Press release 29 AUGUST 2012 Britain to help Ghana reach final stages of poverty reduction

08/29/2012 | 11:16am US/Eastern

Press release 29 AUGUST 2012 Britain to help Ghana reach final stages of

poverty reduction

Britain will help Ghana to prepare for a future without aid and ensure that

the poorest benefit from the country's record growth, International

Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell has said following his first meeting

with the new President Mahama.

Speaking from Ghana, he said that if the country can maintain its rapid

progress it may no longer need aid, but he warned that a failure to address

inequality between the north and the south would delay Ghana's success in

pulling itself out of poverty.

Andrew Mitchell pledged that aid from Britain will be targeted towards kick

starting growth and development in the poorest areas, helping 50,000

entrepreneurs and businessmen to bring their goods to market.

Andrew Mitchell said: "Ghana is fast becoming a West African success story

and shows that well-targeted aid can help to make a lasting difference.

"Ghana's economy has grown well in recent years, but this growth has

bypassed many of the poorest. Britain will help ensure Ghana can free itself

from poverty for good."

Over the coming years, aid from Britain will boost education for girls,

enable more than 100,000 children who are out of school to receive an

education and help to kick-start economic growth by enabling 50,000 local

producers in the North of the country to access business services to boost

production and bring their products to market.

The UK will also support Ghana's upcoming general election, assisting the

Electoral Commission and local police to ensure that it runs smoothly and

peacefully. This follows Ghana's five previous peaceful elections, including

the last which only had 40,000 votes between the two presidential

candidates.

Ghana is firmly on track to halve the level of poverty by 2015. It has

enjoyed twenty years of economic growth and five free and fair elections,

yet in the north of the country more than two out of every three people

currently live on less than $1.25 dollars a day.

The pledge was made following the launch of the first Millennium Village in

northern Ghana. In a partnership between the UK, the Government of Ghana's

Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), and the Millennium

Villages Project, this new project will improve the health, education and

future chances of up to 30,000 people currently living in abject poverty.

Ghana demonstrates how well-targeted aid from the UK can make a difference

to millions of people's lives. Since 2010 UK aid has distributed more than

four million anti-malarial mosquito nets.

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An Open Letter to Columbia University Regarding the Invitation of Meles

Zenawi

I learned about the invitation of Mr. Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia to “World

Leaders Forum” with a shocking disbelief. As the world's most important

research center and top academic institution, Columbia University has a long

tradition of engaging world leaders on the multifaceted issues facing our

global world.

Established in 2003 by Lee C. Bollinger, the World Leaders Forum has

featured an impressive list of heads of states including Presidents Bill

Clinton, Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Michelle

Bachelet of Chile, Václav Klaus of the Czech Republic, and the Dalai Lama.

Indeed the Forum’s decision to invite an African Head of State was an

awe-inspiring idea considering its stated aim of advancing “lively,

uninhibited dialogue on the large economic, political, and social questions

of our time.” However, I am deeply troubled that Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia,

now in power for two decades, fits that bill.

As rightly stated, dubbed “the cradle of mankind” – Africa’s second most

populous country, characterized by rich but complicated history, it suffices

to say, Ethiopia is making strides in areas such as the economy and

education, albeit overly exaggerated. However, it must be clear that under

Meles Zenawi’s ever tightening grip, Ethiopia has jettisoned the path to

democratic governance and the respect for human rights. With no free press

to speak of and the once vibrant opposition effectively muzzled, Meles

Zenawi has managed to set up a de facto one-party system in Ethiopia.

After the dubious 2005 election, the Ethiopian government slowly but surely

emasculated the country’s fledgling free press, using a draconian press law

that went into effect despite international condemnation and local outcry,

followed by a similarly heavy-handed legislation enfeebling an otherwise

budding civil society. The two combined to take the steam, energy, and

vitality out of an already fragile and fatally fractured pro-democracy

movement.

Recently ranked the second poorest country on earth and the world’s second

most expensive place to gain access to information technology, mainly

broadband, Ethiopia has ways to go to make the kind of progress that can be

hailed as exemplary. Its leader described by the Forum as “seasoned” is an

absolute dictator quite in the mould of Ethiopia's repressive past rather

than a departure from it. Perhaps the only state, claiming “a history of

over 3,000 years”, without a single peaceful transfer of power, Ethiopia’s

long history is haunted by tales of repressive, brutal and oppressive rulers

wedded to a murderous path until beheaded or killed withstanding to

relinquish office.

With 80 million inhabitants, Ethiopia is home to over 80 ethnic groups.

Ethiopia’s unique attributes, such as the national alphabet, time system,

and the calendar, which the Forum alludes to, all came into being at the

expense of egalitarian social systems of oppressed peoples that were

violently subjugated. The incumbent party of Meles Zenawi, the Ethiopian

People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), has introduced an

ostentatious ethnic federal system. However, Ethiopia's federalism is all

but in name and the glaring disparities in access to power and decision

making among the country’s rival ethnic groups resemble apartheid's pecking

order of racial segregation and risk producing the cataclysms that befell

the former Yugoslavia. To ever consolidate its grip on power, Meles Zenawi’s

administration is wantonly sowing the seeds of mistrust and hatred even

among ordinary subjects. Vigorously employing a perilous divide and rule

policy, amid increasingly recurrent ethnic conflicts, the regime is also

promoting religious dogmatism.

It is therefore, an affront and a walk out on the tradition of advancing

dialogue for the Forum to invite a tyrant of unrivaled distinction to speak

at a renowned global university. Accurately, it is only through dialogue

that discourses can be advanced or the leaders can be pressed on those

pertinent issues, but Meles Zenawi has long forsaken reason and dialogue.

Since the thwarting 99.6% “election victory” in May 2010, Meles Zenawi has

reiterated, time and again, his determination to forge ahead with the course

that he has single handedly charted for the country completely disregarding

the chatter about democracy, rule of law and human rights.

When the outcome of the election and the only observer team, the European

Union group’s, report drew a worldwide criticism prompting among others the

White House to issue a press release, Meles Zenawi, the tyrant of Ethiopia

immediately fired back. In Associated Press story dated  May 26, 2010, Anita

Powell, quoted the premier saying, "quite a few people in Washington were

more interested in the outcome than the process…If (the U.S.) feels the

outcome of the elections are such that we cannot continue our relationship,

that's fine and we can move on." Congressman Ed Royce, the former chairman

of African Subcommittee, once said, “Ethiopia is one of the few countries

that jam Voice of America radio service.”

Ethiopia’s judicial system is characterized by a woeful lack of

independence. The over 30,000 Oromo and other prisoners of conscience have

no realistic chance to see the light of day, or get their day in a court of

law. The Chinese and the Asians are engaged in a burgeoning investment

ranging from agriculture to construction all the way to mining--- thereby

displacing subsistence farmers, polluting lakes and rivers and filling the

pockets of corrupt officials. The rise of the Al-Shabab in next door

Somalia, fuelled by Mr. Zenawi's disastrous and ill-conceived military

intervention in 2006 and years of meddling in internal Somali affairs, sends

shivers through the spine of the West. And hence the West is too preoccupied

with the "war on terror" to risk alienating a reliable ally. However the

illusively false and short-sighted sense of stability that Meles promises to

provide is drowning the call for democracy, the rule of law and respect for

human rights.

Meles Zenawi has been invoking the model of Southeast Asian Tigers recently.

The EPRDF leader believes economic development is the quickest route to

political legitimacy. The reason, he argues, is that rapid progress requires

a "developmental state". The thesis is that the public would be amenable to

lack of political liberty if the regime delivers the economic goods. The

reality of the matter is that while a handful of cronies of the regime are

becoming billionaires and ruling party owned businesses dominate the

commanding heights of the economy, the vast majority of the rural poor are

being displaced from their ancestral lands condemned to a miserable life of

destitution, despair and disillusionment.

To make matters worse, Mr. Zenawi has just last week inducted his own wife

to the highest  position of power, an action reminiscent of Kim II Sung of

North Korea, Mubarak of Egypt, Cuba's Castro, Indonesia's Suharto,

Philippines' Marcos and last but not least Saddam of Iraq.

Given the fact that Meles Zenawi is trampling on freedom and democracy in

Ethiopia, the designation of him as someone with a “seasoned governmental

leadership” is tantamount to blessing his utter disregard for human life,

human dignity, justice, liberty and equality.

I therefore call on Columbia University, the Committee on Global Thought,

and the World Leaders Forum to reconsider their invitation to a man drenched

with the blood of the innocent up to his neck. A failure to heed this call

would mean an endorsement for the tyrant and a slap in the face for the

impoverished in Ethiopia who look up to the West and the free world for

deliverance from his 20 year long reign of dictatorship, dashed hopes and

denial of basic freedoms and liberties.

With Kind Regards,

Oromsis Adula

http://opride.com/oromsis/ethiopia/734-open-letter-to-columbia-university.ht

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