Proud to be Ghanaian

#1SimpleStep – My Letter to President Mahama

A few minutes ago, I deliver a letter to John Dramani Mahama, President of the Republic of Ghana about my some frustration. I share the letter here so you can read my concerns and perhaps it will motivate you to write to the president too.

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Dear President Mahama,

I would like to share a picture of Moses Imoro, a farmer who appears in the documentary “An African Election” with you. I believe you have seen it a couple of times. You should if you haven’t. Every politician should. My star in the documentary is not John Mills, Nana Addo, John Rawlings or the priest. My star is Moses Imoro. In the documentary, he’s asked why he didn’t attend a political rally & what he expects from politicians.. He answered  ”if they’ll stop telling lies.”

Moses Imoro | An African Election

I am writing this letter as a Ghanaian who believes in Ghana and believes Ghana is not where it ought to be. The Ghana Dr. Nkrumah and the founding fathers is so far away from the Ghana today and whilst some Ghanaians remain optimistic, the future is bleak for many. I know as president, you are probably not told the truth most of the time because people lack the courage to. At the end of the day, this is my Ghana and I die with it.

Every time a new president is elected, a country is filled with so much hope and optimism; that it is a new beginning and things can only get better. I have felt that optimism thrice and I have been disappointed on all three occasions.

Mr. President, I have been disappointed by how slowly you have composed your administration. I think before everyone becomes president, they should have an idea of who will be the best fit in various positions. Like many Ghanaians, I expected you to hit the ground not told the ground running. Sadly,  you haven’t done that and that is not what Ghanaians expect from you or any president of the land. We need leaders who believe in Ghana, take crucial decisions, fight off cronies and work for the people.

Your Independence Day speech was brilliant. It is probably the best I have heard in my lifetime but are you walking the talk? In your first tv interview (with KSM on TGIF), when you became vice president in 2009, you mentioned a new licensing system for government vehicles to curb personal use, you also mentioned government, MDAs will be directed to purchase Ghanaian rice and Made-in-Ghana products. I remember it all like yesterday but what is striking is all this hasn’t been done. If you see the gift hampers going out of the MDAs every Christmas and you will be amazed. I wonder what you have to say to that. And this runs through government. Enough is enough!

When you assumed office upon the death of President Mills, you outlined policy directions for Ghana. Again you gave a similar speech when you moved to the Flagstaff House. One thing which struck me was government was going to come up with a social media plan & policy for government. Two months down the line, I ask where is all that. I am afraid Mr. President, you will have to walk the talk. If you belong to the new Ghana like you say, you will do things differently. You can’t be a different Mahama when you want to win an election and a different Mahama when you’re elected.

Mr. President, every president who from Day 1 says he’s going for all two terms can never be a good leader in my books. Focus on the 4 year mandate Ghanaians have given you and deliver and let the people decide if they want to keep you for another 4 years. Pardon my language but that talk of second term makes me sick. You campaigned for 4 years and not 8 years.

Until Q4 2012, I worked in the Public Service and I also volunteered with a group of young Ghanaians to run an election project. I traveled the country and I was disappointed and heartbroken with the stories, scenes and some of the people I met. Everywhere we went, people just wanted to see government working. Ghanaians are tired of the corruption and cronyism. We used the road to your hometown Bole in August to go interact with people on the elections. We didn’t have an four wheel drive and it was just a taxi driver who agreed to get us there for ¢200. It wasn’t a smooth journey. We fell into a ditch at one point. Luckily, no one was injured. We could have died on that road but who cares? This year, Mahamudu Bawumia had an accident on some weeks ago on the same road and the noise wouldn’t stop. I kept thinking about the many Ghanaians who ply the road daily, the kids who run away upon seeing our taxi stop, the poor taxi driver who broke his axle getting and the villages along the road without lights. Do we care about them?

Have you observed the towns without lights when you travel at night? Sometimes, I wonder if they don’t vote or pay any taxes at all. What about the pregnant woman who has to travel on a bike to get medical attention? What about the worker who slaves for Ghana and has to feed his family with ¢300?

I could go on and on. What I am saying is simple;

• Walk the talk, Mr. President – you can’t say one thing and do the other

• Put an end to cronyism and government working for only people in government – we elect leaders to serve not to enrich themselves and seek their interest first.

• Be a new Ghana leader and make those painful decisions you politicians are always afraid of making – posterity will judge you.

• We need a National Development Plan now! – That’s the only way we will know as a people where we are heading and how we can get there. (S)he who fails to plan plans to fail.

• We the people demand strong and determined leadership.

God Bless Our Homeland Ghana!

Kwabena

From Las Gidi through Cotonou & Lomé with Love

I just arrived in Lagos with Kwabena O. Boateng for Social Media Week Lagos. Before I continue, I would advise everyone to take a road trip from Accra to Lagos before 2015. I have a feeling you won’t have the same experience in 2015 so just do it now. 

Traveling by bus from Accra through Togo and Benin, it’s been one hell of a journey. Ghana and Togo were pretty cool and easy to cross. I saw the famous Aflao Border Gate from our primary school textbooks. It looks really old, dirty and needs rehabilitation. I also saw someone pay a bribe to a Togolese Customs official. With the way he had packed his stuff, he just had to pay. It would have been so much trouble unloading the carefully packed textiles. I must add I like Togo. It seems too laid back but I’m sure when I return later in the year, I will get a real feel of the country and the people.

Benin was okay. I actually liked the feel of the country till I realised there was refuse all over. It is something that can’t miss a visitor’s eyes and I was quite shocked there were “petit” refuse dumps all over. I am probably exaggerating but it looked like everyone owns a dump… but still, I like the feel of Benin; from Ouidah to Cotonou, I found the architecture pretty interesting and a country which is developing.

Entering Nigeria was all I have heard over the past years. The famous Seme Border had its usual craze and it didn’t even stop till about four hours after entering Nigeria. From one checkpoint to another, you could tell from my face, I had regretted not flying to Lagos. I even lost count of the number of stops; Customs, Immigration, Police, NDLEA. Thank God the Anti-Bomb Squad didn’t come search the bus. That would have been 1 hour wasted.

Thank God for Habeebat. She has taken care of us. She had our hotel booked and got us from the bus terminal. Is that Nigerian hospitality? That’s awesome hospitality. 

We begin our SMW participation in the morning. I am looking forward to meeting awesome people attending and connecting with some colleagues later in the week. if you are reading and attending SMW, let’s connect and share experiences & ideas.

From Las Gidi through Cotonou & Lomé with love,

Kwabena.

Where Have I Been?

The answer is quite simple. I have been around. 2012 was a pretty busy year.

Last year, I had the opportunity of working on the Ghana Decides project. It was an awesome experience and the memories of the project will be with me forever. I will blame Ghana Decides for me not blogging much last year. It was really time consuming and it was also important not to write blog posts which might suggest I am aligned to a political party. It’s sad but that where Ghana is and I hope we can move away from that; that people can express their views on issues without being tagged NDC or NPP.

I also picked up a new job as a Social Media Assets Manager. It sounds pretty cool, right? But don’t think it means I get to sit on facebook or twitter all day and update my status. It’s really half of the job but it’s really exciting and I look forward to work everyday. 

I hope to be blogging more this year. I have started procrastinating already. I should have had three post up by now but there’s very little time for me to do all that.

It’s safe to say I am back though. Rediscovering my self, the desire to see Ghana where it ought to be, a transition and a new administration, social media and technology gives me a lot to write about.

I will need a pinch if I am not writing though. Life gets busy.

Ghana Decides Launches “Our Vote, Our Voice” Campaign

Ghana Decides launched a campaign yesterday, 27 November 2012, to get the Ghanaian electorate to turn up massively at the polls to vote on 7 December.

The campaign, called Our Vote, Our Voice, is the latest in a series of successful campaigns since February 2012, which commenced with #iRegistered, Ghana Decides Tag and SpeakGhana.

The purpose of the campaign is to promote communal voting. Campaign Coordinators, Kwabena Akuamoah-Boateng and Nehemiah Attigah, said “we believe peer-to-peer influence is still high and people could call up friends to vote or post updates to say #iVoted which may encourage others to vote.”

According to the Coordinators, “From our experience during the #iRegistered campaign, enthusiasm usually dies down after the first week or so. That is why the campaign is deliberately launched this close to the election.”

Project Lead of Ghana Decides, Ms. Kinna Likimani said “The Our Vote Our Voice campaign intends to use pledge cards to get people offline to pledge to vote. Much of our work has been focused on Ghanaians with limited or no access to internet, computers or smartphone devices, so this latest campaign is no different. We do not want to leave anything to chance come 7 December.” According to Ms. Likimani “Ghanaians must know that they have to vote because it is the in the interest of their children, their sisters and all of us. If you refuse to vote, it is like saying you don’t care about the people you love.”

However, the Coordinators admit the offline activity would be volunteer intensive, especially on targeted voters outside of Accra and are calling on Ghanaians to volunteers. Additionally, Mr. Attigah said “online pledge forms will be made live so that people can pledge to vote on December 7.  We’ll need you to pledge and got others to pledge too.”

The campaign will distribute Our Vote Our Voice branded t-shirts on Friday, 30 November, to all volunteers and participants in the campaign to whip up interest and excitement.

As part of efforts targeting Ghana’s growing tech-savvy community, voice notes and text messages have been designed and are ready for forwarding to users of Whatsapp & BBM. Currently, Ghanaians on Whatsapp and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are already using the logo as their profile pictures.

“We’ll be tweeting with the hashtag #LetsVote to encourage people to go vote and #GoVote on Election Day as well as #iVoted to share pictures after voting. The #GhanaDecides hashtag must trend on election day” says Mr. Akuamoah-Boateng

Rest in Peace John Evans Atta Mills

It’s a sad day in Ghana. We still haven’t recovered from yesterday’s shocking new of the demise of the President. I haven’t and I decided to stay home today and mourn the President.

Source: GhanaDecides

Last night, I was out with the Ghana Decides Team trying to gather people’s reactions to the President’s death. It was encouraging seeing Nigerians opting to say a few words about President Mills. Throughout the interactions, people kept stressing how they were in deep sorrow upon hearing of his demise. Almost everyone, I spoke to alluded that indeed, the President would be remember as a religious, calm, gentle, hardworking, peace-loving and jovial man. I was particularly moved by the interview with Florence [link to interview soon]. She spoke with so much passion, I was almost moved into tear. 

I remember in 2008, the discussions that ensued with my friends after the Electoral Commissioner, Kwadwo Afari Gyan had announced that Candidate John Atta Mills was in the lead with Tain to go. One friend remarked that the youth of Ghana should learn from the perseverance of Candidate Mills; haven lost two elections, he hadn’t given up like most of us would have. President Mills fought on to become the Commander-in-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces and President of the Republic of Ghana.

President John Mills was a fighter! Although he hasn’t been well, he fought it and continued working to make Ghana a better country.

And once again, I congratulate the Government and People of Ghana for passing yet another test of our democracy. In sorrow & grief, we have remained strong and steadfast as one nation. 

God bless our homeland Ghana!!!

How Did @presidencyghana Become @JohnAttaMills?

I noticed something last week on my way to Tamale with Blogging Ghana’s Ghana Decides’ Team that the official twitter account for the Presidency (@presidencyghana) had changed its username to @JohnAttaMills.

Now, this is something one might consider petty or overlook but not if you have been paying attention to social media (trends) in Ghana and the roundup to the December general elections. There are some questions we need to ask here.

Is The Presidency/John Atta Mills finally taken social media seriously and gotten a pro to manage the president’s social media? If so, it could be good news. At least an acknowledgement of how social media can make a difference in governance and elections. I would like the candidates to seriously use social media as we move toward the elections. For some Ghanaians, that is how we can be reach.

Now, does anyone see abuse of incumbency here? The Twitter account @presidencyghana was and is still listed on the Presidency’s website as the Presidency’s account. Many people followed the account because its username said Presidency, not John Atta Mills. I am guessing whoever is running the account is one government payroll. Can someone on a government payroll be running the president’s private account? This could be bad precedent.

The facebook page (http://fb.me/PresidencyGhana), which is linked to the account hasn’t toned down on it sycophantic captions; a big minus for them. Anyway, I will continue to look for answers and follow the account and that of the other politicians to see how they do this year.

God bless our homeland Ghana!

Rock the Vote & Ghana Decides: Similar Cause, Different Sides of the World

This week, I had the opportunity of meeting Chrissy Fassen from the Rock the Vote! For me, this is the highlight of my trip to the USA; meeting someone who has been involved in a campaign to get people registered and get them to vote; something we are trying to replicate in Ghana with Ghana Decides. We recently run a campaign called #iRegistered to get people to voluntarily go register and share their experiences. That went pretty well and we are going to run another towards December to get people to go out and vote.

If you don’t know about Rock the Vote, they have been around as long as the 4th Republic has been. It’s in its 21st year and they run campaigns targeted at people between 18 and 29. It is the largest single non-political voter registrant in the USA, engaging people and giving them the information they need to register.

I first heard about Rock the Vote around the time P. Diddy put out that Vote or Die song and since we started the Ghana Decides project, I have been looking at their Website and social media for inspiration. Usually when I talk to people especially those who have lived or visited or know about USA politics about Ghana Decides, they always say ‘Are you trying to do something similar to Rock the Vote or Vote or Die?’. My answer: similar cause; different sides of the world.

Apart from increasing youth participation in the electoral process in Ghana, we (Ghana Decides) also try to reach socially excluded groups; women, prisoners and the physically challenged. It is not only about getting them to register but also getting them on social media; giving them a voice.

Chrissy shared some interesting strategies with us and a lot of these will come handy when we start our campaign to get people to vote. Some of the take-aways will be getting people to sign pledge cards and doing follow ups on election eve and election day. I am pretty excited to see how that will go. Rock the Vote is also huge on social media and on whether social media would be crucial as it was in 2008, Chrissy said ‘social media can outweigh every dollar spent’ and ‘it would be even more…. especially considering how Facebook and Twitter has evolved over the last 4 years.’ 

When Secretary Clinton Met the Young African Leaders

Have you ever heard of the President’s Forum for Young African Leaders? In August 2010, President Obama convened a three-day conference with more than 100 young leaders from a cross section of African life to examine how they see Africa’s future over the next half century, and to help craft innovative solutions to regional challenges. This programme has continued since the meeting in 2010 and has produced some alumni like Fred Swaniker and Shamima Muslim. 

Secretary Clinton Addressing #YAL

On June 13, 2012, 60 Young African Leaders (including Dorinda and Tonyi from Ghana) from over 40 African Countries convened in Washington DC for a 3-week tour. US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in addressing the Innovation Summit and Mentoring Partnership with Young African Leaders from Africa said with Africa’s population under 25 years forming 60% of the entire population, it could be daunting statistic or a cause for celebration. Daunting if they have no access to education, healthcare, voices are not heard and respected, etc. It could be a cause of celebration when young people can have their voices heard, help chart a new beginning, etc.

Secretary Clinton in her remarks said, having benefited from African migrants, America’s interest in Africa is a genuine one. Citing the example of the midwife who assisted her doctor when she had her daughter and has recently returned home to Ghana, Secretary Clinton said the USA wants to see a lot more Africans stay or return to the continent for Africa to benefit from them.

Initiatives like this are good for the continent and its youth. I posted on Instagram & Twitter this morning the lovely logo of the Young African Leaders and someone asked “What’s the deal with the star?”.

Young African Leaders logo

I bet he didn’t know or expected it to be an initiative from African within Africa but does it really matter? We live in a global world. As Barack Obama said during his visit to Ghana and Hillary Clinton reiterated yesterday, Africa is not a world apart but it is a fundamental part of our interconnected world. We keep talking about youth empowerment since we believe the youth of our countries hold the key to our development.

The two Ghanaian Youth Leaders this year; Dorinda and Tonyi are doing really cool things. Dorinda has established an NGO, Dream Environment in Kumasi with a team of young scrap and second-hand car dealers to help protect the environment. Tonyi, who was Mensah Sarbah JCR President 2006/2007 has established a shoe factory in Kumasi. I believe there are hundreds of many more young people doing wonderful things in Ghana. It’s important programmes like this bring them to the fore and give them a boost. 

Good Morning from The District

Last year this time, I was in Beijing to learn about China’s economic policies, which have lifted 100 million people out of poverty within the shortest time. This year, I write this blog post from Washington DC, where I am here with a group of Journalists from 20+ countries on the “Youth in Politics” reporting tour.

I am representing Blogging Ghana’s Ghana Decides’ project, which you may have read about or seen around. The project seeks to leverage the use of social media for Ghana’s 2012 elections. It has been great so far and looking at the schedule for the tour, there are a lot of ideas I am looking to pick up.

Already, we have a vibrant Facebook group and we are sharing ideas and todos already. I will tweet and blog as much as I can for the next 10 days. You can follow the tour on twitter and Instagram with the hashtags #YouthInPolitics

NDC, NPP & the Ghana Statistical Service

Today’s headlines was all about the Ghana Statistical Service’s response to Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s speech at the 5th Ferdinand Ayim Memorial Lecture. Every newspaper and headline I saw quoted Acting Government Statistician, Dr. Philomena Nyarko’s response to Dr. Bawumia. In the past week, Ministry of Finance & Economic Planning, Governor of Bank of Ghana among others have come out to criticise the former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana.

Source: @GhanaDecides

For me, it is sad to see a state institution like the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) being drawn into the NDC-NPP politicking Ghanaians are fed up with. (At least I am). 

Now one of them is being mischievous here and I wish I knew which of them is. All I know is this undermines our quest to build strong institutions. As many have argued and was echoed during Barrack Obama’s address to the Ghanaian Parliament in 2009, when he visited, we need to build strong, capable, reliable and transparent institutions. P

I really hope our greedy, deceitful and incompetent politicians will leave our state institution out of their politicking. At the end of the day, the politicians will come and go but the our state institutions will remain. Let’s build and defend our institutions. Let’s not let any government manipulate the GSS or any other state institution and let’s not let any party undermine the integrity of our institutions.

God bless our homeland Ghana!

A Successful Biometric Voter Registration?

It has been a while since I wrote here. The Glo post doesn’t count. It was just a quick post to answer all the questions that were coming at me on twitter. I have been quite busy with a lot stuff, the best of which is an election project I am involved in. 

For the past 40 days, we have all been involved and witnessed the biometric voter registration. I will cut the chase and say the exercise in my opinion was successful and peaceful despite the few incidents notable the clashes in Odododiodio and Kennedy Agyapong’s arrest. 

A lot of these could have been avoided if the Police was more vigilant and the political parties had a real control over their supporters.

I travelled to my hometown of Sunyani to register in the first phase. My polling centre, Ridge Experimental School as I expected, had no applicants at the time of my application. It allow for time to interact with the registration officers and take some pictures. I also got to understand how authentication of the device was done and how they back up data. The party agents from the NPP & NDC, although looked hungry were calm and didn’t ask any questions.

One thing which make the 40-day period worthwhile and I am not being bias here, was the #iRegistered tweets and comments. #iRegistered is a campaign which Ghana Decides run aggressively during the registration period to get people to register and share their experiences. It was interesting all the comments and reports which came in. Occasionally, people would tweet at the Ghana Decides twitter account.

So, if you’re reading this post and you are not following Ghana Decides on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Tumblr, Storify, Instagram, Skype, then you should do so now. Ghana Decides is a BloggingGhana (BloGH) election project. It seeks to leverage the use of social media in Ghana’s December 2012 elections. 

Glo NetPro Hands On

Glo Mobile Ghana finally launched yesterday and today was their first big day.

I got a data modem from Glo this afternoon. It took about an hour to get the modem as I had to wait in line and everybody was buying at least two SIM cards or modem. Glo NetPro a ZTE MF110 USB modem which sells at GH¢60 with 6GB

Setup

Setup was easy and fast. Setting up on my MacBook Pro took just a few clicks and a little over a minute. 

Welcome

Speed

The first thing I did after the installation was to dive right in with a speed test. With so much talk about the Glo-1 cable, I was curious to find out how fast the NetPro is. The speedtest result was quite impressive with the download but upload disappointed. Only the average, I clocked 3Mbps for download speed and 0.5Mbps for upload speed. It compares to what one can get on MTN and Airtel. I will have to test this over a wide area to come to a better conclusion. 

Data Bundles

Very little information is out there now on the available data bundle for Glo NetPro. Naa from Glo Customer care was helpful with some of the available packages. The packages have apart from having data limits also have time limits;

• Diamond |  GH¢ 80 | 90 Days | 10GB | 24hrs
• Gold | GH¢55 | 30 Days | 6GB | 24hrs
• Silver | GH¢40 | 3.2GB | 24hrs
• Bronze | GH¢ 15 | 1.2GB | 24hrs
• Day Business | GH¢ 30 | 30 Days | 3GB | 8am - 8pm
• Night Personal | GH¢ 25 | 30 Days | 3GB | 8pm to 8am
• Pay-as-you-go | GH¢ 0.05p

…to be continued

The President’s Encounter With Senior Editors & Journalists 2012: A Complete Waste of Time!

Good morning Ghana! I guess some of you spent some time watching or listening to the President’s interaction/encounter with senior editors and journalists at the Castle yesterday. Even if you missed it on radio and tv, you probably saw a couple of tweets or Facebook updates on it. 

Mills interacting with Media. Credit: Presidency of the Republic of Ghana

I did listen via radio in the office and after the one hour interaction/encounter, I found it a complete waste of my productive time. I was left very disappointed by the questions the senior editors and journalists asked as well as the response from the president. 

The senior editors and journalist focused on questions (in my opinion) are of very little relevance to the needs of Ghanaians now; not a single question was asked about education and health. I dare not mention technology, export and support for local businesses. I am not sure there was anything on unemployment and the other basic issues affecting Ghanaians. Instead, these so-called senior editors and journalists spent the little time talking about the relationship between President Mills and President Rawlings and how it would affect the his chances in the December poll. Ten questions were asked about the payment of judgement debt of GH¢53 million to Mr. Alfred Wayome. Yes, 10 questions and none bothered to ask about education. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to talk about the state losing such a huge chunk of money but 10 questions whilst the basics are not tackled is quite pointless. This is what these so-called senior editors and journalists sought to do; they all wanted to be quoted as asking the president that ‘controversial’ questions and also get those useless front page stories for their newspapers. Shameless journalists.

One of many questions which in my opinion was out of place and unnecessary was that by Mary-Ann Acolatse, formally of Metro TV. She asked if the government would pay compensation to someone wrongfully imprisoned for 14 years. Isn’t this something you take to the courts, the A-G or the Commission of Human Rights & Administrative Justice (CHRAJ)? Again, probably one greedy journalist try to put her media house’s story in the spotlight. There were some praise singers as always.

With an encounter which comes once every year, I think we should have gone past one hour… but then, these journalists wouldn’t have gone past asking about the president’s health, wayomegate and ask more sensible or meaningful questions.

The reaction on twitter was no different from mine after the encounter. Tweeting with the hashtag #GhanaDecides, people expressed their outrage at journalists who made the whole encounter seem rehearsed (maybe it was). Like me, most tweeps from the it hard to believe these were really senior editors and journalists. The poor quality of the questions asked reflects in the discourse these media houses chart in the country. After all, to them, asking about improvement in health care won’t sell; they would rather ask about the president’s health. I bet the president would have been caught fumbling if he had met BloggingGhana or Barcampers.

As we move towards the December poll, I urge the people and the media to ask relevant and intelligent questions when given the opportunity. That is a pretty good way of holding politicians accountable and achieving the Ghana we ought to be.

God bless our homeland Ghana!