Africa: A Marxian Analysis

 Introduction

1. State and class in pre-colonial West Africa

2. Tribalism, colonialism and capitalism

3. Religion, racism and class

4. Sharia in Nigeria: a class analysis

5. The poverty of education in Ghana

6. South Africa in the twentieth century

Africa: A Marxian Analysis – worldsocialism.org/spgb

Poisoning the air for profits

Trafigura, Vitol and BP exporting dirty diesel to Africa, says Swiss NGO, Public Eye. Traders blend cheap fuel with sulphur levels sometimes hundreds of times over European limits for sale in African countries.

Major European oil companies and commodity traders are exploiting weak fuel standards in African countries to export highly polluting fuels that they could never sell at the pumps in Europe. When the fuel is burned, the sulphur is released into the atmosphere as sulphur dioxide and other compounds that are major contributors to respiratory diseases such as bronchitis and asthma. Vehicle emissions are a significant contributor to air pollution, which is why in Europe the maximum sulphur content of diesel has been set at 10 parts per million (ppm) since 2009. In parts of Africa, the legal limit on sulphur in diesel is 5,000 ppm.

The high-sulphur fuels also have a knock-on effect, rapidly destroying emission-reducing technologies in vehicles, according to Rob de Jong, the head of the UNEP transport programme. “So if you buy a vehicle that’s a couple of years old and import it into some of the African countries, the technology in there – sensors and filters – all gets spoilt, and these cars, which are potentially very clean, are destroyed in a couple of tanks, and for the next 20 years will be belching smoke,” he said. “It’s important to understand the tragedy of this,” he added. This in turn increases emissions of fine particulate matter, which can lodge deep in the lungs, causing cancers and other health problems.

Air pollution is estimated to have killed more than 17,500 people in Ghana alone in 2013, costing more than $542m in lost labour income, an estimate that doesn’t even include the cost of treating pollution-related disease.

De Jong said suppliers deliberately blended products towards the high end of the nationally imposed sulphur limit to increase their profits. “There’s not much market anymore for high-sulphur fuels. These are really specific batches made for those specific countries.

The companies involved all deny any wrongdoing and say they comply with the law in the countries in which they operate. Public Eye, however, says the result is “regulatory arbitrage” that allows traders and fuel companies to dump cheap, dirty fuels by blending them into other diesel before export, maximising profits at the expense of Africans’ health.

Trafigura made headlines when a ship it had chartered dumped toxic waste in the Ivory Coast a decade ago, and the company’s lawyers attempted to gag the press from reporting on a draft report into the incident. Vitol’s sales last year topped $270bn. Its chief executive, Ian Taylor, is a major Conservative donor.

Ghana's children

Malnutrition is responsible for nearly all half of deaths of children under five worldwide and, along with poor diets, is the main driver of disease, the 2016 Global Nutrition Report said.

Ghana economy's is losing more than two billion dollars a year due to the impact of child malnutrition, which has driven up healthcare costs, strained the education system and hindered the productivity of the workforce, a study said. Malnutrition comes in many forms, such as poor child growth and development or vulnerability to infection among those who do not get enough food, which is known as undernutrition.

Undernutrition among children costs Ghana $2.6 billion per year - 6.4 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) - according to a study led by the African Union and backed by U.N. aid agencies and the African Development Bank. Stunted growth, which occurs when children miss out on vital nutrients in the womb and their first two years of life, is the biggest concern, said the Cost of Hunger in Africa (COHA) study, which has been carried out in 12 other African nations.

A third of adults in Ghana suffered from stunting as children, and that child mortality linked to undernutrition has reduced Ghana's workforce by seven percent.

"In northern Ghana, 30 percent of children under five are stunted or chronically malnourished," said WFP deputy regional director for West and Central Africa, Margot van der Velden. "This not only affects their growth but also their educational development and economic potential, and consequently the future of the country," she added in a statement.

Ghana and Poverty

Ghana's economy has witnessed steady growth over the last 30 years, economists say, but they have raised concerns over mounting inequality, which now sees the richest Ghanaians consuming 6.8 times more food than the poorest, up from 6.4 in 10 years ago.

Around a third of all national consumption is attributed to the wealthiest 10 per cent in the West African country, the poorest 10 per cent consume just 1.72 per cent, according to the Ghana Poverty and Inequality report produced this year.

The growth rate among the two groups has witnessed positive trends since 1990s, but the poor's growth rate has been lower than the wealthiest groups, Professor Andy Mckay from the economics department of University of Sussex, said. "Looking at consumption levels, we see that the gap between the poorest 10 per cent and the richest 10 per cent of the population has been on the rise and has also increased since 2006," Mackay said. "We also found that the average consumption of this wealthiest group increased by 27 per cent between 2006 and 20013, whereas for the poorest it only increased by 19 per cent, meaning growth for the richest group was over 1.4 times greater than for the poorest in this period." The increase in inequality, the report said, has dampened poverty reduction efforts.

The report also says child poverty is higher than the overall poverty and is also greater among farming households than any other group. This implied many rural children lacked access to good diet, education, health services and good drinking water. "We estimate that in Ghana, a child is almost 40 per cent more likely to live in poverty than an adult," McKay said, and "this inequality has risen substantially from the 1990s when children were only 15 per cent more likely to be poorer than adults."

The three regions in north of the country – northern, upper east and upper west – now have the highest levels of poverty. The upper west has the highest level of inequality and largest increase in inequality since the 1990s, while the lowest level of inequality is found in the greater Accra region.

Letter from Ghana (1988)

From the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Having now lived in Ghana for more than two months it is time to try and fit this totally new experience together with the socialist ideas I used to discuss (what seems like such a long time ago) at weekly meetings of The Socialist Party in Bristol. I came to Ghana with VSO, not so much to make a great contribution to the world's problems but for personal reasons. I wanted to travel to a third world country not as a tourist but to work. I wanted to change from the nine to five job that I had had in England for the last twelve years. So I ended up becoming a trainer with Ghana's National Service (not a military service but a compulsory community social service). training school leavers and graduates to do Primary Health Care, which largely means health education, in rural districts.

I now live in a very rural district myself in a pretty basic way. 1 live in a small village in the chiefs compound - no electricity and having to boil river water to drink, defecating in a pit (quite a luxury here) down a path which has to be carefully inspected for snakes.

I am sure that all of us advocating world socialism would find it useful to travel and live in the third world for a while to begin to understand some of the enormous problems facing the case for world socialism. We have to understand that the vast majority of the world's people come from very different starting points, not just geographically but differing social, economic and political structures and. most importantly, different ways of seeing the world.

The difference I think is most important here in Ghana has to do with people's sense of their own powerlessness. A terrible brand of fundamentalist Christianity has been laid on top of already existing traditional beliefs in the powers of ancestors and gods over the details of people's lives. Here is just one example: last week I was waiting for my Twi lesson and my teacher did not turn up (Twi is the local language). He is a trained teacher teaching at the local village school and I had just seen him the day before. He had not come, I was told, because his sister-in-law was very ill - someone had put a curse on her and he had to take her to the other side of Ghana to see a famous fetish priest.

One of the things I first noticed in Ghana was the absence of the political posters or graffiti that you see in so many foreign countries. Instead, everywhere are slogans about the power of God. the need to accept God's will and not to put your trust in humanity. In a country where the vast majority of people only live just above subsistence level there are perhaps many reasons why people do not concern themselves with national politics. When people here think of improving their material conditions it is in terms of managing to make a little more money by selling in the local market or by doing a deal with a friend rather than joining up with a group of people who advocate more radical change.

The Ghanaian government, the PNDC or Provisional National Defence council, under J.J. Rawlings is claimed by many to be a great improvement over previous governments and over many others in Africa. However, no elections have been held since he came to power in 1981. although this is supposed to be a transitional stage and local elections are to be held in October 1988. But candidates are to stand in their own right only and no parties are allowed. Candidates will be elected on the basis of local projects they propose - a new school or a new health centre perhaps. None will be seeking a more radical change. Since I have been here I have heard no one question this absence of political parties and in fact voter registration, which is to end at the end of this month. November 1987, is still at very low levels.

As far as I can discover new reformist policies in health, education and social services are in theory in the direction of greater fairness but there is no money to finance them. The poorest families still have to pay for schooling and medicines for their children. Of course this will change under socialism. Health care and education, as with everything else, will be freely available according to need, not ability to pay. However strongly I have argued in the past that a socialist system is both desirable and possible, I have had trouble enough to persuade my English friends. Here, I feel, it is even harder. 'Socialism', as it exists in this part of Africa, is the top-down imposed variety and often associated with the Eastern bloc or Libya.

Socialists maintain that the experience of capitalism as a member of the working class leads people to question the system. But here the subsistence farmer will not experience capitalism in the same sort of way. Although big business affects them - world cocoa prices, the cutting down of their forests for timber export - the connections are not clearly seen and most people's economic worlds revolve around their own small-holdings and market trading.

The women that I live with make peanut toffee and buy long bars of soap which they cut into pieces to sell. They sell to friends and relatives and one thing that 1 have come to understand is that buying and selling is about the best fun they have in their lives. There is none of the English embarrassment about money — several times people have quite unashamedly looked in my purse and cheerfully commented "You've got a lot of money in there”.

At the village level people do have experience of rich people. The chiefs of villages, especially if they have large farms, may be rich but their households, such as the one where I am living, may be filled with relatives who have almost nothing. In Ghana the chief's money is passed around when he dies - in ways that are studied by anthropologists - to his sister s sons.

Also I notice great divisions between the sexes and their roles. But even so this is not clear-cut for, although women do not own the land, they are involved in trading and as traders can become rich and powerful. In the household however, women work, cooking, caring for children, while the men sit chatting and drinking together, waiting for their food to be brought to them. I have talked to women about these hard-and-fast sex roles which seem, from my position, to mean a lot of hard work and drudgery for women and they smile at me good naturedly for having such strange ideas.

So the question I keep asking over and over again is. what needs to happen before people react to inequalities and oppression and begin to realise the possibility of a better world which they can bring into existence themselves? I wish I knew for Ghana and I wish I knew for Bristol - and whether the answers are different.

Naomi Roberts

Ghana, the Waste Dump

40 million tonnes of electric and electronic waste (also known as e-waste) are produced worldwide every year. That is boundless heaps of refrigerators, computers, television sets, ovens, telephones, air conditioning units, lamps, toasters and other electric and electronic devices, with a total weight equal to seven times that of the Great Pyramid of Giza. The greatest producers of e-waste per person are the United States and the European Union, while developing countries, such as China, are producing an ever-increasing amount. Only a small part of this waste – about 15.5% in 2014 – is recycled with methods that are efficient and environmentally safe. Researchers from the University of Ghana explained that "the treatment of e-waste in full respect of developed countries’ environmental laws increases its costs, and highly polluting procedures will tend to migrate towards developing countries, where there are no such laws".

Ghana is an important centre for receiving, re-using, recovering and disposing of electronic waste. Accra, the capital, hosts a thriving second-hand market, a sprawling network of repair shops, and a range of activities which attempt to tap into the full potential of e-waste. And yet, it is also the location of an enormous and heavily polluted electronic waste dumpsite. A significant part of Ghana’s e-waste is transported to Agbogbloshie, a suburb of Accra. Here, men and children extract copper, aluminium and other materials – using methods that are harmful to health and the environment – which are to be shipped back towards the factories and refineries in developed countries. To call Agbogbloshie "the largest electronic waste dump in Africa" is - paradoxically - an understatement: it is actually a city within the city. This is where the poorest classes of Accra have spent years dismantling, recovering, weighing and reselling parts and metals extracted from the scrapped devices and from the heaps of electronic waste.

"What was once a green and fruitful landscape is now a graveyard of plastics and skeletons of abandoned appliances," explains Mike Anane, an environmental activist from Accra. "The e-waste boys burn hundreds of kilos of electric cables to extract the copper and then resell it for just a few cedis per kilogram. The toxic fumes rise into the sky, poison the air and then settle on the soil and on the vegetables sold at the market," explains Anane. The consequences fall directly on the inhabitants’ shoulders. "Our boys have very serious health problems," says Wolfgang Mac-Din, of founder of Help the African Child, a foundation that supports Agbogbloshie’s children, providing them with free schooling and protection masks, among other things. "Some of them, like Fuseini, 19 years old, or Ben, 16 years old, we found already dead. Others have cancer."

Blood

A team of researchers from Ghana and the United States have collected and analysed blood samples from Agbogbloshie workers. "The samples have revealed high levels of lead," explains team researcher Onallia Osei, "and the amount of time in which one is exposed to e-waste seems to determine the amount of lead present in the blood." (International growth centre)

Urine

Traces of iron, lead and antimony have been detected in the e-waste boys’ urine samples. Scientists speculate that these heavy metals originate from the fish and seafood around which the eating habits of Agbogbloshie’s inhabitants are based. (Science of The Total Environment – Volume 424, 2012)

Milk

Disturbing amounts of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) have emerged from the analysis of breast milk in the Agbogbloshie area. PCBs are highly toxic compounds found in old electrical appliances. The analysed samples have shown levels ranging from two to 34 times the threshold allowed by international PCB standards. (Environment International, 2011)

Air

An air control station installed in the Agbogbloshie dumpsite has detected iron, lead and copper. 1.5 milligrams per cubic metre of copper (the allowed threshold is 1.0 mg), 7.8mg/ m³ of iron (threshold: 5.0) and 0.72 mg/ m³ of lead (threshold: 0.15) have been found. These thresholds are meant for work areas, but Agbogbloshie is actually an entire area of Accra with about 90,000 inhabitants. (Journal of Health and Pollution, 2011)

Soil

Out of 100 soil samples collected in Agbogbloshie, more than half have shown an amount of lead which is over twice as much as the standards allowed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). The detected values range from a minimum of 135 ppm (parts-per-million) to a maximum of 18.125 ppm. The threshold indicated in the USEPA guidelines is of 400 ppm. (Journal of Health and Pollution, 2011)

Ghana's rich are the ruling class

According to Dr. Emmanuel Akwetey, Executive Director for the Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG) the power of the ordinary Ghanaian is gradually being sold to the rich politicians and that it is not the power of the people that is governing Ghana now, but the power of people who have money, stressing that these group of people have different agenda than serving the public good and are exploiting the system. 

He said there could be a possible collapse of Ghana’s democratic system if vote buying is allowed to take center stage in the coming elections in November.

He explained there was a small group of people that is controlling Ghana’s democracy and not for public good but for their pocket.

The struggling poor in Ghana

In Ghana the Vice Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Professor William Otoo Ellis has expressed concern over the present high cost of living in the country indicating that it is likely to further widen the gap between the rich and the poor.

According to him, this has negatively affected the quality of education in the country, warning that the situation could worsen if measures are not immediately adopted to reverse the rising cost of living in the country.

“There are many who gained admission into higher institutions but are unable to pursue their education in these institutions because they do not have the resources,” he disclosed.

According to him, some SHSs in the country which are science bias do not also have the necessary logistics including teaching and learning materials to facilitate knowledge acquisition, having a toll on education. He indicated that these were but a few of the reasons resulting in the yawning gap between the poor and rich 

African Hothouse (1966)

From the January 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1957 Ghana became the first of many Colonies to achieve independence within the Commonwealth. Much has been said and written about these new Nations in the intervening period and those who were loudest in their support and praise have usually seen their hopes drowned in a welter of dictatorship and suppression.

Certain conditions must be fulfilled before the idea of Socialism can arise. Of paramount importance is a highly developed industrial society in which the propertyless mass of wage-slaves is increasingly forced into the consciousness that its interests are in conflict with those of the owning class. Some workers, hearing us say this, consider the backward areas throughout the world. They see those millions of primitives whose way of life has never changed in a thousand years and feel that all this renders Socialism, if not impossible, something for the distant future.

Is it really so hopeless? We think not. Therefore, a progress report is required to see whether things are as unchanging and permanent as they seem to be. A comprehensive survey of all the new States is beyond the space at our disposal and a skimped attempt would simply defeat our purpose. So we shall look at one country only, and the question now arises—which one? Ghana, with its 400 years of western influence, would be the easiest choice, but we are looking for something less obvious This presents itself in —the Federation of Nigeria.

Here, the barriers to Socialism seem insurmountable. The most densely populated African National—55 million according to hotly disputed Government figures—it was, if anything, even more backward than Ghana in the days of Empire and generally had little contact with the West until recent years.

In the more developed South (East and West Regions combined) the inhabitants are distinct from those of the Moslem-dominated North. The Southern City has many modern features, with the motor vehicle a common sight. The North, in contrast, is from the world of Arabian Nights with its Minarets and feudal Emirs. A Nation where, instead of one people sharing the same life, speech and background, there are over 250 different tribal groups with no common language and with vastly assorted stages of development.

As late as 1920, the Governor of the day, Sir Hugh Clifford, ridiculed the idea ‘That this collection of self-contained and mutually independent Native States separated from one another by distance, history and tradition, political, social and religious barriers, were capable of being welded into a single homogeneous Nation”. This was the picture up to Independence.

Independence was the culmination of half a century of demanding freedom from the shackles of Colonialism. The driving force was the urbanised African who had come to work in Lagos, the big trading centre. By 1896 he was protesting that most of his taxes were going towards improving European residential areas. Down the years he found himself debarred from real advancement because of his native origin and he resented serving under white men whom he considered his inferior. Strict segregation, plus the fact that everything luxurious was for Europeans only, heightened the desire to be rid of the British. The absence of a reactionary settler class—it really was the white man’s grave—prepared the ground for the inevitable. After the war the rising tide of Nationalism engulfed Nigeria just as it did almost everywhere and degrees of Self-Government were demanded and won until, in October 1960, British Rule came to an end.

In 1947, outside of textiles and palm-oil, only one factory existed in the whole of Nigeria. Between then and 1960 there was a dramatic increase in unbanisation, with an estimated half-million wage and salary earners. But the vast majority were, and to a lesser degree still are, subsistence Farmers. Some of them worked part of the year in the Towns or Mines, but living off the land was the main way of life. Unlike today, there was nothing else for it

In his increasing contact with the modern world it becomes clear to the native that there is more to life than the Village can offer. He may hear that the earnings for a few hours work in Town bring a return the equal of many hours of back-breaking toil in the fields. This, or the desire for education, among other reasons, send him into the City to begin the process of losing his backward past—that of “de-tribalisation”.

It starts the moment he parts from the controls of the Tribe and the ties of the Village. He must adapt himself to the new conditions in order to survive, and the changes are great. He walks on different ground and keeps different hours. The tools he uses have changed and with them his idea of himself. The traditional life of the Village with its protections and comforts are no longer his; instead, he is in a jungle where those things do not exist. New associations must be sought and these usually present themselves at work and are seldom from his particular background. Thus, new interests are created and when problems arise they may not be treated as personal or Tribal in nature but as social issues which demand new thinking. More, these new associates have different Gods from his own—or no God at all—so his acceptance of conventional superstition is challenged. To sum up, there is enormous pressure for re-examination of his beliefs, standards, values and aspirations. At the same time, the contradiction of a wage-worker’s life and the spectacle of immense wealth displayed in Stores, etc., leads to the development of the idea of crime. No longer can the Village expatriate simply pick up anything he wishes to make use of. Those things are now privately owned and must be paid for. He is living in a money economy.

What protection has he? The same as anyone else; he joins a Trade Union. Here again the story is one of a mushrooming under the conditions of emergent Capitalism. Pre-war, only Clerks and Administrative workers in Nigeria were organised. There was little compulsion to work for wages and jobs were only taken to supplement agricultural income while the depression reduced demand for labour in both Government and private sectors.

In 1940 only five Unions existed, claiming 3,500 members between them. By 1956 they numbered almost 200 with 170,000 members. Progress, if swift, was erratic with many Unions vanishing as quickly as they came. There were reasons for this.

(1) Poor communications between Branches separated by great distances.
(2) The small scale of industry—some Unions had only 50 members!
(3) Seasonal nature of many jobs.
(4) Large labour surplus.

Today, although still split by factional squabbles, the Movement continues to grow. In July 1964, a major strike involving a million workers took place over wage-rates and lasted two weeks despite everything the Government could throw at it. Threats to dismiss all strikers were ignored and with the country at a virtual standstill the Government was forced to accede to many of the strikers’ demands.

This growth in trade union strength has occurred in the face of Tribal loyalties and animosities. Does this mean Tribalism is a spent force? Far from it. In fact it has staged something of a come-back in recent times. Before I960, when Nationalist aspirations were rampant, differences of Tribe and Region were submerged in the unity of aim—independence. Nowadays, the political leaders, jockeying for position and power, are having to invoke all the old antagonisms—although the dangers of this are obvious and recognised. Also, as the demand for the more skilled type of labour—administration, education, etc.—slackens off, then those who have not yet landed a good position must exert pressure wherever they can.

In the long run the past will lose out to the demands of the new social order. Those who have spent much of their lives with the Tribe will remain under its influence to some extent, but the generations who know only City life and who receive a uniform education will have little interest in the ancient ties.

In any case, Tribalism is not confined to primitive peoples. It is present, although in modified form, throughout modern society and can be seen among Scots, Irish, Jews, etc. These groups who consider themselves different because of Nationality or Religion will still unite with outsiders for political or economic reasons.

And capitalist education is in Nigeria forging ahead. The Ashby Commission, set up at the time of independence to map-out the necessary rate of expansion, recognised that lack of skilled manpower was the biggest obstacle to development, and put forward “massive, expensive, and unconventional” recommendations which included four new Universities by 1980. Today, that target has been beaten. Four million children are already receiving Primary schooling and the plan is for an additional half million each year.

Everywhere the story is one of rapid “Westernisation''. The Lagos Sunday Times (19/9/65) provides the following sample. “The sleek Mercedes Benz saloon glides out of the corner. At the same time, august lady at the Bus stop flips out a miniature looking glass from the dazzling' bag slung over one arm and after applying another layer of lipstick. smoothens down her skirl. With a screech of brakes the car stops and a not-too-young face smiles at the lady . .. Want a lift madam , . . and so begins yet another etc., etc. . . " The article goes on to deplore faithless women in WIGS who leave “whimpering infants” and ‘‘good husbands" to indulge in affairs. True, this is more a picture of upper-crust life but the trend is unmistakably away from the old values and standards.

Ultimately, the greatest factor in the development of Nigeria's working-class is that it is part of a world economic system, the effects of which it cannot escape. The catastrophic fall in prices on the world market of its chief export. Cocoa, has meant a large and increasing balance of payments deficit. The result has been to cut imports drastically of manufactured goods from those countries mainly responsible for the adverse trade balance, such as Japan. Thus, favourable conditions are created for the expansion of home-grown industry and one Company exulted in a full-page ad. in the Daily Times (21/9/65), “With the recent decision of the Federal Government to restrict the 'importation of imitation jewellery from Hong-Kong and Japan, our factory has taken positive action to increase its capital investment by ordering more machinery, resulting in increased production capacity to cope with this restriction”.

The political upheavals which have been part of the Nigerian scene lately have brought forth suggestions that the Federation may be in the process of breaking-up into several smaller units. Even if this should happen the developments outlined above will continue to a greater or lesser degree, but the conclusion must be the same. That the part of Africa now known as Nigeria is advancing towards the image held out to it by the older, established Nations—that of an industrialised, class-divided. Capitalist society.

Vic Vanni

Ghana's Boom Bursts

In Ghana workers marching through the capital and other cities were showing their dismay at recent price hikes and taxes, which have increased the cost of electricity by 59%, water by 67% and fuel by 28%. At the end of last year, inflation in Ghana was running at 17.7%.  “We are drumming home our concerns generally,” says Kofi Asamoah, secretary general of the Trade Union Congress, “to let the public and government know how serious we are.”

Ebenezer Pabi, a warehouse keeper at an import company for 17 years, says prices are making life in the West African country very difficult.  “The government is raising things and the living standard in Ghana is hard. Money is not flowing in the system and it is a problem. It is difficult. When my child got sick and we went to the hospital, the bill was high and even the school fees have increased – it is too much. We want the government to see how we, as workers, are suffering.” the 39-year-old father of two explains.

Once an African success story built on gold, oil and cocoa, Ghana leveraged its natural resources to produce strong economic growth in the early years of this century. It met the millennium development goal of halving poverty rates by 2015, and was hailed as a model of political stability after peaceful elections. But plummeting global commodity prices have pummelled Ghana’s economy. Export revenues for oil, gold and cocoa declined from $8.2bn (£5.8bn) between January and September 2014 to $5.8bn a year later. Add to this a three-year electricity crisis, rising public spending and debts of 90bn cedis (£16bn) – giving Ghana a debt-to-gross domestic product ratio of more than 70% – and it is clear why one of Africa’s most stable countries is in trouble. The mounting debt levels led the International Monetary Fund to introduce a $918m three-year assistance programme in April. A third payment of $114.6m was given this month and the IMF said Ghana must rein in spending to reduce debt. The cedi lost 18.75% in value against the dollar in 2015 and its decline, along with the introduction of a capital gains tax on all listed securities on the Ghana stock exchange, has seen foreign investor interest wane.

Geoffrey Maison, analyst at investment bank Cal Brokers in Accra pointed out “A lot of foreign investors pulled out of the stock market and a lot of people are now moving toward government of Ghana securities and away from the stock market. With revenues going down, we expect the government will come back to the market to borrow. If they are borrowing like they borrowed last year, we can expect interest rate levels to go up and inflation will be affected.”

The public’s anger at higher prices has been stoked by a perception that the government is mishandling the economic downturn, and mismanaging public finances. A 2015 Transparency International study on perceptions of perceptions of corruption in Africa ranked Ghana second worst, behind South Africa. In October seven high court judges were suspended amid bribery allegations. The transport minister was forced to resign in December after it emerged the government spent 3.6m cedis painting pictures of President John Mahama and former leaders on buses. Mahama’s government, which will go head-to-head with the National Patriotic party in November, has been criticised for lavishly rewarding government officials with houses, cars and fuel in addition to generous salaries.

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/jan/26/ghana-success-gold-oil-cocoa-economic-downturn

Fighting Capitalism in Ghana

A study that used the Gini coefficient index in its measurement of the extent to which the distribution of income deviates from a perfect line of equality carried out in 2014 by the Ghana Mine Workers has revealed that 90 per cent of mine workers share of wage income is less than 10 per cent of the highest paid person. Such a wide disparity in wage inequality, according to Mr Prince William Ankrah, the General Secretary of the Union, had been a long held view in the mining industry of Ghana which the study had confirmed.

Mr Ankrah said:”The reward for labour in the mining industry in Ghana and for that matter Africa should not only be just wages but fair and equitable wages. “We have trumpeted this injustice and discrimination on many platforms but very little attention has been received. Responses from the industry’s stakeholders have been hypocritical or at best rhetoric,” he said adding on the international front comparing with their peers like South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, and Namibia all in Africa, Ghanaian workers were short-changed in every aspects. The Union, he said, wanted stakeholders and the world to know that “the discrimination, the alienation and the injustice must stop…To us, the dawn of a new struggle is beckoning and the Union is prepared to heed the call to change the destinies of its members.”

Mr Kwarko Mensah Gyakari, the National Chairman of the Union, said the unacceptable level of income inequality and uneven remuneration system that had persisted for a long time was a dangerous threat to the stability and sustainability of the industry. He said another worrying phenomenon creeping into the industry at a faster pace, which needed urgent response, was the issue of massive outsourcing of work. “Today, employment in the industry is fast transforming from long and permanent status to a more precarious fixed term contract and casual work. Currently, some labour brokers whose only duty is to facilitate employment have turned themselves into employers and abusing workers’ rights. We want to caution such organisations to end the practice now or face the wrath of the Union.”

Confirming this, Mr Kofi Asamoah, the Secretary General of the Ghana Trades Union Congress, said in the last three decades despite a revamping of the mining industry, mining employment had declined and mining technology had become less labour intensive. He said however that given the current fiscal regime in the mining industry, one surest way for Ghana to retain significant amount of the mining rent would be through the wages and salaries that were paid to mine workers. “Rather, mine workers in Ghana are paid on the basis of so-called purchasing power parity in which compensation in the mines is pegged to the costs of living in Ghana. And the assumption is that Ghana has relatively low costs of living compared to other major mining countries.”

Socialist Banner applauds every effort by workers to resist employers and urges all to join and strengthen the trade union movement. But why stop at what Marx described “limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system.”

“They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: “Abolition of the wages system!" 

A Tool For Foreign Takeover Of Ghana's Agriculture

By seizing intellectual property rights to Africa's seeds, western corporations are attempting one of the greatest thefts in human history: the theft of the entire agricultural base of all the countries of Africa. 


Ghanaian citizens have so far prevented the passage of the Plant Breeders Bill, a UPOV-91-compliant law that would strip Ghanaian farmers of their rights to their own seeds. But there is worse coming from the African Regional Intellectual Property Association (ARIPO). To Ghana’s great credit, and despite determination and pressure from the G7, USAID and its contractors, despite the willing and enthusiastic cooperation of Ghana’s ministers, Attorney General, and both major political parties, Ghana has refused to pass a farmer destroying, sovereignty busting, UPOV law.
 
Ghanaian farmers and citizens are not falling for the International Union for the Protection of New Plant Varieties (UPOV) con. The G7, USAID, Big Agribusiness, and Ghana's government and academic elites intend to go around the democratic process and force an end to Ghana's agricultural sovereignty.
 
If they can't pass a UPOV law within the country, they will impose it from outside. At the African Regional Intellectual Property Association (ARIPO) Diplomatic Conference in Arusha, Tanzania, this coming Monday, 29 June to 1 July 2015, ARIPO plans to adopt the highly contested draft ARIPO Plant Variety Protection Protocol (ARIPO PVP Protocol), based on UPOV 1991.
 
This is clearly an undemocratic attempt to smuggle the obnoxious UPOV-compliant Plant Breeders' Bill through the back door! Ghana’s farmers and citizens demand seed sovereignty, and clearly oppose GMOs and the deadly chemicals that are an integral part of commercial GMOs. The agribusiness corporations are chemical corporations. So they breed seeds that require you to buy and use their chemicals. This is unhealthy and piles debt on farmers. It takes money from the hands of poor farmers, takes it out of Ghana, and gives it to western corporate shareholders.
 
If the draft ARIPO PVP Protocol is to be adopted without changes, ARIPO and any ARIPO member that ratifies the Protocol can join UPOV 1991. This means that any member state of ARIPO can simply side-step national consultation processes and ratify the ARIPO Protocol, and in doing so, give up its national sovereignty to a centralized decision-making authority, and further, become a UPOV 1991 member, all in one foul undemocratic swoop. It is unconscionable that Ghana’s government should have any part in this despicable subversion of democracy.
 
The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, AFSA, is of the view that the whole process of developing the draft Protocol is fundamentally flawed, has been extremely un-transparent, and thus lacks credibility and legitimacy. Farmers and civil society groups have been cut out, and denied participation.
The principal aim of the ARIPO PVP Protocol is to create a harmonized regional plant variety protection system within the region in order to give prominence to breeders and place restrictions on seed/varieties protected under such a system. Such protected varieties are bred and sold to farmers through seed companies and other private entities and government/private led subsidy agricultural programmes. The main goal is to facilitate the capturing and control of all seed so that private companies can make profits by forcing farmers to buy seed and pay royalties.



 
By seizing intellectual property rights to Africa's seeds, taking African seed DNA, manipulating it in a laboratory, then claiming all rights to the seeds and their successive generations, western corporations are attempting one of the greatest thefts in human history, the theft of the entire agricultural base of all the countries of Africa.

read on here

Food Sovereignty Ghana Opposes Monsanto

For too long, Monsanto has been the benefactor of corporate subsidies and political favoritism. Organic and small farmers suffer losses while Monsanto continues to forge its monopoly over the world’s food supply, including exclusive patenting rights over seeds and genetic makeup.

Food Sovereignty Ghana, a food advocacy movement, hereby serves notice to embark on a public march as part of a worldwide event comprising millions of marchers. This march is being organized in collaboration with the Kanyan Akuafuo Kuo Society, and is scheduled to take place in two locations: Accra and Goaso.
There are currently over 300 marches scheduled to take place around the world.
Out of respect to the Ga Traditional Council annual ban on drumming and noise making, which always precedes the Homowo festival, we have decided to organize a silent march in Accra and a more animated one in Goaso.


MISSION STATEMENT
On May 23, 2015, activists around the world will, once again, unite to March Against Monsanto.
 
WHY DO WE MARCH?
Research studies have shown that Monsanto’s genetically-modified foods can lead to serious health conditions such as the development of cancer tumors, infertility and birth defects. In the United States, the FDA, the agency tasked with ensuring food safety for the population, is steered by ex-Monsanto executives, and we feel that’s a questionable conflict of interest and explains the lack of government-led research on the long-term effects of GMO products. Recently, the U.S. Congress and President collectively passed the nicknamed “Monsanto Protection Act” that, among other things, bans courts from halting the sale of Monsanto’s genetically-modified seeds.
 
For too long, Monsanto has been the benefactor of corporate subsidies and political favoritism. Organic and small farmers suffer losses while Monsanto continues to forge its monopoly over the world’s food supply, including exclusive patenting rights over seeds and genetic makeup. Monsanto’s GMO seeds are harmful to the environment; for example, scientists have indicated they have caused colony collapse among the world’s bee population.
 
What are solutions we advocate for?
Vote with your cedis by buying organic and boycotting Monsanto owned companies that use GMOs in their products. Labeling of GMOs so that consumers can make those informed decisions easier. Rejecting the UPOV-compliant Plant Breeders' Bill Calling for further scientific research on the health effects of GMOs. Holding Monsanto executives and Monsanto-supporting politicians accountable through direct communication, grassroots journalism, social media, etc. Continuing to inform the public about Monsanto’s secrets. Taking to the streets to show the world and Monsanto that we won’t take these injustices quietly. We will not stand for cronyism. We will not stand for poison. That’s why we March Against Monsanto.
 
We will not stand for cronyism. We will not stand for poison.
For Life, the Environment and Social Justice!

from here

SEEDS: The Source Of Sustenance

“My mother gave me some seeds to plant. And I’m also giving those seeds to my children to plant. So that is ongoing, every time we transfer to our children.  And that is how all the women are doing it. We don’t buy, we produce it ourselves.” 

Sitting together in the heat of the Ghanaian sun, Esther Boakye Yiadom explained to me the importance of seeds in her family and the transfer of knowledge between the different generations of women.
Esther continues to explain the role of the community in sharing and preserving seeds: “I am having tomatoes and I don’t have okro. And another woman has okro. I’ll go to her and then beg for some of her okro seeds to plant. And then if another person also needs tomatoes from me and I have it, I’ll have to give to the person. Because you know every season changes, because maybe mine will not do well. But that person’s will do well. So next season we can get to plant. That’s why we [ex]change them.”

The ability to save and exchange seeds, after each growing season is an age-old practice that ensures that small scale farmers have seeds to sow the following year. The seeds are free for the farmer and they have the knowledge of what seed is required, for what conditions and the different tastes that complement the food they cook. Where they do not have a particular seed, they can ask other farmers in the community to share seeds.

This ‘freedom’ is essential for sustainable livelihoods as well as ensuring communities have access to nutritious and culturally relevant food. But this is all under threat by a proposed bill – dubbed the ‘Monsanto Law’ - in Ghana that would bolster the power of multinational seed companies whilst restrict the rights of small farmers to keep and swap their seeds. 
This attack on the way of life to so many farmers in Ghana is one of the commitments that the Ghanaian government has made to be part of the G7’s New Alliance. At the end of last year we exposed the role of the UK government in the New Alliance and their complicity in this attack which led to a series of questions in our parliament as well as a parliamentary petition (Early Day Motion).

As I travelled around Ghana this last couple of weeks, I met many farmers and communities who echoed Esther’s sentiments around seeds and the paramount role that seeds play for farmers and their communities.
When I met Patricia Dianon, president of the for Rural Women's Farmers Association of Ghana, she also articulated some of the spiritual and cultural aspects of seeds: "We use them when we have funerals, we put the seeds around the funeral sites, that is the last respect for the dead". She explained to me how you send off your loved ones with seeds so that they have them for the afterlife – underscoring the importance of seeds being the source of sustenance.
Yet the corporate agenda for seeds, as pushed through by the New Alliance, is one where farmers are treated as passive consumers of corporate-controlled seed. Ignoring the cultural importance of seeds and the economic impact on small rural farmers who have to spend money on purchasing seeds year after year and instead of enjoying a wide variety of seeds free of charge, becoming dependent on big seed companies.

This agenda is being challenged in Ghana and on my trip I also met different civil society groups, unions and farmers networks that are actively fighting to protect the rights to their own seeds and the freedom to protect their way of life. Their relentless organising, protesting and petitions led to a halt on the legislation. But it’s not over yet and any day the bill could come back on the agenda of the Ghanaian parliament, so the movement remains vigilant. We will continue to stand in solidarity with the food sovereignty movement in Ghana and challenge the complicity of the UK government.


 from here

More on the vagaries of the market

While Africa is home to oil powers such as Nigeria and Angola, much of the continent is reliant on energy imports, and even producing nations often import gasoline and other fuels. Several African countries are suffering this year from a double-whammy of higher oil prices and weakening currencies. One of the worst hit is Ghana, which is just establishing itself as an oil exporter. Its cedi currency has tumbled almost 20% since the start of the year, meaning oil priced in cedi has soared 43%. Facing a 17% inflation rate and more pressure on the cedi, Ghana raised interest rates by 100 basis points this week to 22%, one of the highest in the world.

For African oil importers, last year’s crude price drop tempered the damage inflicted by a stronger dollar. But now, many are grappling with rising oil prices along with a depreciation of their own currencies versus the dollar. As a result, for much of Africa, the cost of oil has risen far more in local currency terms than in dollars, as this graphic shows:

While the dollar has eased recently, it is up 17% in the past 12 months, contrasting with a 40% oil price drop. Yet since January, both are up – the greenback has risen almost 4% while crude has gained 16%.

“The longer you have that double-whammy of rising oil prices and weakening currencies, the more pressure there is,” said Angus Downie, head of Economic Research at Ecobank  “It all comes down to who manages the exchange rate the best, and what level of foreign exchange reserves they have.”

Oil importers across eastern Africa are also being hit.

“The biggest impact will be in east Africa,” said Cavan Osborne, portfolio manager at Old Mutual Global Investors, citing Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya where currencies have depreciated between 6 and 13% in 2015. “We will see some slower economic growth out of that region because the oil price is rising again.”

Exporters are not being spared. Nigeria has seen crude prices rise by 27% in naira terms. This puts the squeeze on the continent’s largest economy which imports 80 percent of what it consumes, including fuel. With crude revenues tumbling, Nigeria’s hard currency reserves are down by a fifth over the past year – lower than most other big emerging economies.

IMF - Exploiter

Between June 1995 and October 2006 Ghana had three arrangements with IMF under various disguise phrases such as Enhance Structural Adjustment Facility and Poverty and Growth facility. It again recently agreed with the Ghana Government a programme worth $940 million said to aim at overcoming the country's economic challenges, supporting stronger economic growth and lower inflation.

It is worth mentioning that no singular institution in our time has facilitated the devastating spread of poverty in Ghana and for that matter in other African countries than the International Monetary Fund. IMF, other Western financial institutions and donor agencies have remain mere fronts for Western profiteers instead of being a genuine partner in our development agenda that aim at taking our people out of vicious cycle of poverty.

It has always been the IMF policy to perpetually keep its 'business partners' in debts. This is the only way, it believes the business it does, that is making money for its owners, can be sustained. Over the years the IMF has hook on unto its crooked system of compound interest which has made countries in developing world perpetually poor. Such policies and strategies should be a source of concern to our leaders and those conduct business with the IMF on our behalf. The conduct of IMF and other Western financial institution is becoming increasingly questionable.

It is important that as a country we do all that it takes to wean our country from the control of IMF, the World Bank and other Western financial institutions that continue exploit our country for their comfort and pleasure. The imperialist agenda is relentless and the system they put in place to subjugate developing countries and importantly Africa countries so many years ago is still on course.

http://">http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/artikel.php?ID=354930

Ghanaian Government Sued over “Illegal” GM Crops Policy

Food Sovereignty Ghana (FSG) has filed a writ of summons against the Ghanaian National Biosafety Committee (NBC) and the Ghanaian Ministry of Food and Agriculture MoFA, with an application for an interim injunction to stop any release or commercialization of genetically modified cowpeas and rice, until the provisions of Ghana’s Biosafety Act are expressly and fully obeyed.
FSG are not only calling for an injunction on the commercialization of GM rice and Bt cowpeas, but on all GM crops until the National Biosafety Authority is in place.

FSG have taken this action as a result of the fact that “Ghanaians are being constantly bombarded with news items containing false claims that the attempts to impose GM rice and beans are being done in accordance with the law.” FSG maintains that this is certainly and evidently not the case.
FSG’s case is very simple. According to Section 13 of the Biosafety Act, 2011, Act 831, on the “The application to import or place on the market”, only the National Biosafety Authority has such a power to authorize the commercial release of GM foods in Ghana. The law says:

 ”13. ( 1) A person shall not, without the prior written approval of the Authority, import or place on the market a genetically modified organism. (2) An application under subsection (1) shall include (a) The information set out in the Third Schedule (b) a risk assessment as set out in the Third Schedule, and (c) any other information that the applicant may consider necessary for an assessment of the potential risks and benefits of the requested activity.” See: Ghana Biosafety Act

According to the FSG, Ghana’s National Biosafety Authority “does not even exist, because it is yet to be inaugurated. No appointments have been made and approved even for it, so under what authority are those undertaking these dangerous experiments doing so, and who is supervising them? Apparently, even the National Biosafety Committee has no power of its own apart from the authority of the Minister for Industries, Science and Technology, MIST.”

Ghana is a signatory to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. Article 23 of the Protocol requires Parties, on their own and in cooperation with other States and international bodies, to promote and facilitate public awareness and education, including access to information, regarding the safe transfer, handling and use of living modified organisms (LMOs). It also requires Parties to consult the public in the decision-making process, to make public the final decision taken and to inform public about the means of access to the Biosafety Clearing-House.

Meanwhile, Section 11 (1) of the Biosafety Act states very clearly that: “A person shall not conduct a contained or confined use activity involving genetically modified organisms or their development without the written approval of the Authority”. The law further stipulates in Section 42 (2) that “The Authority shall publish notices of final decisions concerning applications made under this Act in the Gazette and electronic and print media, in order to ensure public awareness and participation”. This law has not been followed by the Ghanaian authorities, who have created a veil of secrecy surrounding the experiments currently going on in Ghana, according to FSG.

FSG calls on all Ghanaians who care about the safety and the quality of food they are putting into their bodies, to show keen interest in this matter and provide them with the moral and material support we need to prosecute this case which is set to be a David versus Goliath struggle.

from here

More on land-grabbing again

In 1885, the great European powers met in Berlin to divide up the African continent into spheres of influence. There was a similar conference last week, in New York, but you did not read about it and it was held behind the closed doors of a corporate board room. And, the week before there was a similar conference in Amsterdam, and the week before that in London. Colonialism today is no longer conducted by nation-states but, instead, by multi-national corporations but the essence of the saga is unchanged: A poor continent is being raped by the powerful and wealthy.

Ghana has been a net importer of palm oil, which is like Saudi Arabia being a net importer of oil. Herakles Farms, a New York-based firm had come into the Volta region of Ghana region and did what land-grabbers do: They promised a lot of money, some of it up front, they promised they would drill wells for the people, build schools and clinics and roads, improve the standard of living, if only the farmers would sign a 99-year lease at $5 per hectare per year. A hectare is about two and one-half acres. Many Western companies initially put enormous pressure on local landowners to sign lease agreements without legal counsel or, in the case with Herakles Farms, the company “provided” the locals with a lawyer who happened to work at the same firm as the lawyer representing the company. Of course, the people of the Volta region did not get what they were promised. And, Herakles Farms, once they realized that the intrepid social justice advocates from Africa Faith & Justice Network were on the case and who had tangled previously with the company in neighboring Cameroon  sold the lease to a British company, Volta Red, which has set up a mill to process palm oil.

The land-grab problem is not unique to Ghana. In Liberia, 64% of usable land is held by foreign corporations. 64%. In Tanzania, forty thousand people are being evicted from land they have lived on for all their lives because the royal family of Dubai bought the land to set up a private game preserve. This will devastate the nomadic peoples in the region, placing the grazing lands they and their ancestors have used for centuries behind the walls of the preserve. Similar tales can be told about most of the countries in Africa.

In the 19th century the European powers were only taking resources. Now, more people are dividing Africa up, all motivated by greed, and they are taking the land. It is much worse now than before.

http://ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/fighting-injustice-land-grabs-africa

Private or Public: Vigilant Civil Oversight Necessary

Despite large aid support, Ghana's privatised water utitily AVRL consistently failed to meet its contractual commitments.  Water is now back in state hands,  but it will need increased investment and a vigilant civil society to deliver the services Ghanaians need.

Ghana finally yielded to pressure from multilateral donors in 2006 and privatised its urban water utilities. The Government’s experiment with what it conveniently referred to as “private sector participation”, and not privatisation, was short-lived. This was despite considerable high hopes and expectations fostered by the Ghanaian media as well as very well-resourced backers and promoters of privatisation. The road between 2006 and 2011 was bumpy for the new management. The period after 2011, after water returned to the public sector, has also not been smooth. However it has highlighted the cost and key challenges that confront a public/state facilitator and provider of urban water within the context and constraints of a developing country.

Before Privatisation
The economic context before privatisation in Ghana was similar to most African countries in the 1980s and 1990s. These economies were characterised by high trade deficits due to a decline in prices of exports and a surge in the prices of imports, with resulting high budget deficits. This made it impossible for such countries to provide needed support to vital state-owned enterprises, and there was a consequential decline in the efficiency of such enterprises.
Particularly in Ghana, there was pressure from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for fiscal discipline. The intention was to keep the government from investing in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and supporting them to weather the economic storms of the time. The prescription was to rather leave such roles for the private sector. Whether such private sector actors existed in Ghana at the time and were willing to take the risk were issues that did not receive much attention. This did not prevent a vigorous push by donors requiring the government to privatise, for example, the urban water and energy sectors^[1] in exchange for economic assistance
This pressure led Ghana to open up its urban water sector to private ‘capital’ in 2006. The government’s original offer of a lease concession was not successful with previously interested bidders saying a lease involved too high risk in relation to political stability in West Africa and the large liabilities of the Ghana Water and Sewage Corporation among others.^[2]
The truth was, however, that they had wanted to pay very little. Their concern about stability was not so much about stability of West Africa, but more about the wider stability and sustainability of water privatization contracts globally. On the continent and elsewhere in Latin America, similar contracts had been overthrown and were a major cause of uneasiness for the bidders for the Ghana contract.^[3]
As a result private sector actors sought an arrangement that could allow the private sector to participate in urban water supply in Ghana without being required to make any direct investment.^[4] The Government therefore contracted Aqua Vitens Rand Limited (AVRL), a company formed by Vitens Evides International of the Netherlands and Rand Water of South Africa. The company was paid USD 5 million as management fees for five years. Additionally, they administered donor support to the contract of USD 120 million for non-infrastructural work with huge cost overruns.

 New water provision failed to meet expectations
A close study of the contract shows how much it privileged AVRL above the state.  The contract was clear about the obligations of the Ghana Water Company Limited and very general about the obligations of AVRL.^[5] The road became bumpy for AVRL because of the contradictions in the contract, particularly the arrangement where the private actor invested nothing financially and was given guaranteed returns before any performance.
The effect of this was that shortly after the signing of the contract, AVRL had to contend with the high expectations of workers seconded to it, as well as expectations of citizens who had been told of the efficiencies of AVRL. With no new investments by the new actors, AVRL faced similar challenges to those that the Ghana Water Company Limited faced: poor conditions of work for workers and irregular water availability for most citizens.
In the end, AVRL failed consistently throughout the contract period to meet its targets. Some of the significant failures included inability to reduce non-revenue water^[6], inability to improve water quality, and consistently poor performance in six other target areas identified in a World Bank commissioned technical audit report.^[7] These facts, in addition to the unmet expectations of citizens and workers of the company, created the conditions for the contract to be discontinued.

Reverting to public management
The same media that was instrumental in getting the public to accept AVRL became the ally of citizens and the workers in forcing them out. In June 2011, the management contract with AVRL was discontinued. However, operations did not return directly to the Ghana Water Company Limited as expected, but passed to an interim structure that the government named the Ghana Urban Water Company Limited. Some activists believed the World Bank (opposed to discontinuation despite the evidence) influenced this process. There was therefore a deadlock situation for about two years, after which pressure from civil society ensured a full reversion to the public company, Ghana Water Company Limited.
Currently, the urban water sector is fully owned by the state and is managed centrally by the Ghana Water Company Limited through its regional and district offices. It retains both production and distribution functions.

Ghana Water Company Limited’s Performance
Unfortunately the improved performance expected by citizens has not yet materialized and signs of poor water supply are everywhere and increasing. Water is still fetched and stored in yellow 25 litre gallon containers in most communities.
One cannot blame the Ghana Water Company Limited entirely for the present difficulties. The five years of dormancy in which they were placed during the management contract was enough to affect their momentum and rob them of continuity from their past experience.
Another publicly run water utility, the Uganda Water and Sewerage Corporation, offers a useful point of comparison. It was spared this hiatus and had reforms that did not bring in new managers but rather corrected what was wrong within the public corporation. The Uganda Water and Sewage Corporation is today celebrated as a successful case. It even now offers assistance to other countries, like Ghana, learning from the challenges it had.
At the Global Water Operators Partnership conference of 2013 in Barcelona, the UN-Habitat facilitated the second phase of a mentoring partnership between the Ghana Water Company Limited and the Uganda Water and Sewage Corporation under a public-public partnership (PuPs). Under the arrangement, the Ugandan Water Corporation acts as a mentor for the Ghana Water Company Limited.

Influence of Uganda – The promise and dangers of PuPs
Uganda’s experience, was one in which the water utility was highly corporatised. This process has been prone to sacrifice access for efficiency. A case in point is the introduction in Uganda of prepaid water metres to increase revenue collection efficiency. Under the public-public mentorship by Uganda, the Ghana Water Company Limited announced a similar policy in February 2014.^[8] Intense public reaction and revulsion caused the policy to be halted, though not abandoned. Meanwhile, public investments into expanding infrastructure has improved relatively. Such investments mean that the capital city Accra’s current capacity of 93 million gallons^[9] a day will increase to 158.3 million gallons by the end of 2014. This will provide 8.3 million gallons in excess of current demand.^[10]
Though the increase in capacity would improve access, the Ghana Water Company Limited is looking for ways to avoid using public (tax) finance to fund its operations. This makes citizens the sole source of cost recovery, with poor areas and people being the most vulnerable. This was behind attempts to introduce the pre-paid water metering in  Ghana.
What the Ghana-Uganda partnership shows is that in the absence of a vigilant civil society, even a state company will sacrifice the common social objectives for profit objectives. Civil society therefore has an obligation to expose this discriminatory public policy and to mobilise public support behind the social objectives that should equally inform water supply to make safe water available for both rich and poor.

from here with links