ACCRA, Ghana.
Several thousand children live and work on the streets here, and their numbers are growing. Increasing urbanization in the capital city and increasing poverty in the surrounding countryside are making more children vulnerable to all forms of exploitation and abuse, including a higher risk of exposure to HIV.

Amina is 11, an orphan who works as a porter in the suburb of Nima. Porters like Amina, known in Accra as kayayei, carry heavy loads in a basin balanced on their heads. She said in an interview that she came to Accra two years ago, when she was 9, after her parents were killed. They were returning home from their farm field on a bicycle when they were hit by a car and killed, she said.

Although she has aunts and uncles, they not only declined to take in the orphan but also accused her of causing her parents’ deaths, she claimed. Since she had no other family to run to, her only option was to head to Accra to find work and take care of herself. So now she carries loads for shoppers in the Nima market.

She charges 70 pesewes ($ .50 U.S.) for a small load and 1 cedi ($ .68 U.S.) for a bigger load. After the day’s work, she waits for a shop to close so she can sleep in front of that shop, she said, adding that she has been robbed a few times of the money she made that day.  She asked that her full name not be published because she feared for her safety if her relatives should learn of her whereabouts.

The minimum age when children can work legally in Ghana is 16. However, more than 26 percent of children between 5 and 14 work illegally, according to the Ghana Statistical Service. The service’s report indicates that children in rural areas work in fishing, herding and farming, and as domestic servants, porters, hawkers, mine and quarry laborers, and bus conductors. In urban centers like Accra, street children work mainly as truck pushers, head porters, and sales workers.

Jalal Mohammed, a program officer at Moslem Family Counseling Services in Accra, said in an interview that child laborers are not only denied access to education but also some are held in indentured servitude, forced to work off their families’ debts. According to his agency, more than 1 million underage children work in Ghana. Of those, more than 242,000 are engaged in the most dangerous and exploitive work and over 800,000 are not in school.

Mohammed said many child traffickers in Ghana have been publicly exposed but authorities have failed to prosecute them.  He added that the government would not act and traffickers would not be deterred unless aid workers, human rights activists, and journalists continued to apply pressure.

Worldfocus partner A24 reports on a kingly celebration.

Modern buildings such as this nightclub and restaurant have emerged out of the old Accra.

Accra, the capital city of Ghana, was host to U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent trip to Africa, during which he pushed developing countries to strive to build prosperity and progress.

Although Accra continues to have problems with its sewage system, among other things, it is modernizing at a relatively quick rate. Ghana as a whole maintains an 11 percent unemployment rate and a 28 1/2 percent poverty rate, both comparatively lower than many of the country’s neighbors.

Ethan Zuckerman of the blog My heart’s in Accra visited Accra and compares the city now to the city he saw during a trip more than a decade earlier.

Visiting Accra feels like time travelling. [...]

I feel as if I could recreate the past by layering a thin film on top of the current reality - a scrim that covers that new four-story shopping plaza with the disused concrete and rebar hulk that stood there a decade before. Add some burning plastic and we’d be able to take me back to a past I remember, if I squint a little bit. It’s the same place, just gentrified, in a particularly Ghanaian fashion. My friend Amos met me for lunch at Asanka Local, a deservedly popular chop bar that’s new since my last visit, and mentioned that he was looking for a house in the area to use as an office. He figured he’d need to spend at least 100,000 cedis, or about $67,000. Makes me wish I’d bought the apartment building I used to live in.

When I visited the Accra Mall on Sunday, there was no amount of squinting that could have convinced me that I was in a country I knew and understood. Ten minutes past the airport, the mall features two supermarkets, a cinema, several high-end boutiques and an excellent bookshop. It’s beautiful, as nice as its counterparts in Nairobi and Cape Town, and it’s got a steady buzz of people, tourist, Filipino overseas workers, Lebanese traders and lots of middle-class Ghanaians.

The bookshop left me babbling. In 1993, the only bookstores we had in Accra were the university shop in Legon, which featured required reading texts, Akan-English dictionaries, and the occasional heavily used Mario Puzo novel, for $5.

[...] And then there’s the grocery store. When I first came to Accra, I asked the bartender at the hotel where I was staying where I should shop for food. “All the obruni go to Danquah Circle. You can get anything you imagine there.” I walked around for a couple of hours, visiting the handful of western-style food shops and discovering that my imagination now needed to be limited to canned corned beef, canned mackerel, dried beans and pasta. Add in the amazing fruits and vegetables on sale on almost every corner, and we had a perfectly servicable diet, but one light on the comfort food that everyone needs now and again. My family and friends ended up feeling like they were supplying a prisoner, sending me letters that included packets of dried orange cheese mix so I could buy pasta, oil and a little milk and make macaroni and cheese. A letter from Rachel included sheets of nori, which led to a sushi party, using soy sauce bought from one of the Chinese restaurants in town. I almost got into a fistfight with a housemate about his incursions into my most prized posession - a jar of Skippy peanut butter.

And now there’s a supermarket, and it has cheese. A whole cold case full of it. Apples aren’t luxury items sold for a dollar a piece by roadside hawkers - you can buy them by the kilo. I looked like a madman, walking through Shoprite with my camera, snapping photos of remarkable, miraculous sights - chickens, already gutted and plucked, frozen and in bags! - that looked completely ordinary to everyone around me.

I don’t know that one could come to Accra and pretend that it’s 1994 anymore. If the mobile phones don’t give it away - with phonecard sellers, repair shops and charging stations on every corner - the architecture does. [...]

My friends who support the NDC - the party that regained control in the most recent election - tell me that NDC won because people felt like eight years of NPP government had resulted in a lot of developments that looked like Citizen Kofi and not much improvement of schools or infrastructure. I’m not sure that’s entirely fair - driving throughout the city, I saw roads I knew to be almost impassible that are now paved and smooth. I ask about whether a particular neighborhood is still plagued by traffic jams and learn that a two-lane road has been replaced with a six-lane carriageway with two flyovers.

Is this just benefitting the comparatively wealthy who are lucky enough to live in the capital city? No idea - I was there for 51 hours, and I didn’t get outside Greater Accra. And I know it’s a mistake to characterize the direction of a country based on half a dozen long walks and conversations with a dozen old friends. But I felt like I was catching glimpses of a future Accra, the stylish capital of a middle-income nation.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user ethanz under a Creative Commons license.

Obama’s message was described as a kind of “tough love,” encouraging democracy and at the same time warning African nations they need to take care of themselves.

Yaw Nyarko, a professor of economics and director of Africa House at New York University, joins Martin Savidge to discuss why the president chose Ghana and what is at stake for the U.S. in Africa.

John Atta Mills of the opposition National Democratic Congress party narrowly won a runoff election in Ghana.

Recently, Ghanaians returned to the polls for a runoff election after both major presidential candidates failed to gain a majority in last month’s vote. John Atta Mills of the opposition National Democratic Congress party narrowly defeated Nana Akufo-Addo of the ruling New Patriotic Party.

Leaders from the United Nations and several countries around the globe congratulated Ghana on the peaceful elections, the country’s second transfer of power between parties since restoring democratic elections in 1992. Some consider Ghana’s elections a model for African democracy, given election-related conflict in other African nations like Kenya and Zimbabwe.

Ayo Johnson is a journalist of African heritage working in the United Kingdom. He writes at “Africa speaks to you” about the significance of Ghana’s peaceful elections.

Ghana elections

Ghana is the blue-eyed boy of the African continent. One of Africa’s brightest-known democracies; from the famous Kwame Nkrumah for his revolutionary and progressive views and aspiration for a united Africa. To a chequered past was with that of infamous Jerry Rawlings – (NDC); who came to power repeatedly via the barrel of a gun. Rawlings finally adopted self-governing values with elections that eventually saw him crowned as president.

Election today in Ghana is a stark reminder of how far the nation have come since it’s independence 51 years ago. Ghana is a mature democracy having grown as a nation with decent economic growth forecasts that have cemented their position globally as a major producer of cocoa, gold and now new found wealth of high grade oil.

No wonder the John Atta-Mills of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and Nana Akufo-Addo of the ruling party New Patriotic Party (NPP) are prepared to fight tooth and nail to the bitter end; to get what must be a lucrative opportunity for high office in Ghana.

A win for John Atta-Mills of (NDC) will be dogged by counter claims and further appeals by (NPP) to the electoral commission of vote rigging and election irregularities. Both parties must use the judiciary in line with the constitution and take their grievance to the courts.

Both the (NDC) and (NPP) must respect the courts decision as final, failure to adhere could lead to increased tensions that could lead to chaos and anarchy.

To read more, see the original post.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user bbcworldservice under a Creative Commons license.

Ghanians text results of the election.

Ghana’s presidential election will see a second round after both candidates failed to win a majority of votes in Sunday’s election.

Voter turnout was high, at 69.5 percent, and some have called the peaceful election a “beacon of hope for Africa.”

The runoff between ruling party leader Nana Akufo-Addo and opposition candidate John Atta Mills is scheduled for Dec. 28.

For more on Ghana’s election, see what a Worldfocus contributing blogger had to say: Race tightens as ballots are tallied in Ghana.

Ghanian blogger “Mercy” writes that she is proud of the fair and free election and of the civic engagement of Ghanians, expressing support for the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP).

The “MobileActive” blog discusses the use of text messaging, which played a role in monitoring the election.

The National Democratic Congress (NDC), the opposition party, posts a blog entry expressing gratitude to supporters and the Ghanian media and asks for restraint on the part of threatening security organizations.

Ethan Zuckerman of the “My heart’s in Accra” blog writes that the ruling party is currently in the lead, and if Akufo-Addo emerges victorious in the runoff, he will face a divided government.

Blogger “Oluniyi David Ajao” asks, “Does Ghana exist?” and argues that the international media has ignored the Ghana election and only covers violence and starvation in Africa.

Watch a video of vote counting in Odododiodio, Ghana, from YouTube user hdnrp:

Photo courtesy of Flickr user bbcworldservice under a Creative Commons license.

A representative from the electoral commission supervises a Ghanian voter.

Ghanians are awaiting the results of Sunday’s national election. Current President John Kufuor of the New Patriotic Party is stepping down after two terms in office.

Tallies have shown both the ruling and opposition parties leading at varying points throughout the day, as the race is tight.

For more, see the election blog of “Think Ghana,” featuring ongoing updates and citizen reports.

Bright Simons is an executive at the African nonprofit IMANI Center for Policy and Education. He writes at citizen journalism portal OhMyNews about the election and the experience on the ground.

Ghana votes: Who wins, who loses?

Ghanaians are voting as I write.

They are at the polls to elect the sixth democratically chosen President and legislature in the country’s 51 year post-colonial history. Of the 11 regimes that have ruled the former British colony in that period, five have been military insurrectionists.

Most of the streets are deserted, but not from any fear of violence. This is a majority Christian country, and Sundays are normally observed as a Sabbath by many of the 70 percent of the population who profess adherence to the Christian faith. Moreover, the tail-end of this year’s election season has been amazingly calm due to loud clarion calls for peace by the Clergy, eminent members of Ghana’s large Diaspora, and most of the country’s political heavyweights.

As I walked through a peri-urban suburb of the capital, I was struck by the wide observance of the much-emphasized proscription against the overt display of partisan affiliation near any of the 21,000 polling stations across this West African nation of 22 million.

While most of the pre-election polls have seemed to favour the ruling NPP of sitting President John Agyekum Kuffuor and its flagbearer, Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo-Addo, scion of a ruling dynasty that stretches back before the time of his father, Ghana’s second democratically elected Head of State, many pundits still say the contest is too close to call.

The opposition NDC has campaigned on a platform of change, though the tone has been angrier and grittier than the genial flavour that coloured the Obama revolution of recent times. That has however not stopped the NDC from insisting, sometimes even brashly, that their mission resonates with that of their Democratic counterparts across the Atlantic.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of flickr user bbcworldservice under a Creative Commons license.