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!

Why Aren’t Our Nations Better Off?

African nations have had independence for so so many years: Why aren’t our nations better off? That is the question Nadia Zeine asked on twitter a couple of days ago. It is question I have often tried to answer. Off the top of my head, I can think of these five reasons; Leadership, Followership, Aid, Corruption, Neocolonialism and Religion.

We haven’t been too lucky with the leaders we have had in the past 3 decades or so. We have had very ignorant, selfish and greedy leaders who have done nothing but robbed our nations of their wealth and signed contracts primary school children wouldn’t even sign. Development can come when we have strong development-oriented leaders who are interested in the welfare and development performance rather than vague policies, nepotism and ethnic divisions.

I have maintained that ‘in as much as we have a leadership crises in Africa, I believe we have a followership crises as well.’ We have followers who don’t analyse or pay attention to the real issues and vote accordingly; we have sycophants who only seek their well-being and not that of the state. Followers have failed to criticise leaders constructively and vote the right people into power. Followers have been more interested in what they get rather than what nation.

Aid, Aid and more Aid. I am just one chapter deep in Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid but I share her views on aid; Aid has been and continues to be, an unmitigated political, economic and humanitarian disaster for most parts of the developing world. Aid has done nothing but led to the underdevelopment of our continent. Aid has been seen as a end rather than a means to an end. Governments have become lazy because of aid. We have become too dependant on aid that we have failed to generate the money we need for development. This is one area we can learn from China. China in its economic transformation sought foreign aid as a supplement to national resources and as a means to acquire know-how and management skills. The opposite is true with Africa. Governments after governments boast how much aid they were able to secure. This has to change!

Corruption continues to be one of the reasons for our underdevelopment. Although we have some good examples in Botswana, Cape Verde, Seychelles and Mauritius, African countries continues to be in most corrupt nations. I have always said we don’t punish corruption enough in Africa. We live in countries where corrupt public servants are ‘asked to proceed on leave.’ How do you deal with corruption in a state like that? The only way to deal with corruption is not true fruitless education drives we have seen around the continent but to give out stiffer punishments.

Before the end of the cold war, Africa was the ground for the proxy wars; Mozambique, Angola which have caused tremendous damage to their economies. Neocolonialism continues to be a problem for the continent. Today, it has taken economic dimensions through unfair trade practices.

It is my view that every society which is over-religious or over superstitious will always remain underdevelopment. Our being over-religion and over-superstitious has affected the development of our continent. We take religion too seriously. We would do whatever the pastor, imam or priestess says even if it’s wrong. We rely too much on religion to solve our problems. Religion won’t! I believe in religion but I think religion comes in where science can’t provide an explanation.

Africa’s future is up to Africans. The earlier we take our destiny into our hands and correct these wrongs, the better.

One Year Away…

We are exactly a year away for the 2012 Presidential and Parliamentary elections. I bet I am not the only one excited about the 2012 elections. I had a couple of retweets when I tweeted it this morning.  2012 presents a new dimension in Ghana’s elections. 

Apart from the much touted biometric voters’ register and ‘vote of confidence’ in the sitting John Evans Atta Mills, I am excited about how social media will be used in our elections. The use of social media was quite low in 2008. We saw only a few tweets and Facebook status updates from Ghana. Today, we have the major news outlets; Joy 997, Citi FM, Peace FM and the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation all have twitter accounts now. I believe the number of Ghanaians on twitter and Facebook since then has tripled.

I expect a revamped Electoral Commission of Ghana website to include social media just as the Independent Electoral Commission of Nigeria (INEC) did in 2010. Hopefully, the EC will have a Twitter and Facebook page in 2012.

The candidates are also gearing up for 2012. I have seen a couple of politicians on Twitter including Vice President, John Dramani Mahama and the Nana Akufo-Addo 2012 campaign team. I will verify and detail the social media accounts of politicians and key people to follow in 2012 in another post.

I am curious to see how my home region of Brong-Ahafo will vote in 2012. As they say in the USA, “As Maine goes, so goes the nation” but in Ghana, it is “As Brong-Ahafo goes, so goes the nation.” Christened the “Chameleon of Ghana Politics”, the Brong-Ahafo has gotten every election right since 1992 and I don’t expect that trend to end in 2012.

This is most likely to be Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, Electoral Commissioner of Ghana’s last elections and I expect him to do a fantastic farewell job. I trust the Ghanaian blogging and Twitter community to do a great job with telling the world, the real situation before and after December 7 2012.  

God bless our homeland Ghana!

How Many Times Can Vodafone Ghana Replace Stolen Cables?

App Store Now Available for Ghana!

Apple Inc. has added 33 additional countries to its Mac & iTunes App Store. New to the list are 5 African countries; Ghana, Nigeria, Angola, Algeria and Tanzania raises the number of African countries to 16.This means users in these countries can create an App Store Account with their Apple IDs, link it to their VISA, MasterCard or AMEX credit/debit cards and purchase apps. It also means developers can sell their apps in these countries (new territories) by adding them to their sales territory lists in the iTunes Connect web application. 
A lot of people have been yearning to see the flag of Ghana on the App Store and with Apple aggressively expanding its international reach, Mac OS X Lion only available in the App Store and iCloud set to go live in fall, there is the need to add more territories. What users will find disappointing is purchases cannot be made with App Store vouchers. Users will also not be able to purchase music, movies, tv shows or iBooks in the iTunes Store (which is not surprising because there a lot of copyright hurdles to clear first). I have provided a few screenshots from the Mac & iTunes App Stores. I dare say the iPhone & iPad will launch in Ghana soon.

China!

Ni hao! I returned from China a week ago and it was so much fun. Unfortunately, I have had so much to do at work that I haven’t been able to blog about the People’s Republic of China. Four words; Beautiful country, Nice people!

I was in China for a 2-week Chinese Government Seminar for Officials from Developing Countries on Development Zone Policies. It was was exciting and presented a great opportunity to interact with some Chinese (Officials & non-officials) and other nationals, as well as visit some really cool parks, markets and other monuments.

I don’t even know how to structure this post but I will try to fit it all in one and make it less boring.

New Friends 新的朋友

One of the best parts of the trip was making new friends. By far, the Egyptians were my favourite; Ahmed, Nihal, Shiima, Nehal, Mohammed and Walaa. [I know they are reading; You guys rock!]. There were other cool people from Ethiopia, Vietnam and Zambia. At least if I find myself in their countries, I know I have a friend there.

We had great hosts we can call friends now. Steven, Celia and the other staff at AIBO were just lovely. Steven is always looking out for a brother :D At this point, I must say in my honest opinion, Chinese hospitality tops Ghanaian hospitality.

Beijing 北京

Beijing was fantastic! The best part was with the tours; visiting The Forbidden City, Behai Park, Silk Market, Yashow Market and of course climbing the Great Wall of China! ‘He who doesn’t reach the Great Wall is not a true man’ - Mao Zedong.

The world knows I love gadgets and I visited Zhongguancun on 3 occasions with Ahmed. Though we couldn’t get all we wanted, we got some pretty good bargains. The Apple Store in Sanlitun Village was the first Apple Store the fictional Apple Inc Executive has visited. It was packed with people. One couldn’t even move but for me, I was in a shrine.

iPhone 4 & iPhone 3GS

These are by far the most popular smartphones in China. Everybody has an iPhone 4 or 3GS. I saw a bunch of people making purchases at the Apple Store and I think every 5 people with smartphones I met, 4 had the iPhone 4 & 3GS. Androids are quite popular too. I saw only 2 Blackberrys in China. [Yes, I was counting]

Dalian 大连

As part of the seminar, we visited Dalian to see first-hand and interact with stakeholders in the Dalian Development Area. Dalian has some similarities with African countries having been occupied by the Russians and Japanese from 1898 to 1955 but that will be discussed in a different post. 

I love Dalian. I left my heart there. It is indeed a lovely city with a lot of squares and parks. My group was skeptical about visiting Dalian. We wanted to visit Shanghai or Shenzen but Dalian proved us wrong. I can’t even begin to talk about the people. From the tour guide Hebe to everyone we say in the city including the Russians (a lot of Russians live in Dalian) were so friendly. The hotel staff at the Guo Mao Ja Ri Hotel were really nice and I made a personal friend called Xiao Han Song.

In Dalian, I learn’t something about Korea DPR. The hotel had some North Korean girls who performed some lovely songs for us. Interestingly, they double as waitresses at the hotel. Dalian isn’t far from Korea DPR, so children of officials are often sent there to work. They earn CN¥1,200 ($185) of which their government takes ¥1,000 ($30), which I learn’t is a lot of money in their countries. I also learn’t in Korea DPR, footballers earn as little as CN¥36.

It was also fun playing Cuju (Ancient Chinese Football) with complete strangers. The only bad thing was I tore my dope khaki trousers :(

Dalian nights were also cool; walking through the city and shopping. A lot of locals took a lot of pictures with me that my Egyptian friends joked about my picture being in the tabloids the next day. I can go on and on about Dalian. Maybe I will do a full post on Dalian later. 

Mao Zedong & Deng Xiaoping
They are the two most revered men in China. You will hear phrases like ‘Chairman Mao, our great leader’ and ‘Deng Xiaoping, the architect of reform and open-up policy’ everywhere you go. I revere them too. I knew very little about Deng Xiaoping but visiting China and seeing how his policy and directives have driven the country to its current state, I can’t help but admire him some more. Since I returned home, I have been reading a lot about Deng Xiaoping and his works and occasionally post some of his quotes on twitter. Deng is my man!

The Communist Party of China

Don’t believe everything you read and hear in the media. The Chinese people love the Communist Party of China (CPC). Everybody I spoke to or sought his/her opinion told me how they admire the CPC. One man I interacted with in Dalian said he didn’t see the current political system changing in the next 50 years and I agree with him. The only way I see the CPC losing its legitimacy and as echoed by President Hu Jintao when addressing the CPC Central Committee on the occassion of the 90th anniversary of the founding of the CPC is the warning that ‘corruption could cost them the support and trust of the people’.

Let’s be fair. The CPC and its policies have worked for China. In a lot of my discussions with a friend from Zambia, Steven, whom I usually shared a seat on the bus with, we questioned whether the system wasn’t the best for our countries.

Dislikes and Half-Likes

China wasn’t perfect. There were a couple of things I didn’t like. Obviously, the Great Firewall of China is on top of that list. I wasn’t happy I couldn’t tweet and post updates from facebook. Not entirely though. A friend gave me a software (Freegate) to bypass the Great Firewall of China which I in turn distributed to everyone else [yeah, I am bad like that]. Ocassionally, it couldn’t bypass the firewall but it was better than nothing.

I was able to use Foursquare and Tumblr though, but I think the social media detox was good for me though. A lot of people argue how the Chinese government is giving her citizens half the internet. The good thing is that it has led to the growth of local companies; Baidu (Chinese Google), Sina Weibo (Chinese Twitter), QQ (Chinese Yahoo! Messenger) - I use that :) There is a Chinese version of everything in China. There is even a Chinese ‘Proud to be Ghanaian’ :)

Like Ghana, A lot of people spit indiscriminately in public and a lot of people cough without covering their mouths. I think these are reasons airborne diseases spread like wildfire.

It was a wonderful trip and I really did enjoy China and I look forward to visiting soon.

I Love China!!!

Have You Registered Your SIM Card?

With 5 days to go, I ask, have you registered your SIM card yet? Don’t forget per the National Communication Authority’s directive, all SIM cards which have not been registered by close of day, June 30 2011 will be deactivated. This means that from July 1st 2011, only SIM cards that have been registered will be able to make and receive calls. This applies to data sim cards too.

The exercise, which begun on July 1st 2010 according to the National Communication Authority is  ’to enhance the personal safety of subscribers; eliminate fraud and crime made possible by the use of mobile phones and to give consumers permanent ownership of their mobile numbers’. 

If you are not sure if your SIM card has been registered or the registration is one of the 30% invalid registrations, just send an SMS with your SIM card’s (phone) number to 400 (for free) on all networks and you will receive confirmation of your registration. 

It is not difficult finding a registration point in your neighbourhood. Just present either your Driving License, National Passport, National Health Insurance Card, Voter’s ID Card or National Identification Card and your SIM card to be registered.

Go on, register your SIM card and stay connected!

Technology & Social Media: Lessons From The Nigerian Elections

It’s a wrap and as expected Goodluck Ebele Azikwe Jonathan has been elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for the next 4 years. I closely followed the Nigerian Polls way before it begun. Nigeria was on everybody’s radar when Umar Yar’Adua, the former president was elected in 2007 after his demise last year.

My interest in the Nigerian Elections was in the use of the internet, technology and social media and I looked it from its use by the Independent National Electoral Commission, Political Parties/Candidates, the People (Voters) and the media. In all, I was trying to draw lessons as Ghana prepares to go to the polls in December 2012.

Despite the initial hitches, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) did quite a good job. I was impressed by how Nigeria deployed the biometric voter registration system. This is something we have been talking about in Ghana for some time now and I really hope we can get a biometric voters’ register for the 2012 elections. I will eliminate/reduce electoral fraud and vote rigging. The process according to the Electoral Commission will cost $80 million. I don’t think that is too much to spend as we want our polls to be credible and avoid situations like the Ivorian one. INEC’s website displays boldly links to their Facebook and Twitter pages, Blackberry PIN, email address, SMS and telephone numbers for results and updates. I am quite certain the Electoral Commission of Ghana’s website will be update towards 2012 with social media integration. They better hire the right people to manage their Social Media office.

The candidates and political parties used social media to woo young voters. In 2010, CNN published an article on its website titled Goodluck Jonathan: The Facebook Preseident in 2010. Back then Mr. Jonathan had 246,000 friends. Goodluck Jonathan went on to announce his candidature for the presidency on Facebook. Today, he has 532,000 friends and counting. Social Media was widely used in the campaign trail and I expect that to catch up with Ghanaian aspirants for both the Presidency and Parliament. Ghanaian politicians haven’t showed much interest in Social Media. John Evans Atta Mills has 15,500 fans and counting on his unofficial Facebook page. Opposition leader, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has 4,920 friends on a page I believe is his personal profile. I expect these pages to swell up with friends and fans towards #election2012. Can someone confirm Nana Addo Dankwa’s twitter page? Can we get more Ghanaian politicians using Social Media, please?

My primary source of news for the past three years has been Twitter and my RSS feed. I turned to Twitter for updates on the elections via the hashtag #nigeriadecides and users on my private NigerianVotes list (@eggheader, @africanelection, @NigeriaNewsdesk and @bubusn). In 2008, I remember using Twitter to push out updates to Ghanaians in the diaspora and people who were interested in happenings in Ghana. I will single out @ghanaelections as the best source of 2008 elections update on Twitter. The account now tweets post-election issues. I recommend you follow @ghanaelections now! With the number of Ghanaians on Twitter growing, the world should expect an explosion of tweets from Ghanaians in December 2012.

I don’t remember any media house in Ghana using Twitter during the 2008 elections. I am not sure about Facebook either but as we gear towards the 2012 elections, taking examples from the USA’s 2008 elections, Nigeria’s 2011 elections and recent Social Media-led revolutions, I bet our media houses will be doing a lot of reporting via twitter and facebook. I tip @Joy997FM and @peacefmonline to lead the way. Between the two, they have some 5,000 followers on twitter. I expect them to beef up their social media desks in the next 12 months in anticipation of the 2012 polls.

Let us continue to pick lessons from the Nigerian polls and debate how the Ghana online community can contribute and make ours free, fair, transparent and better.

God bless our homeland Ghana!!!

How The iPad Is Changing My Reading Habits

Growing up, I used to read a lot. My favourite author was Enid Blyton and not a week passed without reading an Enid Blyton book. I read a lot of comics too; The Adventures of Tintin and The Adventures of Asterix & Obelix. Somewhere along the line between Junior High and Senior High, I completely lost it.

I don’t know why I developed a dislike and a lazy attitude towards reading. I was brought up as a reader. My mom made sure I registered at the Sunyani Regional Library and borrowed a book every week. At the same time, I was bringing a book from the the school’s library. I remember my mom would drop me and my kid brother at the library every day of our school vacations. We thought it was cruel and unfair for her to drop us off at the library at 09:00 and pick us up at 16:00. All we wanted to do was stay home, play with our Sega 2 console and sleep.

Thanks to the iPad, my reading habits are changing. I am rediscovering the old me. I always said I would rediscover the habit of reading with the iPad and gladly, I am. I could touch on other habits and how beneficial the iPad had been but I think ultimately, what I am grateful for is it helping change my reading habits.

The iBooks app and the iBookstore provides a wide variety of books to choose from. No more waiting for the Silverbird Lifestyle Store to get a book from the New York Times Bestseller List. I can make purchases directly on my iPad. I can also add epub and pdf files, making it easy to read reports and other documents on the go.

It is great to read on the iPad. I enjoy reading on the trotro, the bus stop and before those boring meetings begin. I can bookmark pages, highlight texts, add notes, change the font size and type, change the background colour, listen to music whilst I read, look up meaning of words with the in-built dictionary as well as search in Google or Wikipedia.

Currently, I have 650 books and pdfs on the my iPad. Now, I may never be able to read all 650 but it’s cool keeping a library. I have read a couple of them and I am currently reading Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference.

The iPad beats the Kindle hands down in reading. The added advantage is the ability to install the Kindle app and buy books from the Kindle Store. I prefer iBooks and the iBookstore over Kindle though.

If you got a few cedis to spend, spend it on an iPad and some books. Most importantly, it is green!