My Ghana Electronic Desk

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE Ghana’s fifth post independence and 2010 Population and Housing Census took off to a bumpy start in the wee hours of Monday 27 September – just after midnight on Sunday September 26, 2010. Some of the initial challenges the National Census Secretariat had to grapple with in the early hours of Monday, were the unwillingness of outdoor sleepers, workers who ply their trade at night and the commuting population to be counted, even though they were the first point of call for the census officials. Making this known to ghanabusinessnews.com in an interview on Tuesday, Michael Adu Gyamfi, Communications and Media Officer of the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) and Public Relations Officer for the National Census Secretariat, affirmed; “We have few challenges here and there but we are trying to resolve all of them.” “It is just about the outdoor sleepers – I am talking about the floating population – some of them were resisting that they were not going to allow us t

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE Owner of world-renowned beverage brand, Coca-Cola Company, has pledged to empower five million women entrepreneurs throughout its global business system, by the year 2020. Announcement of the pledge was made by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the company, Muhtar Kent, at a plenary session on empowering women at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, USA on Tuesday, September 21, 2010. The pledge is a follow up of a promise made by the company at last year’s Clinton Global Initiative, to ensure 50% of all new Micro Distribution Centres (MDCs) are run by women, and is in turn a step up a commitment made by the Coca-Cola Company in 2008 to the United Nations “Business Call to Action”, to grow the company’s MDCs in Africa. Currently in Ghana there are already about 200 of the MDCs, of which 80% are being run by women, disclosed Conrad Van Niekerk, General Manager, Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Ghana. Making this know

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE Fifty thousand (50,0000) enumerators have been trained for Ghana’s ongoing census which began on Sunday, September 26. The enumerators have been spread across the entire length and breadth of the country, to ensure every Ghanaian citizen is counted in the ongoing exercise. Disclosing this to ghanabusinessnews.com yesterday in an exclusive interview, Michael Adu Gyamfi, Communications and Media Officer of the Ghana Statistical Service and PRO for the National Census Secretariat, expressed optimism that in view of the large number of well trained enumerators on the field, there is no way any Ghanaian citizen would be left out in the exercise. The Census PRO intimated that before the final selection of the 50,000 enumerators, some aspiring census officials had to be dropped, after four major examinations had been conducted, to ensure they had only the best persons to conduct the nationwide exercise. “This work is not as easy a

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE Ghana is on course to become the first African country to achieve the first target (MDG l) of halving poverty and hunger by 2015, says a report released by the British Overseas Development Institute. According to the report, "Ghana had reduced hunger by nearly three quarters from 34% to 9% between 1990 and 2004 -an area in which it had out-performed all other countries around the world." Disclosing this at the just ended High Level Plenary Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on the Millennium Development Goals in New York, USA, Alhaji Muhammad Mumuni, Ghana’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, said “We are approximately four and a half years to the target date of achieving the MDGs in 2015, and Ghana's progress is encouraging.” Quoting the report, he said, “Ghana is firmly on track to achieving MDG 1 -halving poverty; MDG 2 -achieving universal basic education and part of MDG 3 -e

 BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE The Government of Ghana (GoG) and the European Union (EU) will soon sign a Supplementary Contract Finance Agreement for GH¢3.2 million ( to finish up a water project began in 2007 for the people of Assin Fosu in the Assin North District of the Central Region. This will bring the total funding for the EU Small Towns Water and Sanitation Project (EU-STWaSaP) for 40 communities in the Western and Central regions of Ghana to about €25 million (The original agreement involved €23 million from the EU). The Supplementary Agreement has become necessary, because although the construction phase of the Financing Agreement numbered 9421/GH – 9 th EDF (European Development Fund) between the GoG and EU for 20 selected communities in the Central Region ended in August 2010, the Assin Fosu Small Town Water and Sanitation Project, which is expected to provide 37,307 people with potable water, has not been completed. Announcing this to a g

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE In spite of efforts that have been made so far by governments the world over, to half the global population of those who starve daily because they do not have access to food, current estimates say 925 million still go hungry. This figure however, represents an improvement over last year’s estimate of 1.02 billion published by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, which is 15 percent of the estimated world population of 6.8 billion . According to the FAO, last year alone, the number of people deprived of food rose from 915 million to 1.02 billion, despite interventions being made globally to meet the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving hunger by the year 2015. Of that number Asia and the Pacific had the largest chunk with 642 million hungry, followed by Sub-Saharan Africa with 265 million, then Latin America and the Caribbean, 53 million, Near East and North Africa 42 and develope