My Ghana Electronic Desk

EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE The Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Lars Thunell, has stressed that the finance institution is very much interested in the development of Ghana’s private sector. He indicated that as proof of its commitment, the IFC has increased its operations in Ghana in the last couple of years and has syndicated in addition about $70 million or so in its programmes in the country. According to Thunell, the IFC is focused on getting the benefits of its operations to the poor and other parts of the country. Speaking earlier on the institution’s work in Africa, he said; “We are very much focused on Africa and we have a series of operations here. We have increased our operations here significantly over the last couple of years”, adding, “back in 2003 we invested about $160 million and we expect to invest about $2.1 billion this year and have significant operations in neighbou

EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE Ghana’s Minister for Water Resources, Works and Housing, Hon. Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, yesterday received thunderous applause and cheers, when he displayed his football skills in Accra. The Minister, who said he had not played football in a long while, shot twice on target to score two goals for WASH-United, to officially launch the club at a brief ceremony, which attracted some stakeholders of the club. Hon. Alban Bagbin’s football display at the launch at the British Council hall dubbed World Toilet Cup, was his symbolic kicking of a football into two holes in a goal post, to drive home the need for everyone to ensure that every excreta is made to drop in a hole, i.e. practice good sanitation. He was later presented with a souvenir, made up of a miniature goal post with a player and football to remind him of his commitment to the club, while he pledged to captain the team to chalk successes. WASH-United is the acronym

EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE The government of Ghana has indicated that it will need about $200 million annually over a long period, if it is to reverse the country’s poor sanitation coverage that it is experiencing currently. According to the Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) standards which are used as the yardstick for measuring global performance and progress towards achieving the MDGs, instead of Ghana achieving about 30% in sanitation coverage as at 2006 so that the country could be at 53% by 2015, only 10% had been achieved by then, which is an indication that if the rate of progress should remain as it is now, Ghana will achieve just about 15% by 2015. Disclosing that Ghana would need such whooping amount annually to address its sanitation burden in Accra on Friday, as he launched a water, sanitation and hygiene initiative dubbed WASH-United, Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, Hon. Alban S. K. Bagbin lamented that “even though as a co

EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE Schoolchildren and villagers across Rwanda will receive solar power while more than $85,000 will go to gorilla conservation as part of the lasting legacy of World Environment Day 2010, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has announced. The announcement was via a press release issued by UNEP in Kigali, Rwanda, to commemorate World Environment Day (WED), which was marked on Saturday June 5, 2010 at the Volcanoes National Park. Under the theme 'Many Species. One Planet. One Future' , this year's event celebrated the incredible diversity of life on Earth as part of the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity. Rwanda, which was this year’s global host for WED, organised a vivid celebration in the Volcanoes National Park that brought together Hollywood star, Don Cheadle, the Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, UNEP Climate Hero and acclaimed wildlife photographer Luo Hong and Achim Steiner, United Nations Under S

EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE Hollywood star Don Cheadle, who became very popular with his role in the movie ‘Hotel Rwanda’ in 2004, has been appointed the Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The Hollywood actor of renown, who has portrayed iron men, mobsters and a hotel manager who saved hundreds of lives during the Rwanda genocide, will thus in his latest role, take on a new kind of challenge – the environment. Don Cheadle, an internationally respected actor, humanitarian and also an environmentalist, was appointed Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) on 5 June 2010, World Environment Day (WED). The designation was announced in Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda during the global WED 2010 celebrations, where Mr. Cheadle took part in the traditional Kwita Izina gorilla-naming ceremony. The renowned actor’s trip to Rwanda was especially meaningful, given his ties to the country through his Academy Award-nominated role in

EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE     Gowtham Vigneshwar, a 10-year-old pupil at the Oshwal Academy Nairobi Primary, Kenya, has been declared winner of this year’s United Nations Environment Programme’s African Children’s Painting Competition on the Environment. The winning entry, which was announced on 5 June 2010 to mark World Environment Day, was chosen among 420 entries from ten countries around all of Africa by a jury made up of representatives of the competition organisers – UNEP, Bayer, Nikon and the Foundation for Global Peace and Environment. Under this year’s theme ‘Biodiversity: connecting with nature’, children aged 6 to 14 were invited to focus on the beautiful planet earth full of different life forms, and to depict through art what they can do to protect it. Gowtham’s painting depicts the richness of African biodiversity and the interconnectedness between its different forms in a beautiful world, a statement announcing the winner said. Sp

EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE Some world renowned academics have warned that the industrialised world’s promise of billions of “new and additional” dollars to help developing nations tackle climate change is meaningless without a baseline from which to count new funds. Expressing this view in a briefing paper published by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the academics, Saleemul Huq , senior fellow in IIED’s climate change group; Martin Stadelmann, researcher at the Centre for International and Comparative Studies in Switzerland; and J. Timmons Roberts, director of the Centre for Environmental Studies at Brown University, United States, outlined two workable options for defining a baseline that would balance the demands of donor and recipient nations. Authors of the paper, which was formally launched on 5 June, 2010 at a side event during the UN climate-change negotiations in Bonn have also called for a UN-based system to define baselines and monitor pledges

EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE The government of Ghana says it has not taken any decision yet regarding management of the country’s water systems by Aqua Vitens Rand Ltd (AVRL), whose contract expires in June 2011. AVRL was given the contract to manage Ghana’s 81 water systems in 2006, after signing an agreement with the government of Ghana at the end of 2005. However, the Dutch company has recently come under a barrage of attacks from sections of the Ghanaian consuming public, who have blamed it for poor performance and service delivery and have thus asked government to abrogate the contract. But responding to that thorny issue of AVRL’s competence or otherwise in a statement delivered Thursday in Accra at a forum dubbed Meet-the-Press, Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, Hon. Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, declared that the government had not made any decision yet on the issue. Instead, he said, the government, together with its development par

EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE Real Estate Developers and builders may soon be constrained to incorporate gutters in the roofs of their building designs to enable harvesting of rainwater into receptacles for use by occupants. This will be done through a policy framework, which will be developed to ensure compliance by all builders so as to aid in addressing the shortfall in supply of potable water to communities and homes. This was disclosed by Hon. A.S.K. Bagbin, Minister for Water Resources, Works and Housing (WRWH) as he outlined major policies concerning Ghana’s water sector, when he took his turn at the Meet-the-Press series, a forum created by the government to make known its plans and address issues concerning the various sectors of the economy, in Accra. Speaking on rainwater harvesting as a sub heading in a statement he delivered on Thursday on Ghana’s water situation, he said “Sometimes, the key to unlocking our water problems simply falls from t

EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE Ghana’s rural communities may soon benefit from solar powered pumps for their water needs, according to the Minister for Water Resources, Works and Housing (MWRWH), Hon. Alban Bagbin. It is envisaged that employing of solar energy will go a long way to solve the recurring incidence of the lack of potable water for Ghana’s rural communities as a result of  difficult geological formations and the unavailability of groundwater in some regions, which have dampened the demand for hand dug wells. Making this known in Accra at a media encounter dubbed Meet-the-Press on Thursday, Hon. Bagbin said the current situation calls for alternative means to provide the communities with potable water. “Together with the team at the ministry, we are exploring available and affordable technologies such as the use of solar powered pumps to enable them access water at affordable cost,” he divulged. The Minister earlier indicated that if alternative

EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE Ghana’s Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing (MWRWH), Hon. Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, has outlined steps by his Ministry, to ensure Ghana remains on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal for Water by 2015. The Minister stated that although according to the World Water Council, nine out of 10 of the one billion people who lack access to potable water worldwide live in rural areas and the UN Millennium Development Goal aims to reduce that number by half, “the drive to increase access to rural water systems neglects the critical factor of sustainability and maintenance of existing water systems.” Speaking in Accra today during his turn at the Meet-the-Press series, which is a platform created by the Ghana government for its Ministries and agencies to address the media on pertinent issues concerning the various sectors of the economy, he said some rural areas, as well as some in his own constituency are known to be graveyards of nonperforming p