Alex Singleton sent me this link from his Globalisation Institute Blog. In this BBC article by Peter Day, Day says that the Ghanaian economy has shrunk for much of the last twenty years. No it hasn’t. This case study on Ghana by Andrew McKay and Ernest Aryeetey takes a long time to load but has a great deal of info. What I noticed most about the graph Alex cited, the greeny-yellow one on page 11, is how much steadier Ghana’s economy has been in the last twenty years.
That said Peter Day’s article is informative and, rightly, upbeat. It is positive about the good that businesses, both locally owned and foreign, can do in Africa – and that is something we haven’t always seen. This was pure BBC-think though:
You might also say, if you pushed it, that mobile phone access is fast becoming a basic human right, like clean water and access to affordable healthcare, two other things which many Ghanaians do not yet have.
Africa has had a great deal of things being defined as basic human rights, the provision of which was too important to be left to the profit motive. It has not worked well. Since it did not pay people to produce them, those very things have been in the shortest supply.
According to the United Nations Information Service, half of all Africans have never made a phone call (http://www.unis.unvienna.org/unis/pressrels/2002/sgsm8209.html) and that’s including South Africa, which improves the average no end. Less than 1% have ever used the Internet.
I thus am at a loss as to why the BBC thinks that phones and indeed mobile phones are so essential in Africa.
The liberal left media have served Africa very badly I think and Africans generally have had a raw deal.
The image of starving Africans is very misleading. Whenever I see films about sub-sarahan Africans I see a lot of people who look pretty well fed and healthy – much more so than say Indians in rural areas. They are probably mostly eating very fresh produce, plenty of fruit and have a reasonably varied diet. It probably compares well with the diet of the UK underclass.
Africans have had similar problems to the Latin Americans following the ending of Spanish colonialism. The West (the French being the worst) have propped up dictators and done little to promote real democracy.
To the north they have been harassed and persecuted by the chauvinist Arabs and Islamists.
The Africans need roads, they need free borders, they need democracy, and they need the rule of law. None of these are impossible for them to achieve.
This is the kind of juvenile junk that often features on the “flagship” radio broadcast programmme of “the worlds most trusted broadcaster”…….Are Tony Blair and Gordon Brown the Lennon-McCartney of British politics?…………
Who Cares?, How much more of this Labour Love-In are we expected to fund for Gods sake?
Makes me feel like licking Gavin Avisos` head.
How did THIS get past the BBC goodnewsfromiraq firewall???
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4420933.stm
“Call it what you will, it happened and it was a magnificent thing.
Iraqis are feeling better. They are breathing the air of freedom. They read, watch and say what they want.
They travel, work and receive a living wage. They use mobile phones, satellite dishes and the internet, which they did not even know before.
The negative side, which is transient, is that some here are trying to force others to accept their way and even using force to achieve that.
As for terrorism, we are now beginning to unite against it and to defeat it.
I say to you: Wait two or three years and you will be pleasantly surprised.”
“Are Tony Blair and Gordon Brown the Lennon-McCartney of British politics?…………” Bono
Oh hell, please spare us any more of these narcissistic celebrity bottom feeders! I can’t think of anything sicker than that site of Bono wandering around African villages in his $1000 suit and $100 sunglasses with a camera crew filming his every move so that we’d all think “Wow he’s amazing!”
What I find strange is that, along with mobile phones, the BBC hacks did not consider free and easy access to pretentious wine bars a basic human right as well.
Must put those Africans well down the curve then.
If the capitalist creed is “find a need and fill it,” the socialist creed is “invent a basic human right and demand it!”
PS — does everyone know about http://www.worldstock.com? This is an e-commerce site that sells goods from developing nations all over the world. Worldstock cottage industries are currently the largest employers in Afghanistan right now, and most of their workers are poor widows who do handicrafts, rugmaking and sewing out of their homes.
Buy something from worldstock and spread the word to other people — it’ll help the Third World far more in the long run than giving to Oxfam.
OT … another ridiculous Howard picture:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/frontpage/4477901.stm
Day is one of teh only presenter/writers who gives me that nice “old-time feeling” in one SIMPLE SENSE –
I actually accept what he says, whether I agree with it or not, and find it worth of my attention.
Which is generally what the Beeb once was. They simply ditched the wrong virtues on the way to the marketplace.
No excuses for any of us to be single!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/frontpage/4476847.stm
OT
Anyone see have I got news for you?
“Alexander Armstrong: The pope was in the Hitler Youth for a short while
Paul Merton: But he left because they weren’t right wing enough.
Paul Merton(several times): He’s got the eyes of a killer”
Classic BBC ‘comedy’.
Forget about Africa, the Beeb World Service has decided the Middle East and Islamic cultures are it’s new strategic focus…what does this mean? A 24-hour television news service in Arabic, to the tune of a cool £20million of your money each year.
Link is here:
http://news.independent.co.uk/media/story.jsp?story=632884
BBC wants an Arab presence do they?
Is that so that they can screen an Arab version of Jerry Springer , the Opera? or commission an Islamic version of Popetown, called oh, I dunno, Mohammedville? or do they just want to introduce relativism and gay porn to the poor deprived peoples of the middle east?
Oh and by the way, we`ll pick up the tab.
The Arab world already has al jazeera, do they really need more anti Americanism from al beeb?
Pope Panzer’s got “killer eyes”? What would they say about a real killer clergyman like Sheikh Yassin?
Nada.
Christ these lefty “in” media people are such hypocrites.
The Left wouldn’t care if Pope Benedict had loaded Jews on cattle cars sixty years ago if only he supported gay marriage, women priests, and an end to celibacy.