of transport. For decades that sector received no investments and no modernisation to the extent that it now takes about 10 hours to travel by train from Kumasi to Accra, a mere 200km. Compare that with a train service in Japan where it takes one hour to cover more than 270km. Despite having the advantage of being cost effective, cheap, reliable and business friendly 11 years of PNDC rule plus 8 years of NDC and another 8 years of NPP did not help the rail sector and our country except turning former poor soldiers and politicians into billionaires at the expense of our nation. After 52 years of independence and more than 28 years of (P)NDC and NPP rule our trains still run on engines that are 50 years old. NDC and NPP have neglected Ghana's infrastructure needs for years, yet we have forgotten that no nation can develop without investing in infrastructure and technology. That is why Democratic Republic of Congo has every mineral you can think of yet it is one of the poorest in the world. That is why Malaysia, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong have developed and that is why President Obama is talking about building US infrastructures because they are the engines that run the economy. You cannot export if you do not have harbours and airports to support it. You cannot attract tourists if you do not have airport, hotels, well developed roads and other infrastructures that support it. You cannot move goods from centres of production to centres of consumption if you do not have roads, rail lines and inland water infrastructures to deliver it. You cannot supply the industries with doctors, architects, bankers, lawyers, planners, engineers, teachers, nurses if you do not have the educational infrastructure to deliver it. And you cannot run an efficient and vibrant economy if you do not have the energy and telecommunication infrastructures in place. Look at the state of Akosombo dam. Ghana is shut off anytime it refuses to rain yet we have had parties and their political leaders who have promised us so much yet have delivered so little. Ghana has been experiencing serious disruptions in the energy sector for years and no political party has seen any wisdom to solve it. As a result factories are folding up and are laying off workers and we are waiting for nature to help fill Akosombo Dam before we rectify the problem. Will these do nothing approaches to problem solving help our nation? What are we doing with the abundance of sunshine in the country? We have not taken advantage of it, have we? We have sunshine 365 days and we have not tap into solar energy which is cheap and more reliable than hydro. In a situation that mimic problem facing the entire African region, the Finnish president on a visit to Nigeria in March 2009 asked, “Nigerian people have so much sun and wind, why don’t they use it for the generation of light for cooking and every other thing”? She queried, and added that “we do it in Finland for our renewable energy”. Source: www.dailytrust.com, 12 March 2009. The sad story is that Finland and most of the nations in Europe are locked up for most of the year by cold winter but take advantage of the short summer to convert the little sunshine they receive into solar energy while here in Ghana we have sunshine most of the year but do nothing with it. Dwindling rainfall has limited the ability of Akosombo dam to produce the needed energy to support the economy. It is another indication of the useless institutions that we have and lip service paid by the various political parties and their leaders to Ghana's development. There is entropy of organised traffic disorder and inefficient transport management system, poor public transport service in Accra, Kumasi, Tema, Koforidua and many major cities in the country. Road transport in the country is dominated by rickety trotro and accident prone taxis and buses. Many travellers travelling in our cities have to endure huge delays due to traffic congestion. In the evening between 5pm and 8pm travellers from Accra to Teshie-Nungua spend not less than three hours in traffic in a journey that should take them less than one hour and in the morning suffer the same fate. Those going from Accra-Circle to Achimota and Ofanko, and Accra-Circle to Legon and Adenta undergo similar traumatic experience. But the NDC and NPP governments that have ruled Ghana for most of her 52 years existence as an independent nation have done very little to ease the situation despite persistence protest by the people. The NDC and NPP and their so called policy makers have refused to solve the traffic problems in the country because they drive in and around the country in four wheel drives assisted by dispatch riders and sirens and therefore do not experience the difficulties that ordinary Ghanaians go through daily. Look at the state of the agricultural sector. How many of our farmers have their own tractors and farming equipments to produce beyond the level of subsistence? Virtually all the important equipments needed to make the agric sector viable and productive have to be imported and how many of our farmers have their own resources to buy even the basic machinery to expand their farms? Today after 52 years of independence our farmers still depend on nature for water for their economic activities despite the availability of irrigation technology and what has the NDC and NPP done so far to help them? Aren't they still using cutlasses and hoes to plant and harvest their crops, technology our forefathers used before they were enslaved and colonised? Aren't they still relying on nature to plant their crops in this 21st Century? Aren't we still importing rice from India and China after nearly 53 years of self governance? We cannot even feed ourselves after 17 years of NDC and NPP rule. Where are the food sufficiency policies of the two major parties then? What are the many directors at the ministry of Agriculture who enjoy fat salaries and bonuses doing? Although we are in the 21st Century yet our farming practices indicate that we have still not moved beyond the 19th century. Fishermen are always faced with the constant shortage of premix fuel despite the pledge by both parties to help them. This is the more reason why we continue to hunger even though rich soils abound in Ghana. It is common to hear Ghanaians say that 'Malaysians got their palm fruit seed from Ghana'. Well Malaysians use the oil they get from the palm fruit as fuel for a number of engines including cars, something they accomplished through research and we what do we use the oil for? It is sad to say that Malaysia got independence about the same time as Ghana but they have made great strides economically, while we have been marking time courtesy NDC and NPP. While the rest of the world is moving forward scientifically and technologically we are still marking time because of corruption, poor leadership, poor governance, and bogus agricultural and economic policies, politicisation of every national issue, tribalism, ethnicity and military incursions into our social, economic and political life. If Agriculture which provides us about 35% of our GDP is bad, then can our educational sector upon which the development of the nation rest be any better? Aren't the NDC and NPP toying and playing politics with our secondary school system. The SSS (now SHS) was a three year programme when it first started. When the NPP replaced the NDC in 2001 they changed it to four years and now the NDC is considering reversing it to three years. Who are they fooling? Is it not Ghanaians, our economy and the future well-being of students who are going through these ill conceived education policies of NDC and NPP? Is the entire educational system anything to be proud of? Just look at the world ranking of Universities and see where the first university falls. Of the about 9,760 Accredited universities in the World, Ghana's prominent universities including University of Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology only managed to place 5,702 and 6,703 positions respectively in the World University Ranking. Even in Africa, our own backyard they only managed to secure 43rd and 63rd positions respectively. (Source: topuniversities.com/2008) Can we afford to develop the nation with ill-prepared graduates not to mention the millions of illiterates and semi-literates who roam around the cities and countryside? Dr. Ave Kludze, a Ghanaian born top NASA Scientist in a rebuke of our leaders and our education system said in an interview with the CNN "no empire has ever achieved greatness without technology and the earlier the leaders realise this the better". He later told BBC that, "But where African schools have a problem, is that they focus heavily on theory, whereas [universities in the west] focus on the practical - solving real world problems.” Source: bbc.co.uk, Thursady, 12 February 2009. It is abundantly clear that our education system is not producing the architects, engineers, planners, bankers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, social workers, nurses and the scientists that we need in the 21st Century. That is why every major architectural and engineering activity in Ghana is undertaken by foreigners and foreign companies especially from USA, Japan, China, India and the European Union. An illustration of how bad the situation is was captured in a news report by Ghanaian Times headlined: "Water Shortage: Experts Coming From S. Africa" which reported that "Experts from Ballest-Nedam, the Dutch company that installed the control panel at the intake pump station of the Weija Headworks are expected in Ghana on Thursday morning from South Africa to help repair the machine. This follows the inability of local experts to get the damaged electronic equipment fixed for the pump to function again. Mr Stanley Martey, Communication Manager of Aqua Viters Rand Limited, disclosing this to the ‘Times’ yesterday said AVRL was in touch with other experts in London and Holland for support in getting the engine to operate”, Source: Ghanaian Times, 09-Feb-2010. Another news item reads: "Straight-talking Charles Kofi Wayo has poured scorn on engineers working at the gutted Tema Oil Refinery, asking if they qualify to even be called engineers when they cannot manufacture common bolts and have to wait for three months for foreign expertise to fix the minutest of problems. "If you have engineers there why is it that one small bolt you have to wait for a white man two, three months. You can’t even make your own bolts…You can’t even tool anything down there, even gasket - common gasket when it blows, you shut down the RFCC and stuff like that so where are the engineers? Where are the engineers? Source: www.myjoyonline.com, Thursday, 21 January 2010. The simple truth is that our students are not able to invent neither do our experts able to repair even broken machines and experts have to be brought from elsewhere. We cannot blame our universities for failing to produce high quality graduates and experts because they have mounting resource problems. The Universities lack well trained lecturers. They lack modern facilities such as state of the art libraries, laboratory simulation facilities, studios, computers, projectors, internet facilities, constant energy supply and books. They lack them because we the NPP and NDC governments have failed to invest and build them; we cannot build them because the curricula have not prepared our students to build them. As a result we have to import the equipments and books from countries that have done their home work well and have invested heavily in education notably in science and technology. In many of our universities, Polytechnics and secondary schools lecturers/teachers are still teaching students the same way the 19th century academic institutions taught forgetting that we are in the 21st century. The same notes given a final year student four years ago are still being given to first year students with no addition or subtraction. Lecturers cannot write books for students because they do not have the resources to carry out research that form the basis of any academic material. Whereas students in advanced countries get their hands on books immediately they are released those in Ghana have to wait 4 years or even more to get the same books. What is more the academic facilities including libraries are in a state too appalling to describe. Not a single of our universities can boast of a million volumes of books in their libraries. Even the few text books that they have are so old that information contained in them are useless. Very few books have been published by Ghanaians. Due to this most students have to rely on the notes that lecturers give them. In Kwame Nkrumah University of Science Technology as it is in many of our higher institutions of learning students do not have access to proper accommodation, food and shelter. Room which once housed one student at KNUST officially houses four students and that is when a student is lucky to have his name shortlisted by the authorities. This is state of our universities and the little I say about our Polytechnics and secondary schools the better. And who do we blame other than NDC and NPP governments that have received billions of dollars in loans, grants and taxes and yet cannot invest some of it to develop and transform it into our education sector. Nothing get discussed in the country without NPP and NDC die-hards injecting politics into it and Ghana has paid a huge price as a result of that. Our higher institutions found themselves in this bad situation because for decades the NDC and NPP have been talking left while walking right playing politics with anything that matter to the nation. The streets of Accra, Kumasi and other major cities in the country are swarmed with children selling ice water, bread, chewing gums and anything that can be hawked. Children head potters are visible every where in Kumasi, Accra, Tema and Koforidua, a clear manifestation of the misery and hopelessness that the NDC and NPP have brought to Ghanaians. These are the children who are supposed to be in the classroom and be trained as future leaders but have to abandon the classroom and scavenge for food because the NPP and NDC do not care about them. When they drive in their expensive tax-payers' Land Cruisers do the NPP and NDC MPs, ministers, Vice Presidents, the Presidents and their advisors see the children who live, sell, and are taught by the street in Accra, Kumasi, Tema, Takoradi and Koforidua? Do you know why NDC and NPP keep toying with Ghana's education? Because they want to keep the people in darkness so no one will rise up to challenge their corrupt and useless administrations. Ask the President or his vice or their ministers where their children are schooling now and you will understand why they don't give a damn about SHS, Poly or University education. Their children are schooling in expensive universities in Europe and North America. And as to how they pay for those expensive fees your guess will be as good as mine. When their children finish their education overseas they stay there and work. They only return to Ghana when there are big contracts where they would make millions of dollars for staying away and doing nothing for the nation, and what do the poor Ghanaians who could not travel to study outside and had to pass through God knows what get? Nothing - no contract, no retirement packages, just poverty. Our research institutions have achieved very little because they are underfunded and the researchers do not have the expertise and the facilities to carry out any meaningful research. A case in point is Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG) located at New Tafo in the Eastern Region. Despite decades of its existence we still export raw cocoa beans for peanuts. No value has been added to the cocoa. CRIG has not been able to come up with other ways in which to use the beans to benefit Ghanaians despite the mounting evidence that the beans have several potential uses. Have you visited Korle Bu or Komfo Anokye or any of our hospitals lately? Didn't you see patients lying on the floor even though they are sick and are suppose to be receiving care? If Korle Bu and Komfo Anokye hospitals are crying for resources then you can imagine the situation at Donkokrom. And where is the NDC and NPP that you want to die for or support so blindly? Where in Ghana are mosquitoes not widespread? Are we not still dying from mosquito bites and other minor and preventable diseases? Despite NDC and NPP pledges, our hospitals are without the basic essentials needed to run a hospital not to mention the advanced technologies that save millions of lives in Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Europe, Japan and America. And NDC and NPP what are they doing? According to peacefmonline "888 out of every 100,000 pregnant women in Ghana who visit the hospital, end up dying. Another expert, whose statistics were even more frightening said, out of every 1,000 pregnant women about 451 die". Source: peacefmonline.com, Thursday, 23 July 2009. How about the state of the housing infrastructure? A visit to any village or town gives the same picture of poor housing and poor quality of public service. People are living in mud/thatched houses with bamboo/raffia leafs as roofing sheet with no electricity, potable water and clinics. They live in a subsistence environment without social security, health insurance and are condemned to poverty, desperation and hopelessness. Those living in urban areas are without jobs, without mortgage, and face high utility bills with poor public services. They face constant barrage of water and energy disruptions everyday. In every region the situation is not different. Go to Nima, Agbogloshie, New Town, James Town, Sodom & Gomorrah and see the kind of living conditions and environment in which fellow Ghanaians are living in this 21st Century. People are living in squalid conditions not even fit for animals yet we have NDC and NPP always promising to build us castles, swimming pools and what have you. The problems of waste management in the cities and the associated health effect on the people need no telling. Accra and Kumasi Metropolitan authorities and other city authorities are struggling with waste management issues due to lack of vehicles, waste treatment plants and inadequate personnel capacity. Sewerage in the country is almost non-existent, with only a portion of Accra, Tema, Kumasi and few regional capitals enjoying piped sewerage services. There is no centralized wastewater treatment system in most of the cities and households and commercial premises generally have no onsite flush latrines. Within Accra, Kumasi, Takoradi, Tema and most of the cities and towns solid waste is unhygienically burned, disposed; and indiscriminate dumping of waste is creating health problems. There are few cities and towns with reliable piped water supply. Many residence of Accra do not have access to good drinking water and many households have to resort to extreme measures to be able to cope. In short the infrastructures to deliver water to the people do not exist courtesy NPP and NDC. Majority of the people in Teshie and Nungua have no access to toilet facilities and have to use the coast as places of convenience and even in those places where there are few toilet facilities you could hardly stand the stench. Please you can verify this by going to where Dutch Hotel is situated at Nungua and witness how people troop to the coast in the morning to attend nature's call. On the other hand the NDC and NPP MPs, ministers, vice president, the president, their cronies and families live in total luxury with mansions, sport utility vehicles, bodyguards, fat salaries, fat bonuses, house servants and they have all the resources of the state at their disposal. When they leave office they propose special emolument packages for themselves yet they claim to be serving the poor. How can it be? I can continue all day but it is a fact that both the NDC and NPP are bunches of hungry politicians with no concrete economic and social agenda to move Ghana beyond the level of importing used computers, used cars, used televisions, used underwear and any used thing you can think of. What are all these telling you about Ghana, the NPP, and the NDC? Do we have any option not to vote for them in 2012? Why should Ghanaians continue to die and suffer for such people who only think about their stomach? These leaders and their parties always play on the ignorance of the people promising them heaven but failing to even provide them earth. Until we have leaders who have vision like Dr. Nkrumah and are committed to industrialise Ghana beyond agro raw material production and export, Ghana will continue to be classified as a developing and poor country and even though we will continue to vote we will continue to wallow in abject poverty as we have always done. I want to urge every Ghanaian to seek education and knowledge which I believe will help us to question our leaders and demand accountability from them. I also want to challenge the various TV and radio stations to devote money and resources to embark on documentaries on what it really means to live in poverty in Ghana under the NPP and NDC, documentaries and programmes that will show Ghanaians the living conditions of the people in rural areas and expose the lies of the NDC and NPP. And to the parasitic NDC and NPP I say 52 years is enough for us to see real development in the country.

Lord Aikins Adusei

Entrepreneurship - Kenya's Economic Saviour

By Jeconia Omondi Olonde

 

The current economic condition for Kenya is on a down hill while the population growth rate is quite high. This implies there is an increase in unemployment as the new jobs created cannot match the increase in population. A situation is created where the youth are finishing university, college and secondary school expecting to be employed yet the economy cannot accommodate them. This will in the end bring social instability especially with the high cost of education.

But what can the government and the private sectors do to help alleviate the situation that may bring the country to its knees? An initiative such as the Kazi Kwa Vijana was started by the government and has ended as a failure, taking the country back to the maze. The Kazi Kwa Vijana could not have been sustained as we can say the jobs given to them “do not add value” to the economy and the government is spending a huge amount of money in paying recurrent expenses. Also some of the jobs given may seem demeaning to some of the unemployed graduates. Telling an engineering graduate to clean trenches shows that the government has no plans for its citizens who are meant to be assets.
 

Further, unemployment situations in Kenya have been increased by the high requirements by employers in order to get jobs. Requirement of years of professional experience for jobs in Kenya has made it difficult for the fresh graduates to get jobs and their Kenyan dream of finding that dream job after years of education.
 

For the country to be able to create employment, the government and the private sector should highly consider embracing entrepreneurship as a source of expanding the economy and reducing poverty. With the shift towards technology, the government can use the youth to enhance and come up with new technologies which will help accelerate growth and achieve Vision 2030.
 

Some of the ways in which the government can do to help youth embrace entrepreneurship are:

• Providing financial assistance and guidance. Many youth have good business ideas but translating these to actual jobs is hindered by lack of knowledge of transforming ideas into feasible and tangible work. Also financial guidance on how to spend the initial finance is necessary as the projected financial statements are is not enough, for example, purchasing of essential assets, marketing and branding, establishing of internal business controls, and book keeping.
• Providing mentors to the youth who come up with good business ideas or proposals. The mentors are used to guide the youth especially through the tough times as they have been in the business before and they know what to do best in such situations.
• Introducing entrepreneurship as a subject in schools so that the students are able to know early enough how to start their own businesses and succeed. Mentality of students has to be changed from them expecting employment for them to create employment. This should be done for both students in professional courses and those in vocational training. In the earlier years, it was preached in radio stations and songs that at the end of education one will get a good job and this mentality has stuck in the mind of the population. We should therefore start changing the minds of people with regards to this.
• Providing tax incentives for young entrepreneurs who provide employment to others. There are difficulties involved with business start ups and therefore the government should recognize this effort by giving the youth tax incentives. This has been done to Export Processing Zones (EPZs) to attract foreign direct investments. Local investments should also be considered important as this brings more stimulus to growth as there are no profit flights.
• Patenting of special business ideas created by the young people. This may reduce the chances of the ideas being stolen by other capable individuals or by corporations. Good ideas are known to have been submitted to “wrong” organizations which take advantage of the weak protection laws of ideas. These weak laws demoralize the young people with brilliant ideas who may opt to stay with the ideas for long until they are able to finance themselves. Developed countries are known to have proper laws protecting ideas created by its citizens and developing countries should follow suit.
  

These are only some of the things the government should take into consideration if it has to help the country become entrepreneurial. The effect of citizens creating job opportunities in the economy cannot be over emphasized and the government has to act fast to improve the livelihood of its citizens.

Doing Business but Suffering in Silence

According to the World Health Organisation, gender-based violence is a major public health and human rights problem throughout the world. Though the assault is carried on in the privacy of the home, the violation is widely seen as a "private" family affair, and for some - a normal part of life.

In Kenya, an estimated 49% of married women were physically abused by their husbands (Borwankar et. al, 2008). Though violence against women mainly occurs in the form of physical and sexual assault; it takes many forms including emotional abuse, verbal abuse, and economic abuse.

Economic abuse includes the controlling of finances; not allowing one's partner to venture into enterprise; taking a partner's money without her permission; denying access to, or knowledge of finances as well as using a partner's finances or credit for personal gain.

Socialisation of the girl child

Women entrepreneurs fall victim in part to economic abuse due to familial socialization from the time of birth. From a tender age, socialization which is the process of inheriting norms, customs and ideologies differentiates girls from boys. As boys grow up, they learn to be the head of their future homes as well as being the main (if not only) breadwinners. Girls in turn are socialized to be the home makers and caregivers.

In some settings, a girl’s day starts early. She wakes up to go fetch water and ensure breakfast is ready before she sets off to school. Her brother on the other hand has the luxury of sleeping in. Between the two, the chances of attaining higher grades are in favour of the boy. Then there is the practice of early marriage that dooms young women to lives where they never have the opportunity to actualise their aspirations.

Though education is one way in which women can emancipate themselves from the grip of the culture of male domination, the education system has only served to perpetuate the proposition that women should be more “arts” oriented than their science oriented brothers. Women are under-represented in tertiary institutions where they would have had the opportunity and facilities to hone their entrepreneurial skills. This in turn adversely affects their business growth potential.

McDowell and Pringle (1992) have argued that women are not only constantly defined in relation to men, but are defined as dependent and subordinate to them as well. This has been manifested in the low numbers of women entrepreneurs in “manly” sectors such as manufacturing. Women tend to operate micro service oriented enterprises with low possibilities for growth. The International Finance Corporation in Kenya has found that despite their potential, women-owned businesses which predominate in trade and service sectors, are smaller and less likely to grow.

And, all their early experiences and nurtured perceptions result in some established women entrepreneurs being disempowered when it comes to making independent decisions about how to spend their business profits as well as the direction for their businesses’ growth. Moreover, though many women empowerment programes focus on entrepreneurship development as a means to empower women, they neglect to design and implement ways to address gender based violence towards so-called “empowered” women.

WHO Controls The Purse Strings?

Then there is the issue of who actually “wears the trousers”, or has control of the household or business budget. Though single-motherhood and female headed households are becoming more common, these homes tend to be poorer than male headed homes.  According to the International Fund for Agriculture & Developmet (IFAD), the reasons are that female headed households tend to have a higher dependency ratio in spite of their smaller average size, and also have less access to resources.

An unfortunate trend has also been recognized where there is the self-perpetuating cycle of these women heads of household also causing their daughters to assume the same roles of unpaid house-help and caregivers, whilst their sons are urged to study so they can in future pull the family out of poverty.

Thus the question for development experts is: what is the use of trying to improve women’s livelihoods while such male dominating norms and perceptions continue to thrive?

Ending the silence

Through the emergence of micro-finance pioneered by Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, financial institutions and policy makers have come to acknowledge the challenges women entrepreneurs face, not least in accessing loans. However once credit is given, who is to say that the beneficiary can keep to the loan agreement if her partner insists on having if not a share then all of the money?

Lack of access to education and opportunity, and low status are correlated to violence against women. Long term socialisation and inaction has meant that many women do not seek help or report abuse when it occurs. Cultural norms, lack of awareness, community pressure and widespread insensitivity of officials have also contributed to the fact that the majority of women who are abused suffer in silence.

Though the educational system needs to take into consideration the inequalities of the girl child when they enroll in school, it is ultimately most vital that there is a committed move to strengthen policy and legal frameworks to recognize economic abuse and outlaw all forms of gender based violence.

Watch USAID Kenya Adressing Violence Against Women

African Leaders are saboteurs of development

By Lord Aikins Adusei

 

It is a waste of time to argue that there is anything remarkable or worth emulating about the brand of leadership that is seen in Africa. Throughout Africa not a single country has been able to deliver its people from poverty, malnutrition and diseases. Almost all countries in Africa South of the Sahara are facing deep poverty and that includes resource rich counties like Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Senegal, Gabon, Cameroon, Ghana, and even South Africa.

 

Everywhere in the world whenever the word Africa is mentioned four words come to mind: poverty, hunger, wars and diseases. Apart from Botswana where the leaders have relatively been able to use their resources to advance the development of their people, the rest of Africa is nothing but misery. Misery in sense that the average African is hardly able to live one-third of the comfort that a citizen of the global north (US, Canada and Europe) is able to enjoy in his/her lifetime. Apart from the corrupt politicians, dictators and their cronies who live in luxury, the rest of the population have to survive the harsh realities of the African economy on less than two dollars a day.

Why is black Africa so different? Any time the question of poverty is raised black African leaders are quick to point to colonialism and slavery. But it is a fact that the era in which everything is blamed on colonialism and slavery is past and gone. India, South Korea, Malaysia, Hong Kong were all colonised yet they have been able to shake themselves of what Dambisa Moyo terms the 'four apocalypse of hunger, disease, war and poverty'.

A visit to rural parts of Ghana shows that very little has changed economically since independence more than 50 years ago. In spite of the availability of tractors and other advanced farming technologies that can be employed to increase productivity, farmers in Ghana still cultivate and harvest their crops with cutlasses and hoes, tools their forefathers used before they were colonised. 

The situation in Niger, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Togo, Benin is not different from that of Ghana. The extreme poverty and deprivation in countries in the Horn of Africa region and Ethiopia in particular continue to baffle economists and development thinkers after so much aid money has been poured into that region to no avail as politicians divert aid money into their own private bank accounts.

Any major study about why Africa is so different from the rest of the world points to the kind of leadership that exists in Africa. The leaders in Africa love power and will do anything to get it: rigging elections, organizing thugs to cause mayhem and violence, refusing to step down when their term of office end. The likes are Mwai Kibaki of Kenya, Mamadou Tandja of Niger and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe who employed violence and intimidation against members of opposition parties after loosing elections.

The leaders love to be worshiped and served as kings even though they claim to be servants of the people. They love to live in fine palaces, drive in convoys, attend state functions, deliver long speeches yet do not raise a finger to fight poverty and deprivation that are so common in their countries. 

 

African politicians and traditional leaders and those in control of economic and political affairs are always interested in titles and the financial rewards that go with their office not the responsibilities attached to the office. Ghana's current President is a Law Professor but he seems to have no clue on how to move his country forward. He is surrounded by others with academic titles similar to his but the ministries, departments and the sectors they head have not changed since they took office earlier this year.

Malawi's president holds a doctorate degree but his country is no different from that of Togo, DRC or Gabon which are all being governed poorly by children of former dictators and thieves who took decades to mismanage their countries' economies and resources. Nigeria's current president has been titled "the first graduate president of Nigeria" but Nigeria with all its oil revenue and human resource is still deep in poverty, sometimes not even finding enough petrol to feed her economy despite being the biggest oil producer in Africa.

This contrasts the president of Brazil, Lula Da Silva who used to be a shoe shine boy and street vendor but is increasingly turning his country into an economic power house, thereby steering his country into economic independence and freedom . Where did Yar' Dua leave his thinking cap when he became president or what did he graduated from? I want to know because I still wonder why they are not applying what they learnt in school to free their countries from the international disgrace and weakness that have come to be associated with the continent. A poor Cuban seeking to leave her communist country said she "would be prepared to go anywhere except Africa". When asked why she said "how can I jump out of a frying pan into fire?". Meaning she cannot leave a bad situation in Cuba and get into a worse one in Africa.

In a conversation with a female Professor in Stockholm, Sweden about the poverty situation in Africa she asked angrily "well the leadership in Gabon claim to have used the huge oil revenue for infrastructure investment but is that the reality on the ground?" She continued, "Democratic Republic of Congo is a mess, Angola, Congo and Equatorial Guinea are an eyesore and as for Nigeria well I reserve my comment".

The monumental failures on the part of African leaders have given birth to the phrase 'Africa South of the Sahara' and the leaders seem to be happy with that phrase. Black African leaders have accepted the phrase with all the negative connotations it carries without reacting to challenge it. The phrase in its proper sense refers to a part of Africa which does not count in global politics; a toddler in everything important in the world, a backward part of the continent that continues to stand still while the rest of humanity is moving forward both technologically and scientifically. Africa whose people live in darkness despite 365 days of sunshine and availability of solar technology to convert the sunshine into solar energy.

It means Africa which is so poor in an economic, social and political sense  - despite being rich in natural resources and hard working people: an Africa which is so poorly governed, whose leaders are corrupt and lack the capacity to plan and to initiate any programme of development on their own without being told to do so or helped by outsiders.

Africa where infrastructure decay is a norm, where rural life is nothing but a condemnation to abject poverty, hopelessness, misery and frustration. 

Africa where ethnicity and tribalism are exploited by corrupt dictators and opportunists bringing a wave of negative tendencies of cronyism, nepotism, corruption and conflicts in its trail. 

Africa where politicians are happy to exploit the ignorance and illiteracy that have enslaved and prevented its people from taking their rightful place in the world community of continents.

Africa that has not learned anything from its colonial experience and whose leaders continue to dance to the tune of Western and Chinese rhythm to their own peril; Africa which can be and is being recolonised by China and its rival competitors in Europe and North America through their multinational corporations. (Have you heard of Africom)? 

Africa whose leaders can be bought by multinational corporations with some few thousand dollars and allow multinational corporations to plunder their resources without any accountability.

Africa which is both economically and politically fragmented, having no common foreign policy, and no economic, immigration and agricultural policies and whose leaders see no wisdom in unity and are without a mouth in world affairs.

 

Africa which is so militarily weak and technologically paralysed to defend itself against external forces, their ideologies, philosophies and cultural pollution.

Africa whose leadership are morally bankrupt to criticise one another. 

Africa whose leaders have great ideas about how to rig and win elections, kill journalists, stifle press freedom, freedom of speech and association but have not the slightest idea as to how to fight chronic poverty. 

Africa whose leaders prefer to steal from their countries and bank their loot in foreign countries instead of using the money to build roads, hospitals, railway tracks, irrigation facilities, schools, electricity, housing and other social and economic infrastructures for the development and benefit of their own people. 

Africa where natural resources are a curse rather than a blessing.

Africa where an illiterate soldier with a gun in hand can easily become a president of a country tomorrow. Examples are Yahyah Jammeh of Gambia, Moussa Camara of Guinea, Gaddafi of Libya, Joseph Kabila of DRC, Mamadou Tandja of Niger, Museveni of Uganda, Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz of Mauritania, Al Bashir of Sudan,Francois Bozize of Central African Republic, Jerry Rawlings of Ghana, Valentine Strasser of Sierra Leone, Sergeant Doe of Liberia, and Kolingba and Jean-Bedel Bokasa of Central African Republic.

 

Egypt a purely desert country and a member of 'Africa north of the Sahara' recently sent food aid to Uganda, a country rich in minerals, soil, natural lakes, rivers but whose leaders see no wisdom in employing irrigation technology that could be used to increase food production to reduce hunger.

Africa which continues to beg for and depend on foreign aid despite sitting on huge natural wealth an act that defies any economic wisdom. Africa which continues to depend heavily on natural resource exploitation as the main economic activity without diversification despite the dangers of such economic approach to development.

Africa where women are treated as second class citizens, denied political representation and are coerced and used as sex objects and commodities by those in power. 

Africa where child bearing is a matter of life and death, where pregnant mothers die of preventable causes of deaths; where so many children die before they reach the age of five; where child labour and child poverty are the norm, and where both rural and urban children grow without proper education, healthcare, food, shelter, clothing and without future or hope.

Africa where economic hardship put people on death roll and cut short young bright lives. Africa where there is no mortgage, safety net for the poor and the aged and where owning a house or a car can be as daunting as climbing Everest. That is the true meaning of 'Africa South of the Sahara' which the leaders have accepted without a fight.

Most of these leaders make an annual pilgrimage to London, Washington, Tokyo, Berlin, Beijing and see the infrastructures and the living standards of the people in these countries yet nothing pricks them to help their countries to do the same. When they are sick they are quick to take the next available plane to America, Europe or north Africa for treatment but forget to build the same hospitals and other institutions and infrastructures for the good of their countries. After blaming their monumental failures on colonialism and slavery they have now found a new scape goat: climate change and with it they can continue with their decades of inaction without having to lose anything.

Yoweri Museveni seems to be okay living in his palace enjoying almost three decades of his loot of Ugandan resources with his family and cronies. Obiang Nguema and his circle of friends live in their mansions surrounded by bodyguards yet the only 600, 000 people in his oil rich country live in 18th century conditions and likewise Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville and Dos Santos of Angola.

The black African leader will accept bribes from companies and interest groups to stop implementing policies, programmes and projects that could help alleviate poverty in his country. The failure of Omar Bongo of Gabon to make his country the Switzerland of Africa can largely be linked to the hundreds of millions of dollars he received as bribes from Elf which allowed the company to loot Gabon's oil proceeds.

It is sad despite being the continent's biggest oil exporter Nigeria does not have a well developed petro-chemical industry and has to import most of her oil products abroad. How come Cameroon is so poor when the country exports oil every day? How come Equatorial Guinea is so poor when it is the third biggest oil exporting nation in Africa?

How come Angola is mired in deep poverty when oil revenues bring the country billions of dollars annually? How come Nigerians live in 18th century environment when oil proceeds flow into the country every day? The answer is the leaders. They are corrupt, power hungry, arrogant, ignorant, illiterate and visionless buffoons, who can neither think out of the box or understand what it means to be president, prime minister, senator, MP, councillor, Assemblyman, or a chief and who prey on the ignorance and powerlessness of their people to stay in power while amassing wealth at the expense of their countries. Chief among them is Yahyah Jammeh a murderer, blood sucker, sometimes a president, sometimes HIV/AIDS healer who makes a mockery of himself and the seat of the presidency in The Gambia and who like the rest of his colleagues in Guinea, Guinea Bissau, CAR, Ethiopia, Burkina Fasso, Niger, Mauritania and Ivory Coast cannot devise plans to steer their countries out of economic predicament.

They are what Ghanaians call 'Konongo kaya' which literally means saboteurs who will not raise a finger to do anything to help their countries and yet will not allow others to do it. Saboteurs whose continuous stay in power is the cause of Africa's woes and underdevelopment. If you happen to be in economic or business class and economic or development regions is discussed you will be surprised to know how Africa is bypassed several times even though it is strategically located at the centre of the globe. The discussion moves from North America to Europe to South East Asia then back to Latin America and to the Middle East without the mention of Africa. All these the leaders do not seem to worry about it. They are not bothered because they no know they are the cause, the saboteurs and enimies of Africa's development.

Black African leaders must put on their thinking caps. It is very disheartening to see women, and children die of starvation in many parts of Africa. At least we know these leaders don't care but at least they should give the people the chance they need to initiate their own development. I hope that some of the advice I have offered will be adhered to by the leaders so that Africa can also take her rightful position in the world community of nations.

Umuro Wario’s reinstatement at Kenya’s Youth Fund is a victory for public officers committed to fighting corruption

The government’s decision to reinstate Mr. Umuro Wario to continue serving as the Chief Executive Officer of the Youth Enterprise Development Fund should be highly lauded. It’s a point of victory for public officers who risk their jobs by committing themselves to fight corruption.

Kenya’s biggest problem with the war against corruption has always been having the corrupt have their day whenever they fight back. This has happened to so many competent people before. A number of committed and hardworking officers have often lost their jobs whenever they showed determination to fight graft. A few years back it was confirmed that in Kenya, corruption fights back. It happened to Goldenberg whistle blower David Munyakei who lost his job and died in agony after he revealed how Kenyans had lost billions of shillings through the Goldenberg scandal. The same nature of machinations worked so hard to remove true anti corruption crusaders from transparency international. It was such kind of behind the scene political games by some board members that two very competent CEO’s Mwalimu Mati and Gladwell Otieno were consecutively removed from TI Kenya. Transparency International is just one example among many where officers committed to sincerity end up losing their jobs because of the greed and immorality of some of the board members of those institutions.

The minister in charge must be lauded for taking a bold action and making the truth carry its day by re appointing Mr. Wario. The minister has shown that if we all work for the truth, the just will always get justice too.

The initial sacking of Mr. Wario was like condemning those who fight corruption within the institutions where they work. This is because the ground of dismissal was based on the fact that he didn’t cooperate in the approval of some questionable deals pushed by the board. He must be lauded for standing strong in the interest of Kenyan youth when he refused to approve a ‘loan’ of ksh.300million to a Canadian NGO. Its noticeable that some politically connected board members wanted to use their political influence to blackmail the CEO into approving projects that mattered to their own selfish interests and not in the interest of the Kenyan youth.

It’s important that the minister was able to rescind her own earlier move of sacking the YEDF CEO after finding out the truth.

As the minister appoints new board members it’s important to ensure that new faces are put on the board to make the YEDF operate without any external coercion from various political interests as it has been before. The minister should now move to ensure that the board is fully reconstituted to include people who will work in the interest of the Kenyan youth and not those who will end up arm-twisting the CEO to give’ loans’ to foreign NGOs. A new board I believe will come up with a new way of implementing the youth projects and also oversee the funding of the youth groups by merit and not through political manipulations.

Wario is one of the competent young people who are emerging in providing leadership in different sectors of our economy and it’s wrong for individuals to use tribalism or any other form of bigotry to sabotage such talents. He is also is famed for having rolled out the audit of the Kenya’s free primary education when he worked for the ministry of education.

I really wish that other ministers and government officials emulate the youth and sports minister Prof. Hellen Sambili and stand and support the truth always whenever circumstances of this nature arise. Through this, we shall achieve a lot in our war against nepotism and all other forms of corruption. It must be fought from all corners and sacking public officers who help fight it is not one of the methods of ridding our society of graft.

FWAMBA NC FWAMBA

Slum Safari’s: Tourists pay for the squalor and stench of poverty, not development

There was uproar on twitter this morning regarding Kibera Tours, a website advertising slum tours in Africa’s largest slum. Indeed Kibera Tours is not the first nor will it be the last outfit trying to make money out of poverty. Tourists seeking such experiences can go to Dharavi in Mumbai - the biggest slum in Asia, the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, South Africa’s townships or even Mexico City’s garbage dumps.

Such escapades have been made even more popular by celebrities who sometime go by the title “Ambassadors” such as Angelina Jolie and Chris Rock, who after a tour of the ramshackle huts, having had to hold their breath while passing the open sewers, ducking the flying toilets while walking the narrow footpaths and in front of a trash heap, maybe surrounded by big bellied snot nosed children, express outrage at the poverty and make impassioned pleas for more money to assist the people. Even the Oscar award winning movie Slumdog Millionaire put comedy into the scenario.

The ironic thing is that Kibera has the most number of NGOs, INGOs, CSOs, FBOs, CBOs, students on their gap year or whatever name they go by per square foot compared to the rest of Kenya. Yet, poverty persists, maybe a prime example of the economic law of diminishing returns.

Recently at Yipe.org we met a youth group from Kibera who told us they were into “eco tourism”. When we delved into their enterprise further, there was nothing eco friendly about their business. It was slum tourism pure and simple. However the lead entrepreneur was un-phased and said why care what it’s called or what it’s about when you make US$ 20 on a bad day! – this in a place where the majority live on less than US$ 2 per day.

Reading the customer testimonials on the Kibera Tour website makes one wonder whether the inhabitants have been dehumanised. Among the customer reviews posted on the site a few stood out:

“This is what our guests said after joining about our tour, our organisation and about Kibera: ‘It feels safe’ … ‘Very interesting to see. Unique experience! Friendly people! Solidarity and happiness. Impressive!’ … ‘Impressive to see how strong the people are’ … ‘I thought first it was very dangerous, but now I think every one was friendly and helping each other'….” And the list goes on …

So what is on display: the people or the slum environment?

The reviews above teeter dangerously close to the environmental determinism movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that got away with saying things such as people that live in the tropics are lazy, slothful and riddled with venereal diseases amongst other slurs. To objectify the “people” of Kibera in such a way is even worse because they don’t receive the cash for the tours; the tour companies do.

Further, objectification of the people comes on the advice posted on the Kibera Tours site to the tourists:

“Please don't hand out anything during the tour. So don't hand out money, sweets, pens, balloons and so on. This can create chaos and quickly may establish the assumption that tourists equal gifts”.

So, how come slum tourism seems to be the hottest business idea around, judging by the number of people involved? Well, it’s really simple. For an entrepreneur seeking to venture into such an industry the entry barriers are low; so low they are almost negligible. Kibera is an informal settlement which means it officially doesn’t exist. The sprawling slum has a reputation of being dangerous, so even police or local authority presence is low – so you can pretty much do anything without too much interference.

The startup costs are also minimal – the slum is already there and with rural-urban migration it continues to grow. No need to invest in infrastructure on that score. The “people” are also there for the tourist’s viewing, and with high fertility rates coupled with high unemployment levels (which would otherwise take them out of the slum) the total package is there.

What about attracting customers? With internet access getting cheaper one can within no time set up a slum-safari site and get interest from eager do-gooders from afar. Without much government regulation the dollars, yen, euros or whatever other currency goes direct into your pockets. In fact you don’t even need to share it with the “people”.

Demand is also inelastic, it would take a great calamity for a do-gooder’s heart to change (demand) and poverty (supply) will remain and even grow – making a perfect equilibrium point. Finally there are no sunk costs; indeed it is in the interests of such entrepreneurs that the slum stays just the way it is. Slum upgrading initiatives are thus the only threat for the business. Tourists won’t pay to tour high rise concrete apartments equipped with basic living facilities even if the people living there are the “people”. Tourists pay for the squalor and the stench of impoverishment, not development – that they do by donating money to aid agencies.

But what to do when even the larger travel companies are joining the fray? Victoria Safari’s which operates throughout East Africa has a package called “Africa Slums Tours” calling it “pro poor tourism”. From it's website pro poor tourism is described:

“the concept of pro poor tourism in Africa is not new as it has been and is being practiced in South Africa. Soweto and Shanty tours in Johannesburg and Cape Town respectively are not new tours but have been ongoing slum safaris that are changing the face of South Africa's Slum areas. Kibera Slum dwellers in Nairobi - Kenya are gradually beginning to reap the benefits of Kibera Slum Tours just as other Kenya Slums dwellers, courtesy of Victoria Safaris.”

If slum dwellers have been benefiting then wouldn’t that mean there would be no more slums to visit? Besides that, there is also the worrying aspect of the logo of Eco Tourism Kenya at the bottom of the Africa Slums Tours web page. Ecotourism Kenya is a civil society organization that was founded in 1996 to promote ecotourism and sustainable tourism practices in Kenya. Is slum tourism then sustainable tourism?

So will slum tourism continue to thrive? Of course as long as the barriers to entry remain low, and the government does its best to do nothing to uplift the lives of the millions of Kenyans living in informal settlements. And it is doing that job very well!

Switzerland: A Parasite Feeding on Poor African and Third World Countries?

For more than half a century the Alpine nation of Switzerland has built a reputation as the world´s centre for tax evasion, fraud accounting, money laundering, racketeering, save haven and above all a staunch ally of corrupt third world leaders and a great beneficiary of third world corruption. For more than 70 years various categories of persons including Popes, presidents, prime ministers, corrupt dictators, wealthy business men, and drug dealers have all used and benefited from the banking secrecy laws of Switzerland. As a result her economy has been described in various terms as underground economy, deposit box for dirty money and dirt-driven economy.

Over the last couple of years countries such as United States, Germany and France have argued that they have become victims of Swiss illegal financial activities and as result have stepped up their campaign to get Swiss authorities to cooperate in fighting tax evasion and money laundering. The campaign has even brought a row between the German Finance Minister and members of Swiss parliament. These nations claim they are loosing billions of dollars annually through tax evasion and other illegal financial activities. In 2009 a action by the US Justice Department against the Swiss Banking giant UBS earned the United States close to $1 billion. In 2001, the United States learnt that the Swiss had protected the bank that handled finances for Osama Bin Laden. One of them, the Bahrain International Bank, had funds transiting through non-published accounts of Clearstream, which has been qualified as a "bank of banks" and was involved in one of Luxembourg's major financial scandals.

Western governments have argued that dirty money in many forms welcomed by the Switzerland allows the proceeds of corruption, drug trafficking, racketeering and terrorism to tag alongside and deny the world´s poor the chance to escape poverty. Swiss banks are reputed to be holding an estimated 35% of the world's private and institutional funds (or 3 trillion Swiss francs)".

However, of all the victims of Swiss banking secrecy laws and her shady banking practices, developing countries and Africa in particular seem to have suffered the most. The global infrastructure of international financial secrecy with headquarters in Switzerland has helped bleed trillions of dollars in illicitly generated money out of Africa and the rest of the developing world. The activities of Swiss banking institutions and real estate companies have plunged third world nations into debts, poverty, misery, malnutrition, diseases, economic meltdown, infrastructure decay and political instabilities through the help they give to corrupt politicians, civil servants, the business elite and corrupt multinational corporations who collude and connive with the corrupt entities to loot and hide the proceeds of their ill-gotton gains.

Many third world countries especially those in Africa lack the infrastructures needed to run successful economies. They lack schools, hospitals, roads, harbours, rail infrastructure, irrigation facilities, electricity, clean water, telecommunication, sanitation facilities because of the loots. Many children are orphaned and malnourished and many do not have access to education and healthcare because money meant for all that are stolen and are sitting in Swiss banks such UBS, Credit Suisse. There has not been a single corrupt politician or dictator in Africa, Latin America and Asia who has not had dealings with this secretive alpine country. While third world countries continue to struggle to provide the basic necessities of life Swiss economy is washed with money could save millions from hunger, starvation and diseases.

Every year since the year 2000 developing countries receive about $100-billion in aid annually from rich countries with about $10-billion going to Africa but these rich countries headed by Switzerland receive about $900- billion from these poor countries ($150-billion from Africa) in the form of tax evasion, embezzlement, fraud accounting debt servicing and corruption. The World Bank´s Stolen Asset Recovery initiative estimates the cross-border flow of proceeds from criminal activities, corruption and tax evasion at between $1 trillion and $1.6 trillion per year, about half of which come from developing and transitional economies.

Global Financial Integrity agrees with World Bank and says, "$900-billion is secreted each year from underdeveloped economies, with an estimated $11.5 trillion currently stashed in havens. More than one quarter of these hubs belong to the UK, while Switzerland washes one-third of global capital flight".

The Africa Union says 25 percent of the GDP of African States is lost to corruption every year amounting to more than $150-billion a year. The negative impact of that has been increasing the cost of goods by as much as 20%, deterring investment, holding back development and preventing the people from escaping poverty. The fact as pointed out by GFI is that most of the money that denies poor countries the chance to escape poverty sits in Swiss Banks.

Over the last couple of years a number of Swiss banks have been accused of accepting money from dictators like Sani Abacha, Mobutu, Lansana Conte, Gnassingbe Eyadema, Arap Moi, Omar Bongo, Obiang Nguema, Blaise Campore, Denis Sassou Nguesso, Eduardo dos Santos, Sadam Hussein, Ferdinand Marcos, Baby Doc Duvalier, Hosni Mubarak, Yoweri Museveni, Augusto Pinochet, Gaddafi and the evil genius Ibrahim Babangida without questioning the source of their wealth.

For example Swiss economy was the main recipient and beneficiary of Sani Abacha´s $5-billion embezzlement of Nigeria´s oil money. When it was discovered that Abacha used the crook banks in this country to steal the money, Switzerland wanted to distance herself from the criminal enterprise run by her banks and benefited by her economy and her citizens. But in the end she had no choice but to repatriate over $700-million to the government of Nigeria after five years of foot dragging. The banks in Switzerland that aided, abetted and provided shelter for Abacha´s stolen money were UBS AG, Zurich; UBS AG, Geneva; Union Bancaire Privee, Geneva; Credit Suisse, Zurich ; Bank Len, Zurich; Banque Barring Brothers, Geneva; Goldman Sachs and Company, Zurich; Gothard Bank, Geneva; Citibank Zurich; Banque Nationale De Paris, Basle; FIBI Bank (Schweiz) A. G. Zurich. Only heaven knows how much of Abacha´s loot still remain in these countries.

Again the Arab daily newspapers Asharq Al-Awsat and Al-Hayat reported that former Prime Minister Dr. Iyad Allawi told them in interviews that Saddam Hussein admitted he invested stolen Iraqi money which the Iraqi Governing Council estimated at $40 billion in Switzerland, Japan and Germany, among others, under fictitious company names. Directors of those shell companies would deposit 5% in company bank accounts, and the money was effectively laundered. Swiss and French lawyers did the paperwork.

One million Iraqis died during the oil for food programme while money that could have saved them was accepted by Swiss Banks and their corrupt counterparts in Japan and Germany.

Also after 18 years of legal wrangling Switzerland agreed to let the people of Philippines receive the $700m looted by Ferdinand Marcos and kept by her crook banks. Switzerland kept $700m while children were starving to death and hospitals were closing down for lack of medicines and electricity.

Furthermore, between August 2001 and 2004, Peru recovered nearly over $180 million stolen by her former spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos from several jurisdictions including Switzerland, Cayman Islands and the United States.

In May 2007, an agreement between the governments of the United States, Switzerland and Kazakhstan allowed for the repatriation of $84 million denied the people for many years. Again it took Switzerland 12 years to return $74m of the $110m stolen by Raul Salinas to the government of Mexico. Switzerland still has in her possession the money looted by the dictator ´Baby Doc´ Duvalier 24 years after he was chased away by the poor people of Haiti.

Additionally, when Mobutu died in 1997 Swiss newspapers reported that the country may be home to at least $5-billion of Mobutu´s stolen assets. The report was also confirmed by CNN World News in September, 1997. The whole world was shocked when Swiss authorities announced that Mobutu´s stolen assets in the country totalled something just under $8m and this was after they had sold his villa for $2-million. The shock sent a chill down the spine of DR. Congo´s president. He has still not recovered and has refused to show any interest in pursuing the money.

In recent years Switzerland has repatriated some of the money her banks criminally accepted at the expense of poor nations and Swiss political leadership is using it to score cheap political point instead of being ashamed of it. Mali has received just $2.5millions out of the estimated $5-billion deposited in that country by Mali´s corrupt political leaders among them former dictator Moussa Traore. Argentina has also received $4.5million from a bribery case.

It is believed that most of the $2 billion stolen by ex- President Arap Moi's family is stashed in Switzerland and her sister countries in the Alpine region. In 2003, investigation by the international risk consultancy firm Kroll on behalf of government of Kenya into allegations of corruption on the part of Arap Moi's government revealed a trail of corrupt practices by Arap Moi, his children, members of his government and their associates with most of their 24 years of ill-gotten hiding in Switzerland, Britain, Luxembourg and the Caribbean. Credit Suisse - Zurich and Citibank- Geneva came up several times as the bank where where most of the loots are being kept. "During the beginning of December 2003, Philip Moi made his move through Zara. She left the country for Italy, from where she visited Leichtenstein and Lugano located inside the Swiss canton of Tieino. It is believed that Tieino, though a remote area, consists of over 100 banks. Zara/Rosanna Moi, Philips Italian wife, estimates Philip's worth to be USD750 million." Source: Kroll Report, 2003. http://wikileaks.org/wiki/KTM_report#Target_3

Switzerland has mounted fierce campaign to portray herself as a clean, responsible country. "A senior Swiss diplomat says Switzerland no longer deserve its reputation as a save haven for the ill-gotten gains of corrupt dictators. Speaking in Geneva Ambassador Paul Seger said the government had returned $1.6 billion (SFr1.9 billion) of stolen funds in recent years" but also admitted that "incidents such as the Marcos, Abacha or Montesinos affairs reinforce the international perception that there are still more assets to be returned". Source: Swissinfo.ch.

The fact is that Switzerland has not been able to convince anyone that they still do not hold money for Omar Bongo, Lansana Conte, Obiang Nguemaa, Denis Sassou Nguesso, Eduardo dos Santos, Blaise Campore, Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak, Arap Moi, Gnassingbe Eyadema, Ibrahim Babaginda, Jerry Rawling all of them corrupt dictators with little to show for the billions of dollars that they received from the sale of oil, gas, gold, diamond, timber and other resources.

During the trial of the disgraced Elf executives, they claimed that they paid Omar Bongo $50 million a year for concession rights in his oil rich but economically impoverished country.The executives claimed the millions of dollars were transferred into Bongo's Swiss bank accounts. But we have not heard any comment from Switzerland regarding that money and now that Bongo is dead there is no doubt that what Democratic Republic of Congo went through will be the fate for Gabon should they make any attempt to retrieve the money. It is a common knowledge that the late Omar Bongo of Gabon, Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo, Dos Santos of Angola, Obiang Nguema of E. Guinea like their old friends (Abacha, Mobutu and Conte) have billions of dollars stashed in Swiss Banks.

Where Swiss leaders do not get it is that their past and present actions have led millions of people who could have lived to die of poverty, malnutrition, starvation and diseases. Whereas more than 800 million Indians live in poverty and in squalor, with little access to education, health, water and sanitation, the BJP party estimated during the May 2009 election campaign that the nation has lost close to $1.4 trillion most of it stashed in foreign banks notably in Switzerland.

In 2007 Swiss federal prosecutors abandoned an investigation into suspected money laundering involving the former prime minister of Madagascar. As a result a Swiss bank will refund SFr2.8 million ($2.3 million) to Tantely Andrianarivo, a move that has "disappointed and shocked" the Madagascan government, which has demanded the money back" to be used to help millions of people languishing in poverty. Source: Swissinfo.ch.

There are a good number of experts who still believe Switzerland deserves her reputation. Richard Murphy, director of Tax Research LLP says: "The idea that Switzerland has a clean economy is a joke; it is a dirt-driven economy". Her economy is dirt-driven because her financial institutions (a vital sector of her economy) have been implicated in a number of corruption scandals involving corrupt third world leaders and their associates. In fact Switzerland can best be described as economic vampire, parasite and predator feeding on the economies of poor third world countries. The Swiss Bankers Association claims that four-fifths of the nation supports banking secrecy laws. This law is the foundation of all the corruption, embezzlement, tax evasions and all the criminal enterprises that we see in the world.

The sad thing about this parasitic behaviour is that it is supported by almost all the citizens of that country. The Swiss Bankers Association claims that four-fifths of the nation supports banking secrecy, revealing a society deeply embedded in a culture of impunity and exploitation, where the licit acts as a shield protecting the illicit in a terribly respectable manner.

But Switzerland has had it both ways with her hypocrisy and double standards. Her politicians condemn corruption in Africa and the third world while her banks make fortunes off that corruption. She claims to be a champion of democracy and development but the actions of her banks and companies like SGS, UBS have proven other wise. If there is any justice in the world her banking executives should have been put on trial by the International Criminal Court for crime against humanity because there is no difference between those who use guns to kill and those who kill millions by accepting to hide money that could be used to save them from hunger, starvation, malnutrition, diseases and provide them with medicines, water, shelter, schools and electricity?

The cost of Switzerland's collusion and connivance with the corrupt entities in Africa and the third world fall primarily on the poor people in those poor countries who are denied every opportunity to escape poverty. Many live in squalor with no access to health and sanitation facilities, water, electricity, housing and even food. Over one million people in those poor countries die of malaria, 90% of them from Africa with most of the victims being children. Millions of others also die from starvation, hunger, malnutrition, polio, mizzles, tuberculosis and six killer diseases. The crime of those who die and those who continue to suffer is that they happen to have corrupt incompetent leaders and a counterpart in Europe who is ready to protect their looted funds.

As monies meant for development are stolen and stashed in Swiss Banks, the poor are left on their own to fend for themselves with aid agencies being left to pick the pieces with them. Millions have died, millions are starving and many more are suffering as a result of the role played by Swiss banks, real estate agencies and other companies. In this 21st century such suffering cannot go on forever. Switzerland cannot continue to be a willful accomplice in crimes involving the death of millions of children and women.

It is therefore time for Switzerland to act as a responsible member of the global community,tear down her banking secrecy laws and her corrupt financial infrastructures that are responsible for the deaths. It is time for Switzerland to stop her banks from accepting looted funds from Africa and the third world that make so many face starvation, hunger and death. The banks must be called to order and should be tasked to employ due deligence in dealing with their clients especially the dictators and their associates from Africa and the third world. Finally, it is time for Switzerland to turn words of fighting corruption into action and deeds and repatriate all the stolen money to its rightful owners and stop parasiting on poor African and third world countries so they can also have the opportunity to escape poverty like most citizens of Switzerland have.

By Lord Aikins Adusei

Political Activist and Anti-Corruption Campaigner. He blogs at www.ghanapundit.blogspot.com