My Ghana Electronic Desk

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTEWaste Management company, Zoomlion Ghana Limited, has lent its support to Ghana’s fight against Yellow Fever, which broke out in parts of the country recently. As part of its contribution towards the control of the outbreak , the company is set to begin a spraying exercise to control the vector of the disease, the Aedes or tiger mosquito. This step by Zoomlion, is also to complement the immunisation exercise already undertaken by the Ministry of Health and its agencies. According to the Chairman of the Technical Advisory Committee of Nationwide Mosquito Control Programme (NAMCOP), Dr. Kofi Ahmed, urban Yellow Fever occurs among populations living in communities, mainly hamlets, villages, towns and are transmitted by the adult Aedes mosquitoes, which are day biting mosquitoes. “This type of mosquito, Aedes that transmits the Yellow Fever virus, unlike the others, breeds in clean waters held in containers and some plants in and around the dwelling places in

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE YESDEC Trainees The Youth Enterprise and Skills Development Centre (YESDEC), a private sector initiative, is partnering the government of Ghana through the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, to provide a solution to the country’s unemployment situation. With all regions of the country as its target, the programme has now been introduced in the Central Region. YESDEC is aimed at providing employment opportunities for youth between the ages of 18 and 45 in skills acquisition, as well as the provision of equipment and machinery for beneficiaries who have acquired the necessary skills but lack the requisite machinery to kick-start their respective businesses. It offers training in various trade modules, including agriculture, fisheries, agro-processing and packaging, mobile phone repairs, electronic revenue collection, and transportation. Others are ICT, local foods and catering, mobile toilet operations, canoe fiber lining services, communit

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE SEND-GHANA, a national non-governmental organisation exclusively devoted to policy advocacy, has called for the timely release of the District Assembly Common Fund to all Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in the country. According to SEND-Ghana, the delay in the release of the funds by the Fund’s Secretariat to MMDA’s affects their ability to disburse the 3% of the District Assembly Common Fund (DACF) for Persons with Disability (PWDs). It said any delays in the release of the 3% share for the PWDs impacts negatively on their welfare and will not improve their condition as is intended by the fund.  In various district stakeholder meetings carried out across Ghana, it emerged that even though, some districts have established the Disability Fund Management Committees (DFMCs) and opened the Disability Fund Accounts (DFA), as directed, there are only occasional transfers into those accounts. The Assemblies say in 2009 for instance, the

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE Mr. Ludovic Falcuo Ludovic Falcuo, Nokia General Manager, Sales, in charge of Ghana and Senegal, has disclosed that Ghana loses between US$ 18 million and US$ 20 million annually, due to the influx of fake mobile phones. He explained that because the handsets are fake, they do not go through the approved channels of importation, hence the country loses money that should have been charged as taxes on the handsets. In an interaction with a cross section of the Ghanaian media in Accra on Wednesday, December 7, 2011, the Nokia Country Manager for Ghana, said, “They are imported to Ghana illegally without import duties or VAT paid. This creates a tax loss of between US$18 million and US$20 million per annum for the Ghanaian government.” Apart from import duty loses, Ludovic Falcuo stated that fake devices impact negatively on the performance of operator networks, which lowers operator profits and government tax income. Listing the ills of fake phones on any

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE Olam International, one of the world’s largest rice traders, says it is investing $49.2 million in rice farming and a milling facility in Nigeria. This will translate to 36,000 tons of milled rice annually at its peak, and will be sold through Olam’s distributors and dealers across Nigeria, where it already has a presence, the company said in a statement yesterday, December 6, 2011. Commenting on the new project, Rajeev Raina, President of Olam’s rice business, said “Globally, land under rice cultivation has remained stagnant around 150 million ha over the last 30 years. With the growth in population not being accompanied by an increase in the area under cultivation, we have seen a lot of pressure in respect of global rice supplies, with growing countries either banning exports altogether or increasing the support prices of farmers, thereby increasing the selling price of milled rice in the international market.” He added that while helping the importing coun

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE Some of the vehicles for the new company A new company, Road Safety Management Services Ltd (RSMSL), has been created to deal with the high incidence of road crashes and accidents on Ghana’s roads as a result of broken down vehicles left in the middle of the road. RSMSL will provide a broad array of road safety services to the country on a build-operate-and transfer basis under a public-private partnership scheme, whereby the company will finance the supply, installation and maintenance of a network of traffic cameras to check excessive speeding and reckless driving. It will also finance the operation and maintenance of vehicle recovery and towing services on the roads, to ensure rapid removal and recovery of accident/broken-down vehicles on the roads. This was disclosed at a two-day training workshop for commanders of the Motor Traffic & Traffic Unit (MTTU) in Accra over the weekend on the theme, ‘Curbing the Carnage on Ghana’s roads through efficien

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE African countries attending the fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, South Korea, have asked development partner countries to fulfill outstanding promises made to the continent in earlier fora. The delegates from Africa, listed some of the promises not made good as yet, as: making aid flows predictable, untied from onerous conditions and requirements to purchase development partner goods and services, and delivered in a coordinated way, aligned with country systems and processes. Attending the Busan consultations are over 3,000 policy-makers, academia and stakeholders from African countries and regional institutions as well as development partners, towards a common front in shifting the paradigm from Aid Effectiveness (AE) to Development Effectiveness (DE).  According to a press statement issued by the NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency, the African stakeholders’ message to Busan is that “although Aid is one of the sources for financing Af

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE Joseph Siaw Agyepong being congratulated by the Asantehene Otumfuo osei Tutu II after the doctorate degree was conferred on him. The Chief Executive Officer of Zoomlion Ghana Limited, Mr. Joseph Siaw Agyepong, has been awarded an honorary doctorate degree by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), at a special Congregation in Kumasi, which also coincided with the 60 th anniversary celebration of the University. A citation accompanying the honour read by Prof. Samuel Afrane, Provost of the College of Arts and Social Sciences, described Mr. Agyepong as a distinguished statesman who has made phenomenal contributions to environmental sanitation and higher education in the country. Prof. Afrane further said that through ingenuity, sterling leadership, business acumen and entrepreneurship, Mr. Agyepong has transformed the sanitation and waste management landscape of Ghana and other African Countries where Zoomlion has subsidiaries such

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE The Ashanti Regional Manager for Zoomlion Mr. Gyekye Darko Zoomlion Ghana Limited, has as part of the company’s effort to drive the message of good environmental sanitation deep down the heart and mind of every single Ghanaian in Ghana, rolled out series of community-based environmental sanitation durbars aimed at bringing all stakeholders in the community together to brainstorm about how to push forward the “Clean Ghana” agenda together as a people. The programme, which kicked off Saturday, 29 th October, 2011 at Mamponteng in the Kwabre East District of the Ashanti Region, had the Akyeamehene of the town, Nana Oppong Bretuo chairing the durbar, with Mr. Richard Amoaning, Ashanti Regional Environmental Health Officer delivering a lecture on a wide range of environmental sanitation issues. Speaking to a fairly large crowd made up of all classes of people in the Mamponteng Township including school children, traders, Assembly Members as well as Zoomlion s

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE Food security and climate change, currently two of the world’s most nagging issues, are the focus of a new system suggested by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) for food production. The recommendation is contained in a book published Tuesday, November 22, 2011 by IIED, titled Virtuous Circles: Values, systems and sustainability. Authors of the book who call for circular systems that mimic natural cycles to produce food, energy, materials and clean water, state that the global food system’s dependence on fossil fuels that contribute to local pollution and global warming is just one example of an unsustainable system. The book also shows how the linear systems that shape the world are flawed, as they assume a limitless supply of resources and a limitless capacity for the environment to absorb waste and pollution. According to   co-author and principal researcher at IIED, Dr. Michel Pimbert, “Circular economy models that reintegr