SIKANKU: Ghana’s growing culture of recklessness and political intolerance

By Etse Sikanku, Iowa City, Iowa
Published: March 28, 2010 3:52 PM CDT


A few days ago I found a CD containing some news reports I filed while working as a political reporter for CITI fm in Accra. I hope to share some of these reports on this blog from time to time.

For the first podcast, we reproduce here a short interview with Dr Ken Attafuah, former human rights official and Executive Secretary of the National Reconciliation Commission in Ghana. Dr Attafuah is a well respected scholar within and outside the country.

At the time he was concerned with what he called the lack of "political maturity" in Ghana’s politics. However, Dr Attafuah’s far sighted analysis of politics in Ghana still holds true today. Please click the link below for the audio clip. (I apologize ahead for my “non-radio-ish” voice, folks, lol)



Party fanatics especially within the NDC are engaging in some of the most brutish forms of vindictiveness no democracy in the 21st century should be proud of. Check out these links if you’d like to read sample stories:

"NDC youth in Yendi declare MCE persona non grata, threaten to kill him"

"NDC youth in Yendi smash Chairman's car"

I know Atta Mills is a fine gentleman with a father figure reputation. As president of the nation he has my utmost respect. But he must act decisively to curb this menace which is gradually becoming a national embarrassment.

Etse Sikanku is a graduate student in Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Iowa.

In Iowa, student journalists report on Obama’s visit to their campus

Sam Kienzle, a senior from environmental science, wore a pro-health care reform button on Thursday outside of the Field House. He said he was there mainly to observe. “Iowa City is my home town. And this is a spectacle,” he added. He liked to see all kinds of signs people held during the demonstration, but those that indicated racial slur bothered him, he said. He also said he was expecting to see about 100 more people join the demonstration. Photograph by Josie Liu, PhD candidate Unv. of Iowa

We’re grateful to students from the University of Iowa who offered grassroots reportage on Obama’s visit to Iowa. If you’d like to read direct and non-mainstream filtered accounts of this pivotal visit, here are some summaries:

Heather McKeag gives an account of the drama that ensued as opponents of the bill picketed outside the venue of Obama’s speech:

Demonstrators from all over Iowa gathered in protest and support of the new federal health-care reform legislation.

Supporters of the reform proudly raised signs that read “Health Insurance Reform Now” and “Standing Together for Health Care Reform,” while protester’s signs read “You’re Fired” and “Obama Stole My Wallet.”

“I disagree that health insurance is wasteful spending. However, I wouldn’t disagree that we are in a huge deficit.”
Andrew Alemao, a UI senior said.

Also check out this quote McKeag reported on from another protester:

Nancy Bothius, a doctor of pharmacy and clinical assistant professor came to protest critical issues she has witnessed in the medical field. Nancy’s sign stated, “I support health care reform but NOT this reform.”

However Lisa Brahm reports that it wasn’t all about protests as Obama found a friendly audience at the Filed House:

President Barack Obama applauded Iowans on their support of the health care reform just as much as the packed audience in the University of Iowa field house applauded him. People from the Iowa City area and students from the University of Iowa waited in a line around the corner from the field house eager to listen to the president speak.

His speech consisted mostly of the health care bill that he signed Tuesday afternoon, and while there were several protesters outside and even a brave young man yelling rebuttals at the president inside, many people in the audience were joining in on cheers before the president took the stage and frantically snapping pictures as he approached the podium.

Spectator and University of Iowa student, Paige Wallace described the scenery inside the field house as, “filled with Iowans eager to hear what the President had to say.” As the president walked onto the stage Wallace snapped pictures as she stood on her tip-toes in order to get a better view.

“His delivery was even better in person than when watching him on TV,” Paige said, “He is such a likable person. I didn’t feel like I was listening to the President speak. He seemed just like an average Midwesterner just like us.”

And finally, a summary of reactions before and after the speech from Kelly Oelmann’s report :

Several hundred people from all over the state and country lined up outside the Field House at the University of Iowa this morning in hopes of seeing the President Barrack Obama before or after his speech. While some picketed on one side of the street and others watched from the other side on this chilly windy day, they all wanted to get their voice heard.

A concerned business owner, Robin Staak of Iowa City says, “it is unconstitutional…it’s against the law….your telling people that they HAVE to buy something.” She believes that this bill will absolutely cripple our country.

Logan Garmoe age 14 of Mt. Pleasant is neutral about the bill. He states that the bill is, “taking away choice. They’ll keep doing that. It will keep getting bigger and bigger until we don’t have any way in it.”

College students like Dustin Krutsinger, a second year medical student wanted to encourage President Obama to go back to the Constitution. Krutsinger states, “they continue to ignore the Constitution.”

Tina Thomann of Riverside believes that the health care bill is, “a step in the right direction.” Vernon Rollins of North Liberty agrees and says that it is great that it passed. Vernon was one of the many lucky to receive a ticket to enter the building.

US health legislation receives mixed reviews in Iowa as Obama holds crucial rally

By Amy Tiffany, Guest Reporter, University of Iowa

When President Obama came into Iowa City Wednesday afternoon to speak, people voiced their opinions. The University of Iowa campus was buzzing with energy, emotions, and adrenaline as protesters and supporters rallied before and after the historic event took place at the Field House, speaking up about the highly controversial Health Care Reform that was recently passed.

One protester sign said, ‘My Money, My Health, My Choice.’ Another said, ‘We Earn our Healthcare’ and ‘Honk if I pay your Medical Bills.’ Supporters held up signs saying ‘Healthcare for America Now’ and ‘Obama 08 Thank You’ and ‘Change.’ The opinions varied as much as the signs.

Robert Foster, a Korean War veteran and Iowa City resident said, “I think it’s good for the country,” and he said it’s a first step in the right direction to help young and old people.

Another veteran expressed a different opinion. “He [President Obama] lies constantly,” said Mark McAvon, a veteran of the Vietnam War. He asked President Obama to be more transparent, and not sneak behind America’s back.

University of Iowa junior Kevin Hickey, who had stopped to observe during the couple of hours he had between classes, agreed. He said Obama needs to face the people up front with what he is doing, and asked, why does Obama have to go around selling the Health Care Reform?



McAvon also said the day the Health Care Reform passed was the day freedom died.
Some people were concerned with the financial issues. Sarah Turner, from Washington, Iowa, said America does not have the money for this. Hickey said, “We’re all going to have to pay for this somehow.”

Not all were concerned with the same financial issues. A bystander in a different conversation said to a Republican, “All you care about are rich people!” Turner said the quality of medical care will go down. “There won’t be home grown doctors,” said Kitty Rehberg and Linda Bowden, who traveled from Independence, Iowa to protest.

“Doctor Obama, your prescriptions don’t work,” the pair said while chuckling.
But inside the Field House was where the majority of the supporters would be found. During the speech UI senior Krisanne Ryther said Obama did a good job explaining the positive affects the Health Care Reform will have in laymen’s terms, and even laughed at how UNI’s upset against Kansas messed up his NCAA bracket.

Though tensions were high and everyone had a different opinion of President Obama and the Health Care Reform, one thing was for sure. His visit brought out the passion of University of Iowa students and residents.

AFESEH NGWA: Fueling the mendicant cycle.

By Hilary Afeseh Ngwa


Picture credit: The Economist

Some persons who receive drugs intended to heal and cure hang on a delicate balance which can very easily tip towards dependence and addiction. Increasingly more and more people are abusing prescription drugs especially pain killers and addiction is on the rise. It is thought that some of the symptoms typical of abusers include complaints of continuously losing prescriptions, evidence of seeking prescriptions from more than one doctor, taking higher and higher doses despite warnings and forging prescriptions. An interesting yet heart breaking semblance can be seen with aid in African developing countries.

Countries which lend out a basket for hand outs in financial aid not because of an arisen emergency but as a source and steady flow of income upon which economic growth is contingent, hang on a perilously fragile and lethal thread of dependence and addiction, hand outs which create fat holes in the basket in which it is put. The Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo in her book 'Dead Aid' states that in 1970, 10% of Africans lived in poverty; it’s now more like 70% and in many countries as high as 80-85% of Africans are living in poverty at a time when the aid model has become so dominant. The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than 1.25 US dollars per day. In Sub-saharan Africa for example which has thirty-two of the 48 poorest countries, it is estimated that extreme poverty rose from 41 percent in 1981 to 46 percent in 2001. Some reports have it that almost 50 percent of the population live on under 1 US dollar a day which is the highest rate of extreme poverty in the world and the number of impoverished people has doubled since 1981.

It is also a known fact that in the past fifty years, more than $1 trillion in development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Aid can wire the psyche of the receiver for a near incorrigible cycle of dependence which quickly shifts to addiction. Aid can be the worst abuse substance, for as the evidence shows, it can clip the flight wings of development and mire a potentially prosperous nation in a quicksand of economic stagnation. Like every addict the only way out of the dire consequences which loom and come with addiction is to be finally weaned off the abuse substance.

A careful look at the addiction of many African countries to aid reveals similar symptoms seen in the prescription abuser mentioned earlier in the write-up, to wit - complaints of continuously losing aid money, evidence of seeking aid from more than one donor, taking higher and higher doses of the abuse substance(money) despite warnings and forging prescriptions to get more aid. See how many countries ran in a race to be the poorest countries during the world bank driven Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative.

I propose, partially echoing what some have said before that NO financial aid may be given to african developing countries. All non emergency related aid must be in the form of structures/infrastructure which will last or in the form of capacity building and human resource. All aid must be equipping the aided in every form possible to sustainably live without need for more Aid.

It is painful to watch motherland suffer a mendicant cycle of unseen proportions, spiraling out of control, feeding on aid as it grows and growing as it feeds. To the aid giver may the verity captured in the words of Phillips Brooks forever ring in their hearts, - “The truest help we can render an afflicted man is not to take his burden from him, but to call out his best energy, that he may be able to bear the burden.” To the aid receiver may the words of Miguel de Cervantes rouse the sleeping giant in him/her individually and collectively as a people, -“Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.” I rest my case.

GHANA: E-Zwich Becoming A Colossal Waste of Resources?

In a move largely described as “bold” by industry watchers, the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement System (GhIPPS)—the operators of the national electronics payments switch—will now allow customers access to their traditional bank accounts via electronic cards (e-zwich). 7 Ghanaian banks constitute the first set of participants in the scheme.

the tendency of governments to take on complex programs without sufficient risk analysis...can prove, as e-zwich has shown, very costly for all of us by leading to the wanton dissipation of scarce resources. (IMANI, GHANA)

When e-zwich was formerly launched in 2008, the then Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Paul Acquah, described it as having been primarily designed “...for promoting branchless banking and financial inclusion.”

The new attempts by GhIPPS to make e-zwich look more and more like a typical debit card are perhaps a sign of acknowledgment that things are not going to plan.
A few weeks ago, an Accra-based radio station, Joy FM, carried a news report in which several merchants in the Accra area complained of poor patronage of e-zwich point of sale terminals (POS) and the resulting inconvenience of their having to service and power-up machines that were effectively useless.

Many complaints have also come from users of the card about frequent false negatives during the biometric authentication sessions that are required to establish their identity before they can use the card. A false negative means that the terminal, after reading their fingerprints, returns a message that they are not the true owners of the card.

Some merchants, on the other hand, complain about an inability to synchronise their sales transactions with the e-zwich mainframe at the end of the day. While e-zwich POSs come with the functionality to transmit data using a GPRS modem in instances where an internet connection is unavailable, this auxiliary connectivity function sometimes fail compelling the cancellation of transactions mid-way.

Given the scope of its ambition it was always expected that some technical difficulties would be encountered, and that these will ease with the passage of time and with increasing adoption and use. Even the most proven systems require a period of time to attain stability.

However, at the outset of implementation, the policymakers and the managers of the e-zwich program made systemic strategic mistakes that considerably weakened its prospects at the get-go. The biggest of these mistakes was to not separate the electronic switch and supporting gateways, the biometric identification backbone, and the consumer smartcard and POS terminal services from one another.
The electronic switch could have been the province of the Bank of Ghana, which could have also managed the biometric backbone on behalf of the public until the NIA (National Identification Authority) was ready to assume that function.

The consumer smartcard part of the e-zwich program, which is represented by the smartcards themselves and the point of sales terminals, should definitely have been left in the hands of the many private-sector developers of electronic payment solutions already working in Ghana. The reason why e-zwich’s managers made those disastrous decisions was because they were the sole carriers of risk in the scheme.
Whether e-zwich liked it or not it was engaged in 3 simultaneous marketing battles. Its most compelling proposition was branchless banking. Being able to use one card to access multiple bank accounts at ATM, branch, and POS levels clearly wins any day. But this is obviously an urban and semi-urban middle-class proposition, with convenience and efficiency being the main draw. Improving financial efficiency is a perfectly commendable objective for a national bank. This should have been e-zwich’s priority.

The second battle was one e-zwich might have avoided. By entering the debit space they found themselves in direct competition with VISA, which, for being international and an early market entrant, was unlikely to be dislodged by e-zwich’s murky proposition.

The most complex of e-zwich’s 3-tier consumer smartcard finance operation is the financial inclusion bit. We are used to hearing that only 20% of our population is banked. Misinterpreting this statistic can lead to flawed policy reasoning, as happened with e-zwich. The middle and upper classes control the country’s wealth and they are generally well-banked. This may not speak well of the distribution of resources across the population but it is the reality.

One therefore has to be very cautious when using notions of financial inclusion. Had e-zwich focussed first on remittances it might have made different strategic decisions, but as it turned out its focus was much too broad, much too murky. At any rate is it the case that “poor”, illiterate, rural dwellers have cash hoarded up that can be “deposit-mobilised” into the banking system?
It is not clear that the key financial need in these parts of Ghana is a convenient mechanism for utilising cash. It seems rather that the key need there is the cash itself.
The problem as we see it is that there is a tendency for government agencies and ministries in our part of the world to be overambitious and hubristic about their capabilities, to build complex wholly novel systems from scratch, and to deny the vital place of entrepreneurship and market forces in the creation and sustainability of genuinely transformative socio-economic programs.

The tendency of governments to take on complex programs without sufficient risk analysis, and the bureaucratic unease of government-paid managers about dealing with the private sector, can prove, as e-zwich has shown, very costly for all of us by leading to the wanton dissipation of scarce resources.

Hopefully, the e-zwich saga offers government of Ghana the opportunity to start doing things differently.

Courtesy of IMANI Center for Policy & Education and AfricanLiberty.org

Ngwenya: Mugabe must retire.

By Rejoice Ngwenya,

Dear Mr. Mugabe,

I do not know how to put this, Sir. I have wrestled with my conscience and come to a rationally logical conclusion that after what transpired in your one-man ‘presidential election’ of June 2008, I could not possess enough of a morsel of moral authority, bestowed or assumed, to address you as ‘President’. Moreover, to address you as ‘commander-in-chief’ would necessarily implicate you on the atrocities that your well-trained Fifth Brigade killing machine committed in Matabeleland in the 1980s.

Again if I were to venture onto the term ‘head of state and government’, this would mean you were directly responsible for the collapse in national governance, the blatant disregard in rule of law, a judiciary and policing system that takes only one side – yours - and incremental poverty that has engulfed the people of Zimbabwe for so long. Sir, as ‘head of state and government’, you have to be collectively and jointly responsible for the unprecedented incompetence that your cabinet was associated with in the past ten years, also having misled Zimbabweans on a dangerous path of self-destruction. Nonetheless, God places us in this world in a hierarchy, some whose chain of command is pre-destined, and others where man defines the rules and as such becomes a result of collective consensus. Like the authority bestowed upon national leaders as a result of a legitimate electoral process, of which category you purport to be in, but I vehemently, unreservedly dispute and refuse to submit to.

My argument is that as you approach your eighty-sixth birthday, I have reason to believe that you look back with an unusual mixture of pride and trepidation at the history of your contribution to the struggle for self-determination in this country. No doubt you are consumed with an overwhelming sense of satisfaction that your personal sacrifice deserves all the accolades – and many agree with you. Luckily, I am not in that group, and for good reason.

There is empirical evidence that in African, Eastern and Western Culture, those who overstay their welcome at one time or another of necessity put their host in a state of perpetual discomfort. Your name has featured strongly in the arena of local, regional and global politics. Like all prominent men in history – Napoleon Bonaparte, Tshaka Zulu, Benito Mussolini, Nelson Mandela, Adolph Hitler, Winston Churchill, Kwame Nkrumah, George Washington, Mao Tse Tung, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Samora Machel, Kamuzu Banda – the list is endless – there comes a time when the doors of their fortune are closed. Some, like Mr Mandela, left the arena when millions world over wished them to stay. Others, like Adolph Hitler, took their lives in fear of popular retribution. There are those like Mr Kaunda and Mr Banda whose political fortunes were obliterated by winds of democratic change – and were left with no choice but to succumb to the pressure of popular mass discontent.

But there is a tiny minority of leaders, almost miniscule to the point of invisibility, like you sir, who, by reason of omission or commission, either misinformed or deliberate – fail to acknowledge the principle of political diseconomies of scale. It is almost impossible to recite your history without stumbling onto a grain of good things that you did, for I would be guilty of misrepresentation. And yet weighed against the collective pain and suffering that the citizens of this land have endured in the time of your reign, your erstwhile achievements pale in significance. I am not a good accountant, but if your ‘presidential’ life was constructed in ‘double entry’, or more appropriately, perceived as a ‘balance sheet’, your side of life’s liabilities would far outweigh that of assets! Put simply, for the past twenty five years of your reign sir, we the citizens of this country have been subjected to your corrosive, bankrupt ideological system.

While this is a strong case for your immediate resignation, there is even a stronger case for your retirement. I will summarise my case. The laws of this country, unless I have not read them well, do not permit civil or public servants to be engaged beyond sixty years of age. There is both intellectual and biological justification for this universally acceptable standpoint. All human beings – including those purportedly chosen on a ticket of popular rhetoric – are subject to deteriorating mental and physical capacity with age. Moreover, is it only a coincidence that those who cling to political power tend to be associated with tyranny and dictatorship? There is no possibility that at such an advanced age sir, your capacity of good judgment can be as good as being capable of satisfying the demands of millions of Zimbabweans who are several generations below you. Since the time you were inaugurated in the 1980s, there have been massive shifts in governance perception and standards, economic scenarios and political demands. How is it possible, sir that you can cope with all these new trends?

In humbly persuading you to retire, I would not therefore want to dwell too much on the negatives – Gukurahundi, the DRC intervention, Murambatsvina, land expropriation, three million Zimbabweans in exile, one billion percent inflation, collapse in education, health, road and electricity infrastructure, extensive poverty, election violence and death, biased judiciary, media paranoia – no sir! Perhaps, in persuading you to retire, I may be one of the few renegades who believe your continuing participation in local and regional politics further enhances the high risk perception that foreign and local investors have of Zimbabwe!

It might be that I am part of the small group of political misfits who believe you and ZANU-PF have continuously worked day and night against the success of the Global Political Agreement. Would I be so naïve as not to see that I could, like the few others, be accused of accusing you and your gluttonous ruling elite of wanting to cling to power to continuing plundering the meagre resources of this increasingly impoverished nation? Sir, I therefore do not refuse that for the few of us, we strongly believe the ‘land reform’ and ‘indigenisation’ benefited the few who are associated with the power brokers in ZANU-PF. These sir, are my reasons of advancing a case for your overdue retirement. Thank you, sir.

Rejoice Ngwenya is an associate of www.AfricanLiberty.org and President of Coalition for Liberal Market Solutions in Harare.

GAINES: The Ultimate betrayal? Probable racism on MLK day.

MLK 101: All men are created equal


You’d never find a worse racial paradox.

An Iowa City woman prevented me from videotaping a cleaning event at the Iowa City Public Library this afternoon. On a day when Americans are celebrating among other things—the diversity, compassion and all inclusiveness of Dr King— such a scenario will be unthinkable. Yet it happened to me.

While several MLK day events will make King stand tall in his grave, this might make him roll.

I had interviewed one member of a large group of white girls earlier on before they started cleaning the library. They were really nice. I just don’t understand why another student from the same group will tell me much later on not to interview/video their activities. Was she just unhappy or irritated by my presence? I was left with no other choice but to wonder whether it was because of my black color.

First let me say I do not belong to the tradition that thinks people who are not of my race are necessarily racist. I have lots of genuine white friends who I can call brothers/sisters any day. Whether the brunette lady in question’s action was an act of racism or not, I will never know. But as a black, it certainly got me thinking whether the true meaning of Martin Luther King Day is being lost.

Thanks to Obama, many are beginning to think of this day as one of service. This is great. But my fear is that such an overemphasis on just one aspect of King’s values might overshadow the rest.

“It is a day to help poor people”, “It is a day to teach my kids how to volunteer” were some of the responses I got when I asked people what MLK day mean to them. Which is all well and good but I hope we don’t pretend that is all King stood for. Actually Christian spirituality and the crusade against injustice are a crucial aspect of Dr King’s persona.

According to Andre Willis of the Yale Divinity School, Martin Luther King, Jr. “held two things in a kind of aesthetic tension: the social facts of our daily lives and the spiritual reality of our human existence.” Everything he espoused was premised on his spirituality including his chief belief that blacks and whites were created equal.

My concern is that while we mark this day as one of community service we shouldn’t also forget his core message. All men are created equal.