John Atta Mills wins Ghana election

The Electoral Commission of Ghana has announced John Evans Atta Mills as the winner of the 2008 presidential election. Atta Mills represents the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) and he narrowly won, polling 4,521,032 representing 50.23 per cent of the total votes cast. He defeated the ruling party’s Nana Akufo-Addo who took 4,480,446 votes representing 49.77 per cent of the electorate. It is Atta Mills’s third tilt at the presidency and he had to withstand two rounds of voting and a special election in a single constituency to defeat his National Patriotic Party (NPP) rival by 40,000 votes out of more than nine million ballots.

Atta Mills will replace long-term president John Kufuor who steps down tomorrow after defeating Atta Mills in the last two elections. Kufuor was one of Africa’s elder statesmen during his eight year reign. Kufuor served two terms as president and the constitution did not allow a third term. In his final state of the nation address, Kufuor said parliament should consider extending the term of Ghana's president to five years to give "reasonable room" for a newly elected leader to settle into the job. “For the president of a struggling, developing nation with weak institutions, perhaps in the case of Ghana a five-year term, renewable once, will create the needed space for making a better impact,” he said.

Atta Mills narrowly lost the first round vote in December against Akufo-Addo but the latter did not pass the 50 per cent threshold needed for outright victory. In the run-off election later that month Atta Mills came out ahead of his rival by a wafer-thin margin. The narrowness of the margin meant that there were claims of foul play from both sides. It took a ballot re-run in the remote rural constituency of Tain before the opposition candidate was finally declared the winner. In one hit, the NPP had lost the presidency as well as control of the parliament.

The 64 year old John Atta Mills was the protégé of former president Jerry Rawlings and served as vice-president to Rawlings between 1997 and January 2001. Rawlings anointed Atta Mills as his successor in 2001 but he lost that election to Kufuor. Atta Mills courted controversy by saying he would consult Rawlings (who initially came to power in a coup) if elected but he has recently distanced himself from his mentor. He described himself as a social democrat borrowing from Ghanaian independence leader Kwame Nkrumah's social welfare program. But he pitched a more inclusive and less polarising political platform than both Nkrumah and Rawlings.

Atta Mills will have little time to celebrate his election victory as he faces mounting government debts and wage demands. He will also need to heal the political divisions born of a bruising and suspicious campaign with its allegations of voter fraud. The losing NPP significantly raised public spending in the election run-up to fund expansionary measures to help the country cope with high oil import prices. The legacy to Atta Mills is an increased national debt and it is likely he will have to quickly introduce an austerity budget. But in reality there was very little difference between the two major parties’ policies and a consensus may be possible. And while the world economic downturn has hit Ghana hard, the country is considered a well-administered country by regional standards and a model for political and economic reform. The task ahead for Atta Mills is difficult but far from impossible, by African standards.

Ghana’s Kufuor gets ready for Bush swansong

Ghana’s outgoing president John Kufuor said Thursday his country is buoyant, solvent and economically strong on the back of a vibrant financial sector as well as a 35 percent surge in gold exports. Kufuor was speaking at his final state of the nation address. Kufuor is serving his second term as president and the constitution does not allow a third term. His current term expires this year. Kufuor is one of Africa's elder statesmen and is also head of the AU. He will celebrate his country’s good health by hosting US President Bush next week.

Bush leaves the US today for a week in five African countries: Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia. In Ghana, Bush will meet with Kufuor and visit with Peace Corps volunteers. He will also meet Ghanaian entrepreneurs who have benefited from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) the US Trade Act that enhances American market access for 39 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. However the centrepiece of the visit will be bilateral talks with Kufuor just two years after the Ghanaian president visited the White House.

Bush arrives in Ghana next Tuesday 19 February and will spend two nights in the country. He follows in the footsteps of Bill Clinton who came to Ghana in 1998. Ghana’s Foreign Minister Akwasi Osei-Adjei said President Bush would be making a major policy statement in the capital Accra after a bilateral meeting with President John Kufuor. He said the discussion would feature the promotion of free trade, as well as economic and investment opportunities. The US gave $55 million in aid to Ghana in 2007.

However the major investment between the two countries is via the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). Two years ago the MCC signed its biggest ever deal; a five-year, $547 million anti-poverty Compact with Ghana. Established in 2004. The MCC is a US Government corporation with the aim of reducing global poverty through the promotion of sustainable economic growth. The Ghana program focuses on improving the productivity of agriculture, increasing production of high-value commercial and basic food crops, and fostering greater private investment in agriculture. The Ghanaian government created the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) to be accountable for the implementation of the five-year program MCC program. The money will be split across the sectors of agriculture, transportation (roads and ferry upgrades) and rural development (community services such as education, facilities and banking).

However some analysts say the devil is in the detail with the Ghana program. The MCC has attracted criticism for being slow to spend its allocated budget. Its chief problem has been its sluggish record in getting projects beyond the planning stage. The US Senate is now proposing that Congress provide no more than half the money up front. African leaders are worried by the change. By changing how its projects are financed, “the MCC becomes like the World Bank and all the other countries using overseas development aid in stop and go fashion,” complained President Kufuor. “The aid is spread so thin that at the end of the day the necessary difference is not made.”

But Kufuor has other concerns close to home. Ghana’s problem is a perennial African one – the country has been mired in corruption and mismanagement since independence from Britain in 1957. Ruled by the military up until the eighties, the country made the transition to democracy when a referendum in 1992 approved a constitution for a multi-party system. Today, Ghana is considered a well-administered country by regional standards and a model for political and economic reform in Africa.

Ghana is the world's second-largest producer of cocoa and the country is famed for the high quality of its produce. The cocoa beans are used to make chocolate, both in Ghana, and for the export market. Cadbury Schweppes source most of their cocoa from Ghana. Cadbury’s are sensitive to allegations of exploitation particularly over the use of child labour.

They were among a group of several multinational companies who met in Ghana in October to discuss the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI), a partnership to combat child and forced labour in cocoa farming areas. While Kufuor has claimed "I can say emphatically that we have taken legislative measures to ensure that such practices are eliminated," researchers on the ground disagree. They found that while industry and Ghana have made initial steps such as creating task forces, children still work in cocoa production, regularly miss school, perform dangerous tasks and suffer injury and sickness. Ali Lakiss, the director general of neighbouring Ivory Coast’s Saf-Cacao says it is all about economics. "The farmers don't get the best price,” he said. “If the cocoa price is good, then kids go to school. No money, and kids work at home."

African floods affect 17 countries

Two months of constant rain has caused severe flooding across the Sahel region of northern Africa which has wrecked hundreds of thousands of homes and left many people vulnerable to water-borne diseases. Over 150 people have died and 17 countries have been affected in West, Central and East Africa. Entire villages have been washed away by torrential rains along with crops critical to some of the world's poorest nations. "The rains are set to continue, and we are really concerned, because a lot of people are homeless, and infectious diseases could emerge”, said UN spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs. “Some of the poorest countries, like Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger… are badly affected”.

In Sudan, the worst floods in living memory have left 64 people dead and displaced and affected several hundred thousand, mainly in the troubled south, according to the UN. The World Health Organisation are reporting a cholera epidemic spread by floods which has killed at least 49 Sudanese in recent weeks. "The response is still ongoing,” said Maurizio Giuliano, spokesman for the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).”Most of the 200,000 plus people who were homeless at the end of August have by now been given shelter.”

In neighbouring eastern Uganda, nine people have died and 150,000 have been made homeless since early August. Another 400,000 subsistence farmers have lost their livelihoods after their fields were flooded or roads washed away. The rains are forecast to worsen in the next month. Uganda's Minister for Relief and Disaster Preparedness Musa Ecweru spent Saturday viewing the affected areas by plane. "The problem is getting worse by the hour," he said. “Access to some communities is almost impossible."

While heavy rains are not rare in eastern Africa at this time of year, it is more unusual in West Africa where contingency plans are not as well developed. The UN said severe floods across West Africa had affected 500,000 people in 12 countries, wiping out crops and homes there as well. Ghana has been hit badly by the flooding, with three northern regions being declared an official disaster zone after several towns and villages were submerged. Ghanaian Information Minister Oboshie-Sai Cofie said it was a humanitarian disaster. “People have nowhere to go,” she said, “Some of them are just hanging out there waiting for help to come."

French military helicopters were helping relief efforts in nearby Ivory Coast, while officials in Togo were dealing with more than 60,000 displaced people and wrecked infrastructure. At least 17 people have been killed in the Savanes region of northeastern Togo. Una McCauley, UNICEF’s representative in Togo, said the death toll is likely to rise in the coming days as the rains continue. “About 60 thousand people still haven’t been accessed because their areas have been cut off,” she said. “The situation is quite poor because these are the same communities which have been touched by severe malnutrition.”

While African web sites and newspapers and the UN Information Network are filled with stories about the floods, the major English-language media in the West have mostly ignored this tragedy. But western disinterest in Africa’s problems is not new. When Mozambique suffered catastrophic flooded in 2000, Time reporter Tony Karon lambasted the lack of the interest in the west saying “forget about ‘ask not for whom the bell tolls…’ when it comes to a natural disaster in an impoverished African country, it takes some pretty gruesome images and a dramatic death toll before the industrial west even hears the bell”.