Radio Ghana

Long live UNESCO

2010-05-13T11:08:00.003Z

Sometimes you have to love the UN.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16059928

P.S.
I have been bored with the blog for a while, but this was worth sharing.

1/4 of a century

2010-03-15T11:21:00.003Z

RadioGhana has been a lazy ass lately, but as it turns one unit older today it promises it will bring you up to date. First signs of Alzheimer? maybe.

Job descriptions and TORs will follow.

2010-02-22T15:59:00.002Z

RadioGhana wishes good morning to the new government, that after a year and a half in power has abruptly woken up decided to have a major reshuffle of senior technical staff.

Nothing inherently wrong with the decision, except:

a) timing - almost halfway through the mandate doesn't seem a good place for a fresh new start.
b) loss of institutional memory
c) lack of replacement - not all vacated positions have a clear replacement
d) lack of transparency in the selection for the new entrants
e) total disruption of normal activities and,
f) utter confusion

My boss has been relocated to an ad hoc new agency, and his replacement, in charge from today, has conveniently taken two weeks off (to prepare for the task?).

While at the high floors important people play internal politics they seem to forget that there is a country to run out there.

The title of this post comes from the circular issued by the minister announcing the new appointments. Will they?

Stay tuned.

It's mango season!

2010-01-27T12:52:00.004Z

Mango season seems to come and go at it's own discretion.
All of a sudden the street vendors are selling piles of beautiful gigantic fruits.
I love it.

Train on

2010-01-04T10:07:00.001Z

I was already half way through a long ramble on the ridiculous amount of training that civil servants get here. My boss has effectively been out on training to Canada, Tunisia, Italy, Washington (ehm... bankland), Japan and a bunch of other places I can't remember, which means that I have barely seen him in the past 3 months.
For as important as I clearly am :-) , there are other more important people and matters he has to deal with which pile up on is desk or queue up in fort of his door. No one else can take decisions, everything waits.

Halfway through, I mentioned the fact to a colleague, who burst in laughter and told me "Do you know how much he would make just by sitting in office? 500 cedis a month" (about $350).

I shut up.

Hoy se fue mi hermano

2009-12-21T18:57:00.004Z

Pocas palabras se me occurren, pinche Ivan, porque la vida es mas puta de lo que parece.
Compañero de viajes, amigo, hermano,
Ghana se queda contigo.

UNPEDO updated

2009-12-20T12:35:00.005Z

interesting folloup on uor made up UN agency:

5. Dept head gets back to be saying, Yes, the mission is confirmed you'd better contact Person who knows more about it as he will be there himself.

6. Person: I will be in Ghana attending any mission that the UNPEDO office will arrange for me

7. Dept head: Dear sir I inform you that on such day our mission will be in town, and we would like to arrange for a meeting with you.

WTF? The whole exchange sounded so stupid that I have drawn a map of it.

UNPEDO

2009-12-18T10:10:00.007Z

My experience with UN agencies is limited, but if I were to draw conclusions from this....uhm.

A few weeks ago we registered rumors that there is a UNPEDO mission due in january. (No mission statement, no ToR, nothing). To find out what's going on I dropped them an email to Person.

1. Person 1: yes, the mission is confirmed, I am on it, but know nothing about it and have no time to explain, please contact the country head.

2. Country head: Yes the mission is confirmed, but I know nothing about it, please contact Mr Random. (attaching no contact of Mr Random - Dept head)

3. Dept head (who's email I found on google, bless it!): Is out of office.

4. I get annoyed and call the two contact numbers on the UNPEDO website.
The numbers are wrong.

UNPEDO is just a made up name ( I think), the story is not.

Out of a black out

2009-12-01T22:06:00.003Z

The ministry of Education is running an interesting experiment.

A power cut two weeks ago finally killed some important piece of electrical equipment I had never heard of before leaving my block (the nevralgic center of the ministry!) in the dark and more seriously - in the heat.

Now, with no power (we got an extension cable from the next block to the server room to get internet going) the whole of the block was temporarily relocated to the documentation center.

This is very interesting because
a) you can see immediately who is working and who is not, and you realize how few people you need to run a ministry
b) after a week of sharing the same long desk people from different units and even from within the same unit started to talk!
All of a sudden information circulated freely and everyone was available right there. Amazing.

I think they should knock down the walls and make the ministry a massive open space area.

Shame the power came back this afternoon.

Pulling a tooth out of a rhino

2009-11-09T11:24:00.005Z

That's how getting stuff done on a monday morning feels like.

The old lady

2009-11-03T22:05:00.000Z

This car feeds of fuel pumps! the mechanic changed 3 in a week.
Apart from that I love her - old bitch...

Foreign affairs pyre

2009-10-22T18:02:00.009Z

I wrote this a week ago, but in moving to a different flat I had completely lost track of where my camera was untuill 5 minutes ago. Now, here it goes...

Last night I recieved a call from a friend saying my ministry was on fire.
Not quite. but foriegn affairs is no more.

We took a ride down to ministry and this is what we found.

here is the article on the bbc.

World champions!

2009-10-19T15:48:00.004Z

First nation in the continent to win the Under 20 world cup.

Implementation Flaw

2009-10-14T12:27:00.003Z

Welcome to Radio Ghana,

Today we talk about long term planning and implementation.

This is how things should go:
There is a long term plan - build 100 schools in 10 years (keep it simple),
which informs the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) - build 30 in the next 3 years,
which in turn informs 3 years of budget - build 10 next year.
And then so on...
Following the budget, the money should go where the long term plan indicates.

This is how they go.
There is a long term plan, developped by an external consultant, very few in the ministry are familiar with or can be bothered to read that says - build 100 schools (for a change)
The budget office, like evryone else, is either not interested in the plan, not aware of it's existence, or cannot be bothered to adapt the budget to it. So, it produces a budget very similar to the previous year's that says - blah
And the MTEF? oh! the MTEF! it's too late now, let's paste the budget into year 1 of the MTEF and leave year 2 and 3 empty, at the end of the day how is the budget office supposed to know how to fill year 2 and 3?
And so on.

Don't believe me? Pick up a copy of the 2009 MTEF and see if you can find a single figure in the column for 2010 .
10 years down the line you wonder what happened to those 100 schools.

Reloaded

2009-10-05T19:51:00.005Z

Some of you might remember about the OLPC story.
Well in the same sneaky way those laptop found their way into the basement of the ministry where they silently sat and rusted for six months, they are now gone.
Where? to the constituency of the Minister, deputies, and those of the MPs that could be bothered to get involved.
Targeting requirements? schools must have electricity.
Where teachers trained to deal with laptops in class? no
Was the curriculum adjusted to be compatible with laptops? no

Go Ghana! that's what I call planning.
Meanwhile it appears that the government is trying to cancel the order for the remaining 9000 which are alleged to be on the way.

Ghana gets wired

2009-10-05T14:44:00.000Z

Dear all, after a long break, Radio Ghana is back on air.

So welcome back to Accra, where the rainy season is over and new flashy buildings are popping up like mushrooms.

Piece of exciting news: A branch of the GLO-1 submarine cable connecting Lagos to London has recently reached Accra. It should be operational in 2 - 3 years (the infrastructure is nowhere near to be ready yet) and it is expected to lower costs and improve quality of internet connections significantly.
You can see GLO-1 in yellow in on the map underneath (kindly borrowed from here). Interestingly, GLO-1 is the only submarine cable completely owned by 1 person.

pitch black

2009-10-02T12:25:00.003Z

Ain't no sunshine when she's gone.
It's not warm when she's away.
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
And she's always gone too long anytime she goes away.

Wonder this time where she's gone,
Wonder if she's gone to stay
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
And this house just ain't no home anytime she goes away.

three weeks into the west

2009-07-30T08:56:00.005Z

Here's a few pics of two great weekends...
From the left; Matt, Paul and special guest Jordain de Muizon (!). just crossed the Togolese border (cross the gate and keep smiling approach). Enjoying good french food and incredibly good live jazz at Le Galion.
The cash man at hotel Equateur... need to change money? here he comes.
Mount Agbo, near kpalime, the highest peak in west africa (700m, maybe?) , a vey good hike for who likes it, we had a huge "truck", as Paul calls it, and drove all the way up.
The view from the military base at the top was somewhat unspectacular. a good excuse not to pay the bribe to the guard. Me come back tomorrow, today weather no good (or that's what it sounded like in french)

Crossing Back into Ghana from Kpalime was one of the wildest border crossing experiences I ever had. The road, well... that tiny stirp of mud generously scattered with potholes of the size of the truck, hadn't seen a vehicle in a long time. The togolese border was undistinguishable from one of the many police check points where you try to avoid leaving money by telling the policeman how good his french is. And finally, once officially out of Togo, we drove on for 45 min in the middle of no-man's-jungle wondering where the hell the ghanaian border would be. It's all on Paul's camera, I hope to get the pictures soon.

Second weekend; Busua beach, great surfing spot.
While having breakfast on the first morning, Franky from the surf shop hands me a giant shark tooth asking me how my shark-tooth necklace was made. I took it, and it was still bleedy! First reaction... URGH!. second reaction... WTF?

And yes! Local fishermen had caught this beast (a young bull shark?) after four days at sea Needless to say, the fishing boat is like a big canoe and the fishermen not always make it back. A canadian bloke had it for dinner that same night in coconut sauce.

Marc braving the waters... any fins around?

Chilling on the beach.

Change has come!

2009-07-11T10:12:00.004Z

Good morning and welcome back on radio Ghana.
After...wow, a month long break we are back on air.

Highlight of the day: Obama is in town!
It's been two intense weeks of re-painting the edges of the sidewalks white and plastering the city with massive ads like the ones you see above. And now, we are finally ready to welcome change and discuss with him about the oil that will start flowing from 2010.

Obama's arrival created a good deal of confusion, yesterday at the ministry someone circulated the voice that all the roads would be blocked from 1 pm onwards. Clearly not true but a great excuse for everyone to rush home. Roads were effectively blocked later on for a few hours, but nothig of the apocaliptic scenario people immagined.

As I am writining I hear the helicopter taking off (I immagine) to bring the presidential family to visit Cape Coast castle.

Stay tuned for funny events during Obama's stay, for all the rest there is the bbc.

P.S. Cami may cross paths with Obama in the airport tonight as she is landing around the same time he is leaving...

One Laptop per Child

2009-05-27T16:50:00.000Z

This is a temporary post that I promise I will improve very soon.

Five 1.5 sqaued meters boxes containing 600 OLPC computers each, for a total of 3000 OLPC computers, were delivered yesteday at the ministry unbeknown to most.

OLPCs are supposed to cost $100 each, but according to my ICT technician their cost is more like $250 - $270. Summing up to the handsome expenditure of $750.000 - $810.000, excluding shipment. And their impact on educational outcomes has never been evaluated.

Here are the photos of the truck unloading the boxes at the ministry. You can see the logo on one of the boxes and compare it to the official website

On a lighter note, today I found in the Ministry's database a rural school not connected to the national grid with 1927 computers. It made the day of the chief statistical officer, who tracked down the school and called the headmaster while laughing so hard he was in tears.

Soon more info on OLPC developments

Stay tuned

MDBS and other forms of horse trading

2009-05-11T16:21:00.000Z

Dear "listeners", welcome back to Ministries - that's the unsurprising name of the part of town where the ministries are - in Accra.

The rainy season has started, which means a few showers, cooler temperature and lovely blue skies when it doesn't rain. Quite nice all in all.

First , I apologise for the long silence on this blog. I have been too busy or too lazy, depending on the day, to write, but lots of things are happening.

Today I will tell you about MDBS, or multi donor budget support.

Before I get started let me clarify that I knew nothing on MDBS untill last month, and although I have a number of papers and items of news sitting on my computer on the topic I still haven't read any.
If coincidentally any of you wants to make a charitable contribution to the ministry let me suggest sending over a toner, I have been waiting for mine to be replaced for the past 4 months :-)

So, approaching MDBS with an open (and fairly ignorant) mind, this is my understanding of how they should work; I might be wrong at any step.

A large number of donors, I think it's 13 here in Ghana, agree to chip in into the government budget under the condition that a number of "triggers" are met. The number of triggers vary from year to year and spans the whole public sector. Of the 20 or so triggers negotiated last year, for example, 4 targeted education.
Unlike old school conditionality (loans made under conditions imposed directly from the lender, for those unfamiliar with the jargon), MDBS triggers are left to the government to propose: of the 20 or so triggers, the government planning body allocates a number to every sensible sector. Each sector in turn selects areas where it would like to see improvement and proposes them as triggers. Trigger are then discussed between the sectors and the donors to agree on a measurable indicator and a target level to reach.

Note that donors are not paying directly for whatever target to be met, they are contributing to the government budget and letting the planning body decide the sectoral allocations and the sectors decide on the best strategy to adopt.
Triggers missed result in parts of the payment being withheld. For the donors perspective, therefore, MDBS is not the price paid for a result, but the prize for having reached a result. To a certain extent one can see how this has been deigned to avoid excessive fungibility.

Anyhow, that's how it should work.

I was very impressed to see how the triggers where effectively proposed by the ministry itself. The roles are in fact completely reversed from old school conditionality: instead of a lender imposing a very ambitious target and the government trying to bargain it down, I have seen the ministry proposing very ambitious targets and the donors trying to call it back to reality.

Whilst everything looked very impressive at the beginning, two things really bothered me about the whole process:

1) Having all the donor together in one room is surely very handy for the ministry as it saves a lot of time and bargaining, however, some donors are a lot stronger then others and tend to lead completely the discussion and target setting process (guess who?). As a consequence, of all the possible useful interventions, only those matching the agenda of the large donors are eventually approved.

2) As I am seeing right now, donors will bend the rules to a great extent not to withhold payments. Without going into too much detail: our statistical office made a big mess and is unable to provide any meaningful data to show that the triggers have been hit. The deadline was more then a month ago, and still, week by week we make excuses and get granted extensions. Under the rules, inability to prove triggers have been hit is the same as not hitting the trigger.

I find complacency on the donors side extremely harmful for the country. If the payment was withheld (five million dollars per trigger), someone would have to respond for the inefficiencies in the system and we might see an improvement next year, if not, not... and next year will be exactly the same.
If Ghana is not treated as a serious country, and serious work is expected from it's governing bodies, it will never become a serious country.

It seems like there is a fault in MDBS, the same fault that sunk old school conditionality: donors function by donating. See Bill Easterly...

Ok, now I'll go to read up a bit more on MDBS before I get myself too deep into something I don't really understand.

anomabu beach and stuff

2009-03-24T14:20:00.000Z

Hey,

Another sunny and very hot day in Accra.

Work has been very slow lately. The change of government, although very smooth, is really taking it's time. Most position have not yet been confirmed, and until that happens most bigwigs at the ministry will be running around trying to secure their ass.
That, in combination with the extremely vertical structure of te ministry - where nothing happens without the bigwig's signature (in the next post I'll tell you a story about my printer's toner) - results in near stall of all activities.

The bright side of this situation is that I get plenty of time to sort out things that have been on the waiting list for a while.
I finally got a car insurance for example and interestingly enough while doing that I got a hooker's number as well. Yep. I was asking about the policy to the clerk, when she made me notice that i had a friend in that office and she would introduce me to her straightaway.
So there I was:
"nice to meet you, where 'you from?"
"Italian"
"Oh that's very sexy (pronounced more like sessy)... Can I get your phone number?", Well, no beating around the bush, hey! she already had it from the clerk anyway.
So now I am insured against accidents and loneliness... What a laugh.

I attach pictures of the last weekend in Anomabu, a lovely and quite upscale beach somewhere between Accra and Cape Coast. This was the first trip we made with the "new" car - twelve years old, she's a small girl!
Waves and currents were too rough for surfing - plus it's kinda hard without a board - but it was good enough for bodyboarding, we had a really good time.

The hungry birdo.

He didn't last long

The bar terrace

Our bungalow
Our small friend Arthur, lives in our living room is just about 3 cm long and has very dirty feet.

Cape Coast

2009-03-24T13:45:00.000Z

Hello listeners!

As promised a few posts back, here are a bunch of pictures from Cape Coast. A middle sized (80000 people) town, capital of the Central Region, about 200 kme west of Accra - although by tro it might seem a little more

Fanti streetlife in Cape Coast :

Pineapples for sale

Views on the castle bay
The cape coast castle, world heritage
it's ever-alert artillery

and it's dreadful fleet.

Fishermen on a break
Pretty sights at sunset
The light-house, house of the keepers and not open to for tours unless you leave a small (totally worth) dash to the son of the keeper who will be more then happy to show you around.
Just make sure you whatch your steps on the main metal staircase because it's so rusted that it will collapse any day.
Interestingly the son of the keeper, a schoolboy, hides his books inside the cannons... maybe not a big fun of education

the plague of non human diseases

2009-03-23T15:53:00.000Z

You might start thinking there is something wrong, when to pick up one on your usb drive file you pick up 54 viruses.

With 434 objects on my usb drive, that makes more then 10% pure viruses.
How crazy is that? And I swear I am not making this up!

Can you immagine how much time and information is lost every day?...

Winneba, formerly Windy Bay

2009-03-09T17:00:00.001Z

A quiet place on the coast west of Accra.
Here we met a really cool american, who spent the last 5 years of his life travelling. I don't think there was a place on this planet he didn't have a story about.
The weather was a bit lame.

Coming up sooon pictures from Cape Coast - Stay tuned.

Bojo Beach

2009-03-09T16:20:00.000Z

Finally, here are some pictures from a weekend in bojo beach a few weeks ago.

bojo beach: a strip of sand about 100 m off the coast.

a cool lizard

Ben, howling at the setting sun. It was his goodby party.

Look closely at this creature... It's a fish (or at least, so I thought untill I saw the front legs)

Please have a look down coz I have uploaded some school pics too.

Church on suday... some find faith and some find cars

2009-02-26T15:40:00.000Z

Good afternoon!

This is a good candidate for the most boring afternoon of my life. But let's leave the ministry behind because I have a great story to tell. Brace yourself.

Remember the whole car story? the one that involved an officer at the ministry? well I decided to scrap it in the end. That car was an old wreck, but what really pushed me away from it was the fact that they had clearly rolled the mileage back so that on the day it was imported (5 years ago) it had a good 30.000 km more than it has now!

Anyway, I got myself into an even funnier deal now. I am buying a car from a pastor at the apostolic (?) church.
Let me start from the beginning though. So, after seeing this car, tried it a couple of times, having it checked by a mechanic and all the usual stuff, we are invited to his house to meet him.

The deal was done in the pastor's living room, decorated wide selection of religious paintings hanging on the wall (including one of the last supper misspelled in "last souper). After charming hime with our aid/volunteering work, we managed to chop the last 500 Cedis off by promising to visit his church on sunday. The car was ours, and we were declared members of the family and cerimoniuosly introduced to everyone.

On Sunday, as part of the deal, they picked us up and brough us to church. The service was in Twi and Gah, contemporaneusly, so that Cami and I were given a translator each.
The first hour was amazing, with all sorts of dancing, singing, crying, shouting and back from the top. I really wish I had my camera, because I couldn't take enough.
My bubble of amazed observer burst when about an hour into the service our translator made us stand up, go to the front and announce our names and purposes. I was really tempted to say something like "... I am only here to buy a car". It would have been hilarious, but luckily Cami stopped me.

Then the sermon began... and dragged on... and on.... and on. For an hour and a half, covering all topics ranging from Israel, to Abraham Linclon passing through the Ghanaian air force and I don't remember what more. An endless ramble, made a lot worse by my translator weho asked me questions(!!!) to see if I was following.

Finished the sermon, the music picked up again and everyone queued up dancing towards the front to give their charitable contribution. I found a little unpleasent the fact that you are supposed to make leave your offering in a big boxed while observed by everyone. But I understood everything when I saw my translator pretend to pick up money from her purse, queue up dancing and singing, and put her donating hand deep into the box.

Ane then came the highlight of the day: thongues! The music went mental, and everyone started praying in thongues. I had never seen that before, and I thought it was something that just crazy americans would do

After three hours we were cooked. I don't think I'll go to church again for a long while, but it was a worthy experience

GPRTU - (semi)organized chaos

2009-02-09T12:14:00.000Z

Good morning and welcome to the dusty roadsides of Accra, where all taxis honk continuously and look at you as if it was their right to pick you up, and tro tros clammer on with driver and doorman shouting their destination.

I have a story on the latter(s) this morning. enjoy.

There is always some degree of uncertainty in tro-tro fares. Depending on the state of the vehicle or on the mood of the doorman, you might end up paying slightly more or less. Nothing significant really, just interesting.
Last week however, someone made me notice that prices have dropped by 5 pesawas on all routes.

We asked a Ghanaian friend, and there you go:

It turns out there exists a trade union, the Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU), heavily controlled by the government, that caps private transport fares according to movements in the price of petrol. Since petrol price dropped by 1/3, all fares followed.
Now, seeing how stuff works, the question is: how on earth do they manage to implement this? tro tros are total anarchy! Well - and here is where my jaw dropped - they publish the new fare on the newspaper. As simple as that. People will read it, and refuse to pay the old fare. All tro tros are registered with the union and can be reported for non complying with the new fare. Amazing.

By the way, this morning my tro lost the exhaust pipe. They stopped , picked it up, and shoved it in the trunk. Who needs an exhaust!

school trip

2009-02-05T10:01:00.000Z

Accra:

Welcome back to a newly sunny Accra, the harmatan has gone a couple of days ago and now we are back to the usual hot and sweaty.
Lots of stuff happened since I last wrote, so enough small talk and let's get started...

Last week I held my first presentation at the ministry to brief the Planning Budgeting Monitoring and Evaluation (PBME) team on my progress on the financing model to cost the new Education strategic Plan (ESP) - just getting started on acronyms :-) - which is to say, nothing.
This fancy named excel spreadsheet has been designed by a world bank consultant for a number of francophone african countries, and translated into English to suit Ghana.
As you immagine the education system in francophone countries is completely different. Making it fit to the Ghanaian context has been (and still is) a nightmare. Both because I know nothing about accountancy (never mind excel programing) and because the offices at the ministry are incredibly slow and keep almost no track of where they spend their budget.
To make a quick example: Procurement buys textbooks (from several editors at very different prices), Logistics distributes them to Districts, Districts distributes them to schools, public and private. If you want to know how much has been spent on books provided to private schools you are hopeless.

On Friday I joined a colleague working in the ICT department to run a census of the IT labs in secondary schools in the central regions, a couple of hours out of Accra.
This was an incredible experience. the three schools we visited were in surprisingly good conditions, the teachers and the headmasters well motivated and the students.... well they're students, but given that, quite eager to learn.
Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs) had basically taken over control of the schools from the ministry, and instead of sitting and waiting for funds to come, they raised funds to build new classrooms and buy (or get donated) second hand computers.

On the way back I had a very interesting conversation with my colleague about how complacent and lazy people become in the ministry, and how motivated people are afraid of entering the ministry and going down the same way. That made me realize how tolerant I had become to the pace at the ministry. No more - from now I'll be breathing down their necks.

I have some pictures of the school trip which I promise I will upload in small-small time.

Finally for the weekend, Bojo beach, a lovely sand bank some 200 m away from the coast. Great spot. I have pictures - not many, but some - of that too. I promise they'll be up shortly, just wait small-small.

Take care

Carmatan!

2009-01-22T12:52:00.000Z

Queridos y queridas, welcome back to Accra, for a new post.

Today is - to the best of my understanding - the stereotype of the Harmatan day. In this season, wind from the north brings carries over large clouds of desert sand, which make the sky of a murky colour between yellow and grey and will make your eyes and throat feel a little weird.
Sure enough it doesn't kill, but is not the most pleasent weather I have seen.

A couple of themes have been running separately through my week, and eventually met in a really odd way. Give me a second and you'll understand why.
The first is a data request which i have been working onpretty much since my second week in Ghana, and the second is my car hunt, which just started.

What? well... I told you it was odd.

Let's start with the easy bit: I finally have the money - which the bank took only 3 months to transfer - and so I started to look for a car. Not easy, because I would like a 4WD and my budget is pretty limited, but nevermind. Car hunting here in Ghana means driving around with Thomas (my "loyal" taxi driver) from dealer to dealer on dusty roadsides in the oustskirts of Accra. While Thomas tries to convince me to spend twice my budget on shining range rovers I look at rusty old jeeps - all hopelessly outside my budget. The only option on which me and Thomas (whose judgment I trust more than mine) agreed has so far been a KIA Sportage from 1997, but the game is far from done.

Now, the officer that deals in data has the reputation to be quite a slippery person who seems to enjoy the power he gains from allowing or denying access to the ministry's dataset. He will promise stuff, and than forget, or disappear on the day your meeting was scheduled and so on. If putting through a request for some country level statistics is by itself a nightmare immagine what requesting raw data covering several years could be.

For this reason I decided to invest a good amount of time in building a good relationship with him. And in doing so I told him about my so far unsuccesful car-hunt.
Long story short - I don't know if out of genuine interest or if in the effort to diverge my data requests to a different topic - he my car quest very seriously, so seriously that instead of talking about the data we spent seral meeting talking about cars, looking up ads and calling friends.

I though it was all getting too wird when he said he found a car for me and that he would have the owner bring it to the ministry on the following day.
The following day - a couple of days from now - he rushed into my office all excited. We went to the parking lot to check it out, and in all fairness he had done an incredible job.
A 1994 Hyunday Gallopper in amazing conditions - and for an affordable price!

Game in not over yet... there's a little bargaining and a thorough check up to be done, but it looks like I found my wheels - screw the data!

By the way, tonight Cami gets back, which puts an end to my solitary existence ;-) Last weekend I was so bored I watched the second and third Godfather in one go, and then watched it all over again in a really weird and scarily vivid lariam induced dream.

Let my enemies live long

2009-01-15T11:01:00.000Z

Accra:
Hello and welcome back to Radio Ghana. It's been a long and needed break for me and I hope to upload a few pictures as soon as possible.
Many things happened, in Ghana and outside, since my last (serious) post.
Let start with no particular order:

Holidays were great, and very needed. I realized this is the first serious break i have taken since September 2007, when i started the Msc. It was lovely to spend some time home with family and friends without the concern of an upcoming deadline.
Among the highlights of this break is the discovery of the diaries of my great - grandfather. This gentleman named Ubaldo Savini, on the run from a marriage, sought and obtained a posting in Somalia as colonial officer in 1920, where he spent about 4 years and wrote more 1000 pages of memories (how bored hey?). I find it amazing.

Ghana has now a new president: John Atta-Mills, leader of the opposition party. Elections went very smoothly at the surface, although word of the street says that the votes of the Ewe in the Volta region were forced towards the NDC by the killing of two local NPP supporters.
A more radical croiwd claims that NDC was ready for war, and realizing that Nana Akufo-Addo wisely stepped down and didn't challenge the outcome of the elections.
I doubt this is the case. NPP politicians have been too sure of themselves during the whole campaign and too deaf to the population. Plus, a large portion of the population seems to value change more then continuity as (they argue) it benefits democracy.

Alitalia went from public to private hands on the 12th leaving me in Rome for a extra day.

Back in the office, boring as usual. Today I lost the whole morning chasing (unsuccessfully) the key of a room where a document I need is..One the positive side, I have been associated to the statistical office of the ministry, which gives me more access to the data and analysis. We'll see how that works out.

The title of this post is taken from the rear of a tro tro, and I find reflects perfectly the non confrontational spirit of Ghanaians.

short haired me

2009-01-12T02:20:00.001Z

should anyone bother, I cut me hair.

Music from the continent

2008-12-29T22:40:00.000Z

Rome:

In the hope you all had a merry time in the past days, here are two of the big hits in Ghana at the moment. (no connection with cristian festivities)
This is the song Black Rasta, a radio DJ (or as Thomas the taxi driver says: a Rastaman!), dedicated to Barrack Obama.
And this is a very popular song about some Angelina girl.

Below are some (random) pics of family and friends from the past few days.

"The Maverick and The Spin"

cousins on christmas day...

and

a big bug.

Take care, big hug to everyone.

journey into the abyss

2008-12-23T22:52:00.000Z

Rome:
Long journey to get here. TIA still applies, but inseìtead of Africa this time read A for Alitalia.
I'll come back tomorrow with more details. Now I need some sleep.

Stay tuned

How weird does this look?

2008-12-22T08:30:00.000Z

Republique Togolaise

2008-12-15T17:52:00.000Z

Welcome to Ghana.

No matter how long your visa, when you reach ghana you'll be stamped in for a max of 60 days.
Approaching the end of this period you have two possible routes to follow. The first is through the Ghana Immigration Service: you leave them your passport, the money and hope that you'll get it back in two weeks with the right stamp on.
Stories you hear tell you that none of these will necessarily happen: it can take a lot longer, and you might end up getting something completely different from what you asked for.
The second route goes east of Accra along the coast until the Aflao land border. Cross into Togo, and when crossing back you'll be allowed to stay for another 60 days.

As the title of this post may have suggested, we followed the second route and spent the weekend in Lomè, capital of Togo.
The border is exactly as wild as you expect a land border to be in Africa, and perhaps a little kore than I expected. As a piece of advice: if anyone offers you help in anything: REFUSE! it's much easier to do it yourself and you'll avoid having to pay tons of dodgy officers.
Now I am making it sound worse than it was, I only left about 3 dollars to that kind of people. However, as I realized a few hours after crossing the border, the folk that exchanged currencies made magically vanish 30 dollars from my hand. No big deal, there is always a first time.

Togo is cool. Quite diffrent from Ghana in many ways. From the first step in, it is clear that it is a smaller and poorer country.

Lomè is more chilled than Accra. According to the guide it could once claim to be the Paris of Africa. Not too sure about that, but I have a few more african capitals to see before I can judge.
Unlike Accra however it's colonial past is quite evident. Streets are better designed, no open sewers, nice sidewalks, and every so often you bump into beautiful colonial buildings in a crumbling state. One of the main Boulevards runs parallel to the beach, making the ocean much more noticeable then in Accra, which feels more landlocked.
Motorcycles are all over the place, and most of them are used as taxis, this too is quite different from Accra where there are very few motorcycles and the most popular mean of transport is the "tro tro", a beaten up minibus.

Food is extremely good and cheap, mixing french and african dishes. Croissants and baguettes can be found all over the place. We didn't get much chance of exploring the nightlife, but on the streets there is quite a number of jazz bars. Shame we only saw them at 9 in the morning when looking for breakfast.

All in all, a very pleasant stay. I want to go back and see more, this time possibly learning some french before.

And the winner is...

2008-12-15T16:14:00.000Z

Hello to everyone bored enough to be on radioghana!

Elections came and went leaving no troubles nor winners. According to the Ghanaian constitution, to qualify as winner of the elections a party should have 50% of votes plus one.
NPP scored little above 49
NDC little below48
CPP less then 2
and other minor parties shared the remainder.

A rematch will be held on December 28th between NPP and NDC.
Meanwhile all you hear on the radio is political debates.

On the way back from Togo this weekend we were stopped and checked by the police countless times. Two possibilities: Either with Christmas coming police officers go hunting. Or someone someone fears troubles and wants to prevent guns being brought into the country.
Time will tell.

Coming up soon pictures and stories from Togo.

Stay tuned.

Presidential elections 2008; kwik update

2008-12-09T11:27:00.000Z

Results of the elections are not out yet,

The atmosphere is very sweet: all radios and tv in the country are tuned on a station where they broadcast counting poll by poll. It's all in Twi, but it's fairly intuitive: they give out the polling station number first, then the count and the percentages.
People gather in front of the little shops on our street to listen to the count together.

No major problem was recorded so far, only a few recount requests.

Ghana presidential elections 2008:

2008-12-07T11:46:00.000Z

Hi,
Polls have opened this morning for the fifth democratic presidential election of the history of Ghana.
There are two main parties in Ghana: NPP and NDC.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) is the ruling party at the moment, and it's been in power for the last 8 years under president Kufour. Presidential candidate for NPP is Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, one of the founding members of the NPP and first chairperson of the Ghana Committee on Human and People's Rights.

On the other hand hand, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), which evolved from PNDC: flight liutenant Jerry John Rawlings' party. This party has been in power for a long time through a number of coups first and winning the 192 and 1996 elections. Even though Rawlings is not the presidential candidate for the NDC, he still plays an important role in the party.
Leading candidate for NDC is Prof John Evans Atta-Mills, Phd in Law from School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS.. the worls is a small place!), with a long career as an academic.

There is no substantial difference in the policies proposed by the two main parties. While NDC has a more populist approach, NPP is relying heavily on the populariry of the outgoing president Kufour.

People realize that NPP has been in power for a long time, and wish some change to enhance democracy, but on the same time are wary of the long ruling history of NDC. Voting for one or the other is in many cases a matter of tradition.

A third Party worth of mention, which for it's history and non populist approach has grown to be my favourite, is the Convention People's Party CPP, led by Paa Kwesi Ndoum, A man with a vast experience of the private sector who has lived abroad for so many years that now speaks with a funny accent.
This left looking party ruled Ghana from 1957 to 1966 under it's first president Kwame Nkrumah,

Plenty more information on the three candidates above is available here.

No Problems are expected as Ghana has a respectable history of peaceful elections. However there is a combination of factors that make people nervous.
Both NPP and NDC are very strong, and the probability of a tie is very high. Furthermore, the discovery of oil off the coast, makes the winner automatically in charge of an incredible ammount of money flowing in from 2010.

See the economist's articles here and here. Here are some pictures from the election process.

Black star surf

2008-12-03T13:02:00.002Z

After a cool week, why not enjoy an amazing weekend?

And yes sir, that is pretty much the description of last week: as the world bank consultant came to build up a financing model for the update of the education sector reform stuff started to move at the ministry, and it was great. Finally I am involved in something in something and am doing what i came here for.

Now the weekend... Rushed at the bus station at 5 o'clock as the ministry closed to meet up with Cami and Oli. Lived a few minutes of thrill when we found out that there is no room for us on the bus, until we find a new one, and off we go.
They say never to travel at night (night here falls at 6 and quite abruptly too), and there are good reasons for it. So far we have done a fair deal of night traveling with no problem... but we did see lots of horrible crashes.

Anyway, got to Busua at night and spent there a day and a half... What a sweet place! It's a bay facing south east, sheltered by an island about... 1.5 km away, waves coming in neat and tidy and no currents at all. Very unlike other beaches I have seen so far.
The original fishermen's village is still pretty poor, open sewers and naked children are the norm. But there is plenty of hotels up to very high standards, and locals make an effort (...ok their children do) to keep the beach clean from plastic bags and stuff. I think this place will look very different in a few years.
I will have to go back if anything to take more pictures, because I couldn't take many while surfing.

The pics you see in this post unfortunately are not mine. Next time they'll be.

The volta region

2008-11-23T23:14:00.001Z

Accra:
Hello and welcome back. Lots of stuff happened since my last post that unfortunately, partly due to my laziness and partly due to the poor internet connection, went undocumented.

First, the duty: I am overjoyed to inform you that the ministry noted my presence. Now I am officially part of several teams to design the reform of the education system.
Last week I attended a workshop with the chief director of the ministry and people from World Bank, DfID, JICA, UNICEF, and most importantly free lunch.
And this week I have the pleasure of assisting Mr Rakotomalala, a number cruncher (ehm... consultant) from the world bank who besides being an extremely nice guy, is also designing the financial model to cost the education reform and teaching me a lot.

Second, the leisure: The pictures you see below come from the Volta region, where allegedly the biggest artificial lake is. We had day trip to the Wli falls two weeks ago, which consisted of a five hour bus ride, 4 hour treck, 30 min chill and back, which I enjoyed but could have been better planned And a much more relaxing boat trip on the lake last week, leaving from the Akosombo dam.

Lastly: while all seems to work well, the bank lost the money I wired to myself over here. Pain in the ass! It will get here eventually, but in the meanwhile my father had to send me some through western union.

Conversation with a taxi driver

2008-11-15T14:36:00.000Z

I had (more or less) this conversation with a taxi driver a few days ago and keep thinking about it.

He picked me up, and after a few minutes of driving in silence he started speaking slowly:
"You have to be careful with this job, you never know who you are picking up and you might end up robbed or even get your car stolen".
He saw my interest and continued. "It happened to me. It was around midnight, when this man i was carrying removed the radio and took my key and ran off. I pulled on the handbrake and shouted Thief! Thief! But it was raining and no one came".
"So what did you do?" I asked him
"I removed the battery, so that if he came back he couldn't take my car. And I passed the night watching over my car on a veranda nearby, but luckily the thief didn't show up again".

I was thinking of how his car was his life, when I saw a horrible white rash behind his neck.
Hoping I didn't see properly, I said "You have something on the back of your neck".
"I know" he replied "They say it's a bad disease and if it surrounds the whole body it can shorten life. I am taking this medicine." And showed me a package. "They say this can cure it. And I am praying for this not to take my life away, because I have a five years old son, and he's not a man yet".
"Did you go to hospital?" i asked him
"No" He replied "There is no money. Hospital costs 150.000 at least"

As most of Ghanaians he was talking in the old currency. Little less then 15 dollars.

At that point we were at the ministries. I gave him the equivalent of 5 dollars, instead of the contracted 2, and told him to take care of himself. I would have given him the 15 dollars straightaway, but i was afraid to offend him.

The image above was left me by my predecessor on the computer I inherited from her.

Ada foah

2008-11-11T22:14:00.000Z

While the work at the was going a little slow, we had an amazing weekend on the coast east of Accra. In this place the river runs parallel to the ocean, leaving a strip of sand of a few hundrend meters, where we spent the night in huts made of palm leafs.
The only doubt was wether to dive in the sea or in the river!
(more pictures coming. the connection isn't too good at the moment)

Back at the minstry no sign of life this week either. The boss left for France, and my collegues for the north. When I was starting to get a little desperate one of the subdirectors asked me for a litterature review on the informal sector. It's a start.

The room of no return

2008-11-06T13:17:00.000Z

Hello and welcome back to Accra!

This has been another eventful week. We moved in a beautiful flat in a very central yet quite characteristic area called Osu. We don't have a stable internet connection there and that is the main reason for not updating the blog lately.
Anyway, the flat is there, and stuff is starting to fall into place. We went to a big shopping mall to find out that prices are ridiculously high and there was little we can afford. Luckily there's the famous Makula market, where we should be able to find everything with a little bargaining.

On the weekend we had our first trip out of Accra: with a researcher from ODI and his driver we headed to the Elmina castle, on the cape coast. On the way we stopped at a crocodile farm and at Kakum national park, famous for it's canopy walk.
The coast is amazing, we'll surely be back there to see more. The castle was one of the main places from where slaves were sailed to the new colonies in America and in the south east Asia, a very interesting and somewhat disturbing place. The title of this post in inspired by the the room from which the slaves one by one left the castle from a very small passage in the wall to be loaded on the boats.

Stay tuned.

Symapthy for the garden egg

2008-10-30T18:33:00.000Z

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a veg of wealth and taste.
Ive been around for a long, long year
Stole many a mans soul and faith
And I was round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name

Happiness is a full tank

2008-10-25T19:34:00.000Z

Hello and welcome back to Accra!
This has been an event full week: found a house, opened a cedi bank account, and got reasonably bored at the ministry. On Thursday I managed to get some relevant stuff to read, so next at least I'll know something about the education system.
I am loving every day more the kiosks that sell fruit and peel it and chop it on the spot. You can get a pineapple for 50 to 70 pesawas... next to nothing, and they are so good.

Now, important stuff: here are the first pictures! in the order in which you see them are: (1) The tanks of happiness, which we had filled last week. (2) Cami chilling at Venus, a Lebanese bar where by now I can ask for the usual and get an iced coke with a lime. Here we met a really cool American who has been in Africa for ten years.
(3) A refreshing coconut after a day at the market. What a market! I still need to find where they sell live animals, (4) the amazing stuff Cami prepared for the party we are going to tonight.
And some street scenes: (5) one of the amazing fruit kiosks, and (6) a place where to buy mobile phone top ups!

The ministry.

2008-10-20T19:01:00.001Z

Accra: This morning 9 o'clock, I was at the ministry.
Passed the parking lot, where chickens run free underneath the countless 4x4, the ministry of interior is a nice and reasonably well kept building. It took no less then 20 sweating minutes to locate my office, at the ministry of education, which was on the other side of the parking lot.
Plenty of people roam around or seat in the shade with no better specified purpose. I thought they would be on a break, but a few hours later they were still there.

Kwame, whom I knew by fame to be the keystone of the ministry, was waiting for me. He assigned me a desk overlooking the stadium, we chatted for a while, got some paperwork done, and then pointed to me an incredibly messy library saying that there were some old reports, possibly some new ones, and to make myself busy while the boss was away. I flicked through some PSRPs, IMF papers and internal evaluations, and that was my morning.
Later in the afternoon, after a very good jolof rice with chicken and fried plantain (i.e. substantial lunch), I met the boss, Charles. He expected someone very different from me with a background in finance, but was nevertheless very nice and reasonably interested in my background. Our meeting suspended when three bigwigs came in shouting second round.

I managed to make it at 4.30 sharp at home to open the gates at the water truck that Kwame kindly arranged to come and refill our tanks (the truck drivers only spoke twi :-)). They only showed up an hour later. Given the language barrier I was surprised they showed up at all, and they had no problem with climbing on the roof with no ladder.
Now, me go enjoy a long neglected shower :-)

Water stories

2008-10-18T22:22:00.000Z

Accra: No water since yesterday, I've just realized how much you need water in the house...
Electricity went too for quite some time, but that wasn't such a big deal, we sat in the veranda with a candle with a chilled beer that would have gone hot otherwise... tough!

Radio Ghana will be back tomorrow with househunting stories (if electricity). Now I wanna crash in bed.

On Air: Akwaaba!

2008-10-16T17:52:00.000Z

Accra: After an intense 36 stop hours in London where we fixed the last details and said goodbye to that crazy town and all our friends once again, here we are! Good Mombert was waiting for us at the airport, and is kindly hosting us in his immense house just the city centre.
The first impression is really good. All the paperwork I have been meticulously collecting in the last month turned out to be irrelevant, as all the frontier guard was interested in was whether Cami loved me or the other way around.

We had a long walk in the centre, had breakfast with a pineapple and a papaya chopped on the spot by a street vendor. People are generally very friendly, incredibly chilled, and seem to enjoy sleeping, as they sleep anywhere, no matter age or gender.

We changed money and somehow got a massive block of 100 pieces of 1 cedi, which is turning out to be quite handy. Bought sim cards and semi unblocked my phone. I say semi because the phone butcher, ehmm... repair centre, we went to managed to wipe out my memory and suggested I bought a sim from a different network. All this charging me 12 cedis. :-)
Being spotted as a tourist can get a little annoying, especially now that we don't know how to deal with the vendors or what prices are, but that can only improve with time.

When shopping in the koala supermarket (which by the way has everything down to chinese noodles), we bumped into Maud, the Ethiopian ODI and her boyfriend Olly, a very cool scot.

Radio Ghana from Accra. stay tuned

doubt no more

2008-10-11T11:55:00.001Z

Madrid: My girlfriend is perfectly well. Screw the bank and their credit card application. 4 days to Ghana.

doubt...

2008-10-10T11:57:00.000Z

Madrid: My girlfriend has a stomac bug and I didn't recieve my credit card yet... might delay the depature a few days.

A pic from New York

2008-10-06T23:31:00.000Z

Torino: Packing up the stuff I'll leave behind for a while I found this picture from this summer.

Chilling

2008-10-05T12:50:00.000Z

Torino: here is me trying out the eye, an amazing place in the mountains and again me, enjoying perhaps a little too much an home made grappa ai mirtilli. I won't see much of that in the next months!

Eye.

2008-10-01T09:36:00.000Z

Rome:
It took me a long time to decide, and actually didn't make it to th shop to buy it. But thanks to Gatwick airport duty free here's the eye. (100 euros cheaper too!)
Amazing.

Packing Up

2008-09-25T10:48:00.000Z

London: Packing up is becoming a nightmare.

After having sold all of my earthly possessions (and perhaps a little more) on gumtree. I have to decide where the hell to send all the rest. Nightmare.

On the funny side: today I decided to call up my future boss. And since ODI gave me a business card where all but his mobile number was penned out, that's what i had to use.
In the excitement on Skypeing a call to Ghana I forgot to say who I was and why I was calling, and just asked for his e-mail promising I would mail him back some explanation.

Tune on! Radio Ghana from London.

2008-09-20T18:34:00.000Z

The story that comes before this blog is long (they all are), and either known or boring, so let's keep it light: From the 15th of october I'll be in Ghana for two years. And my girlfriend (I'm glad to say!) is coming with me, at leat for a while.
I'll be working at the Ministry of Education, Sciences and Sports, while sponsored by the ODI fellowship. If any of you want more information on the fellowship, check out http://www.odi.gov.uk/ , this is also an excellent source of information on the developping world.

This blog will report detailed daily information on the performance of Ghanaian financial markets, with particular attention dedicated to credit derivatives.

Or not! Since I don't really know what that is and it looks like it's all coming down anyway. More likely this will be my blog of this amazing experience.

Stay tuned.