Planes to and from Africa

Three weeks ago, I took an Air France flight from Freetown to Paris (via Guinea Conakry). For the most part, the flight was enjoyable; most of this had to do with my being upgraded to Premium Economy, Air France’s version of ‘not quite Business Class’ but which tends to be populated by people who seem to think and behave like they are travelling Business Class. I believe that the Gods were watching me that day because had been stationed in my original 30 cm X 30 cm space in Economy Class, I would probably still be at physiotherapist.

One thing that really stood out was the age of the plane: the Airbus A330-200 we took is apparently 22 years old. I know this because a Sierra Leonean, who boarded in Freetown, asked the steward about whether there were sockets (presumably to plug in his laptop) in ‘Premium Economy’. To this the steward replied ‘This is an old plane, so there are no sockets. It is 22 years old, and we will be – how you say – decommissioning the A330 soon at Air France’. To this, the man replied: ’22 years old! Heh! We are dead!’ The steward laughed and reassured the man that the plane was perfectly functional, which it was. I found myself struggling to supress a wry smile because the remark got me thinking about some of the flights I have taken over the years to and from Africa and flgihts to the continent more generally.

I immediately recalled the Delta flight I took in June 2013 from Accra to Atlanta, where I connected to Ronald Reagan International Airport in order to attend a World Bank Conference in Washington DC. I wisely – although there is no way of verifying this – ‘upgraded’ to Economy Comfort on the Accra flight, paying $40 for the move. At the check-in desk, the agent – rather inexplicably – boasted, with a smile, ‘Welcome to the oldest plane in Delta’s fleet. Enjoy…’ It certainly lived up to this billing: the videos functioned intermittently; the stewardesses and stewards looked like they did not want to be there; the catering was awful; and the Economy Comfort seats were, well, worn so much that it felt like I was sitting on concrete, not cushion. More recently, I read about a similar experience in Nigeria where, in June 2015, passengers began voicing complaints about the old Boeing 767 plane deployed by Delta on its Lagos-Atlanta route. In addition to experiencing numerous mechanical faults and causing a number of flight delays and cancellations, the plane, despite covering one of the company’s most lucrative routes, has been singled out for its subpar service and poor catering (see http://saharareporters.com/2015/07/13/nigerian-passengers-reject-delta-airlines’-old-planes for the full article) Of course, there are exceptions (for example, KLM revamping, in 2015, a Boeing 777-200 for its Amsterdam-Accra flight) but for the most part, we repeatedly see planes that are barely flight worthy coming from European and North American skies touching down on African soil. Why do European and North American airlines insist on using the worst planes in their fleets on their African routes? One would think that because of the underwhelming travel experience, that flights to Africa would be fairly cheap. On the contrary, they rank among the most expensive in the world. Why is this the case?

I looked into this a bit more, and there seems to be a number of reasons why these flights cost so much, and ultimately, why most European and North American airlines select old planes for their African routes. Let me highlight a couple here, drawn from ideas contained in two interesting articles (http://www.ibtimes.com/african-air-travel-why-are-airlines-africa-so-expensive-unsafe-impossible-navigate-1234609 and http://www.travelstart.co.za/blog/4-reasons-flights-africa-expensive-faq-fridays/). The first is poor infrastructure, a problem that plagues most of Africa. Many African airlines use old planes that are fuel inefficient, which forces them to charge exorbitant prices. Complicating matters further is the cost of fuel in a number of African countries and at times, its availability. Understandably, few Western airlines are willing to codeshare with these outfits, which enables them to jack up their own prices whilst still getting away with using poor aircrafts. This leads to the European/North American carrier ‘city hopping’. Some examples that come to mind are the aforementioned Air France Paris to Freetown flight four times per week, which continues to Guinea Conakry, and the Air France flight to Guinea Conakry flight three times a week, which continues to Bamako before heading back to Paris.

Second, and something we often forget, there is simply low demand to fly to Africa. According to the World Bank, the continent has less than 1 percent of global air traffic, and is home to roughly ten percent of the world’s population. Most of these people live on less than US$2/day and would therefore struggle to take a communal taxi, let alone a plane. Only the very few wealthy and elite, a large share of whom reside in the affluent country capitals of Angola, Accra, Abuja and Kinshasa, and are the direct beneficiaries of booming natural resource-dependent economies, are able to take a plane bound for Europe or North America with regularity. The low demand ultimately drives up the cost, irrespective of the aircraft deployed.

Of course, things are not all doom and gloom. In recent decades, we have witnessed the rise of Ethiopian Airlines, which posted profits of US$42 million in 2012, buoyed by contracts forged with the AU and UNECA, both of which are conveniently headquartered in Addis Ababa; South African Airlines, which now operates over 50 aircraft, servicing cities as far afield as Washington DC and Perth; and Kenya Airways, which, despite its losses, has been bolstered by KLM, which now holds the largest stake in the company. But whilst these airlines have made movement within and to and from Africa easier, bringing costs down ever so slightly in some cases, we are still faced with the prospect of high airfares on shabby aircraft.

So, unless you plan on driving to Africa, be prepared for the worst in the air…

In Elite Company

Today, on a trip from Accra to Amsterdam, I was upgraded to business class. It was everything a weary researcher, away from home for a couple of weeks and about to re-enter the family dynamic, could ask for on a ‘red eye’ back to Europe: a bed, freedom to read emails on a laptop without smashing elbows, and a pillow bigger than my hand. This is actually one of the few bonuses that comes with being a frequent flyer on an airline: the occasional – and unexpected – upgrade.

One of the more interesting experiences with being in first class – and something I have reflected on before in this space – are the types you find in the lounge. It is always an eclectic bunch who share a common trait: very little understanding of, and care for, the world they are a part of, or I guess more to the point, should be a part of. These are the elite who run poor economies such as Ghana, working collectively to help it reach new economic heights. A brief reflection on who actually came into the lounge over the hour I was there, however, certainly helps to explain a lot of the things we see in developing countries today.

First, there were the three Americans talking about oil. Clearly, they were Texan: you could tell from the Southern drawl. They requested ‘three’ Jack Daniels at the bar. Once the lady who took their order was out of earshot, the three men began to laugh in unison, poking fun of how, in a rather malicious way, the woman pronounced ‘three’ in her Ghanaian accent. This soon turned into a discussion about how Ghanaians are lazy, and how Ghanaian women are only after foreigners’ money. Sometime later, two Canadians (I assumed, judging by their accents and frequent reference to Calgary being ‘home’) entered the room, whining about how the mining company they worked for ‘could not continue this way’, in the words of one, ‘with the community behaving in the way they did’. ‘What the hell is wrong with these people?’ the other asked, in reference to presumably the community which was causing one of the company’s operations some trouble. ‘You build them a borehole, and they say it’s in a graveyard, and then you build a road, and they complain about the dust.’ ‘Well,’ the other later commented, ‘at least they are not a bunch of goddamned alcoholics,’ which, I presumed to be a jab at the First Nations’ reserves often found in the catchment areas of many mines in Canada.

There was also the Ghanaian whose hands were adorned with gold rings and who wore what appeared to be a tailored Armani suit. Holding two I-Phones, he demanded to be served food in a self-service area. I guessed that this guy was off to an ‘important’ meeting in Europe or North America somewhere, perhaps London, Washington DC or Paris – an engagement with perhaps a donor, his trip financed using the small bits of foreign exchange remaining in the Government of Ghana’s coffers, for a loan that would surely put the country back on track, developmentally. For this individual, ‘ministerial mode’ clearly extended beyond the walls of the office, and included someone else’s airline. Clearly not wanting to be outdone and wanting his presence to be known, an Indian man, who did not stop barking instructions into the newest Samsung Galaxy, began shouting at one of the women working in the lounge, complaining about the internet being slow. I guessed that this man was a wealthy merchant – or at least pretended to be – who has set up businesses in Accra which service the country’s growing primary sector. If this is a glimpse of what South-South cooperation is about, I am sure African people are anxiously looking forward to more arrivals from destinations such as Asia. Finally, there was the heavily-overweight Ghanaian whose phone never left his ear throughout his entire one-hour stay in the lounge. Sweating profusely, the man talked and talked, clearly very busy with setting up some important meetings with various companies and/or other organizations that would bring important investment to Ghana. This was clearly a highly-respected government official sent to represent Ghana at an important negotiation. One could only hope that if the meeting was the next day that he had sufficiently recovered from the two beers and two Baileys he had at the lounge, and – at least based on what I later observed – three glasses of champagne he had consumed whilst on the plane. With such people duking it out in parliament, Ghana’s people are surely in safe hands.

The first class lounge, therefore, could be thought of metaphorically as the microscope which zeroes in on who runs a developing country – in this case, in Ghana. It magnifies all of the nuances, providing a glimpse of the very individuals who have been entrusted with developing a country. It is truly amazing what you can learn about development whilst sipping on a Coke with your feet up whilst waiting to board an airplane…

Let’s Tax Small-Scale Miners in Ghana…

There are a couple of things that are happening in Ghana right now – or at least appear to be happening – that have caught my attention. The first is the insistence of the government that small-scale miners be taxed. The second is the decision of AngloGold Ashanti, long one of the country’s chief operators, to release a 200 km2 section of its concession for subsequent re-demarcation, through the government, to licensed small-scale miners. Let me reflect on why we should view these announcements with some trepidation.

These are curious decisions to say the least for a country that has never really made much of an effort, beyond the rhetoric, implementing a licensing framework and launching the occasional support intervention, to formalize and assist small-scale mining. Prospective licensees have struggled to secure viable plots and make the costly payments needed to obtain the requisite permits in a country where most land is now in the hands of foreign multinational mining and mineral exploration companies. Rather than proactively prospecting and ‘blocking out’ suitable areas for (licensed) small-scale mining, the government has, for much of the past decade, elected to wait for prospecting large-scale prospecting licenses to expire before putting aside lands for this purpose. Moreover, as opposed to working closely with small-scale miners and helping them legalize their activities, the government – rather strangely – continues to do things such as assemble an Inter-Ministerial Taskforce Against Illegal Mining. Such moves suggest policymakers are completely oblivious to the fact that it is the very laws and frameworks which they have implemented and continue to endorse that have been responsible for fuelling the growth of informal small-scale mining activity in the country.
Why, then, should even the biggest sceptics be excited about the announcement to tax small-scale mining in Ghana? Largely because of everything that must be done before the government can be in a realistic position to do so, universally. At present, Ghana’s policymakers have little idea about where many miners operate and why, and possess minimal knowledge about the dynamics of the burgeoning and comprehensive informal networks these operators are a part of and ultimately nourish. To be in a position to send the tax man around to small-scale mines, therefore, would require the government to first do the following: 1) making available adequate land resources, a necessary first step for licensing; 2) kick-starting financial services for legalized operators; and 3) simplifying the registration process, decreasing the costs of licensing and helping to lift operators out of the informal economy. These announcements are a bit puzzling because these are changes that Ghana’s small-scale miners have been demanding for years. So why the sudden change of heart?

The policymakers I have interviewed over the years have consistently argued that any move to tax the country’s small-scale miners would be futile and met with resistance. This view, however, is simply baseless and, on the whole, ridiculous. A more significant question at this point, given the unsustainable development trajectory the industry now finds itself on, is: why wouldn’t a Ghanaian small-scale miner want to be taxed? Apart from benefitting from the above changes, these miners would – at least in theory – be able to hold their government more accountable. The argument that constantly surfaces in the resource curse literature is that taxation, being the foundation of accountability between the state and its citizens, has the potential to bolster the legitimacy of governments, stimulate institution-building and enhance democracy. Small-scale miners, therefore, would welcome being taxed if it enabled them to wield greater influence in Accra, and could explain why so many are demanding that the government make the move. We have already seen, in countries such as Guyana, how powerful and influential small-scale miners who are taxed and in regular contact with government can become.

But how does the government intend to proceed here? The country still lacks a mining policy, which would at least provide some reassurance as to where the policymakers intend to go with this. We must, therefore, still be wary. After all, this is a government that continues to be overwhelming pro large-scale mining; has a Minerals Commission which, despite experiencing a managerial overhaul in recent months, is still – in the words of one outgoing Minister I recently interviewed – largely dominated by a ‘treetop management’ that continues to cling to archaic ideas; and which has never gone out of its way to support ASM. So why the sudden change in attitude towards the sector? The obvious answer links to what is going on in the country’s large-scale mining industry: due to the recent decline in the gold price, companies have scaled down on exploration and, in the case of Obuasi, suspended production. A decrease in gold output obviously means less revenue in the form of taxes and royalties for government. Of course, Ghana would not have been in this situation had stabilization agreements not been signed with Newmont and AngloGold Ashanti in the early-2000s, when the gold price was a fraction of what it is today. Desperate to benefit from the recent windfall, the government did increase the royalty from 3 to 5%, in 2010, a move which seems to have alienated the few ‘unprotected’ companies operating in the country, notably Gold Fields, Kinross and Golden Star Resources. The only logical explanation behind any government’s decision to redistribute lands to small-scale miners, whether in at Obuasi or elsewhere, would be to compensate for lost revenue. With AngloGold Ashanti apparently suspending operations for at least two years, policymakers may be desperate enough to recoup some financial compensation from the idle site, even if it means formalizing resident ASM operators whose pleas for land, licenses and governmental assistance, we must not forget, predate Sam Jonah’s running of the company.

Thus, on the one hand, for Ghana, a move – even a suggestion – to tax small-scale mining, regardless of the motivation, must be considered progress. And, if the government is, indeed, serious about implementing this across the board, the changes that must be made for it to become a reality would mean many exciting times ahead for hitherto marginalized unlicensed small-scale operators. On the other hand, in a country without a mining policy, which recently assembled a taskforce to ‘eliminate’ all unlicensed activity and where there has been no interest shown, for the better part of 20 years, in devising innovative solutions to formalize artisanal and small-scale activities, any move to tax is likely a temporary fix. Officials at the Commission have already indicated that some small-scale miners ‘are in possession of heavy machinery’ and therefore ‘should be taxed’, which suggests that any move to collect revenue will not be a country-wide effort aimed at formalizing activities but rather selected taxation efforts. Will the government simply target the handful of licensees currently in operation for ‘quick cash’, and continue condemning those individuals who, for very legitimate reasons, remain in the informal economy?

Let us see how the Obuasi deal unfolds – if at all – and what comes from it. Maybe 40 years and ten large-scale mining operations too late, the Government of Ghana has finally recognized the importance of artisanal and small-scale activities.

The Minamata Convention: Exactly What Are We Doing?

If the rumours are correct, Ghana has finally signed the Minamata Convention. On 24 September 2014, at United Nations Headquarters in New York City, some of its high-ranking officials, along with representatives from 18 other countries, put pen to paper, pledging a commitment to protect human health and the environment from anthropogenic emissions and releases of mercury and mercuric compounds. The Convention, we are told, will only come into force when ratified by 50 countries, and although we are nowhere close to being in this position, you never really know with some of these policymakers, who do not really need a reason to sign a treaty, however ridiculous it may be. Despite being packaged as a general environmental agreement, this is really a move aimed at changing behaviour – specifically, eliminating amalgamation practices – in the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector, the world’s largest source of anthropogenic emissions of mercury. There are a number of reasons to be concerned about our approach to minimizing emissions of mercury at small-scale gold mines, the most recent highlight being the drafting of the Minamata Convention.

For starters, we continue to view and, by extension, tackle, mercury use in ASM – for lack of a better word – incorrectly. The fundamental difference with Minamata is that it has meant that these unfounded convictions we have of amalgamation have reached the international stage and ultimately wield influence over policy directives implemented at the global level. The point of contention – at least for me – is that this not an environmental problem, as is widely portrayed. It is, rather, a development problem with an environmental dimension. Why is this significant? Because the people inking these agreements rarely see how – or care to understand that – most of the people who use mercury in ASM are, in fact, poor, bonded to someone, and/or are in no position to pursue an alternative, even with all of the education in the world. These people depend on a steady supply of mercury for their survival. Whilst signatories’ pledges to ‘take steps to reduce, and where feasible eliminate, the use of mercury and mercury compounds in, and the emissions and releases to the environment of mercury from, such mining and processing’ (Act 7) are, indeed, commendable from an environmental standpoint, they are also, in many cases, inappropriate, given the dependency of the poor masses on mercury for their livelihoods. What do governments and donors intend on doing with (or for) these people after they remove mercury from the system? The implications of misclassifying this problem, therefore, are quite significant.

A second reason for concern is that, despite efforts to disseminate substitutes for amalgamation and mercury pollution control devices, few, if any, are capable of making much of a difference at this point. Millions of dollars have been spent over the years to develop and pilot viable alternatives to amalgamation alongside efforts to reduce emissions but have yielded mixed results because, well, they have, for the most part, been standalone interventions. Why has this been the case? Although the most important rural nonfarm activity in sub-Saharan Africa, ASM – quite inexplicitly – continues to receive very little attention on the region’s development agenda, a concern which I have discussed extensively, over the years, in this space. The sector is, rather strangely, seen as a threat to development, as opposed to what it truly is: an integral and rooted dimension of rural African society that has inseparable linkages to agriculture. Unless a much-needed ‘space’ for ASM is created in Africa development policy, efforts to, say, disseminate retorts, pilot magnetic sluice boxes and shaking tables, and distribute furnaces, will continue to yield disappointing results.

Why is this so important? Without any development traction, mercury use in ASM will continue to be analyzed in environmental terms. For the technical people signing the Minamata Convention, there is no anthropological or developmental dimension to this equation. The solution is simple: that it would be illogical to continue using a method of gold recovery that is detrimental to the environment and human health. But if development people who are familiar with the realities of African gold mining were brought on board, decision-makers would be provided with timely reminders of how nuanced the situation they are trying to ‘correct’ truly is. Accusations levelled at miners for not considering alternatives to amalgamation would elicit a response such as ‘Most operators do not possess the technical know-how to use, in an efficient and effective way, the majority of these technologies.’; accusations levelled at miners for showing no interest in using retorts would elicit a response such as ‘Time, for poverty-driven operators, is money and expending too much of it on unnecessary things could jeopardize their survival...this includes setting up and waiting for retorting processes’; and those promoting the Minamata Convention strictly on environmental grounds would be shouted at by people who will remind those in the room that a large share of the artisanal gold mining masses are not in any position to abandon mercury at this time because of the personal circumstances they face. In short, having the right development people on board and allowing them to engage in key discussions would recalibrate the debate for the better, in the process, spawning more appropriate solutions to what is clearly a more complex problem than has been diagnosed.

But in the absence of such discussions, a rather strange and highly-inappropriate agenda for ASM has emerged. We have become preoccupied with ‘mechanizing’ the sector or improving the efficiency of operations, to the point where we are putting the cart before the horse without even realizing it. This extends to the Convention itself, which calls for signatories to draft a National Action Plan to combat mercury pollution from and use in ASM, and in Annex C, identifies a number of areas which need to be covered in each. But it is the order that these areas are presented which is a concern – for me at least – because it epitomizes the current policy ‘mindset’ towards ASM. After calling for ‘Each party that is subject to the provisions of paragraph 3 of Article 7’ to identify ‘National objectives and reduction targets’ and ‘Actions to eliminate’, Appendix C calls for signatories to outline ‘Steps to facilitate the formalization or regulation of the artisanal and small-scale gold mining sector’. Should this not be the first step? Should we not be first looking for ways to create the necessary ‘space’ for operators – through formalization – to innovate, including thinking about adopting environmental technologies? The entire backward approach prescribed here is ironic: on the one hand, the reason why ASM has failed to gain much currency on the development agenda is because its operators continue to be viewed as entrepreneurs looking to ‘get rich quick’ but on the other hand, governments and donors are unwilling to provide these individuals with the necessary means – specifically, access to technology and microfinance – to succeed as businesspeople.

Is it a case of us expecting informal, unlicensed miners to pay close attention to new technologies, despite facing very difficult circumstances? The bottom line is that miners, whose priorities are, in no particular order, eating, feeding their families, sending their children to school and paying the chiefs, police and soldiers money to ‘allow’ them to continue working, are in no position to consider implementing improved technologies; nor have we done enough to put them in such a position to do so. In short: if someone is struggling to secure a license, or to pay an unscrupulous middleman, or to free himself/herself from the shackles of corrupt army and/or police officers looking for bribes, pursuing more environmentally-benign alternatives is probably the last things on their minds.

We are – rather strangely – in the midst of a continent-wide push to ‘mechanize’ ASM, further evidence of how little in tune some policymakers and donors are with the realities of this very dynamic sector. On the environmental front, in countries such as Tanzania, there are now processing licenses, holders of which are permitted to construct mini cyanidation facilities. These setups, however, cost tens of thousands of dollars. Most of Tanzania’s small-scale miners are in no position, financially, to make this leap. There are now discussions in Ghana about creating a ‘Medium-Scale’ category, largely in response to the mechanization and influx of foreigners its ASM sector has experienced in recent years. With most African governments not receiving any tax from ASM, the establishment of a ‘medium-scale’ category could quite easily be interpreted as a deliberate move to ‘rent-seek’, although in the case of Ghana, it seems that it is being made in direct response to its central government gold buying facility, PMMC, struggling to fulfil its quotas. The rationale behind the move is sound but as is the case in Tanzania, the vast majority of Ghana’s operators do not fall into the category of ‘Medium-Scale Miner’. Once again, we are back to where we started: the need to create adequate ‘space’ in policy to address the concerns of ASM.

Let me sum up by saying that the timing of the Minamata Convention is rather strange. I cannot help but think it is yet another move made to further marginalize ASM, an industry which, the architects of the Convention, along with African governments, sections of the NGO community and donors, seem to know very little about. It appears to be yet another deliberate effort to discredit ASM and to simultaneously ‘sell’ cyanide-using large-scale mining as the viable extractive industries development solution going forward. Many of those who condemn ASM are quick to bring up the more than 30 years of – largely-ineffective – mercury pollution abatement work that has been conducted but as mentioned, these efforts, the most comprehensive of which was the UNIDO Global Mercury Project, have been largely standalone, in no way connected to any international, national or local development agenda.

Perhaps the most curious oversight is the repeated failure to understand why mercury use in ASM has become the problem it has. As mentioned, we are in this situation because we continue to frame the issue in purely environmental terms when, as indicated, it is a development problem with an environmental dimension. Further analysis will show that the widespread mercury contamination that we now see at countless ASM sites across sub-Saharan Africa is simply an ‘expression’ of the sector’s informality. If formalized properly, and monitored and regulated, would this, along with other problems, not be adequately addressed?

These uncertainties bring to mind one question: why, exactly, has the Minamata Convention been drafted?

A Minister in Disarray…

Is there anything more comical than a Minister from a developing country preparing to travel first class? At the announcement of ‘priority boarding’, the Minister – typically, an overweight middle-aged man, dressed in impressive attire and in possession of the latest mobile phone technology – quickly moves through burgeoning crowds of people in the only way that he can: by pushing and shoving. But as he approaches the front of the line, he is greeted by countless angry faces, and is forced to stop in his tracks. He is told by a number of these angry faces that they are also travelling first class, and, like him, are also waiting to board the plane first. But perhaps more to his astonishment is the other group of people: those in possession of priority cards, which are awarded to frequent travellers by most airlines these days – individuals who, despite wearing t-shirts and jeans, are also entitled to board first. ‘What are these “loyalty cards”, anyway?’ he asks himself. ‘Am I not this airline’s most loyal customer? And, do these simple people not have proper clothes to wear? Do they not know who I am?’

This is certainly alien territory for the well-dressed Minister. Accustomed to such privileges only extending to himself and a small group of other elites and ‘hand-picked’ individuals back home, he is reduced to feeling like a commoner for a few minutes. He is outraged, of course, because he feels that he is above these people, particularly those dressed in t-shirts and jeans. After all, was it not he and he alone who was sent to New York on connecting KLM flights to negotiate the deal with the multinational oil company, which will commence drilling offshore at home in less than a year? Was it not he and he alone who was dispatched to London aboard that British Airways flight last month to negotiate the royalty rate for the mining company that has been operating at home for five years now but which the president now believes should be paying some tax? And was it not he who was sent the month before, at the last minute aboard a United Airlines flight, to Washington DC to negotiate a country-level financial bailout package with the IMF?

This behaviour is the ‘Politics of the Belly’ at its finest. This is precisely the type of behaviour we have grown accustomed to seeing, time and time again, from high-ranking officials abroad. Would you expect anything less from the ‘faces’ of autocratic governments, or elites who are in complete control of private and public spaces in their own countries? We continue to feel sorry for the impoverished masses these individuals marginalize to stay in power. But perhaps the humbling – and, from his perspective, completely embarrassing – experience of this Minister is a bit of a consolation prize in an unforgiving environment, where there are so very few positives. The marginalized masses can surely gain some solace from what for them, is a rare ‘chuckle-worthy’ moment: where a corrupt high-ranking public official, who cannot be held accountable for his actions by the public, uses scarce foreign exchange from the government coffers, rides someone else’s jet first class and stays in a five-star hotel to negotiate deals that will net very little money for his country and local people, is made to feel ordinary.

The Response to Ebola = International Development Project

The more and more West Africa’s Ebola crisis rages on, unabated, the more and more it is taking the form of a typical international development exercise. What I mean by this is that, like all work conducted under the international development project, the activities being undertaken here in the name of humanity – most of which, at times, may seem quite bizarre and unexplainable to the curious onlooker – are, in reality, products or outcomes of complex global power dynamics and negotiations at work. It has nothing to do with what people are led to believe development to mean: that is, helping the poorest of the poor who are in the greatest of need of assistance. It is rather a case of those who can help only helping when it is in their interest to do so.

Thus far, the pattern of Western aid has been somewhat predictable: The United States has sent 4000 troops to its favourite bilateral partner, Liberia, to assist with the crisis; Britain has agreed to send 100 army medics to Sierra Leone, one of its most important bilateral partners in Africa; and France has done its best to look the part in Guinea, one of its former colonies, by setting up a military hospital staffed with doctors. Additional support has come from the likes of the United Nations, and, of course, the usual NGO suspects – principally, Doctors Without Borders – are now rooted in the region, its staff risking their lives to treat the infected.

But what has also been predictable is the timing of – or more fittingly, pedestrian response of – most Western assistance. People have condemned the United States, Britain and France for failing to act promptly and allowing the crisis to, well, morph into a crisis. Some (most recently, here http://opencanada.org/features/the-global-souths-fight-against-ebola-correcting-a-humanitarian-bias/) have also pointed out how parties in Africa, for the most part a recipient of and dependent on donor aid, has pledged more in assistance to tackle the deadly disease than we have in the West. Further criticism has been levelled at the World Health Organization for failing to contain the disease at its early stages. Efforts by the UN to mobilize donations of finances to its Ebola Trust Fund have come up short: as of a week ago, there was only US$100,000 in the coffers. Accusations have also been levelled at the World Health Organization but that its very existence and the vibrancy of its programs are contingent upon continuous receipt of annual contributions of UN members, its role in this context is more cosmetic than substance. The general arguments being voiced by a number of parties are that Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea cannot stop this crisis on their own: that they do not have the resources or expertise to bring it under control. This is why, it is argued, the West must pledge more assistance to tackle the deadly disease.

What is being lost in this discussion, however, is why Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea are ill-equipped to handle the crisis in the first place. In the former, accounting for close to three-quarters of GNI is the US$800 million received in aid monies each year, a large chunk of which is from USAID. Moreover, the UN had, up until a few years ago, spent in the range of US$300 million annually in Liberia on a peacekeeping force. Yet, prior to the crisis, the country had only 200 doctors and Bomi’s Liberia Government Hospital, located next to the Ebola site, has not had an operational X-ray machine since its one unit ‘blew up’ in 2012. In Sierra Leone, it is much of the same thing. Here, aid accounts for approximately 18% of GDP but for some reason, the country has only one health worker for every 5300 people. In Guinea, it is even worse: whilst close to 20% of national GDP comes from donors, according to the World Bank, in the country, there is roughly one physician per 10,000 people. Who has received donor aid in these countries, and what conditions have lenders attached to this aid?

The Ebola outbreak has exposed the realities and many nuances of the international development project. The sad reality is that it often takes a crisis like this to illustrate how inept it truly is…

Dear President John Mahama: Can I Borrow a Generator, Please?

In urban Ghana, few things are more deflating than a sudden outage of power. When the lights go out, you can almost feel the life of the community you are in draining before your eyes, the air peppered with scores of grunts from people who sound like they are living their worst nightmare. Conversely, nothing seems to revitalize an urban Ghanaian community more so than the return of electricity following an extended blackout. It is almost as if the goats and chickens, ubiquitous in their occurrence, recognize the sudden shift in attitude of their owners, and contribute to the chorus of euphoric chants rising from their neighbourhoods.

Such was the scene yesterday in Tema where, following about 24 hours of being without electricity – having to live through an evening with windows open to collect what little breeze was circulating and consequently, enduring an onslaught of mosquitoes seemingly-immune to every insecticide manufactured to date – the lights suddenly went on. The signs of power returning to urban Ghana are always distinctive: the neighbours’ children suddenly singing unrecognizable songs; the air conditioner hums replacing the generator roars; and lights which were not turned off during the night peppering the landscape in the bright of day. Those cursing the government only moments earlier, when the electricity was off, suddenly forget how, in the matter of seconds, they are victimized daily by government ineptitude.

We keep asking ourselves how, in a country that is now producing and exporting oil, a fossil fuel energy source that could surely nourish hungry power facilities, this can be happening? Much of the answer lies in the question itself. Of the 88,000 barrels of oil or so that are being produced daily, 14,000 are being shipped to China as part of a ridiculous oil-for-infrastructure deal; this figure is likely to increase because the Chinese are demanding more. There was also the baseless projection made about future production in the Jubilee Field and adjoining fields some time back – about the area reaching a production capacity of 225,000 barrels a day by 2016 when, in fact, it has never exceeded more than 100,000 barrels to date and does not look to do so in the near-future. We were also told that Ghana could earn in excess of US$5 billion in profits from oil by 2015 when, for the period 2010-2012, the figure was more in the range of US$850 million. Yet, despite these disappointing returns, the country has still netted a substantial amount of money from oil, which begs the question: why are the lights still going out?

The first is a rather obvious reason: availability and cost. At present, hydroelectric generation supplies in the range of 70 percent of Ghana’s power, courtesy of the Akosombo Dam and newly-constructed Bui Dam. But a large percentage of this is exported (chiefly to neighbouring Ivory Coast), which, combined with the inconsistency of rainfall, often results in inconsistent supplies of power being available domestically. Added to this is the cost the government bears to deliver electricity. Successive regimes have flirted with privatizing electricity delivery, encouraging the construction of a wave of thermal natural gas and oil-powered facilities along the country’s coast. But because electricity is subsidized, every additional supplier and consumer ‘costs’ the government more money. Unable to meet the demand for power, these private producers regularly inform the government-run transmission company that they need blackouts of communities in order to prevent over-consumption and consequently, an outright collapse of the power grid. These issues are detailed further here http://re2peets.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/lights-out-power-in-ghana/.

The second reason is also rather obvious: there simply no revenue available in the country to improve the delivery of electricity. Thus, even if the current government were to suddenly morph into a forward-thinking unit, and recognize that the country needs to increase its electricity generation capacity in order to industrialize and appease the general populace, its options are limited because, well, it has no money. At the time of writing, the government was in the process of approaching the IMF for what is probably another ill-advised bailout in an effort to stem the huge slump in its currency, which has depreciated 40 percent against the US dollar in 2014. Why has this happened? By all accounts, the government has, quite bizarrely, pinned all of its hopes to oil, at the same time, neglecting other industrial sectors. The economy has taken a beating due to reckless government overspending, and an unexpected drop in output and profits from the gold mining sector, which has long been the country’s lifeblood. A lack of foreign exchange has had serious implications for budgeting and spending.

Finally, despite over-confidently pinned all of its hopes to oil, the government has done very little to maximize benefit from the steady stream of revenue it is receiving. It is a situation sort of analogous to the football coach (and no Ghana national football team pun intended here) who has an exceptionally talented player at his disposal but seems to have no clue on how to use him, and consequently, plays him out-of-position. Ghana was clearly not prepared for this oil revenue, and it has certainly shown this in so many ways. Few would dispute that thus far, the country’s oil project has been nothing short of a debacle. The exercise has been highlighted by opaque oil deals, a Petroleum Revenue Management Act implemented several months after production commenced, the passing of a Ghana Local Content and Local Participation Bill laden with unattainable goals, and repeated failure to bring online infrastructure capable of capturing precious reserves of natural gas that are being flared. Rather than using oil revenues in ways that can benefit the ordinary Ghanaian – such as increasing electricity capacity – the government has, quite strangely, devised a highly-complex budget in which development ‘priorities’ linked to oil are ‘debated’ in parliament every few years. The results thus far have been anything but promising: using oil monies as used as collateral to secure additional loans, for paving the occasional road and – apparently – for agricultural development.

Given the ridiculous – albeit, self-induced – quandary Ghana now finds itself in, my advice to anyone looking to become ‘blackout proof’ is this: to borrow a generator (and, of course, fuel) from President Mahama.

The Oil Rich Nation and the Petrol Station

Oil has been a curse for Ghana. There is no doubt in my mind. There just does not seem to be anything right going on here – at least at the moment. Everything has gone a bit pear shaped since the start of the drilling of oil just a few years ago.
Let us revisit, briefly, the background arguments here. On the one hand, proponents of the resource curse are quick to draw attention to the circumstantial evidence, that is the things which seem to scream that natural resource extraction – in this case, oil – is causing more harm than good. On the other hand, there are those who contest that such outcomes are by no means inevitable as implied, and that the underperforming resource economy that tends to come to fruition is product of a number of things.

But whether coincidental or not, a lot of strange things have happened in Ghana since the drilling of its first oil. These ‘things’ can be grouped into two broad categories. There are, first and foremost, a series of rather odd phenomena which I believe could have been prevented but have surfaced solely because Ghana’s authorities have been enamoured with the country’s new-found oil wealth, turning what seems to be a blind eye to everything else economic. Problems have escalated but officials seem unphased. There is the rapidly-depreciating cedi which has long enjoyed relative stability, buoyed by what was a substantial amount of gold in the coffers. In less than a month, the cedi has lost 3.1% against the US dollar and at the time of writing, there were four cedis to the British pound. Then there is the rather bizarre recent change in attitude towards large-scale miners – specifically, an increased royalty payment from 3 to 5% of profits and, until the recent crash in the gold price, repeated threats of a windfall tax. I am all for African nations deriving more from their extractive industries but why did it take the better part of 25 years for the government to realize that its taxation scheme was highly-inappropriate? The move has, of course, had a significant impact on gold exploration, which is in danger of drying up completely. These concerns extend to the cocoa sector, long the trademark of Ghana and, until the explosion of gold mining in the 1990s, the country’s greatest source of export earnings. Prolonged neglect has led to the country plummeting to the embarrassing title of the world’s third-largest producer, behind Indonesia and war-torn Ivory Coast. Finally, there is the recent proliferation of Chinese in illegal mining, which has been really bizarre. You travel into some of Ghana’s rural areas and if you did not know it, you would think you were somewhere in China. It seems like every aspect of the economy is worsening and nothing is being done about it.

Then there is the second category of ‘things’, which concern the oil monies themselves, specifically, their misuse. There are the rather obvious ‘things’: the failure to institute any meaningful oil community fund, overlooking the needs of affected communities, the environmental impacts of drilling, reneging on promises of gas flaring, and the squandering of funds. But the biggest concern is this: where, exactly, is the oil money going? No one seems to no. I have heard several interesting – and at times, funny – stories over the years concerning this minister doing that and this MP doing this but nothing has really captured my interest. That is, until now.

Over the past year or so, I have heard several rumours about MPs and ministers constructing petrol stations and stockpiling them with natural gas and refined product originating from the Jubilee Field. It has been said that unmarked trucks would appear in both the middle of the night and broad daylight to replenish depleted supply. Is there any truth to these rumours? I had dismissed them until yesterday, when I travelled down the Accra Kumasi Road, along which it seemed as if there was a ‘Brand X’ petrol station every half mile, even in absolutely remote stretches. Yes, there is the occasional ‘Shell’ and ‘Total’ and Ghana’s own ‘Goil’ and ‘Glory Oil’ but these are sandwiched amongst a proliferation of stations with names you have not heard of. Some of these stations are still under construction but have operational pumps.

They say that Ghana is spending its oil money faster than it is earning it. It may be a case of the country’s politicians not really caring about concealing exactly how this is happening…

Lagos Traffic

Is there anything more infuriating than being caught in Lagos traffic? Accounts of voyages which should not take more than ten minutes having taken many hours may seem laughable to those who have never experienced the wrath of the Lagos traffic jam. But having endured two in less than 24 hours, I can say this: these accounts are no exaggeration in the slightest. One of the most bizarre things about Lagos traffic, though, is how it creeps up with no explanation whatsoever. As a passenger in distress, frustrated about being in a logjam which prevents you from attending an event on time being hosted no further than a few blocks away, you suddenly become intrigued as to how it happened in the first place. Your taxi turns a corner, smooth sailing, and then all of a sudden you are swarmed by vehicles which are dodging pedestrians and being stopped by police for no logical reason whatsoever.

Lagos road congestion has become the topic of legend. Known locally as ‘go-slows’, Lagos traffic jams have become more frequent in recent years, as its road network, which has not been updated in decades, has been forced to cope with an ever-increasing number of passenger vehicles, trucks and automobiles. The reality is that Lagos, with a population now exceeding 21 million, is set to become Africa’s largest city by 2015. Fuel subsidies have made purchasing a car a relatively inexpensive undertaking, and the main reason why the number of registered vehicles on Lagos roads increased nearly 1000% between 1995 and 2010, from 27,000 to 230,000. Needless to say, the ‘go-slow’ is now a part of everyday life in Nigeria’s commercial capital.

What is perhaps most intriguing about Lagos traffic, however, is how ordinary residents respond to it. Numerous visitors and writers, including the famous Ryszard Kapuściński, have, over the years, marveled at how Nigerians have coped with the country’s lack of infrastructure and problems. But you can only appreciate how when you are caught in a ‘go-slow’ yourself: the small, mini-taxis, whizzing down backstreets which you thought never existed; vendors galvanizing en masse around the traffic, sandwiched within the contours of parked vehicles, selling every product imaginable; and drivers jockeying for the four car lengths of space afforded by the slightest vehicular movement every ten minutes or so during the perpetual traffic jam, unphased by the circumstances. Alongside this, of course, and beyond the traffic jam itself, each resident is forced to acquire and run his/her own generator because of the inconsistency in the supply of electricity.

There is certainly something admirable about the way in which Lagos residents cope with and adapt to perpetual traffic. It is a telling sign of their resilience. But it is also a sign that people have conceded defeat, no longer in possession of the zeal, passion and energy needed to facilitate change. For as long as people continue to tolerate ridiculousness such as the Lagos traffic jam, unchallenged, corrupt African governments will continue to neglect infrastructural needs. Has the African citizenry given up?

Are Ghana's Chiefs Coming or Going?

So the Okyenhene has called on the US Government to assist with mining reclamation (‘Okyenhene Lobbies US Government to Support Reclamation’ http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=291594). A self-proclaimed environmentalist, the Okyenhene, the paramount chief of the Akyem Abuakwa State in Ghana and one of the country’s most powerful traditional leaders, has long lobbied the government to double its efforts to eradicate illegal mining. He has drawn particular attention to the environmental impact of galamsey (unlicensed gold mining) activities in his jurisdiction, pleading for policymakers in attendance at meetings held at the regional and national levels to remove galamsey operators from ‘his’ land. These would be reasonable requests if there were not excavators and other mining equipment on the front lawn of the Okyenhene’s palace. But when the Okyenhene went international with the issue, making an appeal for assistance in a meeting held at the US State Department in Washington DC, everything changed. It more importantly begs the question: what do Ghana’s chiefs want?

Although it is sin to talk about Ghana’s traditional leaders negatively in public forums, is it really in the interest of Ghana’s citizens for the government to continue circumnavigate the chieftaincy institution in policymaking exercises, avoiding upsetting traditional leaders, and failing to hold them to account in cases where it is warranted? It has become public knowledge that chiefs are involved in some capacity with small-scale mining. This is not to say that the Okyenhene himself is bankrolling small-scale miners directly but for him to play ignorant when questioned about galamsey, implying that he has no knowledge of why illegal gold mining activity is increasing, and specifically how traditional leaders are fuelling this growth. The reality is that many of Ghana’s chiefs simply want more resource rents, and will do anything to deflect discussion and criticism away from their actions. Whilst the US State Department is unlikely to get involved with mine reclamation in Ghana, the fact that the Okyenhene feels he has the right to even initiate, on his own, dialogue with an international partner, and telling a story which barely captures the truth about a phenomenon – the proliferation of unlicensed artisanal mining – in an effort to mobilize assistance, is mind-boggling.

More significantly, it raises the question of why the Government of Ghana insists on continuing to involve chiefs in, and at times making them the centrepiece of, local economic development. Specifically, if Ghana’s traditional leaders have no intention of using resource revenues for the benefit of communities, as evidence pointing to the hoarding of timber and mine royalties suggests, and have openly declared that ‘their’ share of allocated revenue should not have to be filtered down to their jurisdictions (‘Chiefs should not lead development projects’ http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/blogs/blog.article.php?blog=1995&ID=1000006128), why are they increasingly being featured in revenue decentralization and community development exercises? The EITI has even called for chiefs to be held accountable (‘Ghana: Hold Chiefs Accountable’ http://allafrica.com/stories/201004160833.html), so why can government not act? It seems that many of Ghana’s chiefs have one foot in the modern era and the other in the sixteenth century, when perhaps they were considered de facto land owners, shuffling back and forth when it is convenient for them.

It is a bit ironic that the ‘problem’ which the Okyenhene has asked American government officials to help him resolve is largely his own doing. The view here is that the failure of paramount chiefs such as the Okyenhene and the Asantehene to properly decentralize royalties earned from large-scale mining activities has mobilized ‘lesser’ chiefs based at the grassroots. Desperate for money, these chiefs have turned to local galamsey operators, whom they have sponsored and from whom they now generate significant amounts of cash. It could very well be a case of the Okyenhene wanting a piece of the action as well but that his centralized paramount position inhibits effective infiltration of existing sponsorship/ore-sharing arrangements between ‘lesser’ chiefs and galamsey operators. He, much like his colleagues, is forced to rely on ‘palace gangs’, who, equally disconnected from the realities on the ground, have not really put the Okyenhene in a better position to benefit from the galamsey activity burgeoning in his jurisdiction right before his eyes.

There is an important ‘takeaway’ message here: When is the Government of Ghana going to realize that the country’s chiefs are not vanguards of development. Any responsibility assigned to chiefs in the context of development, in particular, revenue sharing, should, therefore, be reconsidered.

The Meaning of a Meeting in Rewind

It never ceases to amaze me how little people know about small-scale mining. How is it, after more than 40 years after surfacing in the international development lexicon, that we are still reviewing the most basic of questions? I am talking about questions such as: What is small-scale mining? Why is it such a problem? and How can we formalize the industry’s operators? I find myself shaking my head as these, and similar, questions are being asked in the middle of yet another workshop that is rapidly morphing into a discussion focused on the theme ‘What, exactly, are we dealing with?’.

At this particular event, there are some of the usual suspects – myself included – who eat and breathe small-scale mining, publishing papers on a range of the industry’s many interesting but poorly understood nuances in an attempt, in the short-term, to raise its profile, and in the long-term, to secure it the donor support it rightly deserves. But it seems that, every 2 years or so, a new crop of people from the donor, policymaking and NGO communities, each with a peripheral interest in the sector but who are intrigued nonetheless, emerge on to the scene. And so, we must again revisit the basic questions that were posed at the beginning of this exercise four decades ago: What is small-scale mining? Why is it such a problem? and How do we formalize its operators?

The only logical conclusion I can come up with as to why we constantly press the reboot button and start over again is that no one is interested, apart from the handful of people committed to doing research on the subject, in bringing ASM into core international development policies and programs. This is why, time and time again, we host workshops on ASM which take us back to the Stone Age. This is why, time and time again, we invite disinterested and disconnected African ministers to these workshops, where they proceed to deliver presentations, which always run over the allocated time, and talk about mundane points that they believe they have acquired a sound knowledge of from the confines of their air-conditioned officers. This is why, time and time again, we host workshops on ASM which yield the same unproductive conclusions which, if implemented, would not advance the agenda one iota. The same messages we have relayed over the past 20 years, such as ‘We need more transparency in this sector’ and ‘More miners need to be licensed’, were resonating at this particular event.

It is hard not to have a preconceived idea of what to expect at this events. What gets me through most, however, is the exuberance and naivety of the new crop of peripherals. In response to my criticisms, which I do a poor job of hiding, I am told things like ‘This is a new direction for development, so be patient’ and ‘The World Bank is here, so it must be serious’. One delegate told me, in what seemed like an effort to reassure me that things are improving, that ‘We are even lucky that small-scale mining got on the agenda…this is the 10th year of these meetings and it was only a last minute decision that led to its inclusion’. It was as if I was supposed to be grateful that we are having some dialogue about small-scale mining, despite being one of the most important development issues today. But if not for this enthusiasm, the energy and excitement expressed by people who seem to have discovered something new, I think I would be more cynical than I am which, at this point, seems impossible. One cannot help but get excited when others come on board, presenting new ideas about ‘directions we should go’, ‘what donors must do’ and ‘where we should carry out work’. One delegate even said to me, half-excitedly, that ‘we need to build on this, to do some work on small-scale mining so by the next meeting, we have some valuable experiences to share’.

I only hope that this materializes: that we will be reconnecting with this same seemingly-passionate group next time. Or will we be pressing the reset button yet again, welcoming another curious but intrigued support cast?

A Unique Resource Curse…Or Is It?

It seems quite strange to speak about a resource curse in Guyana. After all, the debates on this topic have focused almost exclusively on the performance and impact of large multinational mining and oil and gas companies, none of which are operating on or off of Guyana’s shores at present (the days of Omai seem like a distant memory). But as we have come to learn over the years, nothing is as straightforward as it seems in this vastly under-populated country: its identity crisis, specifically, how, despite being situated squarely in South America, its people appear as Caribbean in their mannerisms and attitudes as the ‘islanders’; how its Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS), which was supposed to become a centrepiece of national development and a ‘quick-fix’ poverty-alleviation strategy, has quickly become a debacle; and its regressive democracy and politics, underpinned by racial tensions, themselves relicts of the colonial period. The dynamics of its resource curse ‘epidemic’ are no exception.

Guyana’s resource curse has been particularly distressing for me. Unlike most mineral economies in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and elsewhere in Latin America, the country’s gold mining industry is comprised entirely of indigenous and Brazilian small and medium-scale operators. I have dedicated my career to raising awareness of, and creating a ‘space’ for, these operators, the economic contributions of whom have been – rather strangely – neglected by donors and governments across the developing world for decades. In Guyana, however, successive governments have done just this: reserve land for their own small and medium operators, and not succumb to the pressures of international donors that have lobbied for the allocation of mineralized territories to foreign multinationals. As a result of these efforts, gold mining, backed almost exclusively by indigenous wealth, now generates over US$700 million in revenue annually in Guyana, making it by far the country’s largest industry.

The ‘results’ of this policy approach, however, appear little different to those of the developing countries that have fast become to focus of our lengthy tirades on the resource curse, few of which have much to show from the booming and sprawling large-scale mining industries that now populate vast sections of their landscapes. Although the anatomy of Guyana’s gold mining economy differs markedly to that of, say, Ghana or Tanzania, its salient developmental features do not, the most significant being what I often refer to as the ‘laziness’ of its institutions. The steady stream of revenues provided by gold miners seems to have made the government complacent. It appears to have shied away from supporting other sectors of its economy, the resulting Dutch Disease now most noticeable in the country’s sugar and rice trades, which have long been important sectors of the national economy. The former has suffered tremendously in recent years from a skills shortage and a change in global trade policies, which have resulted in a decline in exports to the European Union; the sustainability of the latter is precarious, at best, given how exports are determined heavily by an oil-for-rice agreement forged with neighbouring Venezuela, a country which experiencing a resource curse of its own.

There are a number of other disturbing similarities between Guyana’s own resource curse and the ‘epidemics’ of those which now engulf countries where foreign large-scale mining industries dominate the economy. The first is the inappropriate – or rather cavalier – attitude of its government officials toward economic diversification. Much like the policymakers I have encountered over the years in countries where foreign-controlled large-scale mining activities are now rooted, Guyana’s politicians seem to be in denial about the resource curse and therefore, unwilling to take proactive measures to avert it or prevent it from intensifying. This was quite evident during a conversation with the country’s Minister of Finance, in response to my comment about there being ‘no other industries apart from gold mining in Guyana’, responded, quite animatedly: ‘what are you talking about?...we [Guyana] have a burgeoning sugar industry and flourishing rice trade’, seemingly oblivious to the aforementioned problems plaguing both of those sectors. How can a problem be fixed if it is not acknowledged by senior-ranking officials?

A second similarity is the concentration of ownership and finance. Critics often draw attention to how, in the likes of Ghana, Tanzania and Peru, gold mining activities are controlled by a small group of multinational corporations which, as a result, wield a considerable amount of influence over the economy and local politics. But a similar dynamic persists in Guyana, the key difference, of course, being that the gold mining economy is controlled by a handful of indigenous elites, multimillionaires with lavish houses and cars, and who have made countless investments abroad. A final point relates to where revenues are going – or more specifically, where they are not going. The criticism of the large-scale mining multinationals operating in the developing world is that they repatriate most of their profits, and take advantage of lax regulations and policies to import equipment and supplies without having to pay duties and invest locally. The same problem, however, persists in Guyana, the difference being, of course, that it is the group of elite small-scale miners who are taking millions of dollars of gold out of villages such as Mahdia and reinvesting very little in the community. These miners certainly flaunt their wealth by erecting large houses and hotels but elect not to contribute to developing domestic value-added industries such as agriculture and manufacturing, which would certainly provide greater economic benefit to the country than the fancy cars they import from abroad; the capital flight is enormous.

Thus, whilst Guyana’s mining experience has the look of being more favourable for domestic growth, the outcomes are very much the same and challenges very real. It goes to show that it does not matter whose hands the extractive industry are in: if there is little policy recognition of the implications of being one-dimensional economically, the resource curse will quickly become a reality.

Stirring up the Mining Wok

It has been a while since I have made an entry here but the truth is, I thought I had covered mostly everything out there about artisanal mining. I thought I had seen it all in Ghanaian galamsey communities: child labour, mercury pollution, land degradation, crime. That is, of course, until I stumbled across something rather peculiar quite recently: a Chinese galamsey miner – no, wait ten, eleven…100 Chinese galamsey miners, working illegally in the community of Japa in the Western Region.

This is something that has been talked about quite extensively in the Ghana press for much of the past year. All over the country, Chinese, covered in dirt and armed to the teeth, can now be found digging for gold. Often, they are working with excavators and other heavy equipment, right in front of policemen and local government officers. They have even brought to a standstill Jeffery Sach’s Millennium Village in Bonsaaso, long portrayed by his much-beloved Earth Institute as an idyllic farming community, overtaking people’s plots and almost overnight establishing massive small-scale mining enclaves. Though the village was likely destined for failure anyway because of a flawed design and unrealistic aims and objectives (pushing people in a locality in the heart of a wider area built on nearly 300 years of gold mining into exclusively farming), the fact that the Chinese have had no qualms about overtaking an UN-funded project is indeed grounds for concern. After all, they are mining illegally.

Perhaps even more worrying than the lack of action being taken by the Ghanaian Government to address the growing Chinese presence in the country’s galamsey economy is the shortage of answers concerning how these foreigners have managed to set up shop in this context altogether. The basic questions we all have on our minds seem to be the least answerable at this stage: namely, how did they get here? and why are they flourishing? There are, of course, several rumours about, none of which is verifiable. The most believable is that Chinese were initially registering as mine service companies and, once securing the requisite documents, ‘entered the wild’ so to speak, picking up shovels and pickaxes en route to becoming the latest additions to the galamsey economy. This, however, does not explain why there continues to be a steady influx of Chinese into the country’s mining communities because Ghana has since cracked down on this, prohibiting Chinese from registering as service companies. It is now, allegedly because of this loophole, even reviewing its procurement law.

A colleague of mine who rarely does any meaningful research on the ground and, rather unjustifiably, seems to have something negative to say about everyone who has, claims that it is the politicians who are behind everything. It is probably the only logical thing he has said in his lifetime. He went on to state that the growing Chinese presence in the sector is ‘stirring up the mining wok’ (which I presumed at the time, given the laughs that followed, was some poor attempt at village level humour, using Chinese cooking and specifically a reference to what he claims is ‘the only good service they provide in Ghana’ – cooking food – as some kind of bizarre metaphor to underscore how the dynamics have changed in the mining sector as a result of their growing presence). But on this issue, my colleague, who knows next-to-nothing about small-scale mining in Ghana, seems to be spot on. How does a daily flight, direct from Abu Dhabi, ¾ filled with Chinese citizens connecting from Beijing or Shanghai, not raise any suspicion amongst policymakers? Possibly because they, and perhaps some corrupt officials in immigration, are facilitating their entry into Ghana.

This leads to a second question: how have the Chinese been able to stay for such lengthy periods in Ghana? There are obviously parties which are housing and supporting the Chinese in the rural areas where they are now working. All signs point to the country’s traditional leaders and certainly, on more than one occasion, contingents of Chinese miners have been seen sleeping and being fed lavishly in a paramount chief’s palace for extended periods. Ghana’s chieftaincy institution, which had long been a shell of its former corrupt and powerful self, stripped of lands by Nkrumah and its local authority heavily undermined by the decentralization project and District Assemblies implemented by Jerry Rawlings, have seen its power restore rapidly in an era of mining sector reform. Chiefs have emerged as crucial community liaisons, often brokering mining rights with parties of all shapes and sizes, the Chinese included. Their power in rural areas remains highly uncontested, which has likely led to situations where Chinese miners, in exchange for a share of output, are provided maximum protection by chiefs.

The growing presence of illicit Chinese mining activity is reducing opportunities for Ghanaian miners and causing significant community-level friction in farming areas. But why is nothing being done about this? There are whispers that a US$2.4 billion dollar development loan awarded by China to Ghana is forcing the government to turn a blind eye – that too many arrests of illegal Chinese operators could affect this lending and jeopardize donor relations between the countries in the future. This could explain why, quite regularly, scores of Chinese can be seen shopping at Shoprite, in the Accra Mall, shamelessly wearing nametags belonging to ‘Hansol Mining’, a company which is allegedly engaged in significant illegal activity in districts such as Amansie West.

The number of illegal Chinese-backed mining activities is increasingly rapidly in Ghana. But the next few months, a time when swift and immediate action will be needed to tackle this problem, will be a protracted period of inaction. Not wanting to lose any of what little popularity it has left in Ghana, the incumbent NDC Government, desperate to hold on to votes, will not risk upsetting any local-level community dynamics.

Who knows what Ghana’s galamsey economy will look like when – dare I say – Nana Akufo Ado is sworn in as the country’s next president in December.

Living through a Paradox

The lights have just gone off and I am now in battery mode on my computer. It is 7:30 at night, and the sounds of generators starting and humming now fill the night. I am in Ghana, which means the lights may or may not go on again tonight.
I find myself living through a paradox. Has Ghana not recently begun drilling for oil, one of Earth’s most prized energy sources? It produces 80,000 barrels of crude a day, pale in comparison to Nigeria’s 2.5 million barrels of daily output but certainly enough to keep the lights on in some parts of the country. Where is all of the oil going?

This is a problem which plagues all of sub-Saharan Africa, and an issue which most of the world – except the few benefitting from oil production in the region – is now very familiar with. Nigeria is the biggest basket case: despite producing 2.5 million barrels of oil per day, it is a net importer of fuel. Angola, with steel-fisted Dos Santos at the helm, is another puzzling case. How did the world sit back and ‘allow’ Luanda morph into an enclave of multimillion dollar housing complexes, US$300 meals, champagne and hummers? The two million barrels of crude produced in Angola each day further enriches Dos Santos and his cronies. Then we have the ‘lesser’ producers, such as Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Congo Brazzaville, each with its own corrupt leaders and greedy customers. In total, there is an average of 10 billion barrels of oil produced in Africa. But what benefits have come about from this production?

Going back to Ghana, the Ghana Oil Fund has, according to the World Bank, accumulated savings in the range of US$69.2 million. I do not dare estimate what the value of the oil extracted was that yielded this sum but regardless: there is little disputing that this is a substantial sum of money. So why not improve your capacity to generate electricity, to construct facilities capable of turning your rich, untapped reserves of oil into the electricity needed to transform your country into the developed nation your delusional Vision 2020 alleges you will become by the year 2020.

Make no mistake. The resource curse is alive and well in Ghana today.

Briefing: Fair Trade for Whom?

It appears that as an idea, Fair Trade mining has finally captured the consumers’ conscience. Through extensive lobbying, many of the organizations that make up the umbrella Fair Trade Labelling Organizations International (FLO) have successfully popularized this idea, painting the picture that the acquisition of so-called Fair Trade minerals is helping to lift some of the world’s poorest people out of poverty. But further analysis reveals an entirely different story.

Apart from gold mining – a discussion which I will leave for another day – perhaps the most intriguing cases in this context is coloured gemstones. How can Fair Trade schemes be launched for these high-value commodities, which only occur in a handful of countries? There are now a host of international players involved in the production, distribution and sale of coloured gemstones. At first glance, it would appear that implementing a superimposed system of Fair Trade in such instances would be an impossible feat. Closer investigation underscores just how difficult this can be.

Take, for example, the case of Nyala ruby, a much-coveted precious stone sourced from Malawi which the Washington State-based distributor Columbia Gemhouse has curiously – and potentially, prematurely – has labelled a ‘Fair Trade Gemstone’. This classification seems to have arisen on the basis of the organization knowing where the stones are being sourced from, and that production is taking place under certain conditions. But the message is very different on the ground. If we were to follow the model in place for agricultural commodities, it would mean that Columbia Gemhouse is partnering with impoverished small-scale gemstone operators, which is not the case. It is rather partnering with a series of ‘local’ businessmen (of Indian descent) who run a large-scale operation. During interviews, these men shared their own ideas about Fair Trade that were completely different from those of Columbia Gemhouse and small-scale miners.

The reality is that each of the different parties involved has a very different perception of what Fair Trade is. Research is ongoing to unpack each of these viewpoints further but in the meantime, the customer should not be told they are purchasing a commodity which could be the furthest thing from Fair Trade.

Restoring the Unrestorable

There is a ubiquity about rural Malawi that most travellers to sub-Saharan Africa would appreciate. In fact, I would say that it has a certain ambiance about it. It possesses all of the characteristics that the traveller has come to recognize as being quintessentially rural African: goats roaming freely; cattle herders directing their flocks on to roads, pretending to be unaware of the cars passing by in excess of 100 km/hr; and rural traders, stationed 50 feet apart, selling the same product – in this case, watermelons – for a three mile stretch. If one stops and thinks about why these various phenomena persist throughout rural sub-Saharan Africa, the answer is, I guess, simple: they are, in effect, products of evolution. They are what we identify as the very constituents of sub-Saharan Africa’s rural cultural fabric. These ‘sights’ have emerged from decades of political, economic and socio-cultural change.

When reflecting upon my travels to Sierra Leone and more recently, Liberia, I cannot help thinking about how rare such sights are. One rarely sees a goat running around in the rural stretches of both countries; the banana vendor, who is normally a regular sight, can never be found; and agricultural commerce is absent – at least to the naked eye. The reconstruction process has been painfully long in both countries, dependent upon the inflow of donor funds from a range of countries, including the UK, US, China and – until recently – Libya. Some recent highlights on this front include US$1.2 million being pledged to reconstruct the Liberia National Police, and US$62 million being awarded by the African Development Bank and the OPEC Fund for the reconstruction of three water stations in Sierra Leone. But as more infrastructural pieces fall into place, the absence of ubiquitous rural African images becomes all the more obvious.

We are all aware of how the reconstruction projects in Liberia, Sierra Leone and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa are the ‘operationalized’ visions of donors and donor governments. Sure, the taps will eventually come back on; the electricity may finally flow once again. But all of the money in the world cannot restore cultures – dolalrs cannot ‘recreate’ the circumstances that lead rural people to line up stalls of watermelons, 50 yards apart, for three mile stretches. Culture must evolve, typically over generations – it cannot be restored.

As paradoxical as it may sound, next time I travel to rural Liberia, I will certainly remember to pack fruit...

Appreciating no Concept of Time

A running joke in Africa is that most of its people have no concept of time. I vaguely remember organizing a focus group for my PhD, set for a specific time and date, and no one showing up. ‘They are not here because they are on “African Time”,’ my Ghanaian colleague laughed. ‘Go knock on the doors of their offices, and they’ll probably come in the afternoon.’ Sure enough, they did.

Sometimes I think our view of Africans’ perception of time extends – quite unfairly –to other somewhat unrelated situations. Take the Kenya Airways flight I took to Monrovia just over a week ago from Accra. The flight arrived late from Nairobi in Accra, was delayed further in Accra, and ended up arriving in Liberia really late. As we waited to be escorted off of the plane, one man – A Brit based in East Africa somewhere, I believe – decided to speak out loud, amongst other grumbling passengers. ‘This is the last time I take this bloody airline,' he said. ‘They leave when they want and arrive when they want. Next time, I’ll go through Brussels or Amsterdam.’ But would he say the same thing today? Because boy, what a difference a week can make.

On Saturday, my Kenya Airways return flight from Monrovia to Accra (where I am currently grounded), which left about two hours late, was completely full.

And there was no one complaining about it being late.

There was no one complaining about the typically-shocking food.

There was no one complaining about Kenya Airways as an airline.

In fact, everyone seemed happy to be in the air. Because a perpetually erupting volcano in Iceland, which has grounded European travel completely, has suddenly changed many people’s perception of the airline: it is a shining star, an airline that can do no wrong. One gentleman I spoke to, who was scheduled to travel through Brussels where he was supposed to transfer on to a connecting flight to Toronto, seemed quite upbeat about the Accra-Johannesburg-Dakar-Washington DC trip, a voyage which spanned three days, he had managed to sort out as an alternative. Countless others were no doubt jubilant over taking Kenya Airways in a southeasterly direction, further away from their North American destinations, into airspace unaffected by volcanic ash, to Nairobi, linking to South Africa, and finding their way back West. Every Kenya Airways flight not going to Europe is no doubt full with experimental travellers. Maybe people are flying from Nairobi to China and trying their luck getting on a flight to Vancouver or Seattle or LAX.

Who would have thought that travelling in Africa would be so coveted? Even those who believe that Africans have no concept of time are forced to admit, for the time being at least, that Kenya Airways is not only ‘The Pride of Africa’ but the envy of the airline world.

Managing Expectations

You can see it now. All of the NGOs applauding the Ghanaian Government’s move to double mineral royalties, from 3% to 6%, which should take effect this year. This is indeed something which is long overdue. It is no secret that African countries have achieved very little in the way of economic development through leasing their mineral-rich lands to international mining houses. The great disparity between the sector’s miniscule contributions to national GDPs and the value of the product they are exporting is testament of this. But the decision of the Ghanaian Government to do this now certainly raises eyebrows – or at least it should.

Of course, the move to change the royalty payment to 6%, though perhaps significant in practice, will entail only a slight amendment to extant legislation. At present, and as stipulated in the Mining Act, mining companies are required to pay between 3 and 6% as a royalty payment. As they are not charities, all pay 3%, with the exception of Newmont Ghana’s planned Akyem Mine, which, when it finally opens, will pay royalties in the range 3.25% as compensation for being situated in a – albeit contested – gazetted forest reserve.

But why make this amendment now, and not 10 years ago? Has it really taken the government this long to realize that the existing arrangement of 3% generates next to nothing economically for the country, or is it because of something else? It is certainly far more disadvantageous for the government to make such a change now than it would have been, say, a decade ago or even five years ago. All of mineralized sub-Saharan Africa has been partitioned to multinational companies in the past 10-15 years, and quite rapidly for that matter. Significantly, for Ghana, with gold, the principal mineral extracted in the country, being ubiquitous in the region, there is concern – or there at least should be – that, once the new mineral royalty rate takes effect, international mining houses will simply abandon their exploration activities and relocate elsewhere, such as Mozambique or Mali, where the investment climate is comparatively more attractive economically.

The claim made by the Ghanaian Government that the move to modify the mine royalty rate stems from its desire to ‘boost revenues from the sector’ is purely a facade: it certainly did not become enlightened about the implications of a 3% royalty rate overnight. It is rather, and quite worryingly, as result of an confidence, which seems to resonate in many branches of the government, about the perceived viability of other sectors of the economy. Notably, the Atta Mills NDC-led government is convinced that it will net something from what has become a debacle with Vodafone, which now holds a 70% stake in Ghana Telecom. It is working to unravel what it claims was an unlawful deal forged between the previous NPP government and the company. Some allege the deal was consummated rapidly before the 2008 elections in order to compensate for finances siphoned by the previous regime.

But the biggest reason why the government is exuberating confidence is the belief that the country’s economic woes will be resolved in record time, courtesy of revenues brought in from oil. Oil could indeed change the face of Ghana forever – for the better – but it would require the implementation of a comprehensive policy recipe that hitherto has failed to materialize in sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, the government’s continued belief that offshore drilling, which is scheduled to commence in late-2010, will catapult Ghana’s economy along a new development trajectory entirely is one concern. A more significant concern relates to what appears to be a belief that revenues from oil will be an instant cure-all – or, more specifically, the projection of this message on to an expectant public. The overhyping of oil discoveries in the local media has created great expectations in Ghana. Every one of its citizens will be paying close attention to how the current government manages oil revenues in the months to come. This could be serious because it has already created the impression that the economic benefits will be instantaneous.

NGOs and community groups, therefore, should view the adjusting of mineral royalties with some trepidation. Whilst ten years ago, such a move could have set an important precedent in sub-Saharan Africa, doing so today could prove fatal for the Ghanaian economy.

Child Labour in Ghana

This past week, at the second meeting of the International Working Group on Labour in Cocoa Farming, in Accra, Vice President John Dramani Mahama called for the US Department of Labour to remove Ghana’s cocoa from its list of goods produced by ‘child or forced labour’. Ghana’s cocoa regions have long been identified as ‘hotspots’ for child labour – that it is an industry comprised of children supposedly working in appalling conditions. The US Department of Labour has included Ghana’s cocoa on a list of 122 products from 58 countries on its Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005 (TVPRA List). ‘This is unacceptable and serves to undermine the efforts that we are making to address the issue of the worst forms of child labour as well as a disincentive for other countries to embark on any comprehensive effort,’ the Vice-President said. He continued by citing that the inclusion of Ghana and neighbouring Cote d’Ivoire on the list stemmed from the inability of stakeholders in the cocoa industry to agree on common indicators and benchmarks for measuring the impact of child labour.

On this issue, the Vice President may a point. People in the developed world, particularly those in the ivory tower, seem to have a distorted image of child labour in rural sub-Saharan Africa, seemingly unaware of the fine line between ‘child labour’ in the exploitative sense and children ‘going to farm’. We need look no further than Kanye West’s music video of ‘Diamonds are Forever’, which contains images of children being beaten whilst mining diamonds underground in Sierra Leone, despite the fact that there are no underground mines in that country, to realize how little Westerners know about the issue of child labour in sub-Saharan Africa. The suggestion made in Accra was exactly this: that the United States Government is completely unaware of the situation on the ground, drawing conclusions about situations it knows absolutely nothing about. Ironically, the Vice President is in no position to refute these claims because much like the US Government, he himself has not gone to the field to properly size up the situation. The Vice President’s claim, therefore, is about as reliable as the potentially-erroneous claims being made by the US Government.

But what is perhaps even more bizarre than two governments disputing over something they no absolutely nothing about is the idea of the United States Government actually accusing a country of trafficking individuals. After all, this is the only country, along with Somalia, that has not ratified The United Nations Convention on The Rights of the Child. Somalia can be given some reprieve here, given that it has not had a functional government since 1991 but what is the US’s excuse? Of course, ratification would mean cracking down on a series of US-based clothing companies, a long list of multinationals that include Walmart, GAP, Nike and Adidas, which, if reports are accurate, owe child labour for their hefty profit margins.

But have no fear: hope is on the horizon. Recently, US president Barack Obama described his country’s failure to ratify the UN Convention as ‘embarrassing’, and, much like the climate change issue, has promised to review it. Maybe when he does eventually get around to it, makes an eloquent speech from the White House, and organizes a conference in a world clothing capital like Paris or Milan, we should nominate him for another Nobel Prize.

Rewarding the Rewarded

Rumour has it that John Agyekum Kufuor, the former President of Ghana, is a virtual shoe-in for the much-coveted US$5 million Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership.

Mo Ibrahim, an African himself and self-made entrepreneur, established the foundation as a ‘carrot’ to discourage kleptocracy on the continent. It is awarded annually to a former African Head of State or government who demonstrates ‘excellence in African leadership’ – basically someone who ‘steps down’ come election time. It is a US$5 million prize awarded over ten years, with the potential for an extra US$200,000 annually for life thereafter. Whilst I share Dr Ibrahim’s passion and desire to eradicate corruption in Africa, I disagree completely with the idea of a financial reward for ‘good leadership’ in Africa and anywhere else for that matter. What next – a Rolls Royce for paying your phone bill?

But the award process underscores everything that is wrong with the approach taken to resolve the continent’s problems to date. It is hypocrisy of the highest proportions: on the one hand, condemnation of the continent’s leadership but on the other hand, a willingness to forge deals with its corrupt elite, in this case, rewarding corrupt leaders for doing the jobs they have been elected to do. We do not want to be seen interacting with the big and bad Mugabes and Obiangs of the world but because we want their countries’ resources, we formulate development action plans to extract coveted raw materials under pretexts of transparency and ‘good governance’.

We need look no further than Kufuor to put into perspective how wrong the Mo Ibrahim Award is. Here is a man who, in his eight years in office, sold Ghana Telecom to Vodafone, sold what little remained of the large-scale gold mining economy to foreign investors, and negotiated unfavorable oil contracts which the impotent, newly-elected NDC Government cannot possibly change anytime soon. The most significant achievements made under his watch were the construction of a shopping mall in Accra, right across from his house; the installation of several roundabouts in his hometown of Kumasi; and providing moral support for the Ghana National Team, on site, at the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

The point is that Kufuor is nothing more than the ordinary man, an unspectacular leader who was more interested in accumulating air miles by travelling outside of his country. So why is going to be given US$5 million – for stepping down at the end of his rule? Rewarding people like Kufuor for doing virtually nothing almost concedes that we have given up on tackling corruption in Africa, and have accepted that the high-ranking people in the region who do their jobs are anomalous and should therefore be rewarded because, well, they do what they are supposed to do.

But I guess there is no reason to get upset over Kufuor having done nothing to get this US$5 million. After all, Barrack Obama was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for doing little more than winning an election and assembling a handful a fairly-engaging speeches…