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

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.

By Lord Aikins Adusei

Gaddafi is a traitor, a betrayal of the Africa Union and the Africa course

Like the rest of his colleagues in Gabon, Congo and Angola who have sold their birth rights, dignity and sovereignty to multinational corporation for dollars, Gaddafi has signed a land mark deal with Italy that will allow Libya to receive 5 billion dollars in investments from Italy over the next 25 years. For his part Gaddafi will arrest every African who tries to reach Italy by boat to seek greener pasture despite Gaddafi and his friends making life unbearable for the ordinary African.

In an act that resembles African traditional leaders selling their subjects to Europeans as slaves Gaddafi did not only agree to arrest Africans who want to cross the Mediterranean into Europe, he has also agreed to accept those arrested by Italy. His agreement with Italy is an indication that he is only seeking his selfish interest and is using the Africa Union for his own personal aggrandisement.

How on earth can the Chairman of Africa Union arrest people that he is suppose to protect on the orders of colonial power? If he is not a traitor then what is he? So far over thousand Africans have been arrested by Italian authorities and deported to Italy and we still do not know what has happened to them whether they have been released, deported or are in the notorious Libyan gulags.

He has shown that like his corrupt cohorts in Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Uganda, Congo, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and Zimbabwe he is much more interested in money that human life. He has shown that he cannot be trusted as an African. He is the modern day slave collaborator, modern day slave guide who will guide the slave raider to where their unsuspecting victims live. Gaddafi who is a lifelong dictator should not have been made Chairman of AU in the first place. How can a dictator be made a chairman of a body as important as the AU? How can a person who oppresses his own people and denies them freedom of speech, association be made Chairman of a whole continent? I do not blame him. I blame the people of Libya who have tolerated his misguided government for quite so long.

While he and his corrupt friends in Africa are making life miserable for the ordinary African he is busy signing deals with European colonialists to arrest and maltreat the very people he and cabal of blood suckers, vampires and saboteurs have denied any hope of development and future. He does not deserve to be AU Chairman and should be shunned by the leaders who believe in defending Africa, its people and their interest. He should be shunned like he was shunned by the Arabs. He is a traitor, inward looking collaborator who does not deserve to have any role in the Africa or have any association with AU whatsoever.

He can go ahead and arrest Africans to please his colonial masters in Europe. He can go ahead and let his colonial masters rape his country of its oil wealth while he continues to preside over a poor, disunited and fragmented continent as a Chairman.

For now at least he does not represent me, or my country and I know he does not represent Africa or its people. He represents himself, his corrupt friends who make up the toothless AU.

By Lord Adusei

Africa Yes We Can but only If We are United

“We cannot be kept into a limited space by African leaders who are holding on to petty little states” President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal.

For decades the dream of an African continent united under one leadership, one government with a prosperous people with shared values, shared interest, common citizenship and with a common destiny and taking their place in the world community of nations has alluded the leadership in Africa. On the 12th of February 2009 Senegal President Abdoulaye Wade is quoted as saying “the United States of Africa will be proclaimed in 2017, to allow for the time needed to work out the different African institutions," Source:Pan-African News Agency, 12th of February 2009.

If realized as mentioned it will be a milestone for many who want to see a united Africa with a common foreign, trade, agricultural, environment, immigration and economic policies. There are many skeptics who doubt Africa's ability to achieve unity but I strongly believe it is possible to achieve unity if we work together. Unity in Africa is achievable if we eschew the bickerings and the misunderstandings that characterized earlier effort to unite.

African leaders must first and foremost recognize that unity in Africa is in our best interest and the only option we have if we want to attain peace, stability and economic development in Africa. Must recognize that we can only make progress if North, South, East, Central and West Africa come together as one, act together as one and speak with one voice. Unity is the only key to our success. We can only make progress if we dismantle the artificial boundaries that have divided our peoples for quite too long. We can never develop if we continue to hold on to the artificial colonial divisions that divided tribes, peoples and regions without into consideration the needs of the people. We must unite as one people if we are to ensure the future survival of our continent. We can only guarantee the rights of our children and their children’s children to be the owners of our great continent if we take steps to unite our countries.

There can never be peace and development if we are not united. Africans must remember that it was our disunity in the past that enabled Europe to exploit our continent for centuries and even today it is being exploited by the so called super powers to our own disadvantage. We have had our people carried into slavery, we have had our resources looted by foreigners, we have had our countries invaded, and even today we are under siege from foreign powers and their corporations who are raping the continent of its valuable resources for their own selfish gains. We are helpless because we are fragmented. We are helpless because we cannot speak with one voice. We are helpless because we are disunited. We cannot act together to bring peace to Somalia,Sudan and DR. Congo because some of our leaders with the connivance of foreign defence companies and contractors are benefiting from those conflicts.

If Africa is going to make it then the leaders must act together as one, eschew their personal interests and put the needs of the continent first.

Julius Nyerere in an interview about Africa’s unity said this:

“Kwame Nkrumah and I were committed to the idea of unity. African leaders and heads of state did not take Kwame seriously. However, I did. I did not believe in these small little nations. Still today I do not believe in them. I tell our people to look at the European Union, at these people who ruled us who are now uniting. Kwame and I met in 1963 and discussed African Unity. We differed on how to achieve a United States of Africa. But we both agreed on a United States of Africa as necessary... After independence the wider African community became clear to me. I was concerned about education; the work of Booker TWashington resonated with me. There were skills we needed and black people outside Africa had them. I gave our USAmbassador the specific job of recruiting skilled Africans from the US Diaspora. A few came, like you. Some stayed; others left. We should try to revive it. We should look to our brothers and sisters in the West. We should build the broader Pan-Africanism. There is still the room – and the need” — Julius Nyerere interviewed by Ikaweba Bunting, The Heart of Africa, New Internationalist Magazine, Issue 309, January-February 1999.

Fearful of what Africa could achieve if united, Europe led by France one of the beneficiaries of Africa disunity is proposing what they term ‘Mediterranean Union’ an association that encompasses all nations bordering the Mediterranean Sea including the five north African countries, a move largely seen as an attempt by Europeans to weaken Africa’s effort to unite. This is the divide and rule policies of Europe that has ensured that continental Africa never gets united to do things central to their own people. We must fight this divide and rule policies if we are ever going to make it as a continent and as a people. Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt can never be called Europe and will never be accepted as Europeans no matter what Nicolas Sarkozy says and the earlier the leaders in North Africa realise it the better. We must resist and fight every attempt to weaken and destroy our effort to unite.

“The Mediterranean Union project is also rife with hidden agendas, including the promotion of French national interests, while ignoring some of the biggest dangers in the former European colonies in West Asia and Africa… France’s real motive, though, is to establish a French southern sphere of influence to counter Germany’s dominant position in central and Eastern Europe”.--www.livemint.com, Fri, 1 Aug 2008.

The secrecy and the hidden agenda of the Mediterranean Union project was rightly noted by President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal:

“But of course there are other obvious goals behind the Union for the Mediterranean initiative like Algeria's oil and gas and Libyan oil,".

Today Europe is moving forward with political and economic integration while it is making effort to weaken Africa with the hope that a weakened, fragmented and disunited Africa will make it possible for the resources of these countries to be exploited and looted as is currently going on in Nigeria, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, DRC, Angola, Congo where American and European multinational corporations are paying close to nothing for the resources they take.

Leaders in Africa who are dragging their feet and only interested in the sovereignty of their insignificant countries must recognise that a united Africa is in their best interest and those of their children and their children’s children.They may be less concerned and not interested in Africa unity because they may be enjoying power in their respective countries but how can they guarantee the future of their own countries, the future of their children and their children's children when they are weak economically and continue to rely on foreign aid for the survival of their governments?

I believe President Abdoulaye Wade was right when he said: “We cannot be kept into a limited space by African leaders who are holding on to petty little states”. By any margin each of the countries in Africa is weak politically, economically and militarily to stand on its own and it is only by uniting and integrating our economies that we can stand on our feet and be recognized as people. We must not hold on to our small, weak and powerless states in the name of sovereignty, we must unite for the good of Africa and its people.

"Sovereignty also masks the weakness of Africans at a time when other people have pooled political power in vast territories like China, India,Brazil, Russia and the United States of America. The very colonial countries that were the "foreigners" against whom independent African states wished to protect their sovereignty are themselves building the European Union as a bigger source of power in the global arena”--http://allafrica.com/stories/200908061022.html, 6 August 2009. Where as there is common sense as why Europe is uniting, there is no common sense as why Africans who are weak in every sense of the word are not uniting. If the powerful are uniting definitely, the weak must be uniting too.

We must achieve unity at all cost. There are many in East and South Africa that favour United States of Africa through the regional groupings whereas those in the North and West favour a more rapid integration. We can not allow this to delay and detract our effort to unite. Therefore I suggest we allow our diplomats, intellectuals to dialogue and negotiate as which approach suits us best but the 2017 deadline must be met.

We stand to gain if we are united. Unity has the added advantage of defeating the wars that continue to ravage many parts of the continent. It has the advantage of helping us to pool resources together to tackle the many challenges facing the continent. Unity will end the disputes between Nigeria and Cameroon regarding the ownership of the Bakasi Peninsula. It will end the near escalated tension between Kenya and Uganda that we saw this year over the Migingo island in Lake Victoria that pitted Uganda against Kenya. Unity will end the 9 km stretch of land in Yumbe that has brought dispute between Uganda and Sudan, it will end the Katuna border area dispute between Rwanda and the Mutukula border area with Tanzania. If we are united as one people and as one country there will be no need for the many border disputes including the one between Morocco, Algeria and Western Sahara. Unity will make it unnecessary for Uganda and Rwanda to cross several times into DR. Congo to take resources for the development of their countries. Unity will enable us to speak with voice. Deal with Europe, America, China and India through the government that will represent all of us. We can harness the resources in Africa for the good of all us so that Niger, Mali, Rwanda and other resource poor countries will not to go to war before having access to resources that they need.

Hutus, Tutsis and other tribes in the Great Lake region will not have to fight each other for control of land and resources since they will not be bound by space. They can come to Ghana live anywhere, farm and enjoy their live. That is what unity can bring us.

To make the unity of Africa possible we must stop thinking in terms of Anglophone, Francophone and Arabs or Mediterraneans. We must think as Africans not as French or English or German or Dutch, Spanish or Portuguese, or Arabic speakers. There can never be a United States of Africa so far as we are divided into Anglophone, Francophone and whatever. These divisions and categorisations only serve France and Britain’s interest not us. Unity must be achieved at all cost. There is no doubt that there are differences in languages, religion and traditional or cultural practices among our peoples but that should not be a source of division, wars and hatred but rather they must be a source of inspiration that drive us together.

These categorisations have been exploited by those who want to see Africans poor. Those who for centuries manipulated us, exploited our resources, imprisoned our leaders, overthrew our governments and assassinated our leaders still want to control us. If we do not unite against the external forces bent on seeing us weak and fragmented then we have ourselves to blame. "Together we stand, together we fall" that should be our motto. We are all Africans and Africa is our home and we must all work to make it good for ourselves, for our children and for our children’s children. The people of Southern Sudan, Northern Sudan, and Darfur must see themselves as Africans not as Southerners, Northerners or Darfurians. Those categorisations only serve the interest of those who want the wars to continue so they can exploit our resources while we are busy fighting. We must know that there is no Nigeria but Africa; there is no Egypt or Algeria, Libya or Sudan or Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa but Africa. If we think as Africans and work together we can accomplish a lot for our peoples.

This is why we must make the United States of Africa a reality by the 2017 deadline. It is important that some countries make economic and political sacrifices if we are to get there. South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Senegal, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Kenya, DRC, Botswana, Ghana, Uganda and Tanzania, Zambia must make political commitment to bring peace and stability in Africa. The unity of Africa depends on the cooperation of these countries.

Individually we cannot deal with the United States, the European Union, Russia or China, we cannot because we do not have the strength to act and bring pressure to bear. If we want to make our influence felt as the world’s natural resource power house then we must unite and speak with one voice, unite and have one foreign policy, unite and have one economic policy, unite and have one agricultural policy, unite and have one trade policy.

Currently at the United Nations there are more countries from Africa than from Europe and North America combined yet we do not have any say on what goes on in there because we are not united, we do not speak with one voice.

China which is just one country makes a lot of impact at the United Nations than all the over 50+ countries from Africa. If we want to change this unfavourable balance of power then we have no option than to unite.

There are many challenges such as the huge size of the continent, the high level of illiteracy, wide infrastructural gaps, poverty, differences in language but all these can be solved if we commit our hearts to it.

Yes we can but only if we are united.

By Lord Aikins Adusei

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 Damisa 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 and 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 exist 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 worshipped 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 steep 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 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 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 learnt 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, have 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. It symbolizes Africa where natural resources are a curse rather than a blessing.

It implies 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, François 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.

The phrase also signifies Africa which continues to beg for and depend on foreign aid despite sitting on huge natural wealth. It means Africa which in spite of its cash trapped economy its leaders continue to siphon at least $148bn annually into their safe haven accounts in foreign countries notably Switzerland, Monaco. Instead of money flowing from rich countries in the global north into poor one in the global south including Africa, it is the rather the other way round, an act that defies any economic wisdom.

It stands for a continent which continues to depend heavily on natural resource exploitation as the main economic activity and which sees diversification as unimportant despite the dangers of depending on raw material export.

It represents 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.

It also means 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 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 scapegoat: 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 bribe 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 bribe 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 petrochemical 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 Faso, 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 leaders do not seem to worry about it. They are not bothered because they themselves are aware of the tragedy they are causing Africa, they know they are the cause, they are saboteurs and enemies of Africa's progress and 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.