Africa belongs to Africans

Whilst thousands of Sierra Leoneans are fleeing the country, heading to the west in pursuit of a better life, corrupt individuals and businesses see the country as a land of opportunity, a place to exploit. Sierra Leone’s natural resources, which should have been a blessing, have been nothing but a curse.
A little over a decade ago, it was diamonds that played a serious role in the eleven year long civil war which devastated Sierra Leone’s environment as rebels exploited this valuable mineral to fund their campaign. Now even in peacetime, a possible new agent of war is emerging and this time it is buried deep in the bush and it’s known to the locals as “gbenie” a unique type of wood that is secondly only to ebony.
As in most parts of Africa, timber has become the new diamonds. The country’s forests are at risk of being completely wiped out.
Experts calculate that logging is a multi-billion dollar business in Sierra Leone with Chinese companies leading the trade. Logging companies have been destroying the country's forests, plundering natural resources and causing environmental problems but worse, it is mostly being done illegally with local Sierra Leoneans operating as the front men for the foreigners. A 2006 European Union report identified logging as "the leading cause of environmental degradation in Sierra Leone."
Even the country’s Forestry Ministry says that unless immediate action is taken, all of the country's forests could disappear by 2018. According to them, there is no legal, registered company in Sierra Leone with permission to cut down trees and environmentalists have warned that less than five percent of forested areas are now left in this West African country.
For these foreign investors their ultimate goal is getting their wood and making maximum profit, for the corrupt Sierra Leoneans, it is about lining their pockets without any care for the future consequences for the innocent people who will have to pay the price.
For me though, I can not help but think about those days of slavery when a few Africans used to team up with outsiders to exploit their own people and force them into slavery - today it is not our people their selling it’s our mineral resources.
When are we African’s going be free from the “resource curse”? When are we going to realise that only with the proper use of and respect of our minerals and natural resources would we be able to compete as a proud people rather than being the number one beggars of the world? Africa belongs to Africans and only Africans can save the continent. It is this kind of thinking that somehow gave birth to the series, Africa

IS Gold Ghana's blessing or curse?

In the narrow and deadly corner of illegal mining, referred to as 'galamsey' in my country, children as young as seven-years-old are the manual hands in the mining process. Classrooms have become empty in 'galamsey' operation areas. Teachers and opinion leaders appear helpless at stopping this trend. 'Galamsey' operations come with the attraction of money on a daily basis. Though many children are exploited by their employers, kids get introduced to the world of 'galamsey', and once they have got extra pocket money for cinemas and new shoes, find it hard to quit.
For many others, however, it has become the only means of survival. Pregnant women sweat and labour in these pits of death. Young mothers virtually live in the deadly pits, eating, bathing and nursing their young with no choice but to withstand the dangers involved.
In the process, a generational cycle of hardship, danger and vice is being set in motion.
Gold has been a blessing to the international gold mining firms. Why is it not also a blessing to the average Ghanaian, whose land remains one of the world's leading producers of gold? How has this precious metal made an impact on the life of the local Ghanaian, especially those who live in gold mining areas and are not able to get a job at mining firms?
Foreign businessmen come to mine gold with impunity. With the collusion of some Ghanaians, these men steal land, exploit labour, and leave Ghanaians stuck with the bill for the vast environmental problems that follow.
This was the main focus of my recent investigation into illegal gold mining in Ghana. Being the source of the raw product that turns hearts on the international market with any increase in the price of gold, it is a sad story that an entire generation in the continent of Africa is slipping through the cracks, threatened with an apocalyptic future.

Liberia: Living with Ebola

Although the rate of infections in the West African nation of Liberia seems now to be in decline, for months the country has been on the frontline of the fight against the deadly virus.
Since the start of the outbreak last year, around 14,000 people in eight nations have contracted Ebola, killing 5,000. Most of the deaths have been in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
Working alongside Liberian investigative reporter Mae Azango and producer Clive Patterson, Sorious films with a Red Cross body collection team who travel around Monrovia, Liberia's capital, picking up the dangerously contagious corpses of the deceased. Several of the workers have already paid with their lives for doing this job, but the work is vital to keep the spread of infection under control.
Some of them are unpaid volunteers. Robert is one such young man. Fully aware of the risks, he nevertheless believes it is worth the sacrifice: "I'm doing this to have this particular sickness alleviated from my country. I love my people," he said.
But the work was taking its toll. "I eat alone," he explained. "My girlfriends do not want to visit me; my friends do not want to visit me…."
Sorious also spent time in an Ebola treatment unit run by Medicin Sans Frontieres - and met Salome, a young woman who had lost many of her family to the virus but had somehow survived its ravages herself.
"It feels like it's a sickness from another planet," she said. "Because it has 100 percent severe pain from head to toes. You can even feel the pain in the marrow of your bones."
But Sorious also encountered deep anger among Liberian health workers. Infuriated by their pay and conditions they were suspicious that the government corruption was preventing the distribution of money donated by the international community.
That distrust of the authorities was also evident in the wider population. One of the emergency response teams had been called to a slum called Red Light, one of Monrovia's poorest and most densely populated districts and exactly the kind of place where Ebola thrives. A young man, evidently with Ebola symptoms, had taken refuge on a roof. If the paramedics had not arrived in time to talk him down, one of them doctors explained, the gathering crowd below might have taken matters into their own hands and killed the sick man.
"One of the major things that is affecting the country is fear," an onlooker explained as the patient is loaded into an ambulance. "The health facilities in the country, in the various communities, all is shut down, because of the same fear."
This remarkable film gives a deeply disturbing insight into what it is like to live in a society gripped by dread of contagion and mistrust of the authorities, a place where no one shakes hands any more, where a mother will think twice before picking up a sick child to give it comfort. But it is also a world in which ordinary people are making the most extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of their community - and indeed the rest of us.

Ghana: Food for Thought

The most obvious signs of this poverty are found in the north of the country, where most of the population are small scale subsistence farmers who have to battle with poor soil quality, an erratic rainy season, and recurrent floods and droughts. These problems in turn often lead to serious food shortages and high rates of malnutrition.

If you are malnourished, [if] you are hungry right from childhood, it affects who you become in the future. Dr James Duah, King's Village Health Centre, northern Ghana

According to the World Food Programme (WFP), four out of 10 children under the age of five in northern Ghana are chronically malnourished, meaning they will not be able to meet their full growth potential. Some of them, to put it even more starkly, will die for lack of food.
This is why, despite its sunnier long term prospects, Ghana still receives tens of millions of dollars' worth of food aid from the international community.
But while these generous annual donations, from the WFP and others, are carefully calculated to provide sustenance to all those in dire need, somehow they never prove to be enough.
The food arrives in bulk at government-run distribution centres and then quickly runs out. All too often those in search of help turn up to be told that that stocks are again running low or that promised deliveries have not yet been made.
At the King's Village Health Centre in Tamale, northern Ghana, which has helped thousands of malnourished babies and children, operations director Dr James Duah is puzzled about these shortages and worried about the consequences.
"About 40 percent of all under-fives in the communities here are stunted and malnourished. It has an effect on mental abilities ... If you are malnourished, [if] you are hungry, right from childhood it affects who you become in the future," he says.
So what happens to all the food that is donated? Are the deficits merely the consequence of some bureaucratic hold up in the supply chain or are there more sinister forces at work.
In this episode of Africa Investigates, Ghanaian journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas sets out in search of the answers and unveils a truly shocking tale of theft and corruption.
His undercover investigation reveals how officials of the Ghanaian Health Service – some of the very people tasked with distributing aid to starving children - are stealing and selling it for their own gain. Filming secretly, Anas and his team pose as buyers and make contact with two of the corrupt officers. They are shown into storehouses where boxes of donated food – still bearing the logos of international aid agencies – are piled high. It quickly becomes clear, the stolen goods are all for sale.
When Dr James sees the footage he is appalled. "In this community where there are so many malnourished children, and these people are deprived of what could save their lives … it is crime. It is the highest crime."

Anas Arameyaw Anas Investigation Of Fake Doctors In Nigeria

 Anas Arameyaw Anas and Rosemary Nwaebuni go undercover with secret cameras to expose fake doctors in Delta State, leading to three on-camera arrests. Nigerian law forbids abortions, except in cases where the patient's life is in danger. Despite this, Nigeria's Fake Doctors shows Rosemary, who is not even pregnant, twice being offered abortion services from unlicensed practitioners.

Precious Johnson Chuckwudi, who operates a pharmacy in Delta State, offered to provide an abortion - and agreed the price - despite Rosemary's negative pregnancy test, while Mr and Mrs Ogboru offered Rosemary an abortion in the dirty backroom of a bar, without conducting a pregnancy test.

The Nigerian Medical and Dental Association (NMDA) and Ministry of Health (MoH) have confirmed that neither Chuckwudi nor the Ogboru's are licensed and registered as medical doctors and that their shops are not registered clinics. Nigerian police arrested Mr and Mrs Ogboru on camera on the basis of evidence that Rosemary and Anas filmed.

Nigerian police also arrested Charles Igudala, who operates a clinic at Dictat Royal Home in Warri, Delta State, after he was covertly filmed offering medical services and injections to Anas in extremely unsanitary conditions. The NMDA and MoH confirmed that Igudala is not a licensed and registered doctor, while Dr Alfred Ebiakofa of the Nigerian Ministry of Health said that Igudala had been a target of the Nigerian health authorities for some time, but that they “had not been able to catch him before.”

Rosemary and Anas also film other fake doctors wrongly diagnosing healthy patients with malaria and typhoid, as well using as a Quantum Resonance Analyser, a highly controversial machine of unproven effectiveness that is used to illegally diagnose - merely on the basis of tones and lights - a variety of serious illnesses to perfectly healthy patients.

Spell of The Albino, the last investigation Anas filmed for Africa Investigates, won a One World Media Award and was nominated for a Royal Television Society Award.

In this week's episode of Africa Investigates, Anas Arameyaw Anas and Rosemary Nwaebuni go undercover with secret cameras to expose fake doctors in Delta State, leading to three on-camera arrests. Nigerian law forbids abortions, except in cases where the patient's life is in danger. Despite this, Nigeria's Fake Doctors shows Rosemary, who is not even pregnant, twice being offered abortion services from unlicensed practitioners.

Precious Johnson Chuckwudi, who operates a pharmacy in Delta State, offered to provide an abortion - and agreed the price - despite Rosemary's negative pregnancy test, while Mr and Mrs Ogboru offered Rosemary an abortion in the dirty backroom of a bar, without conducting a pregnancy test.

The Nigerian Medical and Dental Association (NMDA) and Ministry of Health (MoH) have confirmed that neither Chuckwudi nor the Ogboru's are licensed and registered as medical doctors and that their shops are not registered clinics. Nigerian police arrested Mr and Mrs Ogboru on camera on the basis of evidence that Rosemary and Anas filmed.

Nigerian police also arrested Charles Igudala, who operates a clinic at Dictat Royal Home in Warri, Delta State, after he was covertly filmed offering medical services and injections to Anas in extremely unsanitary conditions. The NMDA and MoH confirmed that Igudala is not a licensed and registered doctor, while Dr Alfred Ebiakofa of the Nigerian Ministry of Health said that Igudala had been a target of the Nigerian health authorities for some time, but that they “had not been able to catch him before.”

Rosemary and Anas also film other fake doctors wrongly diagnosing healthy patients with malaria and typhoid, as well using as a Quantum Resonance Analyser, a highly controversial machine of unproven effectiveness that is used to illegally diagnose - merely on the basis of tones and lights - a variety of serious illnesses to perfectly healthy patients.

Spell of The Albino, the last investigation Anas filmed for Africa Investigates, won a One World Media Award and was nominated for a Royal Television Society Award.

Nigeria's Fake Doctors, the third episode of Africa Investigates, premiered on Wednesday, 26 November 2014 at 22:30 GMT / Thursday, 20 November at 00:30 CAT, with repeats on 27 November at 11:30, 28 November at 05:30, 29 November at 18:30, and 30 November at 07:30 CAT.

Read more at: https://www.modernghana.com/news/583382/1/anas-arameyaw-anas-investigation-of-fake-doctors-l.html

In this week's episode of Africa Investigates, Anas Arameyaw Anas and Rosemary Nwaebuni go undercover with secret cameras to expose fake doctors in Delta State, leading to three on-camera arrests. Nigerian law forbids abortions, except in cases where the patient's life is in danger. Despite this, Nigeria's Fake Doctors shows Rosemary, who is not even pregnant, twice being offered abortion services from unlicensed practitioners.

Precious Johnson Chuckwudi, who operates a pharmacy in Delta State, offered to provide an abortion - and agreed the price - despite Rosemary's negative pregnancy test, while Mr and Mrs Ogboru offered Rosemary an abortion in the dirty backroom of a bar, without conducting a pregnancy test.

The Nigerian Medical and Dental Association (NMDA) and Ministry of Health (MoH) have confirmed that neither Chuckwudi nor the Ogboru's are licensed and registered as medical doctors and that their shops are not registered clinics. Nigerian police arrested Mr and Mrs Ogboru on camera on the basis of evidence that Rosemary and Anas filmed.

Nigerian police also arrested Charles Igudala, who operates a clinic at Dictat Royal Home in Warri, Delta State, after he was covertly filmed offering medical services and injections to Anas in extremely unsanitary conditions. The NMDA and MoH confirmed that Igudala is not a licensed and registered doctor, while Dr Alfred Ebiakofa of the Nigerian Ministry of Health said that Igudala had been a target of the Nigerian health authorities for some time, but that they “had not been able to catch him before.”

Rosemary and Anas also film other fake doctors wrongly diagnosing healthy patients with malaria and typhoid, as well using as a Quantum Resonance Analyser, a highly controversial machine of unproven effectiveness that is used to illegally diagnose - merely on the basis of tones and lights - a variety of serious illnesses to perfectly healthy patients.

Spell of The Albino, the last investigation Anas filmed for Africa Investigates, won a One World Media Award and was nominated for a Royal Television Society Award.

Nigeria's Fake Doctors, the third episode of Africa Investigates, premiered on Wednesday, 26 November 2014 at 22:30 GMT / Thursday, 20 November at 00:30 CAT, with repeats on 27 November at 11:30, 28 November at 05:30, 29 November at 18:30, and 30 November at 07:30 CAT.

Read more at: https://www.modernghana.com/news/583382/1/anas-arameyaw-anas-investigation-of-fake-doctors-l.html