Ghana's Chernobyl Timebomb ... or is it Ghana's own "Fukushima Daiichi"?

It’s been a helluva quarter, these past 3 months.

I have a lot of updates (as usual), and no clear point at which to begin (as usual), since for me and my renergy experiences, every experience sort of magically tends to run into the next, so that they are all melded together in this surreal way.

Let me start with the bullet points so even if I totter off the path, we have some modicum of order, eh?

·         April 2011: retrospective assessment of first briquette-training by Energy Solutions Foundation (my Renewable Energy & Sustainable Development NGO) … for better 2^nd round of trainings and modifications to upcoming briquette-makers.

Had a lot of email and phone discussions with Danny Quaynor (the NGO’s partner in appropriate technology) concerning our next few projects over the next 18 months, before we had one good Sunday working meeting to put down plans, structures, and timetable.

To come : (1) Semi-commercial production of ready-to-use briquettes of a wide range of choices (palmnut, palm-kernel, cow dung, dawadawa, shea-butter, sawdust, etc) for all households just as one would purchase charcoal and just begin using it. We will call it Green Gold Briquettes (ah, sentimental!)

(2) More production and commercial production, distribution and marketing of briquette-making equipments of all sizes and capacities for what will be a briquette-making industry in Ghana … instead of charcoal-production communities and firewood-stocking merchants in the country.

(3) Waste Oils and Vegetable Oils for use on a small scale in motors, engines, and motorized gadgets in place of fossil fuels. The target is waste vegetable oils for use as fuel (like diesel) in generators, processing machines, engines, motor-bikes, cars, etc.

(4) Appropriate, affordable (less than $500) biogas structures and facilities for the low to middle-class Ghanaians who often most lack access to energy, fuel, and power or have very little of their total needs in these met.

Yes!

To achieve over the next 18 months. Want to steal some ideas from here and run with it? PLEASE DO IT! Feel absolutely free to!

These are ideas we need in the country, and I don’t care who does it or who gets the credit.

In fact, if you want the  blueprints of it, call or email me!

 Make me believe you will really do it for the BENEFIT OF THE SUFFERING PEOPLE of THIS COUNTRY, I shall hand them all over to you with glee.

Yes, I will still keep working on them too … it is never enough, and there can never be too many propagators. We need renewable energy alternatives like “pure water” sells in this country. Everywhere, Cheap, and Never Lacking!!

·         May 2011: Call to collaborate with a Ghanaian FashionHouse called MAKSI (www.maksiclothing.com) to increase awareness on need for clean environment and sustainable ways of living. Secondary objective to donate 10% of proceeds made from eco-focused fashion line to ESF’s “Tuori Biogas Facility” Fundraiser (see here for more about this).

Also asked by Creative Storm, Ghana (hint: Dr. Kwesi Owusu) to lead them to our Aburi workshop for coverage of our West African customized briquette-maker and other initiatives for a documentary they were doing for the EFFA (Environmental Film Festival of Accra 2011 June 2011).

Hopefully, we can make a hope-laden and impact-full documentary out of that session one of these days, when I can add the cost of that to my budget (don’t you just which you could do everything in the world by yourself sometimes? J )

In collaboration with MAKSI fashionhouse, was on The One Show with PY Addo and Jocelyn Dumas, in an interview to highlight the eco-fashion campaign and ESF’s role in it. Was able to talk about the briquette-making training session in the Upper West, and other challenges facing the NGO as well as memorable experiences and personal impressions of the larger situation in the country.

Jocelyn Dumas for MAKSI eco-fashion.

Ama Abebrese for MAKSI eco-fashion. Way nicer pics, but I chose bcus you actually see the dumptruck in the background!

My first intern (I so often shy away from interns and volunteers, but I finally made bold to try it out) for the NGO arrived, and got pulled right into the middle of the heat. Miss Akua Akyaa Nkrumah also writes on her blog whenever she has the chance and peace of mind. Internship, as at now (August 2011) is ended, but went very phenomenally. Now to get her to write me that internship report!

·         June 2011: The EFFA (by Creative Storm) begins in the second week of the month.  Akua and I attend one of the forums and the week after, was asked to be part of a panel (still within EFFA celebrations) addressing the issue of waste and plastic waste (disposal, management, culture surrounding, solutions) in Ghana and beyond.

Shared the panel with MAKSI FashionHouse (Nana Darkoah Sekyiamah), Trashy Bags (Stuart Gold), and we were moderated by the astute and creative Dr. Kwesi Owusu (of Creative Storm and EFFA) himself. This last forum went extremely well.

A five minute insert of our Aburi documentary was included in a 12-minute documentary made by Creative Storm for the Film Marathon aspect of the EFFA, and we felt somewhat encouraged by all events and activities that month.

·         July 2011: intern and I hit Cape 3 Points, Takoradi, Cape Coast, Tarkwa on research and fact-finding ecological and environment-focused learning trips. See here for an album of pictures taken on most of these trips.

We commenced working relationships, procured a lot of data, researched about particular situations in specific locations, and got more familiar with more places in our country. To come, Wa, Tuori, Yargpelle, Lawra, Cape Coast again, Benin Songhai Center, and Cape Verde.

Want me to come see something in your community or neighbourhood? Call me up or email me.

If I need to advocate for help and support, or get you in contact with experts and entities in the field, I will.

This month also saw a lot more people interacting with me about the work I do in this NGO; most of them acquaintances I don’t know so well but now do, friends who keep referring me to things and things to me, family members who encourage and support, and strangers who have been following everything since I started and I have no idea of!

Some call me now and then and mention meetings at BarCamps I have presented at, or conferences and forums I have spoken at, or sometimes just have had only my blogposts to read! Keep the encouragement coming! It really helps.

July ended with another BBC phone interview for one of Africa Have Your Say’s sessions, this one on power shortages/outages on the continent, with focus on Kenya’s new/recent power rationing announcements.

I was humbled to be called by BBC team to be the voice for renewable energy in the entire discussion, and was allowed to have the final word on the programme after all the excuses and annual explanations by the political leaders of the energy institutions. I felt like I needed much more time than that though! Where the boxing ring at?! Lemme at them!

Last year, was called by BBC on similar issues and the Energy Ministry of Ghana promised on the live set discussion to PASS THE RENEWABLE ENERGY BILL into law before the year ended, after I had posed a question to them. We still wait for that to happen. See: WTF has the Ministry of Energy Ghana, done for us so far? and The BBC debate & a promise by the Energy Minister of Ghana.

Finally, pressure has been put on me by a friend who is with me on a Ghanaian social network group to do something about the embarrassing elephant in our midst here in Ghana … the e-waste situation of Sodom and Gomorrah (S & G itself being a problem worth of its very own blogpost!).

Since 2008, it has garnered a lot of HIGHLY-CONCERNED and VERY DISTURBING articles, revelations, and campaigns about the high levels of toxins seeping into the ground, the water-tables, the air, the systems of the young men and the animals and cattle of the area.

Nothing impact-full has happened to cause a change in the situation. Instead, it gets worse.

I sometimes think every European and American journalist, journalist ‘freak’ (some of them write about it with glee), and journalist wannabe who wants to get some attention, or cut their teeth on the job in the fastest possible way comes to Ghana and takes pictures and videos, interviews of this situation, and goes back to make it their promotional or hey-look-at-me-I’m –a-genius ace-in-hand or trump card.

And year after year, they keep coming … to find the situation not even the same, but worse!

WTF Ghana.

WTF all these big electronic companies like Philips, Canon, Dell, Sony, and the bloody Japanese, Chinese, Korean ones.

WTF all phone companies, and WTF Environmental Protection Agency, Accra Metropolitan Assemby, and the Government of Ghana!

W …T …F!

I went to see Kojo Oppong Nkrumah last week, and I asked him for help brainstorming what to do about this situation. He has suggested a first joint step, and I hope he will honour it. What? He’s very busy? We all are, darling.

I will go to Otabil … his wonderful bastion of sense, discipline, and morality/religion ICGC, stands right next to the e-waste aisle of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Toxins and depraved lunatics, deformed babies and malfunctioning young men and women, anybody? (Please don’t scream Amen to that.)

Yes, the toxins from these electronic waste heaps lead to brain malfunctions, lead poisoning, nerve problems, sexual reproduction issues, cancer, and mutants like you see on X-men. Okay, maybe not the last, but you get the idea.

Then I’m going to hit up on Wanlov Kubolor, Mantse Aryeequaye, Kwesi Owusu, Bibie Brew, did I mention Otabil already, and all my radical brothers and sisters … and we’re gonna go see the President.

Because something’s gotta give.

P.S.: Have you donated to our fundraiser yet? See here. This is very close to my heart.

We also have a page on Facebook, where you can interact, get more real-time updates, and ask questions. Click here.

The Oil, Mr. President ... leave it in the ground.

Run! The Aliens are here!

                30-40 years from now ... will their lives testify/negate our decision to drill the oil?

Mr. President, the Ministers in government, proponents of oil-drilling in Ghana … leave the oil in the ground.

All the potential 120,000 barrels a day, 800 million barrel-reserves, and the estimated one billion more that you have already feverishly started looking to locate.

Leave it ALL in the ground.

Already, there are fierce debates about whether the local people of Nzema and Takoradi, more specifically, the fishermen, ought to be compensated, as they are asking.

Already, the chief of the Nzema traditional area, has passionately declared that they are hiring a lawyer to aggressively pursue their interest in the case, citing as their reasons - the arrogance of government, the way they have ignored and trampled over them to get to the oil, the non-integration of his people, their youth, and the fishermen in the oil-drilling preparations being held in their waters.

Yes, their waters.

They were, before government was.

Traditional institutions – chiefs, local rulers, etc. existed before new conceptions such as presidencies and governmental veto-power. Traditional laws existed before democratic rule.

Society before government.

It was society that gave birth to the children who grow to become the proponents and representatives of democracy, to stand in government and rule the country. It is society; the people, who raise these children to fill in those shoes.

Must the Chief and his people be listened to, compensated? I say bloody yes!

Theirs is the land and the waters … they were there long before any president, and would have remained so, ignored, unassisted, unknown – if no-one had gone to discover oil there.

Why snatch what is theirs away from them, and use cold, hard law to decide what is now whose, what must be compensated, and what is perfectly alright to take it away from whom with not so much as a “How d’you do?”

I reckon no-one would go snatch their land and waters from them in such a hurry, if it were drowning under waste, filth, high mortality rates, unemployment, high levels of illiteracy, and no sense of individual self-worth.

Oh, wait … that is exactly the state they were in, before the oil was discovered. And that is exactly the state they are in now, because? … Ding!! The oil is the only focus there.

Leave the oil in the ground, I say.

The economic and social risks of its drilling are worse than those we’d face if we had no oil, and kept on with our current pace of economic and social progress.

In the case of the Niger Delta’s horrendous oil spills over the last 50 years, it’s the people of the area who have suffered harshly, not the Nigerian government.

In the case of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (USA), it’s the people of Louisiana and the the Gulf, and others nearby, who have lost much, not the government of America.

In the case of Peru, it’s the uncontacted communities, the unique diversity of the Amazon rainforest, and the people, who have suffered the very very selfish decision of the Peru presidency to open up such a paradise to oil-drillers.

In the case of Ecuador, they demand $350 million a year from those who want to save that last untouched portion of the Amazon, or threaten to open it up to oil-drillers as well. Yet again, it’s the people who will suffer.

It has, and always will, be the case.

Last I checked, the oil is not about making things better for the people. Will they directly BENEFIT? No. Government handles all revenue incomes, and only promises the people a share via better facilities.

Will they get cheaper petrol or crude oil products? No.

The Nzema indigenes at Cape Three Points are more likely to lose their homes, way of life, dignity, self-worth, and whatever semblance of a life they have left.

But what about the middle-income status they are waving about in our faces, you ask? The 10% increase in Ghana’s GDP?

Whaaa’?! (in a vivid British Cockney accent). That all they got to offer?!

Phoooey shyte-sticks and fiddlefuff! Middle-income status and 10% increase in GDP?!

I’ll take GNH anyday over these.

Gross National Happiness a.k.a. Happiness Index. Because at the end of the day, people don’t think about, don’t live on, are not helped – by the GDP of their country.

They are encouraged, inspired, motivated, kept alive – by their happiness index. By how economically, humanely, psychologically, socially WELL/HEALTHY they are. And if they have most of, or all of these, they have better stability, are happier, enjoy more family and social security, feel more appreciates and self-confident, and feel more self-worth, with or without a well-paying career; career, not job.

These are the indices of the GNH, and the most economically productive countries in the world have citizens who score high ratings on these indices, BEFORE they score equally or exponentially higher on their GDP.

What am I saying? I’m telling my addressees not to fool themselves anymore than they have. I’m telling them that it is the GNH of your people that builds up the GDP of your country.

In fact, screw the GDP! It’s all about the GNH, babe.

‘Sides, the crude oil is all about what government wants, and the money that those in government will get into their personal coffers, not about the people in the area, and not about the people of Ghana.

What about the development opportunities which come with it, you ask?

Oh, I can give you plenty that come with non-fossil fuel activities! And I won’t just stop there, but I’ll show you how high up the GNH scale THOSE are, as well!

And guess what? When I finish with that, I’ll tell you how they develop NOT JUST the people and their Happiness Index (GNH), but ALSO grow the economy, the nation, and formulate us into a better country to be proud of!

3 unselfish strikes against your puny greedy 1-sided one for promoting oil-drilling.

We start.

If I were in your shoes … what would I offer the people and the proponents of the oil-drilling, IN PLACE of the estimated revenue and high risk of devastation and civil war?

I’d give them SUSTAINABLE ALTERNATIVES and RENEWABLE ENERGY options:

1.    One thing Ghana has, is good education. When our education is good, it’s really good, high-level, international-standards good. But our scientists, engineers, and inventors come out in the hundreds of thousands each year, and struggle for years to find jobs, and if they are lucky, careers.

I’d give the scientists, engineers, inventors, designers, illiterate artisans and blacksmiths JOB OPPORTUNITIES. They’ll improve on, build, invent technologies that will tap into these, with focus on our local capacity:

a.    Solar energy

b.    Wind Energy

c.    Biogas

d.    Liquid ammonia as fuel and energy

e.    Hydrogen

f.     Nuclear energy

g.    Sea-waves

h.    Plastic waste recycling, or into energy

i.     Weeds as biomass

They would be empowered and inspired, and people encouraged and convinced – to buy these efficient, innovative, cost-cutting gizmos and gadgets they’d produce and sell.

Business people will be encouraged to purchase some of the designs, and produce the gadgets themselves for their own profit.

Better yet, I’d pull up international interests to come buy the designs for themselves at good prices.

Like I said, JOBS and INCOME for the people. Note that self-confidence and happiness is sure to come with these, as is a sense of security and stability. GNH, several indices, individual capacity building, national development!

2.    I’d encourage recycling on an even more massive scale than it is (at least plastic recycling is now big in Ghana), making it easier for plastic AND other recyclable products to be:

a.    Used in manufacturing things locally

b.    Exported profitably to countries that require it (as is now the case)

Encourage more local processing and finishing so we make more profit when they are exported; grow the local manufacturing industries, put more affordable products on the market for the people, bring in export revenue.

The people learn more about processing and refining, more jobs are created, people can afford more items on the market, job security, individual stability. GNH, several indices, individual capacity building, national development!

3.    I would also get our Renewable Energy Policy passed into law promptly, so that we can get more people onto green energy – solar, wind, hydro, etc.

With this, more investors will come into the green energy sector, there will be more service providers and better prices, (micro)finance companies will support individuals who want to go for green energy, and there will be a reasonable Feed-in Tariff rate so that any surplus energy can be sold back to the national outfits at good mutual profit.

With the surplus energy, and the intentional extra that I’d ensure the country produces, I’d have acquired strategic business deals with neighbouring countries, and export the extra green energy to them; or sell them to large internal industries, or export them to foreign countries. And the ‘items’ in question would be:

a.    Solar Energy

b.    Wind energy

c.    Biogas

d.    Briquettes (green coal)

4.    I’d set in motion, several Sustainable initiatives such as:

a.    Rainwater harvesting – where rainwater is diverted via rooftops and ground run-offs into large underground reservoirs for uses such as watering, car-washing, flushing of toilets, etc. It will be encouraged communally or individually, and it will cut water costs.

Also, business-savvy people in the community can purify/filter the water, and sell it at a slight profit.

b.    Green architectural and Contractor services – where people will be made aware of the benefits and cost-cutting effects of designing and building homes and offices, etc which take advantage of natural lighting and natural ventilation, and less artificial lighting and air-conditioning/heating; and architects and builders encouraged to deliver such services and encourage people to actualize them.

I’d put in place certain remunerations to make such actions profitable to both parties.

c.    People making more use of their community businesses, services, markets, etc, so that wealth generated goes right back into their community, and grows it; not go out of the country.

I didn’t add my 3-strike comment at the ends of 3 and 4, so that you can do it yourself! Try it, it’s fun! :)

But it’s likely never going to happen, and we’re gonna go right ahead and drill that oil.

Oh, well! 


Maybe we'll get lucky and end up like the UAE, or Qatar, or Saudi Arabia, and then we'd build large, fantastical cities like Dubai, out of nothing but ocean or desert ... or we'll get grabbed by our balls by the Americans for all the money we owe them (and others), and they'll send General Petraeus in to occupy us and our oil wells, on the excuse that Prez. Mills lost his marbles and saw too many giant black stars overpowering those 50 tiny white ones.

Whatever the case, there'll be drama, and we better have the popcorn ready when the show starts.

“Governments come and go … come and go.

But the people will always, always be here.”