30/May/2009 WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Weekly Round-up 480 for 23 - 29 May 2009

TO BE NOTED:

	humanitarian news and analysis UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Table of contents
1. NIGERIA: Displaced out of aid workers' reach
2. In Brief: Nigeria’s Cross River state passes child rights act
3. In Brief: Polio campaign to target ‘at-risk’ Liberia
4. CHAD: Scores of children among rebels rounded up in east
5. WEST AFRICA: Protecting children from orphan-dealers
6. WEST AFRICA: West Africa faces yellow fever vaccine shortage
7. NIGERIA: Relief workers slowly access conflict-hit Delta creeks
8. NIGERIA: Timeline of recent events in Niger Delta
9. LIBERIA: First birth registrations in Liberia for 19 years
10. BENIN: Polio vaccine drive suspended by health sector strike

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NIGERIA: Displaced out of aid workers' reach DAKAR, 25 May 2009 (IRIN) - Aid agencies are unable to access an area in the Niger Delta where more than 2,000 people are believed to be hiding in the bush after a military offensive against militants forced families to flee their homes. full report

In Brief: Nigeria’s Cross River state passes child rights act DAKAR, 26 May 2009 (IRIN) - As violence continues in Delta and Rivers states in the Niger Delta region, international community members welcomed the passing into law of the Child Rights Act on 26 May in nearby Cross River state. full report

In Brief: Polio campaign to target ‘at-risk’ Liberia MONROVIA, 26 May 2009 (IRIN) - Liberia – declared polio-free since 2006– will be among 11 West African countries covered in a vaccination campaign to be launched 29 May by the World Health Organization (WHO). full report

CHAD: Scores of children among rebels rounded up in east N'DJAMENA, 27 May 2009 (IRIN) - At least 85 minors are among 212 suspected rebels imprisoned by the Chadian government after recent clashes between rebels and the army in eastern Chad, according to UN Children’s Fund officials, who have visited the children. full report

WEST AFRICA: Protecting children from orphan-dealers ACCRA, 27 May 2009 (IRIN) - The recent rape of an eight-month-old boy in an orphanage in the Ghanaian capital Accra revealed conditions that child rights advocates say are rampant across West African orphanages. When the authorities investigated the incident they discovered 27 of the 32 children living in the home were not orphans. full report

WEST AFRICA: West Africa faces yellow fever vaccine shortage DAKAR, 27 May 2009 (IRIN) - Up to 150 million people in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria could be at risk of contracting yellow fever says the World Health Organization, as the International Coordinating Group (ICG) on Yellow Fever Vaccine says it has just a quarter of the US$186 million it needs to vaccinate people in 12 at-risk countries. full report

NIGERIA: Relief workers slowly access conflict-hit Delta creeks DAKAR, 28 May 2009 (IRIN) - The Nigeria Red Cross says conflict-hit areas it has been able to access in the Niger Delta are in better condition than anticipated, but that continued restrictions on aid workers’ movement leaves many questions unanswered. full report

NIGERIA: Timeline of recent events in Niger Delta DAKAR, 28 May 2009 (IRIN) - Thousands of people are displaced in the Niger Delta region after the military stormed the area in pursuit of militants it said had attacked government troops. The move comes two months after President Umaru Yar'Adua said he would consider amnesty for some militants. Yar'Adua and his predecessors have battled for years with the local groups - perpetrators of regular violent attacks and kidnappings - who say they are fighting for the people's rights in the oil-rich region. IRIN highlights some of the events leading up to the latest clashes. full report

LIBERIA: First birth registrations in Liberia for 19 years MONROVIA, 29 May 2009 (IRIN) - The Liberian government says it has resumed registering births following a 19-year interruption due to the civil war. full report

BENIN: Polio vaccine drive suspended by health sector strike DAKAR, 29 May 2009 (IRIN) - Benin has suspended indefinitely a polio vaccination campaign because of a health workers’ strike, as polio re-emerges in several West African countries. full report

strange irony that Barack Obama and Gordon Brown embrace a Keynesian fiscal stimulus and in its name pour out global largesse to the IMF to distribute

TO BE NOTED: From the Guardian:

"Wall Street wounded Ghana. IMF tonic could hurt it more

Small but steady growth has been undermined by a banking crisis far away. Now is a test of whether G20 aid will really help

Comments (24)

• 
• • Polly Toynbee in Accra
  • The Guardian, Saturday 18 April 2009
  • Article history

In the leafy shade of the tree at the heart of Mangoase village, 50 women sat fanning themselves with their pass books, feeding babies, waiting their turn. Each approached the table to add the equivalent of a dollar or two to their savings or to pay back a small loan that had launched life-changing businesses. One woman had borrowed to buy fish to smoke and sell on, one had bought beans and cassava to sell by the road side, another was building a small bar, a few breeze blocks at a time. This credit union deals in micro-sums for micro-businesses, but enough to send a child to school, buy a school uniform or exercise books.

In the next village, credit union money was kept in a green tin with three keys held by the women trained to run the accounts. Trust was their true key: these unions never had a loan default. This is banking, but not as Sir Fred Goodwin knows it. The day that Harriet Harman was visiting these women's credit unions, set up by Plan UK, Goldman Sachs bankers were thumbing their nose at the world by paying themselves 33% pay increases, as if their bonus culture had never brought down global banking. Their crash reaches right here, hitting these women too in soaring prices and threatened social cuts.

This is a good place to survey what Wall Street and the City did to the world. Ghana, which has met its millennium goals on children in primary education and cutting poverty, has been an economic and political success story, with high growth. A centre-left government has just taken over after hard-fought but peaceful elections. It is better protected than some, the prices of its gold and cocoa holding up in the recession. Offshore oil will flow in a few years.

But last year world food and oil prices soared. China's slashed demand for raw materials is harming much of Africa. Global warming caused a drought that drained the dam powering Ghana's electricity, requiring crippling oil imports. The last government borrowed to cover these unexpected costs, the currency dropped in value, inflation rose to 20% and credit has dried up. Oxfam economists point out that this was not caused by profligacy, but by external events last year. A further source of bitterness: if rich countries had kept their 2005 Gleneagles promises, as Britain did, Ghana would have received $1bn, with no need to borrow at all.

Where should Ghana turn? To the IMF, of course, now the G20 has swelled its treasury. But there is deep political and public resistance after previous bad experience. Remember how humiliated Britain felt going cap in hand to the fund in 1976. Ghanaians know how World Bank and IMF largesse came with neoliberal quack remedies.

Cutting public services, making the poor poorer, putting cash crops and trade before welfare was the old IMF way. It was the IMF that insisted on meters for Ghana's water supply, demanding full cash recovery for the service, steeply raising costs for the poorest. The World Bank insisted on a private insurance model for Ghana's health service that has been administratively expensive and wasteful. The new government rejects it, promising free healthcare for children. The IMF wants subsidies for electricity removed, again hitting the poorest hardest. A market policy of making individuals pay full cost for vital services instead of general taxation has made the IMF hated; Ghana has now voted for more social democratic solutions. Freedom from the IMF feels like a second freedom from colonialism to many countries.

No wonder the new government hesitates to apply for a loan, even though advisers warn them to hurry while the money lasts: big bids are in already from Mexico, Ukraine and others. Not much of the new cash is earmarked to protect developing countries from the global storm. Most will go to countries, like those of eastern Europe, that are seen as a threat to the global economy, to prevent more bank crises.

"The old Washington consensus is over," Gordon Brown announced at the end of the G20. But that ideological battle is still to be fought out over developing countries' economic policies. Surely what's good for us is good for them? Economists wait to see if the IMF and the World Bank really represent "the new world order". Joseph Stiglitz is not the only one to doubt a transformation in these old free-market tigers. Just watch them at the moment, forcing 40% spending cuts on Latvia and others.

The IMF protests that it has changed: it no longer prescribes or monitors so oppressively, and countries seeking loans can set their own goals. A British cabinet minister was quoted on G20 day as saying that it should be no more stigmatising than "going to a spa to recuperate". Arnold Mcintyre, the IMF's representative in Ghana, insists that it would be entirely up to the government to propose its own measures. This is, to put it politely, disingenuous. Every government knows what it has to do to get credit, so Ghana has already said it will lower its deficit from 15% to 9.5% of GDP in one year, steeply cutting public sector costs. "They can do it through efficiency savings, with no damage to services," says Mr Mcintyre breezily. The government grits its teeth and says it can, and will: IMF economic thought often enters the soul of finance ministers. IMF power makes it the sole credit-rating agency for all other donors and lenders - an IMF thumbs-down means money from everywhere is cut off.

Oxfam's senior policy adviser and economist, Max Lawson, doubts such cuts are needed, just a loan to tide Ghana over. "The IMF is too brutal ... demanding balanced books within one or two years. The only way to make such a deep cut is in social spending: teachers' salaries are the main item." It's a strange irony that Barack Obama and Gordon Brown embrace a Keynesian fiscal stimulus and in its name pour out global largesse to the IMF to distribute. But loan recipients risk a Friedmanite tourniquet, cutting off their economic lifeblood. Will Obama and Brown see how their policy is translated on the ground?

In Mangoase Harriet Harman looked at what can be done with small sums, especially in the hands of women using them for their children. She talked of how social progress is economic progress. Even minute social security payments advance local economies. That green bank box with its three keys is a greater multiplier of real growth than anything RBS or Goldman Sachs did."

When you see men voluntarily breaking rocks in the hot sun to build their village’s community center, you think they must really want it.

TO BE NOTED: From Aid Watch:

"Skepticism Takes the Day Off

By William Easterly

When you see men voluntarily breaking rocks in the hot sun to build their village’s community center, you think they must really want it. I saw this on a visit to a project by The Hunger Project in the Eastern Region of Ghana. The Hunger Project believes in people helping themselves.

Sure the skeptic would naturally seek more systematic and rigorous evaluation, and could think of plenty of things that can go wrong in any aid project. But let’s give skepticism the day off and salute the people who work so hard to help themselves and those who help them do so, against tough odds.

A salute to Dr. Naana Agyemang-Mensah, the hard-driving Director of the Hunger Project-Ghana, who works long hours to mobilize communities to help themselves. To the midwife in the birthing room in the completed community center, who lowers the mortality risk for mother and baby. To the microcredit bank in the community center, who gives loans to the members and makes sure they repay. To the food bank volunteers, who store food for the hungry season until the harvest.

Another salute to Professor George Ayiteey, whose Free Africa Foundation distributes insecticide-treated bed nets to the dusty remote villages I visited today. To G.B.K. Owusu, the local coordinator, who follows up with the chiefs and residents of each village to make sure the nets are reaching them (see net in use below).

And finally, once again to the men at work in the hot sun to build their own community center – a better image for aid than the stereotypical helpless child.

Posted by William Easterly "

"I want to assure everybody that I will be president for all. There will be no discrimination,"

From Reuters, news about the election results in Ghana. But this first:

"(Reuters) - John Atta Mills of Ghana's opposition( HE WAS NOT IN POWER ) National Democratic Congress has won the presidential election in the West African country, the electoral commission said on Saturday.

He will succeed President John Kufuor, who is due to stand down on January 7 after the maximum two terms.

Here are some facts about Ghana.

GEOGRAPHY: Area is 239,460 sq. km. (92,440 sq. miles), a bit smaller than Britain. Ghana is bordered by Burkina Faso (to the north), Ivory Coast (west), and Togo (east). The Atlantic Ocean lies to the south.

LANGUAGE: English is the official language, but local languages include Akan, Ga, Fanti, Hausa, Fanteewe, Gaadanhe, Dagbandim and Mamprussi.

POPULATION: 23 million. There are seven main ethnic groups, including the Akan (Ashanti and Fanti), 44 percent, in the mid-southern part of the country. There are Mossi-Dagomba, Ewe and Ga-Adangbe minorities, among others.

RELIGION: Christianity 50 percent, traditional African religions 32 percent, Islam 13 percent.

ECONOMY:

* World's No. 2 cocoa( YES ) grower after neighboring Ivory Coast, producing around one fifth of world supply. Government plans to increase output by around half to 1 million tonnes by 2010.

* Africa's second biggest gold( GOLD ) miner after South Africa, with 2007 output of nearly 2.5 million ounces.

* Britain's Tullow Oil and private-owned Kosmos Energy plan to start producing 120,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil offshore in late 2010, rising later to 250,000 bpd.( OIL )

* Economic reforms under Kufuor's administration are credited with boosting growth and helping secure billions of dollars in debt relief( NB ).

* Economic growth forecast at 6.5 percent for 2008, slowing to 5.8 percent in 2009/10, then accelerating to 6.8 percent by 2013, according to the IMF.

* Annual inflation has eased since an 18.4 percent peak in June, and the cedi currency has stabilized after falling 17 percent against the dollar in the first seven months of 2008.

* $750 million Eurobond issue in 2007 was sub-Saharan Africa's first outside South Africa.

* Ghana's stock exchange is one of the top-performing markets in 2008 with the all-share index up around 60 percent, although trade is illiquid( HARD TO DO ) with as little as 600 cedis worth of trade in one session in October.

* Power shortages in recent years have added to business costs, curbing mining output and forcing the closure of the VALCO aluminum smelter, which the government wants to sell.

HISTORY:

* Ghana was named after a powerful West African empire that ended in the 12th century and based its power on gold. None of modern day Ghana lies within the ancient empire.( THAT'S INTERESTING )

* From the 17th to the 19th century, Ghana was the seat of the powerful Ashanti empire, which was defeated by the British.

* In 1957 the former British colony of Gold Coast became the first country in black Sub-Saharan Africa to shake off colonial rule, inspiring liberation struggles around the continent.

* Independence leader Kwame Nkrumah was a founding father of Pan-Africanism and a figurehead among Africa's independence leaders with his concept of African socialism( TRUE ).

* But the economy collapsed, Nkrumah became increasingly authoritarian and many celebrated when he was overthrown by a coup in 1966 while he was on a state visit to China.

* Ghana then tottered from one military coup to the next before holding its first democratic elections in 1992.

* Former President Jerry John Rawlings, who seized control in a coup in 1979 and again in 1981, left office in 2000 but remains a popular and charismatic critic of the government."

Now the election results:

1 of 9Full Size

Related News

TIMELINE: Mills wins Ghana presidential election run-off

6:46am EST

FACTBOX: Third time lucky for Ghana election winner Mills

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FACTBOX: Ghana, built on gold, looks to future with oil

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By Kwasi Kpodo

ACCRA (Reuters) - Ghana's opposition leader John Atta Mills won a last run-off vote and was declared president-elect on Saturday, sweeping his party back to power after eight years.

Results of voting in a final constituency on Friday showed Mills, of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), narrowly defeated Nana Akufo-Addo of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP). The NPP lost its parliamentary majority last month.

"I want to assure everybody that I will be president for all. There will be no discrimination," Mills said in a victory speech to thousands of NDC supporters who thronged the streets around his office in the capital Accra.

The poll, one of the closest leadership elections in Africa, has raised tensions in the gold- and cocoa-exporting country whose political stability has attracted growing numbers of foreign investors as it prepares to produce oil( OIL ) in late 2010.

Legal challenges and accusations of violence by both main parties had threatened to mar a vote seen as a chance to bolster Africa's battered democratic credentials after flawed and bloody polls in Zimbabwe and Kenya. Mills took a conciliatory tone.

"I would want to congratulate all other contestants, especially Nana Akufo-Addo, for giving us a good fight. It is my hope that we will be able to work together to build a better Ghana," he said. Then an aide popped open a bottle of champagne.

There was no immediate reaction from Akufo-Addo's camp. International monitors say voting has been mostly peaceful( GOOD ).

Announcing the results at a news conference in the capital Accra, Electoral Commission Chairman Kwadwo Afari-Gyan said turnout in the run-off vote, which was held in most of the country on December 28, was 72.91 percent.

Mills won 50.23 percent of the votes against 49.77 percent for Akufo-Addo, whose party had no immediate comment.( WOW )

Neither candidate won a majority in the original December 7 poll and run-off voting in all but one of the West African country's 230 constituencies last Sunday was inconclusive, so the election was decided by Friday's voting in the farming constituency of Tain.( HOW INTERESTING )

FROM RULING PARTY TO LOSING PARTY

The NPP, which lost its parliamentary majority in the December 7 poll but remains in power until President John Kufuor steps down on January 7, boycotted the Tain vote over security concerns but failed to prevent the poll taking place.

Outside Mills's office, a woman dragged an effigy of an elephant -- the NPP's campaign mascot -- in a mock funeral as other NDC supporters chanted "Elephants, go back to the bush!."

"You have cause to celebrate, but let's not do anything to provoke disunity. We must know that this is only one day in a journey of a million miles," Mills told his supporters.

Each side has accused the other's activists of violence and irregularities and appealed to the electoral commission to review some of the results from last Sunday's vote.

Afari-Gyan said the commission had found no evidence to call the results into question and declared Mills president-elect.

"I think there is demand for change ... power outages and corruption in the NPP have really been the key issues for people, "Kissy Agyeman, Africa analyst at London-based consultancy Global Insight, told Reuters before the result was announced.

The center-left NDC has promised change after eight years of NPP rule, though analysts say there are few policy differences.( OK )

Kufuor was voted to power when Mills's NDC ally, former coup leader Jerry Rawlings, gave up power in early 2000 as required by the constitution which his own administration had introduced.

Kufuor's pro-market rule has seen Ghana's economy become one of the most attractive investment destinations in the region.

But critics say his administration has failed to tackle widespread corruption, including smuggling of cocaine and other drugs in which administration officials have been implicated( LIKE EVERYWHERE ELSE ON THE PLANET."