Ghana: Poverty Breeds Terrorism - Prez Kufuor Tells Western Leaders

from All Africa

Public Agenda (Accra)

Amos Safo
Accra

President John Agyekum Kufuor told leaders of rich countries during his three-day state visit to the UK that their fight against corruption will backfire unless they help poor countries to improve the quality of life of their people.

President Kufuor also said the failure of the west to help poor countries to fight poverty is enough justification for many youth to attempt to migrate to Europe, even at the cost of their lives.

Just last week news of another group of African immigrants in the custody of EU coastal guards for attempting to enter Europe illegally came as no surprise to many people. Last year, 31,000 Africans made the hazardous sea crossing to the Canary Islands to enter the EU illegally, according to figures from the Spanish government. A further 6,000 died trying.

In his speech on March 6, 2006 to climax Ghana's 50th independence celebrations, President Kufuor appealed to Ghanaian and African youth to stay at home and help develop their countries, but there is little indication that the youth will stay, judging from the defiant reactions to the President's admonition.

At the heart of poverty in Africa vis-à-vis the future of the youth is the failure of developed countries to honour their promises of increasing development assistance to poor countries. Civil society groups have over the years advocated that G8 countries - Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US should increase their aid budgets to 0.7 percent of national revenue from the current 0.37 per cent. The UK and US are currently spending billions of dollars each day on Iraq to satisfy their foreing policies.

Even the highly publicized increase in aid at the Gleneagles G8 Summit came no where near what it will take to cut poverty significantly in Africa. All the G8 members pledged to lift aid to Africa by $25bn to $50bn by 2010. But UN estimates that Africa needs $300 billion each year if it is to reduce poverty and meet some of the MDGs. Britain for instance, which is heading the campaign to increase aid to Africa, needs to increase spending by $778m each year in order meet its Gleneagles commitments.

As the basic rule of thumb is that the rich countries pledged an extra 0.03% of national income to Africa, which of course, leaves the donors far short of the 0.5% that, was given in 1960; far short of the 0.46% sought recommended by the UN and it is only half the 0.7% level promised in 1970.

The irony of the situation is that, the very western countries led by the G8 who are reneging on their promises help Africa out her dire poor state are those that denying Africa access to their markets, while compelling African leaders to sign Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) that will further open African markets to highly subsidized European products. Equally ironic is the unwillingness of the western to open their borders to African youth running away from poverty, while baiting the few professionals with lucrative packages.

Back home in Ghana, the realities of the growing gap between the rich and the poor and south and the north is staring President Kufuor and his government in the face. The World Development Report 2006's focus on Ghana titled: 'Bridging the North South Divide in Ghana' explains that due to extreme poverty in northern Ghana, many people tend to migrate to south, where they take up the least rewarding economic positions.

The report said few northerners became cocoa farm owners, and the conditions under which migrants gain access to land have become less secure in recent decades. Few northern miners became permanent urban residents in the mining towns as they were excluded from subsidised housing and food.

According to the report, the origins of this inequality lie in (a) geography - the lower rainfall, savannah vegetation, and remote and inaccessible location of much of the north; (b) the pre-colonial relationships between kingdoms and tribes, and (c) the colonial dispensation which ensured that northern Ghana was a labour reserve for the southern mines and forest economy and (d) the post-colonial failure to break the established pattern.

It says the pre-colonial relationships between the Ashanti kingdom and northern ethnic groups established a hierarchy of dominance which still exists today.

"Colonial policy for the north affirmed its subordinate economic and political position. In addition to actively promoting labour migration, the government prevented investment, and adopted a 'protective' attitude towards the population, which kept northerners apart from the development which colonialism brought elsewhere", the report points out.

It says politically, independent Ghana has been adept at including northerners in the allocation of political and bureaucratic posts. However, while this strategy of 'containment' benefits the individuals concerned, it is often not easy to see significant benefits flowing to the north, other than the fruits of pork barrel politics.

Conflict has also been contained, but the conditions leading to conflict have never been resolved, with the risk that re-awakened conflicts will continue to deter investment in the north, and the threat that underlying insecurity makes Ghana prey to broader West African conflicting forces.

Besides, a degree of targeting the north for compensatory poverty reduction (human development, targeted local infrastructure) has been a feature of both democratically elected governments, but this has stopped well short of any programme to transform the north.

"All of this indicates a limited elite commitment to regional balance. The reluctance to decentralise properly has prevented local or regional elites from taking responsibility for the development of the district or region: the northern elite has been able to 'free-ride' on the limited decentralisation process, remain without serious responsibility and accountability to its electorate.

The report said the era of structural adjustment and liberalisation which followed 1983 did not compensate for the neglect of the north's economic interests. Physical and financial infrastructure remained underdeveloped, although there was a substantial and donor-supported effort to improve the north's feeder roads.

Critical inter-regional links, including those between north and south, were left largely unimproved, however, with the exception of the Kumasi-Tamale road. To date, the road leading to the Mole National Park, which is the biggest game reserve in the country and the only natural economic resource of people of the area remains in terrible condition, even though the current Vice President, Alhaji Aliu Mahama hails from the northern region.