News

 Death toll in twin fire, flood disaster hits 200

 The death toll in the twin fire, flood disaster has hit 200 with some relatives still desperately searching for their loved ones.

Torrential rains Wednesday night left Accra in crisis as dozens drowned in a sea of flood that washed away humans, properties, pulled down houses and left tunnels, drains choked with debris.

In the midst of the storm, tens of passengers, drivers, petrol station attendants were also burnt to death in a horrifying fire incident at the Goil Filling Station close to the Kwame Nkrumah Circle in Accra.

Most of the deceased persons were seeking refuge at the filling station and houses and shops nearby but were burnt to death when an explosion occurred at the station.

Charred bodies were retrieved from the scene of the fire but the devastation left behind by the fire will take days or even weeks if not months to repair.

Hospitals have been flooded, not by rainwater but by human bodies driven in several vehicles and dumped at the various morgues.

The 37 Military Hospital has taken 65 dead bodies with 35 survivors on admission at the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital.

Hospital officials say they are sad about the incident but not overwhelmed.

Joy News' Matilda Wemegah who was at the 37 Military Hospital said lots of people who have besieged the hospital are still in a confused state.

They have looked at the surviving victims at the intensive care units, the morgue but still cannot locate their lost relatives.

According to them, the lost relatives cannot be contacted. All their phones are off.

They can't tell if they are alive or dead but they fear the worse.

Meanwhile, rescue efforts are over. Security officers are busy cleaning the debris left behind by the flood and fire.

So far, five cars swept by the floods from unknown destinations and which were trapped in a drain behind the Paloma Restaurant have been pulled out by the Military.

Quite a number of vehicles are yet to be salvaged, the military officials told Joy News Latiff Iddrisu.

Meanwhile, officials are said to be planning a national response strategy to ameliorate the impact of the disaster.

President John Mahama has described the incident as "catastrophic, almost unprecedented."

After touring some of the worst-hit areas, the president said, "we shouldn't continue to behave like the vultures," who would promise to cover its roof but fail to do so once the rain season is over.

He called for a change in attitude by all Ghanaians.

The flagbearer of the opposition New Patriotic Party, Nana Akufo-Addo, described the disaster as the "dark moment" in the history of the capital.

In the wake of the visitation by political players, the Bureau of Public Safety says in memory of the lost souls practical steps must be taken to solve this perennial problem once and for all.

He said officials must with urgency desilt all drains in Accra and demolish all structures in watercourses.

Ivorian revival feeds on troubles in Ghana cocoa sector

  Three years ago, when James joined Ghana's anti-smuggling task force, his job was to intercept illicit cocoa shipments from neighboring Ivory Coast to preserve the superior quality of his country's beans. Now he has to stop it flowing the other way."We used to burn their cocoa because it was not good," said the wiry 60-year-old, one of the leaders of a network of growers and informants that monitors Ghana's porous border with its western neighbour.
"Now the Ivorians are buying our cocoa. They are sucking our blood," he said, as he set out to patrol muddy tracks that run from Enchi-Aowin district and cross the border.

ADVERTISING

Ivory Coast has partially closed the quality gap in the past two years, but it is a collapse in the Ghanaian currency, the cedi, that has driven the reversal of fortunes between Ivory Coast, the world's largest cocoa grower, and Ghana, second-largest. Between them, the two produce 60 percent of the global supply of the principal ingredient in chocolate.
Ghana's big budget and current account deficits have stripped the cedi of 45 percent of its value against the dollar since January.
That means farmers in Ghana, who get a fixed price for the season from the country's cocoa marketing board, Cocobod, can get much more for their crop by smuggling it into Ivory Coast, where the sector is recovering strongly after a decade of civil conflict and political turmoil.
At a time when chocolate consumption is booming in new markets, particularly in Asia, Ghana's problems may jeopardize its ambitious plans to nearly double production to mitigate the resulting global supply shortfall.
"Every time the cedi devalues against the dollar, it reduces the capacity to buy fertilisers and inputs to help the farmers," said a European analyst. "If you consider Ghana is going to produce 900,000 tonnes, about 21 or 22 percent of world demand, it's of enormous importance."
Ghana emerged as a success story during the 2000s, when war, political instability and a disastrous liberalization brought Ivory Coast's cocoa sector to its knees.
Ghana's output more than tripled from 340,000 tonnes in the 2001/02 season to a record 1,025,000 tonnes a decade later. Strict controls cemented its reputation as a producer of top quality beans, establishing a brand that fetches a premium.
A combination of better management of forward sales, increasing world prices and improvements in quality allowed Cocobod to increase the amount it paid farmers from 900 cedis per tonne in 2005 to 3,392 cedis ($989) per tonne for the current season.
IVORY COAST REVIVAL
Then the twin deficits mounted and the government finally abandoned its struggle to prop up the currency.
That also caused a spike in inflation, which was 15 percent year on year in June, hitting farmers' purchasing power.
At the market in Karlo, a border town not far from Andrews Assum's cocoa plantation, a bag of rice that cost 75 cedis a year ago now sells for 120 cedis.
"The market is very high, and the cedi is very low. You can't buy anything," said the 35-year-old farmer. "We don't have enough money to continue our children's schooling."
Little wonder, then, that in May, industry sources estimated that since the start of the season in October, up to 100,000 tonnes of beans had been trafficked across the border into Ivory Coast, where they can now sell for much more.
"It's the situation that is compelling them to do so," said Alfred Allotey, who manages a purchasing depot in Karlo for PBC Limited, Ghana's largest licensed buyer.
"No-one outside Ghana has realized how bad it's got," said Edward George, head of soft commodities research at Ecobank.
In Ivory Coast, meanwhile, the sector is on the up.
Last season, after a brief 2011 civil conflict ended years of political turmoil, its new President Alassane Ouattara ushered in reforms that established a single marketing board, the Coffee and Cocoa Council (CCC), to manage the sector.
It abandoned a system of spot sales and auctioned off the bulk of its crop in advance in order to set a guaranteed minimum price for farmers. In a single season it succeeded in stamping out a decade-long trafficking epidemic that saw a peak of around 200,000 tonnes of cocoa lost to smugglers in the 2010/11 season.
At the October start of the 2013/14 season - the second under the new reform regime - the CCC raised its farmgate price so it was roughly equal to Cocobod's. Not for long.
As the Ghanaian cedi plunged, Ivory Coast's CFA franc, a regional currency pegged to the euro, held stable. Today, in dollar terms, the Ivorian price is more than 55 percent higher.
"You hear people talk about (getting) 300 Ghana cedis, 350 Ghana cedis (per 62.5 kg bag) against our 212 Ghana cedis," said David Akuetteh, the regional manager for PBC responsible for 11 border districts in western Ghana.
While other parts of Ghana have had a bumper crop this year, in the west - traditionally home to some of the most productive areas - his buyers are missing their targets.
"You can see from the figures ... that much more cocoa has been lost by way of smuggling this year," he said.
NEED HIGHER PRICE
Standing beside a footpath cutting between a cornfield and a banana patch within a few kilometers of the Ivorian border, James, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, pointed out the footprints in the mud left by smugglers.
While his team has had some success in stopping trucks, several of which are now impounded at the district police station, much of the cocoa smuggled out of Ghana is leaving the country on the heads of porters.
"The government must try as much as possible to boost the price. That will be the only solution," James said. "Other than that, we are only 15 here. We cannot cover all of the routes."
Cocobod hopes to overtake Ivory Coast as the world's top producer, an ambitious target that requires it to double production from the sector, Ghana's third-largest export earner.
"We know that's not going to happen soon. It's a long-term goal and not a race," a senior Cocobod official told Reuters, asking not to be named. "We're confident of significantly raising output from the current levels."
The agency has pledged to close the price gap with Ivory Coast in order to curb smuggling when it begins marketing the 2014/15 crop in October.
"We take a lot of things into consideration when fixing the price. But for the coming season, we will have to use Ivory Coast prices as the key benchmark," the Cocobod source said.
That could prove a tall order.
"They need to increase the farmgate price next year, but that's very difficult. Given current international prices, they may actually need to double it," Ecobank's George said.
Although the currency crash means Cocobod will have received a windfall this year - selling in dollars, but buying in cedis - its resources have fallen prey to weak government finances.
With the finance ministry forecasting a year-end budget deficit of 8.8 percent of gross domestic product, there will be a lot of budget gaps to close.
Johannes Jansen, the World Bank's senior agricultural economist in Ghana, puts the windfall at hundreds of millions of dollars, helped by current high market prices, but he says little of that will find its way into the pockets of farmers.
    "They are thinking of giving the farmers a bonus at the end of the season, but it is likely to be relatively small," Jansen said. "This is not a sustainable way of managing a value chain, since farmers seem to be receiving the short end of the stick."
Ghana's flagship subsidized fertilizer and pesticide spraying programs, slashed in half as a cost-cutting measure this season, were an early casualty of Cocobod's financial woes.
And though the marketing board now says it wants to breathe new life into the programs - credited by many as the principal driver of the meteoric rise in output since 2000 - how it will sustainably finance them remains unclear.
GRINDING DEBT
Ghana's processing sector, far from adding value, has created another major headache. As grinders have struggled to turn a profit, they have run up huge debts to Cocobod for beans.
"Cocobod may have to write off some or all of the $250 million debt owed by the grinders," according to an Ecobank research note, estimating that Ghana is using just 60 percent of its 430,000-tonne installed processing capacity.
Cocobod is consulting with sector actors, donors and analysts with a view to correcting deficiencies in the current system and mapping out a future. Jansen, while an enthusiastic supporter of the process, said implementing meaningful change would be a long and difficult process.
    "In whose interest is it to reform the sector? Well, perhaps not Cocobod's, at least not in the short run, because they are doing well (from the currency windfall). And perhaps not the government's either, because they can use cocoa money to plug fiscal holes," he said.
"In the longer term reform is actually in everybody's interest, since the status quo is just not sustainable."
Across the border in the Ivorian town of Niable, where workers emerge from storehouses hauling burlap sacks marked "Produce of Ghana" to sun-dry the beans on giant tarpaulins, there is scant sympathy for Ghana's plight.
"If they send it over here, I'm going to buy it. That's how it is," says Adoni Nkanza, a 51-year-old who farms five hectares outside of town. "They're angry now, but before, our cocoa went over there and they were happy ... That's fair."

 Major Problems Facing Ghana Today

 

 The Republic of Ghana or Ghana for short is a west African country bordering the Gulf of Guinea between the Republic of Ivory Coast and the People's Republic of Togo. Ghana borders the Gulf of Guinea to the south, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east and Ivory Coast to the West. Ghana has a total land area of about 238,53sq.km (about 11,000sq.km covered by water) with about 539km of coastline. Ghana has a total  population of about 27 million people with the population growth rate around 1.8%. A major part of the Ghanaian population lives in major cities and towns such as Accra the capital of Ghana (Accra contains about 2.3 million people) and Kumasi the capital of the Ashanti region(Kumasi contains about 1.8 million people). Other regional capitals such as Sunyani the capital of the Brong Ahafo region and Tamale the capital of the Northern Region of Ghana are also homes to several hundreds of thousands of Ghanaians if not millions.

Ghana was the first sub-Saharan African country to gain independence (from colonial rule in 1957) from the United Kingdom.Ghana became a republic on  July 1, 1960. Lake Volta which is the largest artificial lake in the world is found in Ghana.
Ghana is one of the most culturally rich countries in all of Africa with a beautiful blend of several ethnic and racial groups living peacefully together. Ghana without a doubt is one of the most peaceful countries in all of Africa. Akans (the most dominant ethnic group in Ghana today) make up about 45.3% of the total population followed by Mole-Dagbon who make up about 15.2% of the total population.Ewes (another major ethnic group) make up about 11.7% of the total population. The Ga-Dangmes make up about 7.3% followed by the Guans who make up about 4% of the total population. The Gurmas form about 3.6% of the population, with the Grusis forming about 2.6%. The Mande-Busangas make up about 1% of the total population with the several other minor groups making up the remaining 7.8% of the population.
Ghana has a literacy rate of about 75% for the total population with the female literacy rate hovering around 58%. In other words, just about 58% of the total population of females above the age 15 can read and write which although is better than in neighboring countries such as Burkina Faso, is "very" bad compared to countries such as Botswana and even Zimbabwe.
Ghana just like its neighboring countries is blessed with abundance of natural resources such as gold, silver, manganese, bauxite, timber, petroleum, fish, rubber, salt, limestone, industrial diamonds, etc. However, despite the abundance of natural resources, Ghana just like its neighboring countries is crippled by several economic and social issues such as poverty, hunger, corruption, illiteracy, poor governance, etc.
The two decades of political stability in Ghana has helped the country a lot in almost all sectors of its economy. However, despite the significant improvement in agriculture and other sectors of the economy, Ghana like most African countries today continue to face so many developmental challenges. About 60 percent of the Ghanaian population are into Agriculture. Most farmers in Ghana like in most African countries today are subsistence farmers who grow crops and rear animals just to feed themselves and their families. However, lack of farming subsidies, poor farming practices, poor climatic conditions, etc. continue to keep millions of people in extreme poverty.

Despite Ghana being the second leading producer of cocoa beans in the world (Ivory Coast is the current world's leading producer of cocoa beans), most people living in the rural areas especially women and children go to bed hungry in Ghana today especially in times of crop failure.

Most villages in Ghana today lack good drinking water, hospitals, basic sanitation(lack of basic sanitation remains a major problem even in Accra the capital of Ghana), quality education, etc.

The northern parts of Ghana unlike the rest of the country get very unpredictable levels of rainfall in a year which leaves the upper East, the upper west, and the Northern regions of Ghana mostly dry and dusty during most parts of the year which doesn't favor agriculture at all in most parts. Rainfall in the northern parts of Ghana is often unpredictable and causes floods which destroys the few crops and animals in the fields.

Lack of good drinking water was and still remains a major problem in these upper regions of Ghana although the former president Jerry John Rawlings and the NDC government did great for some of these areas by providing them with boreholes and pipe-borne water which has helped a lot in the eradication of the guinea-worm and other water-borne diseases from some of these areas. Not all areas in these regions have access to good drinking water. The NDC government under former president Rawlings also helped a lot in extending electricity to some of these areas. Once again, great help is needed because not all villages and towns in Ghana have electricity and even where there is electricity, frequent power "cut-offs" leave many in the dark. In other words, most small villages and towns in Ghana still live in darkness.

The NDC government under the late president John Evans Atta Mills (may his soul rest in peace) also helped a lot in extending quality education to some of these areas. Ghana under the leadership of the late Peace-loving Professor John Evans Atta Mills saw great improvements in almost all sectors of its economy. Although often considered "slow" by some Ghanaians, the very intelligent Professor Mills was so full of good ideas for the country. Prof. Mills without any doubt, was the best after Nkrumah and did so many great things to help Ghana especially in maintaining peace, freedom and justice.  The recent oil discovery in Ghana if managed very well can help speed the Ghanaian economy a lot.

Youth education especially girl-child and sex education in Ghana has helped a lot in breaking the cycle of new HIV/AIDS infections in Ghana. In 2002, there were at least 260,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in Ghana with about 21,000 HIV/AIDS deaths recorded within the same year. These numbers have reduced a lot with the help of girl-child and sex education programs. Once again, more help is needed especially in the Northern parts of Ghana where girl-child education remains very poor.

 

Burundi Elections to Be Postponed After Weeks of Unrest

Presidential and parliamentary elections have been postponed in Burundi, an official said Thursday, following weeks of unrest in the capital over President Pierre Nkurunziza's bid for a third term in office.

Regional bloc, the East African Community, on Sunday asked the Burundian government to postpone elections for at least 45 days and use that time to ensure there is a conducive environment to hold the polls. More than 90,000 Burundians have fled the country fearing violence. Burundi has had a long history of political upheaval that has been characterized by political assassinations and coups.

Officials are waiting for the electoral commission to propose new election dates, said Willy Nyamitwe, presidential adviser for media and information. He said the latest date the presidential poll can be held is July 26 — a month before the scheduled expiration of Nkurunziza's term.

Before the postponement, parliamentary elections had been scheduled for Friday, and presidential polls for June 26.

The capital Bujumbura has been rocked by weeks of protests following the April 25 announcement of Nkurunziza's bid for a third term in office, which many viewed as unconstitutional. At least 20 people have died in street battles with police. The protests gave rise to an attempted coup in mid-May which was soon crushed.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council welcomed the government's commitment to postpone elections and called on all Burundian parties to reach agreement on a new electoral timetable. It also called for the reinstatement of private media and protection of civil and human rights including the right to peaceful assembly so opposition politicians can campaign freely.

A press statement issued Thursday after a closed briefing by Said Djinnit, the U.N. special envoy for the Great Lakes Region, called for those responsible for the violence to be held accountable and urged the disarmament of all armed youth groups allied to political parties.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged "the swift implementation of measures to help create the conditions for the holding of peaceful, inclusive and credible elections," his spokesman said.

The U.N. chief expressed concern about the potential for violence in Burundi to escalate further and called for "calm and restraint." Ban also called for the resumption of political talks facilitated by Djinnit, the spokesman said.

Some African leaders have been in power for decades after altering their countries' constitutions to extend their tenures.

Burkina Faso's president of 27 years, Blaise Compaore, stepped down in October amid mounting opposition to his bid to seek yet another term in office.

————

Associated Press writers Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Tom Odula in Nairobi, Kenya, contributed to this report