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11:09
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Tagoe Blogger
This era requires nothing less than hands-on education and tuition. Anything short of that will obviously make the beneficiaries of such a system not only unemployed, but also unemployable. In Ghana, the
main public Universities produce many graduates every year. According to the
Minister of Employment and Social Welfare, a big fraction out of this number are unemployable. My objective in this post is to evaluate the underlying factors that cause this dilemma and whether a solution can be found anytime soon.
Our public Universities are under-resourced and yet over populated. Lecturer to student ratios are amazingly unbelievable, yet at the end of the day, the graduates are expected to compete with their counterparts globally. I personally believe it is about time, the private sector came to the government's rescue.
Two main organisations that come to mind are the
Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) and
Ashesi University. These schools have devoted their resources to train the Ghanaian population, one at a time. Ashesi University was founded by Patrick Awuah, former Microsoft executive. Every year the University produces talents in the liberal arts, sciences and engineering.
MEST on the other hand, was a dream conceived by Jorn Lyseggen, the CEO of the
Meltwater Group, to train and prepare Ghanaian graduates in the
technology and software fields. The trainees after graduation are supported by the Meltwater Foundation to start their own businesses to compete with similar Internet companies on the global market. The talents and skills exhibited by these trainees will undoubtedly go a long way to create
wealth and employment for Ghana.
I believe, more of such strategies have to be considered if Ghana would want to compete with other advanced nations.
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1:32
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Tagoe Blogger
Following the successes of BarCamp Ghana '08 and BarCamp Ghana '09, regional BarCamp events will be organized in selected regions in Ghana to enable as many people as possible partake in BarCamps before the main national event in December.
We are lining up BarCamp Accra 2010 which will take place on October 2nd, 2010 at the
Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) campus at 20 Aluguntuguntu Street in East Legon, Accra. The theme is be “Creating wealth and employment in a challenging environment”.
You can become a fan today on facebook,
www.facebook.com/BarCampAccraFollow us on Twitter -
twitter.com/BarcampaccraBarCamp Kumasi with the theme - Collaboration: The key for opportunity and development
Become a fan today -
www.facebook.com/pages/Barcamp-Kumasi/144855548877084Follow on twitter:
twitter.com/barcampkumasiWe'll round up with BarCamp Ghana in December
Become a fan today -
www.facebook.com/BarCampGhanaFollow on twitter:
twitter.com/barcampGhanaFor any inquiries, or suggestion get in touch by sending us an e-mail through barcamp@ghanthink.org. Hope to hear from you soon!
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3:07
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Tagoe Blogger
Very soon, Ghanaians will heave a sigh of relief as they will be provided with an opportunity to get closer to companies that offer products and services in the country.
NandiMobile is a technology company that offers channels with its
Gripeline and
Infoline services for businesses in Africa to offer customer support and business information to their customers via mobile.
With the
Gripeline service businesses are now just an SMS away from their customers. Users with mobile phones can complain, comment, give feedback or ask a question and of course obtain a response from the other end.
It is also the company’s objective to make business information and details easily accessible to a majority of the population.
NandiMobile through its Infoline service will offer the Ghanaian public the opportunity to access such information via mobile just by sending a keyword to a short code. By leveraging the high mobile penetration in Africa,
NandiMobile seeks to become a pan-African company that will re-define global customer service experience by using simple and accessible technologies.
NandiMobile is but one of the many companies in the
Meltwater Incubator funded by the
Meltwater Foundation. With a strong and dedicated
management team, the company will create customer service technologies that will enable businesses connect to their customers through their mobile phones and easily engage, inform and manage their customer relationships. Pay the company a visit on their website and watch out for the launch of the services in September!
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3:19
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Tagoe Blogger
Guaranty Trust Bank was announced the best bank in Ghana for the year 2009 as it won awards in seven categories at the
Ghana banking awards ceremony held at the Ghana International Conference Center. GT bank topped the IT and electronic Banking, product innocation and short term loan financing categories.
For me the most exciting category was the Customer Advisory and Customer Care categories in which Guaranty Trust emerged first and first runner-up respectively. I think it sends a message loud enough for other banks in Ghana that take the customer for granted. They should learn from GT bank I suggest. Although they have only 20 outlets in the country, they have provided very interesting technologies that put smiles on the customers face and go a long way to reduce the length of queues in banking halls.
With their SMS banking and other
e-banking services, customers need not travel long distances for their banking transactions. I am yet to understand why other banks even bigger than GT bank have still not implement such technologies. I think these services should be basic, especially in this technological era.
All banks in the country need to understand that channeling resources into ensuring the satisfaction of the customer should be paramount. It is about time the Ghanaian consumer got value for his or her money, no matter how small it is. Congratulations GT bank1!
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15:38
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Tagoe Blogger
I am always excited when people add innovation and spice to the old and traditional ways of doing things, especially in Ghana. I found it even more motivating when I realized the twist was more into the technological area.
Esi Cleland and Adwoa Perbi are the co-founders of Afro-chic. These two self-motivated ladies have put together an online clothing store that displays and sells Afro-centric clothing. I fell in love with them (not the ladies but the clothes!) at first sight. Besides the African beauty the online presents to its customer, you will love them for these five other reason.
AfroChic presents varietyNana, Naa and Kafui present its shoppers a basket that contains over 300 different shapes and sizes of African costumes. And this number keeps on increasing by the day. If you are interested in GTP, ATL, Woodin, DaViva, Batik or Basin fabric, then click on
AfroChic and get one for yourself
The Online shop can be trustedAfroChic delivers purchased items within two working days. The company also offers
refunds just in case you are not happy with the purchase made.
Items in the store are affordableI was amazed to learn from one of the
co-founders that the most expensive piece doesn't cost more than GHc 40.00. This is definitely in the normal Ghanaian's range, whether you are buying it for yourself or as a gift.
AfroChic cares about youYes, they sell clothing but they also believe that the people who make the purchases need to be treated well and with respect. Try giving them a call, a warm welcoming voice will speak to you.
AfroChic gives moreThey don't just make clothing. They make clothing that fits into people's lifestyle, and that will invite compliments. Once they get to know and understand who the customer is, they can make an outfit that will suit the individual.
Give them a try, let me know how it goes. I believe with such additions to our businesses, customers can begin to experience the level of customer service experienced elsewhere.
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6:24
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Tagoe Blogger
On 6th March 2010, Ghana's Independence day, the President of Ghana, H.E John Atta-Mills, reviewed his second Independence Day Anniversary Parade as President. The day being a special one, brought joy and satisfaction to the many school children at the parade who were neatly dressed in their well-ironed school uniforms complemented by speck-less white pair of socks.
For me the highlight of the event came when the President lit the perpetual flame with the assistance of
Master Frank Adu-Poku, WAEC's over-all best student and winner of the prestigious
Augustus Bandele Oyediran award. It was an inspiring moment for me because it counted as the few events that sought to celebrate
brilliance and academic excellence in Ghana. For two years, Ghanaian student have been selected as West Africa's best, there is however very little done to motivate the students who put Ghana forward in such times.
Master Adu-Poku was one of three Ghanaian students who won the
WAEC Excellence award out of 1,520,319 candidates from Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Gambia. The name doesn't ring a bell, or does it?
For a developing country like Ghana that has acknowledged the development of education and science and technology to be its panacea, I am a bit surprised to find out how little it is invested in education as compared to the millions of dollars pumped into football. Each player in the Ghana
Black Stars team has been promised an amount of $20,000 and a national award for their performance in the South African World Cup 2010. This excludes the hundreds of thousands of dollars given them as winning bonuses. These actions have gone on to see Ghana progress in football. I am not totally against these rewards, I do think though, that similar motivational measures should be channeled into education.
Should similar incentives be introduced in academia?It will depend on what we want as a country. Do we want to produce graduates who will deliver as much as their counterparts in other developed nations do? Do we want to see a Ghana that will have citizens that will understand policies and decisions instituted by the government? OR do we want to continue seeing 1,200 students clamped in one lecture hall being taught by old lecturers in our universities? or do we want the future leaders to share rooms with 13 other students in a room only meant for 5?
At the function, the President gave assurance to the youth that the Government was committed to investing in them to build a critical mass to sustain the nation's development agenda and move it to higher heights. This promise is yet to be fully fulfilled. I think it is about time Ghana invested more resources in education. Until we do so, the country will continue to wallow in poverty and ignorance.
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12:30
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Tagoe Blogger
Sani Kaita was dismissed from the Nigeria-Greece game for kicking a Greek defender on the touchline last Thursday 17th June. In the end Nigeria lost by a goal margin to Greece, their second defeat at the South African World Cup. It is reported that Kaita received more than thousand death threats sent to him via e-mail.
The Nigerian FA however clarified the following week by saying the threatening messages were rather messages showing anger and fury.
'In our language, if we say 'we will kill you', it means we are not happy with you. If a German hears 'I will kill you', it means you are dying next week. We really need to clear up this matter' said the team spokesman Idah Peterside.
I can't argue with the spokesman, but I find it somewhat surprising if more than a thousand 'I will kill you' turn out to mean 'I am angry with you'. I believe a good number out of these streams of threats should be for real especially with assassination stories of players like
Columbia's Andrés Escobar. I still think the Nigerian FA should take the issue seriously and not downplay the consequences this might bring to the nation.
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12:29
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Tagoe Blogger
A
crowdsourcing approach is being considered by the Environmental Protection Agency EPA of the US to help mitigate the effects of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by the oil Giant Bharat Petroleum(BP). According to the
BBC, thousands of suggestions have been sent to the EPA website for review by experts.
Crowdsourcing is an approach usually taken by companies or organizations to distribute problem-solving assignments to a group of people, known or unknown.
Some of the ideas shared on the bbc website can be found
here. I think crowdsourcing is an approach governing bodies can use to involve the citizenry and gather brilliant suggestions from people with experience in a particular field. What is even more interesting about this approach is that, such information can be obtained for free;in the case of the BP crowdsourcing approach, the EPA has warned it will not accept information claimed as confidential business information (CBI).
I would love to put forward this suggestion to the local governing bodies in Ghana especially to create a platform that will allow the citizens to share their suggestions especially in national crisis. I am sure with this approach, it wont be long before we find a solution to the
perennial floods in the capital, Accra.
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11:29
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Tagoe Blogger
Invented some 20 years ago, the
vuvuzela sometimes called
lepatata, is one meter long, hated by Christiano Ronaldo and Patrice Evra, but admired by the soccer fans and branded by MTN, the official sponsor of this the South African 2010 World cup. Medical practitioners have even advised fans to exercise caution when in use for fear of a flu spread.
The LOC announced over the weekend that it would ban the use of the vuvuzela should there be enough reason to do so. This tournament had been slated to generate lots of discussions around the galaxy of stars paraded by the participating teams, instead, there are a lot more talks surrounding the noisy musical instrument and the Jabulani ball manufactured by Adidas. For
Fifa, this does not sound encouraging in terms of the hype it wants to generate around the game of football.
As a fan myself I find it annoying sometimes, although I think it is a special object that will make the tournament different from all previous ones. Fifa has asked fans not to blow the vuvuzela during national anthems and public announcements at the stadium, I think this restriction should go a step further to reduce the noise levels. I cant predict accurately, but I think if Fifa and the South African LOC would want to make the South African word cup enjoyable, then something must be done about the swarm!
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18:54
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Tagoe Blogger
I have never hidden my support for the Brazillian national team in international tournaments such as the World Cup. The Samba boys have been my favourites since I begun watching football about two decades ago. However the Ghana black stars have given me good reasons to consider them as a team to reckon with. The Ghana national team put up spectacular performances at the previous world cup event in Germany; winning against power houses such as the US and Czech Republic to the surprise of many.
This time too, Ghana has started its world cup campaign triumphantly, by beating Serbia by a goal to nil, becoming the first African team to win its game after Algeria, South Africa and Nigeria all failed to win. The black stars put the nation in frenzy after Ghana’s most prolific goal scorer, Asamoah Gyan converted a spot kick that swayed the Serbian goalee in the opposite direction. Ghana will meet Australia in its next game, the latter seems to have a psychological advantage over the socceroos, especially given the fact that Tim Cahill will miss that match after he was sent off in their game against Germany.
The Ghana Black Stars’ Serbian coach Milo, has proven to us all that the team is definetely need not be woven round the Midfield Dynamo of Michael Essien, Sulley Muntari and Stephen Appiah. With Chealsea’s Essien out of the tournament and Appiah’s fitness issues, many thought the coach was out of options. He however got himself three points in his basket with youngsters like Asamoah, Dede Ayew, and Prince Boateng . I think it is about time we got fresh names into the team.
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Tagoe Blogger
At a
Ghanabloggers meeting, a member announced that the
Consumer Protection Agency (CPA) intends to protest against poor service quality by telecom operators on the 27th of May between 6am and 12pm this year. It sounded like a very good idea, but upon second thought, I realized
the approach needed to be re-strategized. According to the leaders of this protest, it will cost the telecommunication industry an estimated $6 million.
Six-hour strike not enough!
I think the objective is a laudable one and I must frankly commend the brains behind the organization. Kudos to the CEO of the CPA Mr. Kofi Kapito. I however think switching off my phone for a period of 6 hours with the aim of punishing Telecom Giants like MTN and
Zain is analogous to attacking Goliath with a catapult (without God’s hand!), this would seem like a tickle to companies that earn as much as 46,1 billion rands a year (
More than 6.5 billion) in revenue and earned more than $54 million only from Ghana.
People have failed to understand that once you recharge your mobile credit account, the amount is credited to the network in question, whether you use the time or not. Putting your phone of will make very little difference unless of course one refuses to purchase credits for the rest of his/her life impossibility in this day and age). The end-user who in this case has a very little bargaining power will still resort to the very network he insults for his communication needs in the future.
If I am still not clear think of it this way, as a husband, you refuse to eat your wife’s lunch with the aim of showing her how bitter her food tastes like, just to have a double dose when it time for dinner. The question is what message will your wife get????
Other service providers are bad too!
I am wondering why it is just the telecoms we are demonstrating against. I was hoping we could rather ask for better service from service providers as consumers who pay hard earned cash for 'such services. What about GCB, GIA, ECG, WAEC and all the other companies with 'G' in them? Should they go scot free? Aren’t we creating the impression that it is only the telcos that are providing us with poor service?
Why bite your nose to spite your face?
I am thinking the CPA has chosen a very bad time to do this demonstration. Why? For a few reasons; In June, the over 30,000 graduates that were churned out of our universities and polytechnics will be looking forward to applying for jobs in various companies. The phone is the main point of contact between recruiters and applicants. I doubt these young graduates would want to take that risk especially because we are in recruitment seasons. Most of those advocating for this event, surely have landlines they would use in their offices and thus wouldn’t mind putting off their blackberries or iPhone off for six hours, I wouldn’t advice other people on the other side of life to do the same. You might just end up losing more than what MTN would.
Blame the NCA not the Telecoms!
The
National Communications Authority (NCA) is supposed to oversee the performance levels of these telecoms. Its mission is to “regulate the communications industry by setting and enforcing high standards of competence and performance to enable it to contribute significantly and fairly to the nation's prosperity through the provision of efficient and competitive services.” The question we need to ask ourselves is whether or not the NCA has been able to meet this objective.
In a letter dated June 14, 2007 the
Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) slammed its hammer down on MTN
Nigeria for poor services on its network after several warnings. MTN was then asked to submit to the commission on weekly basis a report of its achievements on quality of service parameters for an initial period of ninety days or until it (MTN) improved service quality. Also in 2008 the NCC again ordered two mobile operators, MTN Nigeria Communications Limited and Celtel Nigeria Limited, to refund about 4.7 billion Naira (about 41 million USD) to subscribers for poor quality of service rendered in the month of January 2008. This is what I call an authority.
In the past, the NCA has sanctioned some operators for poor service and has gone on further to warn them for poor Quality of service (QoS), but these measures haven’t stopped the latter from its acts of poor service delivery. Even the
Vice-President of Ghana (a former Minister of Communication) has gone on further to ask the NCA to attend to such issues with sharper claws.
Instead of demonstrating against the operators, I think we should rather demonstrate against the NCA or whoever is supposed to empower the NCA with the right resources to do their job well.
Lack of uniformity, low publicity
The publicity regarding this event hasn’t been the encouraging. I know dozens of thousands of people who still don’t know anything about this protest.
We will go back to our them anyway!
I am just wondering what people will do after the 6 hours. My guess is, they would put their phones back on and enjoy the poor services of the very operator you protested against!!
In my next post I will attempt to come up with a few suggestion that can be considered by the CPA and all other consumers for that matter.
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14:48
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Tagoe Blogger
Just after about two hours of rains yesterday the city of Accra got flooded, leading to the collapse of bill boards and buildings in the city. This is a yearly situation that is slowing down the progress of Ghana as a country. What is surprising about these issues, is the blame-game carried out by bodies supposed to ensure the implementation of bye-laws in metropolitan areas.
The ordinary citizen blames the AMA, the AMA blames the lands commission, whiles the Lands Commission blames the citizenry for not obeying simple laid out rules and regulations. There is one thing that is clear though, this situation has happen more than once, or twice. It is a has become a yearly ritual Ghanaians have become used to and prepare for around rainy seasons every year.
Frankly, I dont think the world should come to our aid should our capital be consumed one day by uncontrolled floods because this is a problem that has been staring at us in the face for the past decade and even beyond. The ealier a long lasting non-political solution was proposed to this epidemic, the better.
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16:54
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Tagoe Blogger
Down our inner selves they laid their souls and voices
From the nights after our tags were handed to us
Till these days of cash vacations
Mama has grown with my dreams
And pushed our fears over the tick cliffs
Will few pebbles in hand and no jewels to adorn her with
I can only spill back the milk she filled my belly with
Through the dark days when, days were yet to begin
And nights refused to follow its usual route
She, taken a sip of the sour wine, so I wouldn’t have to
Of all the true lovers of God’s plan, Abena I cherish the most
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8:01
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Tagoe Blogger
Tiger Woods, Ashley Cole, John Terry, Bill Clinton, David Letterman, what do all these men have in common? Looks like the question about why men cheat has come up again. This year has seen superstars crumble in the media circles because they were not able to keep their wedding vows. A couple of weeks a ago I tried to answer the question about why men cheat? Sex got them into trouble, others were more fortunate than others. Below are the four most unfortunate men so far in 2010.
John Terry
John Terry, England football captain lost his captainship in the national team after it was discovered he had had an affair with his former team mate Wayne Bridge's girl. As if that was not enough, some companies terminated their sponsorship contracts with him.
Ashley Cole
A fellow team mate at Chelsea FC, Ashley Cole is alleged to have been divorced by his wife Cheryl Cole via SMS not too long ago. The split followed an allegations that the singer's husband, had been unfaithful.
Tiger Woods
The hottest story of infidelity is that of the most successful gulf player of all time, Tiger Woods. At least one Australian politician suggested Tiger be banned from entering Australia. Several companies that had sponsorship deals with Tiger such as Accenture terminated their sponsorship contracts to avoid the worse.
The unfortunate Ghanaian polygamist
Locally in Ghana, a man from Obuasi met his untimely death after he lied to his two wives (a polygamist already!!) to spend some time with his mistress in a hotel. Prior to the meeting the man had been advised by his doctor to stay away from sex because of his heart condition. He however ignored this counsel and went in for fun. This caused him his dear life.
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11:17
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Tagoe Blogger
Image by alles-schlumpf via Flickr
This week I wrote a
post on how Ghana could copy the way US is leveraging on the power of
technology and
social media to reach out more to the citizens. Obama's state of the Union address was made available live to more people and in more ways than any event hosted since the Obama’s Inauguration. More than 1,300,000 people tuned into to the live video feed of the President’s State of the Union Address provided on the
White House blog. After the speech, over 50,000 people stayed on to watch and engage with administration officials during a live Facebook event. Below are three lessons all governments can learn from the US example.
Start a blog, and be sincere about your issues
In this social media era, blogs are a very dependable way of disseminating information of any kind; good and bad. Just as the White House of US has started a blog to discuss happenings in government, I believe other local governments can do similar. The number of
Ghanaians online is not as encouraging as it is supposed to be, but there still is a good number of Ghanaians with Internet access who would love to read reliable information presented by a source such as its own government official.
Catch them online via Facebook, twitter youtube
My research shows that there are
277,600 Ghanaians on facebook, some of these people access these platforms (especially Facebook and Twitter) via mobile. I believe very healthy discussions can be organisd on facebook chats and on twitter. Issues can be addressed online and questions answered by authorities in power.
Listen to its citizens online
Many aggrieved citizens vent their frustrations online by stating it in their facebook statuses, commenting on posts or by writing a post on the issue. There are many different smart
tools the government can use to keep track of what its citizens are "saying" or discussing online. I believe this will help the authorities make better decisions in most cases.
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8:11
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Tagoe Blogger
Tuesday, 12th January 2010 will definitely go down history as one of the most memorable days in the world. Haiti was struck by a 7.0 earthquake caused not only Haiti but the rest of the world as well. Total number of lives lost is yet to be made certain, but I hear the number runs over 50,000 people. All of a sudden the term “Re Cross Haiti” has become one of the most search terms on
Google.
One thing I must commend is the way people have gone out of their ways to deep their hands deep into their pockets to make donations towards relief processes. President
Obama together with all mobile networks started an initiative we all must applaud. This allows mobile users in the US to donate $10 to the Red Cross to help with the disastrous situation in Haiti following a major earthquake. So far a total amount of over $5 million has been realized. All users have to do it to text “HAITI” to 90999.
Other superstars and sportsmen like
Tiger Woods and Haitian-born rap star
Wyclef Jean have also donated their time and money to ensure that the situation in Haiti gets better. Tiger Woods donated an amount of $3 million to Wyclef’s Yele foundation.
Ghana is yet to join the chain of ‘helpers’, on January 15th the
President of Ghana expressed condolence to the president and people of Haiti. I seriously think more can be done although Ghana is a third world nation. The Obama initiative in the US I believe can also be replicated in Ghana. I am sure we can all put In our widow’s might if these options are provided on MTN, Tigo, Zain, Vodafone and Kasapa.
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8:40
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Tagoe Blogger
I am particularly pleased with the way African nations such as Liberia and DR-Congo are seriously frowning on bribery and corruption which has been
Africa's biggest headache.
This week several officials in the
DR-Congo Ministry of Finance and other departments got to their offices to meet letters terminating their employment or forcing them to retire. They were fired on charges of mismanagement and bribery and corruption. Those asked to proceed on leave had refused to do so when their retirement was due. I think the President of DR-Congo must be applauded for taking such a bold step (provided the the allegations are true).
Liberia is the other country I would love to praise for frowning on Corruption in their country. In October last year, the information minister,
Laurence Bropleh, was suspended over claims that he had misappropriated more than US$200,000. I pray these actions of intolerance for corruption will become the number one goal for all African leaders.
There are clear pieces of evidence of corruption and bribery in most Africa institutions, yet the leaders for no apparent reason fail to bring the culprits to book. Quite recently a journalist with Radio Gold filmed the immigration officers at the
Ghana-Togo border extorting moneys equivalent to $4 from the people crossing the border. What happened to the free movement within the ECOWAS sub-region? I would not be surprised if the officials are still at post.
It is an open secret that the police on our roads who are to ensure that all drivers plying our roads have the skills and documentation,do not do so. They rather take moneys from offending drivers and just let them drive away. If Africa is to progress, these corrupt official need to be exposed.
Do African leaders have the guts Kabila has to expose such corrupt officials?
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5:59
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Tagoe Blogger
Today
Geoff Holf will become the first
Quadriplegic to ever successfully cross the Atlantic unassisted. If you still think this feat is easily achievable, let me break down the reality of the key-words “quadriplegic. A quadriplegic is a person who is paralyzed in both arms and legs and has therefore lost the full functionality of these body parts. His goal is to cross the Atlantic and get to the place where he was injured, and to show the beach - and the world - that he can do whatever he sets his mind to. So some days ago he set off on a 2,700 mile trip from Lanzarote in the Canary Islands to the Caribbean.
I was touched and motivated by this amazing story as
Komla Dumor interviewed this history-maker on
bbc. One thing that amazed me the most was that he has no regret whatsoever in his life;when he was asked if he would change anything about his life he said “I wouldn’t change a single thing”. He is actually thankful for every event in his life even for his physical condition. According to him it is that accident that led him to meet his lovely wife (who is now his nurse). Together the lovely couple has a child.
I have decided to share this story with the rest of the world because of the motivational value it carries. Surprisingly he made this dream possible with a
boat called “Impossible dream”.
Impossible dream is a 60ft, purpose-built, wheelchair-accessible catamaran. It is custom-built designed with push-button technology allowing Geoff to navigate and sail the boat using his sailing skills and experience, without relying on his physical ability.
I hope this story will turn out to be a story that will propel us all to achieve our dreams and goals in the year 2010 and beyond
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4:51
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Tagoe Blogger
I would want to share with all readers of my blog where I found my love for blogging. I attended
BarCamp Ghana 08 last year and was very privileged to meet top African bloggers like
David Ajao and Esi Cleland. I was inspired there and then to start my own blog after the event. So for those who still think BarCamp is another conference for people to talk, take a second look.
What then is BarCamp?
BarCamp is simply an ‘unconference’ - an ad-hoc gathering of people with the simple desire to share and learn in an open environment. Unlike a conference, at a BarCamp everyone is both a speaker and a participant. The content is provided by all attendees based on their interests. So anyone can start a session and get others who are interested to discuss issues concerning that topic. And if possible come up with an action plan. The talkers then become doers.
Focused on human capacity building, BarCamp is also a platform for equipping attendees with new and more acceptable values in business, culture and society.
This brilliant event is organized by
GhanaThink and will be hosted at the
Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology MEST located in East Legon, just about 200 meters from the A&C shopping mall. The team for this year’s Camp is Leadership for Our Times: Cultivating Change Makers. This year’s event seeks to focus on allowing the youth to share ideas on how we can contribute positively to the development of the country.
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8:34
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Tagoe Blogger
All too soon another 17th November has caught up with me. It means just one thing, time and tide surely aint waiting for me. In times such as these, I look back into the year that just flew away and ask myself what I could have done better? I am not a strong believer of New Year’s resolutions and all, but I surely would want love to do a few things better in the coming year!!
A better friend
In the past 14,191,200 minutes I haven’t been the best friend. I have more than 700 friends on Facebook (of course this is nothing compared to the 3,000 friends
Ato has!!), yet I feel like I know so little about them. I hope to get closer to each and everyone, home or away. So the next time you see me throw a chat at you to say hi, just know it is in fulfillment of this promise.
A better blogger
I have always wanted to post regularly; at least once a week would have been fine. I have always dreamt of being the
Ghanaian blogger on the first spot on the
Afrigator list. For some reasons, these wishes haven’t materialized. In the coming years I look forward to fulfilling those dreams. Might even come up with a tagoeblogger.com instead of the usual
tagoeblogger.blogspot.com blog up here. I also hope to start a technology blog to discuss tech issues and their benefits to sub-Saharan Africans like us. Who knows, I might turn out to be the Eric Scornfield of Ghana. Keep your fingers crossed.
A better Poet
My poetry skills have undergone some rusting in the past year, I must confess. I haven’t been regular at my favorite OpenAirTheatre programme on Radio Universe. Neither have I been functional at the
Talk party poetry shows at
Nubuke. I created a
poetry blog with Gameli of
Gamelian World to write nothing but poetry, things haven’t been as smooth as we expected. My poems are scattered all over the place. Some are in books; others are on my PC and a lot more on scrap sheets. I think I need to put them all together, and share them with the world. Poetry has a miraculous way of healing wounds that medicine can do nothing about.
A better Entrepreneur
I was fortunate to be a manager at a very young age. I started and sold a small business even while I was a student on campus. I loved that job. Not because of the returns, but because of it was the first time I had created employment for more than four people, the smiles on their faces every morning was my satisfaction. And I am pretty sure they in turn put giggles on other faces too. Too bad it had to end someway somehow. I have a couple of companies in mind; I think I might start one or two in the coming years. Today at
MEST, I start a very long journey that may help me put smiles on more faces; I hope I take the right steps towards this feat.
A better Ghanaian
I feel I haven’t done much for Ghana. I guess it all started when I decided not to waste my time in long winding queues to cast my vote in Presidential elections. I saw it to be a long useless process because in the end, the result was not going to be anything different from what we had experienced all these years. Now I feel I was wrong, even though I am tempted everyday to believe otherwise. I intend to give more to Ghana (as if I have received so much). Many unfortunate people do not have what, I have, this knowledge I intend to share with all those who will stretch out their arms.
PathGhana will be come out stronger and more powerful.
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4:55
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Tagoe Blogger
For a minute imagine you are the only warrior in your African village who can save it from the attacks of mighty rhinos, thunderous elephants and crafty hyenas. Your task is to defend your helpless village by feeding and driving away the animals before they crash and feed on your livestock and garden!! What a challenge?
This is the virtual situation
Leti Game’s newest i-phone game puts you in.
i-warrior is an attractive game that utilizes the i-Phone’s inbuilt accelerometer to control movement and shooting actions. For those not to familiar with the i-phone accelerometer, you can use your finger to slide and tap, this controls movement and shooting. I have played this game you can move and shoot.
What captivates me the most is the African theme, this game is built on as well as the stunning natural effects that come with the rain and thunder. Users have the luxury of playing their own music in the background and they save their village and livestock. The i-warrior is currently on the Apple app store and sells at $2.99.
The icing on the cake is the fact that this wonderful African game has been ported for most j2me midp2.0 devices. The j2me version of this game is called Kijiji. So for those without i-phone can still enjoy it on their Nokia or Sony Ericson mobiles. Simple keys on the phone are used to control this version of the i-phone.
I have played this game a couple of times. I was part of the first stock of testers when the game was still in Beta. As a game addict, I must say I found the game very exciting. i-warrior has been tried by other gamers like
White African who gave his comments on his technology blog.
Gameli Adjaho a fellow software entrepreneur evaluated the i-warrior on
Gamelian World. You can download the game from
here .
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11:53
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Tagoe Blogger
Ghana is fortunate to be the 4th African country to have an
Enablis Network after South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania. Enablis is a Canadian-based organization which concentrates on driving measurable social and economic development by supporting entrepreneurs in small and medium scale enterprises. It was first launched at the G8 meeting in 2002 but was founded formerly in the year 2003.
Members of this rich network of entrepreneurs, get the chance to derive value from the network that is presented to them and are also expected to create value for the other members in any way they can. Members with viable businesses or companies can also benefit from funding possibilities provided by Enablis. Special funding options are made available to qualified members to fill the "financial gap" in their various fields of operation.
The Enablis Ghana office was officially launched at Labone on 16th October 2009 in a short ceremony that saw various dignitaries gracing the occasion . Charles Sirois is the C.E.O of Enablis and Sika Acolatse is the country Director of the Ghana Office. Below is a picture of me and the friendly CEO, Charles Sirois.
What does it mean to local entrepreneurs?
Now an opportunity has been presented to Ghanaian entrepreneurs to network with other business partners thereby increasing the prospects of their businesses. Aside this advantage serious entrepreneurs can apply for funding from the Enablis Financial Corporation (EFC) and expand their businesses. I see this to be an answer to the prayers of various entrepreneurs in the country. In an era when banks keep on turning away individuals with solid business plans because of lack of collateral, this news could not have been a better remedy.
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Tagoe Blogger
Today is Blog Action Day.
Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world's
bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be the largest-ever social change event on the web. One day. One issue. Thousands of voices.
To add my voice on the Climate change issue, I will share with my readers a very interesting opportunity to kill two birds with one stone (ooops! I nearly wrote killing 2 stones with one bird!!). Yourenew is a company that offers you the opportunity to make money and save the world as well.
YouRenew.com is the perfect place for you to recycle or sell used cell phones, mp3 players, digital cameras and graphing calculators. You can also recycle and sell laptops, video game console, external hard drive, video game or DVD. If you can’t find your device in our catalogue or we can’t pay for it, you can always ship it for free and we’ll recycle it safely. So look up your device today, go green and get green! So look up your device today and go green!
Every single day, dozens of consumers buy electronic gadgets, be it i-pod, laptop or a simple portable MP3 player. These products when bought by the users are not recycled once they no longer have any use for them. The need then arises for them to purchase a newer version of the technology they adore so much. And that is where the problem comes from. Too many electronic gadgets ending up in our landfills goes a a long way to create some kind of environmental inconvenience to the world and the people therein.
Yourenew.com is a technological company that is on a mission to make the planet a better place and provide an easy way for technology users to re-sell their electronic goods after they are out-dated. And the beautiful part of it all is that they do so without the hassles of creating accounts, payments of fees and payment of shipping. The company takes care of all those costs, all you need to do is to send them you old electronic gadget and you get paid for it upon receipt. WOW! It is the company's own way of contributing to the climate change dilemma the world is currently facing.
Below is a video detailing the easy process this crusade involves.
Get under your bed, closet, garage and fetch your old electronic gadget, ship it to Yourenew and get paid. Trust me there is no better way to recycle and definitely no easier way to save the world.
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7:39
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Tagoe Blogger
The World woke up on Friday to be greeted with an announcement from the Norwegian Nobel Committee declaring President Barack Obama as the Nobel Peace prize winner. The committee. The first ever Back American President of US was selected out of a total of 205 men and women nominated for the award. And the winner got to know about it the same time as anyone else.
There have been mixed reactions from the international community about this award. Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwean Prime Minister , was tipped as a favorite for the 10 million Swedish crowns prize. My guess is Obama beat him to the prize because he (Obama) has served the world with hope for a better future and within the past 9 months, he has strived for nuclear disarmament in Iran. Aside these achievements, Barack has made attempts to bring peace to between Israel and Palestinian regions, in themiddle East. This is of course a herculian task he hope to achieve, and he knows it himself since he has mentioned time and again that these objectives might not even be realised in his lifetime. The point is, he is awarded for giving it a try.
Last year the former president of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari, was given the Nobel peace prize for a similar efforts. Ahtisaari for more than three decades made efforts on several continents to resolve international conflicts. Critics who still think he was awarded this prestigious prize because he is Black should think again. After all Morgan in real terms is "blacker" than Obama, so if it were a matter of color then I guess the Zimbabean Prime Minister should be the one on December 12th to take home the 1.4 million dollar sum that comes with award and not Obama. He won it because he deserved it and nothing else.
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15:27
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Tagoe Blogger
I do realize I am no authority when questions relating to social issues come up, and that is even the very reason why I have put this question up. I find it bizarre and very difficult to believe when I hear ‘’it is normal for men to cheat”. My defense does not even encompass religious or moral restrictions but rather issues of common sense. I personally think it is disheartening when an individual hears that a partner cheated on her.
I read on yahoo yesterday about how David Letterman, revealed on his late night television program that he had had sexual involvements with women from his program. I personally do admire the courage with which he put his reputation on the line and offered an emotional apology to his dear wife, Regina Lasko. Some however say he was forced to apologize in order to untangle himself from the 2million dollar blackmailing tether that hung round his neck.
The Question is why on earth do men cheat?
Bill Clinton whiles occupying the highest office on earth, cheated on his ambitious wife, Hillary and the Monica Lewinsky scandal is one thing I am sure Bill will never forget. I spoke to a few friends and to be frank most of them seemed to see the cheating experiences on the part of the men as normal happenings that come with life.
It has to do with the ambitious nature man is born with. For man to live life and enjoy it to the fullest, man (male and female) has ingrained in his DNA a nature that is set to explore the world more and more every time. And that is why we have space explorations and human cloning laboratories today. Man is therefore created to be dissatisfied with one condition after a certain period of time. I may be wrong but I guess this is the root of promiscuity among men. After living with a partner for a long while (long while is actually relative, for some it is just a week for others it could be a decade), they get fed up and perhaps decide to explore more of what life has to offer. And these explorations land them into some trouble. This was actually the best explanation to my question so far.
This explanation however led me to a few more questions. Questions like, “if this hypothesis is true then why are males the ones who get fed up?””Is it that fewer women cheat than men, or more men are caught than men?”, “why is it that some men do not cheat at all?”
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Tagoe Blogger
For the first time in the history of the World Cup, an African nation has been given the chance to host the most watched and most prestigious football completion. In the months of June and July next year, all eyes will be on South Africa, most of these eyes will off course expect nothing less than a spectacular event.
In spite of a few shortcomings the host-nation faced a few months ago, it has made lots of progress in terms of its infrastructural requirements. Five out of the ten stadia to be used for the World Cup 2010 next year have been completed. The others are expected to be fully finished by December 2009. A lot more has been done about the country’s security and transportation services to make sure next year’s football fiesta will be memorable. It is also an opportunity to prove to the World that Africa is capable of hosting an event as big as the World Cup.
A few years ago, Africa was given the chance to host the Miss World event in Nigeria and things didn’t go as planned. In the end, heads lives were lost, Africa was insulted and the event had to be moved to London. We all as Africans regret the way things went that year, and that is why next year’s World Cup in South Africa needs to be a top-class event. I am also expecting a more competitive performance from the African teams that will be representing the continent. This will prove the critiques wrong and perhaps give Africa more daring chances in the near future.
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7:25
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Tagoe Blogger
Over the weekend, the chiefs and family members of Ghana’s first President made a case for the return of the body of Osagyefo. The body of Kwame Nkrumah was exhumed in 1992 with a promise to return the body some years later. This promise is yet to be fulfilled. For the three reasons under-listed, I believe Nkrumah should go back home.
1. A request from Kwame Nkrumah himself to be buried in his hometown when he dies. His daughter Samia Nkrumah was also in support of this idea.
2. Dr. Nkrumah was crowned theTufuhene of Nkroful and as a sub-chief of the area it is required by tradition to bury him in his hometown. Until this is done no other Tufuhene can be installed by the people of NkrofulThe return of the remains of Dr. Nkrumah to his homeland will help boost the tourism prospects of the Nkroful Township. The truth of the matter is, there is very little in Nkroful to show that a man as powerful as Dr. Kwame Nkrumah ever lived in Nkroful or was born there.
3. The return of Osagyefo’s remains will lead a great number of tourists to Nkroful for tourism purposes. It is about time the people of Nkroful started benefiting from their son.
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Tagoe Blogger
I was at the Nebuke Foundation for an art exhibition last weekend. Among the many pictures that were, in the gallery it was one particular one that caught my attention.
Nkrumah had been described in 13 different ways. I wanted to share that with you so that you tell me what you think. Are these terms really objective definition or just another hero worship for Kwame Nkrumah?
- The Messiah
- The Saviour
- Fountain of Honor
- Teacher
- Redemeer
- Leader
- The Infallible
- The Ideolgical Mentor
- Show Boy
- Osagyefo
- Asomdwehene
- Oyadieeyie
- Kasapreko
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5:28
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Tagoe Blogger
After Nkrumah liberated Ghana from its colonial rulers, the effect of the achievement rippled throughout the continent, motivating others to fight for their freedom. It is therefore not so surprising to see nations like Nigeria gaining Independence in 1960. Nkrumah however continued to echo his intentions of liberating the whole landmass of Africa else his toil would have been fruitless.
For some reasons beyond his control, he was unable to fulfill the dream of being Africa’s messiah. Years after his death, does Africa want an African Union?
At the AU summit held in Accra to discuss this delicate topic, the consensus was to unify Africa slowly in a manner that would benefit all participating members. This decision did not go down well with Al-Gaddafi who was campaigning for a unified continent within the shortest possible time. I wonder sometimes, which stand Kwame Nkrumah would have taken if he were alive.
From what I have read about Kwame Nkrumah, I gather he was a radical man and was a man who believed in action. When the United Gold Coast Confederation (UGCC) preached “Independence within the shortest possible time” he was adamant and went for the “Independence Now” slogan. From this past experience one can infer that Nkrumah would have actually gone with Al-Quadafi.
On the other hand, Kwame Nkrumah was a man of discerning wisdom, and therefore strategically approached every problem (at least most of them) with caution. Nkrumah’s approach towards establishment of the first medical school in Ghana is evidence of that nature he carried in him. He took the more cautious approach which was not necessarily the fastest at that time. In the end he was glad to see the medical school established after several years. From this past experience, I can say Nkrumah would have approached this puzzling problem with caution and would probably have gone against Al-Quadafi’s approach towards the African single state.
To ‘posthumously’ think like Kwame Nkrumah, is a task no man on earth can ever do. One thing I know for sure, Kwame Nkrumah used different approaches to solve different problems. And that is why he is the man of the Century!
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5:38
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Tagoe Blogger
The 21st September, this year is going to be celebrated by Ghanaians and Africans as a whole as the Founder’s Day. At least in Ghana, this day has been declared by the president of Ghana as a holiday. My Question is how many people on the streets of Accra really know the significance of this day?
The ordinary Ghanaian will hail anyone for another holiday, and would not really care whether it is a day to celebrate past heroes or a day to remember perishing souls, all they care about is, “It is just a holiday”, and with it comes no work, no school, no alarm clocks. The awareness created by the organizing committee has not been the best. Personally I feel like the little school boy in Class 6 knows more about ASEM or Bradez than they even know about their own Osagyefo. In my opinion there are not enough books about his achievements (and failures). The few that are available are either too expensive to be afforded by the average Ghanaian or are in not in the best of shapes.
I believe Ghanaians as a people have not done enough to celebrate the man Kwame Nkrumah. A writer once complained about how he was unable to obtain pictures of Kwame Nkrumah from the nations television network GTV. They did not have a single picture of the man who had been voted “The Man of the Century”. Who is to blame?
Today, I know of some people who can sing all the lyrics in the most popular Ghanaian hip-life songs, and yet cannot even recite a single quote by Kwame Nkrumah. Should we blame the readers who are not reading enough about him, the writers who are not writing enough about him, or maybe we should blame the committee tasked to put together a memorable Founder’s day celebration and go further to ask them what they are doing the tax payers’ $6 million.
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5:37
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Tagoe Blogger
On Sunday 13th September, the
Nubuke Foundation had an art exhibition in its gallery. In the gallery were some photos of Kwame Nkrumah and other pan-africanist who had contributed immensely to the liberation of the African continent. The exhibition was followed by the
Poetry Talk Party; a literary program for poets and lovers of poetry designed to encourage discussions around very interesting topics. This weekend’s topic was "Kwame Nkrumah" (of course!). During the exhibitions and the discussions I learnt three things I never knew about Kwame Nkrumah.
(1) Nkrumah is Immortal.The immortality of Osagyefo was accepted by most people among the audience. Years after his death, his writings and speeches are still alive. A contest on BBC to select the Man of the Century was won by him, even against other stalwarts like Nelson Mandela of South Africa. I learnt over the weekend that at a certain point in our Ghanaian history, most of Nkrumah’s writings were confiscated and destroyed. People even were banned from quoting him in public. These actions notwithstanding, Nkrumah’s works can still be found online, in bookshops and galleries. Nkrumah lives on.
(2) There were more than 1 attempt on his life.Until Sunday, I personally thought there was only one assassination attempt on the life of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, I was dead wrong! The first attempt on his life was made when a bomb was placed by his residence in November 1955. There was also the major Awhaltey plot to assassinate Nkrumah while he was abroad. This plot is reported to have been planned by the opposition. Fortunately for him, a loyal official who had some information regarding the plot reported it to the authorities who then went on to foil this unbelievable attempt. Then was, the infamous Kulungulugu (a border town between Burkina Faso and Ghana) bombing on 1st August 1962. A bomb was placed in a flower supposed to be presented to him by a young girl at a ceremony in Kulungulugu. He escaped the attack and was hospitalized for a few days, but the young girl died.
(3) Nkrumah never saw Fathia again after they separated.When Nkrumah was overthrown in 1966 whiles he was on a mediation mission in Viet Nam. He was prevented from coming back into the country by the coup makers. Nkrumah then went to Guinea where he was made the co-president of Guinea. That marked the end of the love story that existed between his Egyptian wife, Fathia and himself. They only communicated through letters. Nkrumah later died of skin cancer in a Romanian Hospital, Fathia died several years later. Today they both share the same resting place at the
Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum in Accra.
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7:44
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Tagoe Blogger
I can still remember the scene of a fuming sky scraper on national Television. Not too long afterwards a bird-like object flew into the second twin. Crippling it after it had consumed its internals and the breathless therein. On the radio Fiifi Banson’s voice was hoarse but angry at the unforgiving act against humanity. Once again America had attacked it own on a day least expected.
It’s been eight years since this act was committed by the Al-Qaeda. America was attacked but the world suffered the consequences. All others wept with the bereaved and shared in their grief. Days after the horrible event, the effects were more visible sending ripples through the world economy.
Fewer visas were of course issued. No one traveled unless it was a matter of life and death, at least not by air! Prices climbed higher and higher sparing no one it its way. After the wounded had wiped its tears they spat fire. The hunter was haunted from afar. And when all was done and clear, more harm had been created. Problems in Afghanistan and more trouble in Iraq. A useless quest for non-existing machines rumored to possess crippling capabilities. Days will go and others will come but no one will ever forget Nine-Eleven.
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Tagoe Blogger
On Thursday, Ghana woke up to hear about the Founders Day celebration in Ghana and Africa. This day had been on the drawing board since President Mills’ announcement in his speech in January. Ghana now has one more holiday to celebrate. Founder’s day comes as one of the only days Ghana will celebrate in commemoration of a former head of state.
I never had the chance to meet Kwame Nkrumah, and I strongly believe you too did not have that opportunity. I grew up to think Kwame Nkrumah was a semi-god of immense capabilities and that is how come he was able to wrestle independence from his white-skinned rulers who were to be feared in that era. Today, I know a few tales and myths I heard about Kwame Nkrumah were not so true after all.
Little Kwame Nkrumah in his childhood stripped at his mum’s back, is reported to have told his mother, that she had stepped on a fish. When his mother took the pains to bend and check for herself, it was true. She had really stepped on a fish and didn’t even realize it. I found this myth hard to believe at first. Now, I have no difficulty disbelieving it. Kwame was really great but not a god.
There were also some myths about him being a true servant of one of the most powerful gods in Ghana. And as such he was protected from any human attacks. Some believe that is how come he escaped his attempted assignation at the Airport. It was reported that Kwame Nkrumah knew about the bomb that had been planted into the bouquet that was to be presented to him. This myth is a little bit difficult to disprove or substantiate.
One thing I know for sure, Dr, Nkrumah was a great ruler (although he was a little bit over ambitious with his goals). But he was certainly not a god, at least not a god enough to predict his overthrow.
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Tagoe Blogger
After Ghana thrashed Sudan by two goals to nothing, Ghanaian were so ecstatic most of them poured out unto the streets to celebrate another World Cup entry. Hitherto qualification to World Cup events was a very big task for Ghana. It however looks like Ghana has gotten over its biggest fear. The football-loving nation first qualified to the Germany World Cup some three years ago and has once again made history by being the first African Nation to qualify for WOZA 2010 and for that matter Angola 2010.
Thanks the Morinho's favorites and Ghana's midfield dynamos Sulley Muntari and Michael Essien, Ghana can now relax in their seats and watch how the game flows with two matches to go.
I am ecstatic too because once again Ghana can benefit from the unity that encompassed the whole nation. When Ghana made spectacular achievements at the last world cup, the country was magically united. I believe Ghana needs some sip from the football concoction once again.
This time around I pray the Ghana Black Stars will get a step further than they did in their previous appearance. Go Black Stars go!!!
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11:59
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Tagoe Blogger
It is pain when one wants to purchase an item online from a website and just realizes that it is not possible simply because one’s IP is a Ghanaian IP and has been blacklisted together with a few other African nations’ IPs. Even with a credit card in your hand, there is very little you can achieve within the borders of Ghana.
Many foreigners do not want to do business with Ghanaians online as soon as they realize you are from Ghana. I agree with the school of thought that supports this security move to clamp down on 419 scams and other internet fraud activities that are becoming rampant nowadays. We are notorious for such activities, and no one will ever dispute that. Now I hear Sakawa has been taken to the next step; spiritualist and wizards are now play vital part in the Sakawa dealings.
But my question is “If we were blacklisted because of a few bad nuts then why can’t Ghana be white listed because of the good ones?” Over the past few years some very credible IT companies have come up to do unquestionable businesses in the country. I thought the powers that be will release the black listed nations off their shackles because of these achievements in the business arena. I was dead wrong. What level of credibility then must black-listed countries attain before Paypal opens an office in Ghana? Or how many internet fraudsters must be arrested before I can finally order for goods online?
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10:53
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Tagoe Blogger
Joy fm is one of my favorite stations in the country mainly because of the level of professionalism they attach to the broadcasting business. Furthermore Joy Fm has added a few more interesting and creative touches to the competitive radio industry. The Bridal Fair, Easter Soup Kitchen and the Old Skull re-union evidently are enough to support my compliments. I attended the 9th edition of the Old Skull re-union and I was very excited and impressed with the amount of effort that had gone into the organization of a program of this magnitude. I however think a few holes could have been tightly sealed to make it more enjoyable for the greater majority.
I must doff my hat to the organizing team for such a spectacular event at the Ghana International Trade Fair. Many schools were invited to come to the Joy Fm studio to introduce their schools and reminisce some High School happenings. These activities I believe went a long way to create the necessary hype for the much-awaited-for re-union. It was also an avenue for the BIG companies in Ghana to advertise to the energetic crowd of youthful intellect. Coca-Cola, Zain, Hitz fm and Joy fm were ubiquitous.
I however think this show would have passed for an excellent one had a few set-backs been attended to. Before and after the program, there was a “glue” traffic jam in La, and this created some inconvenience to some motorists and passengers who had nothing to do with the re-union. I believe the organizers could in the future suggest to the patrons to park their cars a few miles away from the Trade Fair premise and board buses that should be provided by Joy Fm. This strategy will help resolve the traffic discomforts.
Next is the lack of control at the program. I witnessed a few cases of harassment where some unscrupulous individuals pounced on ladies and attempted one of several acts. I believe it is very possible to make the program enjoyable for everyone. All the red shirts that were to monitor the level of discipline among the attendants had all gathered on the stage watching the stars perform. Whiles many took the law into their own hands and did what they wanted. Is the Trade Fair not under Ghanaian legislation? If so then why should people be allowed to harass others and just walk away with ugly smiling faces? Also is it allowed to walk naked in Ghana? If not, then why it was possible at the Trade Fair and no one seemed to care?
Next is the issue of poor communication at the Fair. I educated well enough to understand that the population of cell phones at the program will cause some connection problems (and I also expect the organizers to know that too). I however also know very well that the communication networks can put up ad-hoc strictures to support communication at the Fair. What is the point in going to an Old Skull re-union just to miss the rare chance of meeting school mates one had not seen in years? Just because one’s network could not support a simple call? I find it somewhat embarrassing when ZAIN is one of the main sponsors and yet experience communication problems at the grounds.
It looks like slowly this program is being abused by certain individuals who lack discipline and moral. Profanity, nudity and Immorality were what I saw for a greater part of the day. I pray the organizers will attend to these pressing issues. Next year will be the 10 edition of this extra-ordinary celebration and I hope the organizing members will go back to the drawing board and make the next Old Skull re-union more enjoyable for everyone.
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7:00
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Tagoe Blogger
A few days ago I had a chat with a German colleague and he asked a question I found to be somewhat weird. In our discussion he spoke about his siblings and what they are into or what they would want to do in future. He then posed a similar question to me and I was somewhat taken aback.
To him it was very natural for an 8 year old kid to know what he/she would want to be in the next two decades. I on the other hand thought it was close to impossible to choose your future before you have added a BSc or a BA to your CV. After thinking through it for some time, I realized his approach should have been the natural situation everywhere. But my world obviously does not permit that.
When I was in Class 6, I remember how my classmates and I stood up one by one and mentioned the professions we would want to undertake in future. Just as expected, most of us came up with the fanciful job tags such as the Lawyers, Doctors, Engineers and Pilots without knowing the first things about those jobs. Today I look back and see myself as a software developer, though I wanted to do some diagnosis for the sick or listen to people’s psychological traumas and come up with suggestions. For my other mates who wanted to end up in the courtrooms as lawyers or in cabins commandeering airplanes are not there, they are either in better places or have been pushed by the system to consider other alternatives.
Can’t we live in a world where kids can choose what or who they would want to be and get access to the guidance they would need to make their dreams come to pass? Why someone’s dreams should be shattered just because she engaged in coition with a male and got pregnant. Why should the high school kid be refused admission into the medical school just because he was one A short of the requirement? In the future can my children choose to be like me even before they lose their milk teeth?
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5:58
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Tagoe Blogger
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Ghana is the third most attractive tourist and investment destination in the West-African region. It has achieved this feat due to the hospitable nature of its citizens, quality of its human resources, the variety of its natural resources that includes waterfalls and sanctuaries, and above all the existence of legal and judicial system. The visitors who come into the country are fascinated by the beauty of the tourist destinations in Ghana. One other cultural aspect that interests Ghana’s foreign visitors is the naming culture of Ghanaians.
Most visitors who come to Ghana are quick to learn about the Ghanaian day naming system. And more of these foreigners beg for a Ghanaian day name. They are named by the locals depending on their sex and the day they were born. Some even go on further to formalize their Ghanaian names. I have come across names like Jens Nana Kofi Tang (from Singapore), Kofi Wayan, and Kajsa EwuraAma Adu (a Swedish)
Realizing this keen interest in Ghanaian names, the PathGhana team led by Christian built a Facebook application to help other foreigners (inside or outside Ghana) to obtain their Ghanaian name easily. The application follows the system of naming in our local settings. A child’s name is known immediately is born. Depending on his/her sex, a child can be called Kweku or Akua if born on a Wednesday. It is believed that these names come with certain traits and temperaments. A Wednesday born male is called Kweku and they are usually seen as mischievous, vicarious, vigilant and daring.
The application seeks to present this part of our culture to the many lovers of Ghana and give them another reason to feel at home and be a part of the BIG family in Ghana. To get your Ghanaian name click on the link below.
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Tagoe Blogger
a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SnwXnCCtieI/AAAAAAAAAIM/nAb7LZHFmVw/s1600-h/FreedomOfReligionL.jpg"img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 154px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 200px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367190815249369570" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SnwXnCCtieI/AAAAAAAAAIM/nAb7LZHFmVw/s200/FreedomOfReligionL.jpg" //a span xmlns=""span style="font-size:12;"Freedom of Religion is a part of most constitutional documents which permits the practice, preaching and propagation of any religion as a fundamental right. I must say however that the abuse of this human right has caused mankind a lot more than we can bear.br //spanbr /divbr /p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"span style="font-size:12;"In Nigeria, a couple of young armed citizens embarked on an uprising killing hundreds and wounding thousands in the process. They claimed the nation was lost and corrupted by Western education. According to them true Muslims were the uneducated. Once again in the name of religion many souls perished and properties were lost.br //span/pbr /p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"span style="font-size:12;"In Sudan a lady is currently being tried by the supreme court for indecent dressing and if found guilty faces up to 40 strokes of lashes from the long arms of their Islamic laws. Many have been deceived by some religious extremists to believe in some concepts that are set on pillars outside human comfort. I believe ignorance plays a part in most of these instances./span/pp style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"span style="font-size:12;"Else how could Jim Jones of British Guiana tell more than 900 of his followers to drink poison and die, with the belief of being saved? How could David Koresh persuade 20 of his followers, lock themselves up in a building, and set it on fire in Texas? In Uganda, the Movement for the Restoration of Commandments had about 500 of its congregants agree to commit mass suicide in the church building, which was later set ablaze by the propagators of this insane crusade. Many young Muslims are trained by Al-Qaeda agents to blow themselves up and die in the name of religion.br //span/pbr /br /a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Snwecr755XI/AAAAAAAAAIU/UAD7wJRfQiI/s1600-h/photo_verybig_102003.jpg"img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 250px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367198334097941874" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Snwecr755XI/AAAAAAAAAIU/UAD7wJRfQiI/s320/photo_verybig_102003.jpg" //abr /p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"span style="font-size:12;"I believe religion was invented so that man will be inclined to a higher being for salvation , comfort, protection or wealth. Some believe in Karma, Allah, God, personalities, Satan etc. I believe it is very healthy that most constitutions permit people to put their faith into whatever elements they want. But when these beliefs go on further to cause the loss of lives and property then I believe there has been an abuse of this fundamental human right. Don't be a victim because whatever you believe in needs you alive to give it more fame!br //span/p/div/spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8924357768583608269-9218469745384709754?l=tagoeblogger.blogspot.com' alt='' //div
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Tagoe Blogger
a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SmmCIedwEJI/AAAAAAAAAHs/CpnO_WE7aU8/s1600-h/charles.png"img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 190px; height: 90px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SmmCIedwEJI/AAAAAAAAAHs/CpnO_WE7aU8/s200/charles.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5361959913489698962" //adiv style="text-align: justify;"Starting from the July this year a href="http://pathghana.com/"PathGhana/a Friday is expected to be observed by all Ghana Tourism lovers in and outside Ghana. This is a campaign initiated by a team of software developers from the a href="http://meltwater.org/"Meltwater Entrepreneurship School of Technology (MEST/aa href="http://meltwater.org/")/a who decided to contribute their widow’s might to the 3 year a href="http://www.modernghana.com/news/223863/1/ghana-launches-tourism-strategy.html"Tourism Marketing Campaign/a launched by the government of Ghana in. This government campaign seeks to be a marketing strategy, that will span from 2009 to 2012 and is anchored on the theme, “Ghana - Culture, warmth and much more”./divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"a href="http://pathghana.com/"PathGhana /aFriday is intended to be a campaign that will help create awareness on social media platforms of the tourism potentials in Ghana. It will be marked on the last Friday of every month starting from July and all lovers of Tourism are encouraged to participate in this hype. It will involve putting a link of a favor ite tourism webpage on one’s social network profile. For instance if one say an interesting page on the PathGhana website he or she can display in on his/her profile on the last Friday of the month as a way of sending a me ssage to the outside world. Individuals can go farther to use the PathGhana banner as their profile picture on all PathGhana Fridays every month./divdiv style="text-align: left;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"The a href="http://pathghana.com/"MEST/a PathGhana team has put up a very exciting website to sell Ghana and its tourism potentials to all interested parties within and outside Ghana. It has attracted so much excitement since the launch of the PathGhana website which currentlly ranks amongst the top a href="http://alexa.com/siteinfo/pathghana.com"100 in Ghana/a by a href="http://alexa.com/siteinfo/pathghana.com"Alexa/a. It hopes to get more people both locals and foreigners interested in Ghanaian Tourism./divdiv style="text-align: left;"br //divimg src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SmmE0r9M0oI/AAAAAAAAAH0/_MdpRnmwDNg/s200/Ghana+123.jpg" style="float:left; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 200px;" border="4" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5361962872048767618" /div style="text-align: justify;"Ghana will celebrate Panafest and Emancipation day in July this year. It then expected to be the first African country to celebrate the a href="http://www.unwto.org/wtd/index.php"United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)/a Tourism Day under the theme “Tourism Celebrating Diversification”. The MEST team hope more and more people will begin to show interest in Ghanaian Tourism. Tourism has shown to be an industry that has shown lots of potential if given the necessary push. Currently Ghana is the third best tourist destination behind Nigeria and Senegal. Over 600,000 people came to Ghana last year for tourism purposes and more are expected this year, especially after a href="http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/15/obama-ghana-tourism-lifestyle-travel-ghana.html"President Obama had visited the Cape Coast Castle/a with his family and followed up with positive comments about their 2-day visit in the country./divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8924357768583608269-353994924963537282?l=tagoeblogger.blogspot.com' alt='' //div
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Tagoe Blogger
divspan class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap; font-family:-webkit-monospace;font-size:13px;"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SmRhT7j9u5I/AAAAAAAAAGs/japUrJK-saA/s1600-h/mixed.png"img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 248px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SmRhT7j9u5I/AAAAAAAAAGs/japUrJK-saA/s400/mixed.png" border="3" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360516451511679890" //adivspan class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); "ispan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"p align="center" style="text-align: center;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"I/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;" see the word “lunatic” and “mad man” to be somewhat politically incorrect. For the purpose of this post I will therefore avoid the use of these terms and rather fall on the term senior citizens which would refer to the men and women who walk on our streets every day without homes and have lost control of some parts of their mental faculties./span/p/span/i/span/divspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;" /spana onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SmSgBUJd4xI/AAAAAAAAAHc/cD4NzJ6t-9U/s1600-h/Mad+men+in+Ghana14.JPG"img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:left;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 360px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SmSgBUJd4xI/AAAAAAAAAHc/cD4NzJ6t-9U/s320/Mad+men+in+Ghana14.JPG" border="5" alt="Mad men in Gh" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360585400926462738" //a div style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#6600CC;"p align="justify"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFF00;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"The Accra Psychiatric Hospital currently is facing a major problem of returning recovered in-mated to their homes. In Ghana mental diseases in whichever form is seen as a shameful ailment and thus not too many family members would even want to associate themselves directly or indirectly with such affected individuals. What usually happens is that people with some sort of mental illness are taken to one of the only three psychiatric hospitals in Ghana and are abandoned at the hospital. Wrong addresses and contact numbers are provided to the hospital administration. In this case no cquaintance can be contacted when the need arises.br /br /span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:48px;" /span/span/span/p/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SmSkHL7znlI/AAAAAAAAAHk/ThuEs4H6MoI/s1600-h/Mad+men+in+Ghana12.JPG"img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SmSkHL7znlI/AAAAAAAAAHk/ThuEs4H6MoI/s200/Mad+men+in+Ghana12.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360589899847409234" //ap align="justify"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFF00;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"I always wonder who takes care of our senior citizens who walk in town obviously unconscious of their environment. I have seen and heard lots of beauty queens and NGO’s pledge their support for the homeless, the motherless, the poor, the un-educated, the disabled, I am however yet to come across one who will pledge an unconditional support to see to it that our senior citizens get access to a happy and a more hygienic lifestyle. I took my camera one day and decided to capture a few and trust me it wasnt too difficult to come by a few. This is a part of Ghana that nobody seems to cae so much about. Yet it is an image that is slowly affecting the beauty of the country./span/span/pp align="justify"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFF00;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"br /One surprising event is that we hardly see them at ‘post’ whenever a special dignitary comes into the country. I hear they are forcefully captured and hidden from the sight of the visiting dignitaries. Shouldn’t this be a prompt for society to do something about them once and for all? No matter their current situations they are a part of us and need to be attended to in one way or another. The question is who will be the first to bell the cat?/span/span/p/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFF00;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;" /span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FFFF00;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;" /span/span/divtable tbody trtda onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SmR_IKVLYqI/AAAAAAAAAHE/cAL49dTHC6I/s1600-h/Mad+men+in+Ghana9.JPG"img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 100px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SmR_IKVLYqI/AAAAAAAAAHE/cAL49dTHC6I/s400/Mad+men+in+Ghana9.JPG" border="3" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360549234666594978" //a /tdtda onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SmSEOsudKLI/AAAAAAAAAHM/tpOHWJkLrRM/s1600-h/DSC01326.JPG" style="text-decoration: none;"img style="text-align: left;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width:150 px; height: 100px; " src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SmSEOsudKLI/AAAAAAAAAHM/tpOHWJkLrRM/s400/DSC01326.JPG" border="3" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360554844536776882" //a /td /trbr /trtda onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SmR-qb2o5sI/AAAAAAAAAG8/nUKrpYaI1qA/s1600-h/Mad+men+in+Ghana6.JPG"img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 100px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SmR-qb2o5sI/AAAAAAAAAG8/nUKrpYaI1qA/s400/Mad+men+in+Ghana6.JPG" border="3" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360548723974268610" //a/tdtda onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SmR3vk2rxqI/AAAAAAAAAG0/e1QRfl7Wq6A/s1600-h/Mad+men+in+Ghana19.JPG"img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 100px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SmR3vk2rxqI/AAAAAAAAAG0/e1QRfl7Wq6A/s200/Mad+men+in+Ghana19.JPG" border="3" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360541115708327586" / /a /td/tr/tbody/table/span/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8924357768583608269-767272281333601627?l=tagoeblogger.blogspot.com' alt='' //div
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Tagoe Blogger
img src="http://pictures.123pimpin.com/signature-5/2009/april/30-04-09/763206392190411300409.gif" /divbr /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sl9kMPy0WYI/AAAAAAAAAGM/Fqls2Ws4S_A/s1600-h/Obama.jpg"img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 200px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sl9kMPy0WYI/AAAAAAAAAGM/Fqls2Ws4S_A/s400/Obama.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5359112243155065218" //abr /br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"Days after the first family left the country fort the US. Bloggers are still talking about him, business men and women are still using the Obama brand to sell their wares and omany more are talking about him. I just took a ride through town and found out some traces of Obama still in the country. I am pretty sure it will take months before some people will get over his visit to Ghana/divdivbr /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sl9gx2qQ-QI/AAAAAAAAAGE/KpWhj5GviWQ/s1600-h/Obama+in+Ghana3.JPG"img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sl9gx2qQ-QI/AAAAAAAAAGE/KpWhj5GviWQ/s400/Obama+in+Ghana3.JPG" border="6" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5359108491196823810" //a bAn art I found on the Osu Oxford Street./bbr /divbr /br //divdivbr /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sl9kvD8LOuI/AAAAAAAAAGU/RdFfl7htcNU/s1600-h/Obama+in+Ghana6.JPG"img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sl9kvD8LOuI/AAAAAAAAAGU/RdFfl7htcNU/s400/Obama+in+Ghana6.JPG" border="6" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5359112841268509410" //a b /bb One of the many Obama signs I found in Accrabr //bbr //divdivbr /br //divdivdivbr /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sl9lSpaIYBI/AAAAAAAAAGc/rny6HB-VY2o/s1600-h/Obama+in+Ghana11.JPG"img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sl9lSpaIYBI/AAAAAAAAAGc/rny6HB-VY2o/s400/Obama+in+Ghana11.JPG" border="6" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5359113452621684754" //a bAtta Mills partners Obama in a historic Partnership for change/b/div/divbr /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sl9oFKXwhOI/AAAAAAAAAGk/89H3a3NXI_A/s1600-h/Obama+in+Ghana12.JPG"/a/divdivbr //divdiva onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sl9oFKXwhOI/AAAAAAAAAGk/89H3a3NXI_A/s1600-h/Obama+in+Ghana12.JPG" style="text-decoration: none;"img style="text-align: left;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 200px; " src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sl9oFKXwhOI/AAAAAAAAAGk/89H3a3NXI_A/s400/Obama+in+Ghana12.JPG" border="6" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5359116519486817506" //abObama seems to emerge from the tree in this one!!!/b/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8924357768583608269-2804163574858111821?l=tagoeblogger.blogspot.com' alt='' //div
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Tagoe Blogger
img src="http://pictures.123pimpin.com/signature-5/2009/april/30-04-09/763206392190411300409.gif" /br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SlHY0KRwj6I/AAAAAAAAAFw/IWaIXyi8Qws/s1600-h/2237034946_d200b789f1_m.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 267px; height: 270px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SlHY0KRwj6I/AAAAAAAAAFw/IWaIXyi8Qws/s400/2237034946_d200b789f1_m.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5355299822543867810" border="0" //aThe first Black American president of the United States will pay a visit to Ghana on the 10th and 11th July this year. Along with him will be his lovely wife Michelle, Air Force One and an entourage of high-profiles members of his government. Many Ghanaian see his visit to be a breath of hope unto the Ghanaian economic situation. Not too surprising Accra and other vital parts of it are getting new looks to show Obama how environmentally friendly we are as a nation.br /p align="justify"br /object width="385" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/y9b9XZOERJUamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/y9b9XZOERJUamp;hl=enamp;fs=1amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="465" height="344"/embed/objectIt is reported that Obama will visit Cape Coast with his wife, in this light the Mfantseman Municipal Assembly embarked on a massive clean-up exercise a few days ago. This action according to the Chief Executive was done to give the district a positive image. Streets of Accra are being white washed and gutters that have been choked for months are being attended to. These measures are similar to the measures taken by previous government when the Queen of England came to Ghana. Nor are they any different from the ones taken when Bill Clinton visited Ghana in President Rawlings’ regime. Days before Clinton visited Ghana; lunatics were taken off the streets of Accra and hidden away form public view, only to return to their various ‘posts’ after Clinton’s departure. The . Now no one seems to care about their welfare any longer, not the government, not the churches, or the NGO's .Kaneshie overhead which broke down weeks ago got fixed a few days to Obama's visit. Pathches on the roads leading to and from the Airport area have been filled and maintiained. All in the bid to impress the incoming messiah. My question is “Do we always have to wait for the BIG names to come before we clean up?”br /br /I am pretty sure if Ghanaians had a cleaning habit the floods that destroyed lives and property in Kaneshie could have been avoided. We do not need an Obama or a Clinton in the country before Accra is put into an attractive shape.br /br /My other concern is the hypocrisy involved in these actions. These important guests will arrive in Ghana for a day or two in within these days trust me there will be no black-outs, no filthy gutters and no lunatics in sight. Is this the real Accra or for that matter the a href="http://pathghana.com/"real Ghana/a? I believe if we want to portray Accra as a clean city, it doesn’t need to be a nine days’ wonder. It needs to be a part of our system. The AMA or whichever body is in charge should see to the a href="http://atokd.com/blogContent.aspx?blogID=184"maintenance of the city/a. The right thing must be done at the right time in the right way!/pdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8924357768583608269-7012294379404874665?l=tagoeblogger.blogspot.com' alt='' //div
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Tagoe Blogger
img src="http://pictures.123pimpin.com/signature-5/2009/april/30-04-09/763206392190411300409.gif" /
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mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} /style ![endif]-- p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"The World woke up on Friday morning to be greeted with the sudden demise of the King of Pop, Michael span style="font-style: italic;"Wako/spani style="font-style: italic;" Jacko/i Jackson. He undoubtedly left a mark in the music Industry he served. I can still hear some of his hits songs playing in my memory. I posed a question to a few friends on Facebook on the day of his death and the answers were somewhat pathetic. I asked if anyone knew of his financial legacy or how much he was worth at the time of his last breathe. The responses showed that Michael was in some kind of debt or should I say debts!/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"Most black skins in the US who are lucky to be counted among the rich at one point in their lifetime, span style="" /spangot their wealth by either throwing a ball, entertaining people with the microphone or simply because they could strength their muscles more than anyone else could. Think of Iron Mike Tyson, Tiger Woods, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Busta Rhymes, Whitney Houston, Master P, Sean P. Diddy Combs and the list goes on and on. I am a bit fascinated by how these persons who once were millionaires could be reduced into a stack of debts. /p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"The one-time World Heavyweight champ of the world was even forced to file for lawsuit. This is a sportsman who won millions of dollars from punching the jaws of giants- a job he really enjoyed doing. Tyson spent so much money on lawsuits he was left with almost nothing. Prior to that misfortune, he engaged in gambling and led a lifestyle that brought him more debt.
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name="Book Title" w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="37" name="Bibliography" w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" qformat="true" name="TOC Heading" /w:LatentStyles /xml![endif]--style !-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:1; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:0 0 0 0 0 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0cm; margin-right:0cm; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} .MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; margin-bottom:10.0pt; line-height:115%;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} -- /style!--[if gte mso 10] style /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} /style ![endif]-- p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"Whitney Houston had such a sensational voice. I watched her movie, the bodyguard and thought she was a great actress too. She also spent most of her earnings on drugs till she had nothing left in her purse. She is currently in rehabilitation, and everyone is waiting to see if she can make a comeback to the music arena. /p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"Now we have Jackson departing with huge debt to be settled. Some reports say he owed over USD 270million. Michael had planned a '50-cities' concert that could have helped him reduce his debt if not eliminate all debt completely. Many doubt his condition would have allowed him to execute that over-ambitious plan. Michael also had his fair share of lawsuits. Rumors had it that he was a pedophile and spent a great part of his fortune to fight that part of his life./pp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"
br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SkTkCtHwHtI/AAAAAAAAAFo/sC2wZ6SKpV8/s1600-h/images4.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 114px; height: 170px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SkTkCtHwHtI/AAAAAAAAAFo/sC2wZ6SKpV8/s400/images4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5351652992345972434" border="0" //aIs money management the issue with such superstars? Or is it just a natural lifestyle that comes with the black skin?/p
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img src="http://pictures.123pimpin.com/signature-5/2009/april/30-04-09/763206392190411300409.gif" /divp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"/pdiv style="text-align: center;"br //divimg src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SibDX0AmsHI/AAAAAAAAAE4/S5dOM4OiCVM/s400/images+(4).jpg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 146px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343172821787258994" /p/pp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"The brain is undoubtedly the most powerful organ as far as the human anatomy is concerned. It has the ability to process data at a speed of 10 quadrillion (10supspan style="line-height: 115%; "span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"16/span/span/supspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;")/span bits per second, a feat only achieved by the fasted super-computer in the World.br //pp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"In 1997, Gary Kasparov is known to be the World’s greatest chess player to have ever lived. Unfortunately (or fortunately for his countrymen) he is now into active politics in Russia. He played 6 chess games with a specially made IBM computer which was put together by a href="http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/05/murraycampbell_qa"Murray Campbell/a purposely for this occasion. Against the computer. Kasparov won one game drew three and lost two to the supercomputer which was manipulated by five other programmers in the background . Although he lost I believe this feat is one of the greatest achievements by the human brain considering the technology behind the supercomputer's functions./pp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SibNy33yKYI/AAAAAAAAAFA/g5dqb8dygbs/s400/images+(5).jpg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 101px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343184281796749698" //p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"I majored in Psychology and therefore had the chance to appreciate the physiology and morphology of the human brain. I believe mankind has gotten this far primarily because of this organ of great potential. A mass of neurons and millions of nerve endings sending and receiving messages via electricity just so that you can make sense out of this very sentence you are reading! I don’t know about you but to me it is a mystery. /p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"I once watched a documentary on National Geographic in which a group of a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/83184/Buddhism/68735/Vajrayana-Schools-in-Tibet"Bhuddists/a voluntarily raised their body temperatures and with this were able used their bodies to dry towels which had been dipped into water. I found this to very surprising and nearly disbelieved it. I have read around the subject and have realised that the mind is in fact more powerful than we even think. Psychokinesis and Telekinesis are mysteries that portay how powerful the human mind is. Maybe as humans we tend to undermind how powerful we are in our lives sequencially we limit our ability and strength./pp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"Not too long ago I made a presentation with a fellow on a href="http://christinekane.com/blog/how-to-make-a-vision-board/"vision boards/a and the law of attraction. It was then that it all came to me. The power of attraction is known to be the secret behind great people’s success (I am sure the thought were complimented by positive action).The a href="http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/How_to_Use_a_Vision_Board_to_Activate_the_Law_of_Attraction.html"law of attraction/a, states that we as humans attract into our lives anything that we give attention to, regardless whether it be positive or negative. It is therefore in our own interest to pay more attention to the positive parts of our lives like the mansion or bike we have been hoping for throughout our whole lives. If one can visualize it in the mind, then it can be achieved with the body in reality. /p/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8924357768583608269-2354299159755790877?l=tagoeblogger.blogspot.com'//div
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div style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"img src="http://pictures.123pimpin.com/signature-5/2009/april/30-04-09/763206392190411300409.gif" /br //span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"br //span/divdivspan class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap; "a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sh6rgr-qkhI/AAAAAAAAAEg/3zl6zDZ2fyA/s1600-h/images+(20).jpg"img style="text-align: justify;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width: 137px; height: 132px; " src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sh6rgr-qkhI/AAAAAAAAAEg/3zl6zDZ2fyA/s400/images+(20).jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5340894786157711890" //ap class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"The Internet is slowly but surely becoming the new God of today’s era. I must be quick to stress for the sake of world peace that God is ultimately the most powerful and undoubtedly most caring. The Internet has in the past decade fulfilled the needs of mankind -arguably this could qualify it as the new God./span/span/pp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"For starters, one should just try and write the word ‘/span/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"internet/span/span/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"’ with a small ‘/span/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"i/span/span/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"’ in MS Word, this would be underlined as an error by the editor. Meaning the Internet has gained enough prominence and respect, therefore a small ‘i’ is not enough to qualify it. Just like the 'god' and 'God' mistake./span/span/pp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 51, 204);"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"Light unto our path/span/span/span/span/span/pp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"The main virtue that amazes me the most is the amount of resources available on the Internet. This has made it a light unto our path, showing the ignorant where to step in their darkest hour. I was simply amazed /span/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"when I got search results for “How to commit suicide” on /span/spanua href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=amp;search_query=how+to+commit+suicideamp;aq=f"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"YouTube./span/span/a/uspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"What even makes it more surprising was the fact that there were more than one successful result. I could count over a dozen. I read an /span/spana href="http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/148722.php"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"article/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;" on the Internet which even mentioned how a man performed his midwifery duties by successfully helping his wife to deliver a baby at home!. /span/spana href="http://www.google.com.gh/"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"Google/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;" and now /span/spana href="http://www.wolframalpha.com/"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"Wofram Alpha/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;" are like oracles we consult to get answers to our questions. Today mankind is just a click away from getting information. Please dont try this at home!!!!!!/span/span/span/pp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"object width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pxTq681RAjMamp;hl=enamp;fs=1"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pxTq681RAjMamp;hl=enamp;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;" /span/span/pp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 51, 204);"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"The Internet as a Fortress/span/span/span/span/span/pdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"I have half of my documents stored somewhere on the Internet. A few are in my mail others are secured on servers outside Ghana. Every time I access them, I find them just in the same state as I left them in my last visit. The Internet protects my property just as God has always done. There are many other places where one could keep his/her pictures and /span/spana href="http://www.slideshare.net/"span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"PowerPoint/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;" presentation slides for future references. Collaborative tools like/span/spana href="http://www.limewire.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;" /span/span/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"rapidshare/span/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;" and limewire allow users to share and distribute interesting stuff online be it a video, /span/spana href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-sites-to-add-amazing-effects-to-your-photos/"span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"picture/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;", or pdf file. These documents are protected with passwords so I know for sure I am the only one with access to such documents./span/span/span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"br //span/divimg src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sh6zIQNgbuI/AAAAAAAAAEo/U1KX8c_WXLc/s400/images+(18).jpg" style="text-align: justify;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width: 120px; height: 120px; " border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5340903162479931106" /div style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"br //span/span/divp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 51, 204);"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"The Omnipresence of the Internet/span/span/span/span/span/pp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"Don’t you get amazed when you see people access the Internet on their mobiles, televisions and laptops from almost everywhere? It is everywhere; this is even evident on this part of my world. More and more users of the Internet are beginning to get used to the GPRS services on their phones. /span/spana href="http://www.gh.zain.com/en/"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"Zain /span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"and /span/spana href="http://www.mtn.com.gh/"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"MTN/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;" are competing to be the best provider in this area of business./span/span/pp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 51, 204);"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"The Internet as our Daily Bread/span/span/span/span/span/pp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"In case you didn’t know there are thousands of people making money because of the existence of the Internet. Some are paid to blog about issues ranging from ‘types of frogs’ to ‘credit crunch in the West’. There are quite a handful of people who blog for the fun, sharing their first time experiences on /span/spana href="http://maameous.blogspot.com/2009/05/if-you-think-youve-tried-all-fun.html"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"Ghanaian Okada/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;" or telling their readers how they enjoy listening to/span/spana href="http://mightyafrican.blogspot.com/2009/05/10-african-songs-i-think-you-should.html"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;" African rhythms/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;". Blogging is free (unless the individual wants a /span/spana href="http://www.davidajao.com/blog/"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"premium version/span/span/aspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"), all one needs is time and an eye for hidden things. Google ad sense could be installed on blogs to get revenue from the visitors to such sites. There are others wh/span/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"o trade in stock and bonds online for a living./span/spanspan style="mso-spacerun:yes"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;" /span/span/span/span/pdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"The business which fascinates me the most however is the registration of domain names to be traded in the future. It’s a weird business I must confess but pays well if fortune smiles on the individual. For this business, all one needs to do is to read the market and register a domain name that will be needed by another body. Since the body in need would require the name for its business they will be forced to sign a fat cheque for this name. People make thousands of dollars from this. I must quickly add though that there are others who have registered domain names and are yet to earn a penny from the registration!!! I guess some luck is needed to get some suitors./span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;" /spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: bold; "span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 51, 204);"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"/span/span/span/span/span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: bold; "span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 51, 204);"span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"The Internet is the Breath of Life/span/span/span/span/span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 51, 204); font-family: verdana; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;"br //span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"For those with broadband in their homes, when they wake up from bed the Internet is one of three things they attend to first. Do you realize how you shiver and become frustrated when your Internet connection takes a nap in the middle of an important exercise? This is very common in my part of the world. continuous Internet connection down here in Africa is more of a dream than a right. One thing is clear for sure, people just can’t go without the Internet lest they die./span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"br //span/span/divp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 51, 204);"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"The Internet makes old creatures anew/span/span/span/span/span/pp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 51, 204); font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;"img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sh7AieJQHeI/AAAAAAAAAEw/5kVYZMjrwmg/s400/4192_76601824709_779609709_1553678_7753608_n.jpg" style="text-align: justify;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 239px; " border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5340917906547940834" //span/pp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"The virtual world provided by the Internet is a platform that allows individuals to re-live their lives. I heard of a virtual farm last week and was just amazed to find out how it worked. In virtual environments people can do things that are impossible in the real world, like being watch on the news by the first back American president. I have a friend who got engaged to a Caribbean Princess; something he would have never been able to achieve in a real world. In this new world one could assume any personality or status. One day, I would love to be Bill Gate for a few hours just to have a feel of abnormal wealth./span/span/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;" /span/span/p/spandiv style="text-align: justify;"br //div/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8924357768583608269-7104077058879081814?l=tagoeblogger.blogspot.com'//div
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14:04
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Tagoe Blogger
a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sg2w69psDwI/AAAAAAAAAEE/I1OMOL_yzRs/s1600-h/images+(34).jpg"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 128px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sg2w69psDwI/AAAAAAAAAEE/I1OMOL_yzRs/s400/images+(34).jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5336115660532223746" //abr /img src="http://pictures.123pimpin.com/signature-5/2009/april/30-04-09/763206392190411300409.gif" /br /br /div br /br /br //divdivbr //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"There have been more than a thousand questions rambling in my mind. Most of these questions have remained unanswered even after more than two and half-decades of my stay on earth. I must admit though that a few of them have been laid to rest by some of my professors or tutors in school who achieved this goal mainly because I was to believe these principles for examination purposes./divdivbr /div style="text-align: justify;"buIs the earth really a ball? /u/b If the earth is really round and there are other people living on the southern part of the hemisphere, then how come these people aren’t falling off the globe? I hear it is because of gravitational force (or is it gravity rather?). If it is because of this force that we are able to walk on earth without falling then how come aeroplanes that fly aren’t pulled down and crash? I forgot to ask, where does this globe we are even talking about come from? Some say there was once a BIG BANG, others preach the Adam and Even version of the earth’s creation. Some too say the world came out of ‘nothing’. Frankly I find it difficult to believe some of these stories. Not because I doubt the level of truth in them rather because I am forced to believe different things at different stages of my life. When I was little I was made to believe I came from my parents. This version was somewhat easy to swallow. Years later however my Biology professor taught me to believe I belong to a line of apes. I therefore share a great deal of DNA similarities with older generations of Orangutans and monkeys. That also sounded quiet true to admit (I can’t really tell if it was because of the examination factor!). I guess whenever I watch movies that have my ‘cousins’ in the cast, I am more inclined to believe my level 200 Biology professor; there is such similarity in behavior and looks.br //div/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divdivimg src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sg211U0Xh-I/AAAAAAAAAEM/lA9KT_8ACf4/s400/images+(35).jpg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 113px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5336121061229955042" / bdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "buWhy is the black man poor and the white man rich?/u/b I was born into a race through no fault of mine. I know of a few other pals who were born into developed nation through no effort of theirs. When I asked, my SSS teacher once told me that it was because of slave trade and colonization. It that is the case then I hear the US was also colonized by the British so why can they afford things that I can’t? Why should I go to a website, be willing to pay for a product or service on the site just to be told that my country has been blacklisted? Why the word ‘blacklisted’ and not ‘white listed’ or ‘yellow listed’? Who made the black color bad and the white color good?/spanbr //div/b/divdiv style="text-align: center;"br //divdiv style="text-align: center;"br //divdiv style="text-align: justify;"buWhy does Methuselah get 969 and I only get 75?/u/b Today’s man (or woman for the sake of political correctness) on the average lives up to 75 years. Some throw big parties if they are able to cross the 80 line. I asked why the average has dropped as though it were the Ghana cedi? Right from the close-to-thousand to a quarter short-of-a-hundred. I was told it was because of the kinds of food we eat nowadays. I was told our food contained too much cholesterol, sugar and fats. So then I asked why don’t those who live without these mentioned food types live up to 700 years then. I was told it is because God has made it so. I asked why God would allow someone to spend more time on earth than others, especially when he would want us to call him ‘just’. Is it for the person to suffer more or it is for us to enjoy less? Why do we even have to die in the first place? Can’t the world just keep on expanding as the human population increases?/divdivdiv style="text-align: justify;"br //divbdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "buWhy are there more white inventors than black ones?/u/b I have a list of great inventors on my wall. Such geeks are Germans, British, America or from any other continent but mine. Why? Does it mean that the black man can’t find solutions to his own problems? Or does it rather mean that the white man always steals the ideas of my great-grandfathers after they have come up with such ideas? Think of them critically, the aeroplane, car, television, Internet, telephone and many other life’s essentials were brought forth by white skins./spanbr //div/b/divdivbbr //b/divdivspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"br //span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"buWhy maternity leave and not paternity leave?/u/b A couple of years ago, after High school my friends got the same aggregate in their SSCE other female counterparts from/divdiv style="text-align: justify;" other schools. We were just amazed to hear that although the males go just the same grade as the females, the females were admitted to colleges whiles the males were refuse/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"d admission. I asked why and the school authorities said it was the affirmative action. It a policy /divdiv style="text-align: justify;"in /divdiv style="text-align: justify;"some learning institutions to favor females against males in terms of admission even if both sexes got the same grade. Does it truly mean they are the weaker sex? What does /divimg src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sg25gWxevNI/AAAAAAAAAEU/vSD7WyLpO40/s400/images+(36).jpg" style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 145px; height: 150px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5336125099023973586" /div style="text-align: justify;"it mean when they say some things are for men only? I know for sure that women play soccer nowadays – they even have a world cup to celebrate such talents. Mohammed Ali was a good/divdiv style="text-align: justify;" boxer, I read his daughter is also punching and picking up a few on her jaws too. What are the areas where women are not supposed to go? Why should /divdiv style="text-align: justify;"a woman be given preferential treatment over me just because she has two X chromosomes and I only have one? Do we even get the chance to choose our sexes before we are born? If you are reading this and you really know something about this then tell me because I think I missed a step during my pregnancy stage?/divdivbr //divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8924357768583608269-1517813470926579421?l=tagoeblogger.blogspot.com'//div
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8:32
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Tagoe Blogger
img src="http://pictures.123pimpin.com/signature-5/2009/april/30-04-09/763206392190411300409.gif" /br /divbr //divdivbr //diva onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SgGD69qxKxI/AAAAAAAAACk/FcIa_lGbQxY/s1600-h/2314955559_736678f039_m.jpg"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 216px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SgGD69qxKxI/AAAAAAAAACk/FcIa_lGbQxY/s400/2314955559_736678f039_m.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5332688482792975122" //abr /divbr //divdivbr //divdivp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;line-height:150%"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"“I want us to take some time off”, “I think we went too fast let’s take it slow…”, “I think you will be happier with someone else…”, “this relationship is not working”, “I don’t think your Mama likes me,…”, “can we be just friends from now on?”. These are but a few of the phrases we hear from either the lady or the gentleman when a relationship is just about to expire. Anyone who has been through such moments knows how painful an experience it is, even for the terminator of the relationship./span/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;line-height:150%"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"I know of a thousand and one books and a href="http://adventuresfrom.blogspot.com"resources /athat provide people with the necessary skills to con a lady (or a man……….in some rare cases), I am however yet to find such similar resources that teach individuals the best way to break up. Breaking-up undoubtedly is a very dicey subject and an emotional act as well. It’s so inflammable an issue such that even the “experts” discuss it with caution. I have been thinking of which is the best way, if there is any , to call it quits with a partner you have shared your best moments with? /span/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;line-height:150%"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"In lots of cases partners come up with all sorts of excuses so as to come out of a ready-to-crash relationship. I have actually heard of instances where the man’s moustache was a reason for break-up. The slightest omission or negligence from one partner could become a very good platform for a termination of relationship. /span/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;line-height:150%"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"The mode of termination is even an issue most of the time (or should I say all the time). The ‘text message’ technique I hear is the most cowardly yet least stressful technique; a break up txt message is composed by the terminator in 160 characters or more (which is mostly the case) and sent to the other partner. The phone is then turned off, a new SIM card is inserted and life goes on. It sounds quite simple on paper…..huh? Trust me it is more difficult than keeping the Ghana cedi stable .The jilted would at all cost want some sort of explanation or compensation (or should I say Ex-gratia?). That is the part which makes breaking up a nasty ordeal; the aftereffect of the termination./span/span/pp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;line-height:150%"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"br //spanbr /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SgGbMOKd2GI/AAAAAAAAADM/hQqYFRwJ3d4/s1600-h/2848543400_2208c21cf7_m.jpg"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SgGbMOKd2GI/AAAAAAAAADM/hQqYFRwJ3d4/s200/2848543400_2208c21cf7_m.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5332714068046108770" //aspan class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:arial;"The re-bound effect is a very common trap people fall into after a break-up. Individuals in their attempt to get over the break-up tend to spend more time with some other closer pals, usually of the opposite sex. These people, who are to serve as consolers, end up taking advantage of the affected. Experts say this time is the most vulnerable period in the break-up cycle. The urge to replace a lost boyfriend or girlfriend is very likely going to lead to someone taking advantage of you./span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;line-height:150%"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"What about the partners who have broken up and yet do all they used to do when they were in the relationship and perhaps even more? I guess we all know how difficult it is to really really stick to a break-up, especially when the couple keeps on seeing each other. /span/spanspan style="mso-spacerun:yes"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;" /span/span/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"There is an African proverb which literally means it is easy to put used firewood back on./span/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;line-height:150%"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"How many times must one break-up in order to find the right person? Is it once, five times or is it twenty times?/span/span/p/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8924357768583608269-1684603160565777835?l=tagoeblogger.blogspot.com'//div
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13:56
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Tagoe Blogger
img src="http://pictures.123pimpin.com/signature-5/2009/april/30-04-09/763206392190411300409.gif" /br /br /divembed src="http://apps.rockyou.com/rockyou.swf?instanceid=137169055amp;ver=102906" quality="high" salign="lt" width="426" height="320" wmode="transparent" name="rockyou" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"/embedspan class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); text-decoration: underline;"br //span/divbr /div style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"Filth has been the Capital City's main problem since the day it lost control of its population. The Accra Metropolitan Assembly and the central government have been in a tango when responsibility of this problem is mentioned. /span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"br //span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"Whiles the AMA is blaming the goverrnment for beirng non-responsive to its requests, the accused is blaming the AMA for not being ableto offset a debt of /span/spanspan class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"well-over ¢120 million (Gh¢12,000), to solid waste contractors, whose duty it is to make sure that every a href="http://www.blogger.com/pathghana.com" title="pathGhana.com" citizen of Ghana /a lives in a clean environment th. This amount is as a result of accumulated debts over a very long period. /span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"br //span/span/divdiv style="text-align: justify;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"Who is to blame for this mess? Is it the Government, the AMA or the people who break the rules?/span/span/divdivspan class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Arial;font-size:14px;"pbr //p/span/divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8924357768583608269-5511187981354875580?l=tagoeblogger.blogspot.com'//div
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6:50
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Tagoe Blogger
a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sfg1dTMdpUI/AAAAAAAAACc/JoQ1f_m1ZDk/s1600-h/ist1_2981381-problems-in-bed.jpg"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 20px 20px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 220px; height: 140px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sfg1dTMdpUI/AAAAAAAAACc/JoQ1f_m1ZDk/s400/ist1_2981381-problems-in-bed.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5330068936478008642" //abr /There are two ways by which a kid can get her favorite ice cream from her mum. The first and most common one is when she tells her Mum to buy her a very nice scoop of vanilla and in return she will do the dishes all summer. The other option is to warn her mum that if she (the mother) refuses to buy her the ice cream, then she would cry all day till the neighbors call the cops. These are the two ways by which a kid could get her favorite yoghourt or strawberry. In psychology the former technique is called positive reinforcement whiles the latter is negative. People are generally motivated by different things in life. Some are motivated by food , money , hug and sex (why did I bring this one last?)br /p/pfont= '24'br /What might be a motivator for someone is an absolute punishment for another. My question however is “Is sex a motivator for everyone?” I have heard stories of big pot-bellies bank managers who were compelled to sign cheques for huge sums of moneys just because of this “motivator”. I have never gotten the chance to discuss this issue with anyone who has been really involved in such not-so-exciting situations though. Putting me in these scenarios is one Gigabyte more than what my mind can handle. /fontbr /p/pbr /For footballers and athletes for that matter, the ultimate motivator I have come to realize is not really the weekly fat salaries or bonuses they receive. I guess it has more to do with the prestige in being called a Champions League winner or a three time Olympic medalist. It is because of the honor buried in such ornaments that boxers die in rings, footballers break their legs and tennis players get joint dislocations. I am very much fascinated by the way people are steered to behave in a particular manner because of certain metals, plastics or wooden objects.br /p/pbr /Husbands have been put in order mainly because their wives refused them sex until they put up a certain behavior. And gosh! I hear it works like crazy!! Thanks to women rights activists certain legislations such as the Domestic Violence bill in Ghana and other similar ones elsewhere, have made it even more effective than it used to be. I am not a legal brain, I must admit, it is my understanding however that this law is powerful enough to enable the woman ask you to “STOP” when you don’t really really want to stop, or should I say when you really really cannot do so. And these commands could come from the very women, men have spent millions to engage or marry. So for this reason there is no trespassing for the man, at least not without spending a couple of days behind bars. Does this make sex a motivator? Sex is a “thank you” souvenir in other times. I guess when this is done men are more likely going to put up the same kind of behavior that led to such an award. Men – sex, sex – men, I don’t see any synonyms here so then why the relation?br /p/pbr /object width="560" height="340"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/0z2IfFqM_Rwhl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0z2IfFqM_Rwhl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"/embed/objectbr /p/pbr /What if men rather told their partners there will be no sex for them until they have washed all the curtains in the household and attended to the laundry! How many women would be motivated by this directive and do as they are told? Hmmm I can see fewer hands in this case. So then does it mean that sex is more of need to the man than to the woman? Something isn’t certainly isn’t right.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8924357768583608269-1423789336906855211?l=tagoeblogger.blogspot.com'//div
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11:15
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Tagoe Blogger
a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Se3pIH9eq2I/AAAAAAAAACU/N94991rUY2o/s1600-h/Slave+trade.JPG"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 260px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Se3pIH9eq2I/AAAAAAAAACU/N94991rUY2o/s400/Slave+trade.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327170260034300770" //abr /br /span xmlns=""pspan style=" ;font-family:Calibri;color:#cd0e0e;"br / em"/em/spanemspan style="font-family:Calibri;"Good governance is the single most important factor in eradicating poverty and promoting development"br /span style="font-size:9pt;"strongKofi Annan/strong, Former United Nations Secretary-General/span/spanbr / /em/ppbr /br / span xmlns=""/span/ppspan style=" ;font-family:Calibri;color:#cd0e0e;"br / em/em/spanemspan style="font-family:Calibri;"em/em/spanemspan style="font-family:Calibri;" /span/em/em/pemempI remember sometime ago I listened toa href="http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/george_ayittey.html" Prof George Ayittey's/a "a href="http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/george_ayittey_on_cheetahs_vs_hippos.html"Cheetah vs. Hippo generation speech" on TED talk/a . He put out a question. It seemed somewhat simple in the first instance. But if you took a shot at it, then you would realize the difficult algorithm involved. The question was basically easy, but the answer came with difficulties! He asked an online audience to name just 20 of the over 204 African heads of state, who have manned the affairs of the African continent since 1960 Accountability and Democracy have not been at their best in most nations in Africa. It still baffles me when I realize that the poor African countries that have received funding for the past three decades or so are no better than they were before the reliefs started flowing in. Who or what is really to blame for this unfortunate incidence in Africa?br //ppstrong span="" style="color:#cd0e0e"uSlave trade/u/strongu/u: The debate for reparation and compensation of Africa by the West is still under debate. As to whether the west owes us anything currently I cannot tell, I guess Ali Mazrui is a better person to answer this question. There is something that however is certain for a fact. The slave trade really caused the producers of the main raw materials, a fortune. Ships docked on our shores with whiskey and tobacco and left with muscles, beauty and Gold. A trade imbalance I would say. The European intrusion obviously did some harm. Their presence also gave us the opportunity to experience formal education, showed us "the way to salvation", built monuments and provided us with better health care. Does the "In" balance the "Out".br //ppstrong span="" style="color:#cd0e0e"uCorrupt leaders/u/strong: Greedy and corrupt leaders have come and gone and with them the secrets behind their fortune. Sani Abacha, Mobutu Sese Seku, and Iddi Amin are names that ring bells. They will be remembered for the skilful and smart manner in which they robbed us all of our treasures. Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu wa Za Banga embezzled over $5 billion USD from Zaire, making him the third-most corrupt leader in his time and the most corrupt African leader in the past few decades. Sani Abacha was more lenient though with Nigeria; He is reported to have hidden more than $4 billion USD belonging to the very people he promised to serve. If the purses of these two "great" leaders were combined would Africa still be as poor (or as rich) as it is today? The Africa's Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) and the NEPAD are two main weapons designed to audit African leaders and their books. With our fingers crossed let us just hope it will serve the purpose for which these brilliant concepts were born.br //ppShould African leaders be begged or teased to do the right thing? Should they be promised expensive End of Service Benefits (ESB) before they come up with policies that will be in the best interest of their own countries. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation is tasked every year to look out for an African leader worthy of its mouth watering package;prize consists of US$ 5 million over 10 years and US$ 200,000 annually for life thereafter. It does not end there, a further US$ 200,000 will be awarded per year for good causes espoused by the winner during the first ten years. Is this what we need to prevent another Abacha or Mobutu crises?br //ppstrong span="" style="color:#cd0e0e"uApartheid: /u/strongAlthough the slave trade was abolished in 1833 it continued for a few more year in different form though. In fact there are a few who still believe Africans are still under some form of master-servant relationship with their former colonizers. I am sure this temptation stares at us all in the faces giving the fact that our leaders always go knocking on IMF and World Bank's doors with suitcase in hand. The apartheid in South Africa, against which Pan-Africanists such as Steve Biko and Nelson Mandela fought against, is a big scare on the face of Africa. The citizens of South Africa are yet to fully integrate as a people. The black corner in the ring in May last year attacked the white corner. Thousands died, more lost their homes and some are still homeless as we speak. These stories move me to tears sometimes and I then forced to pop the unavoidable question; who is an African? Is it the skin, the passport or perhaps the behavior? Apartheid, until it was abolished in 1994, I believe pulled South Africa backwards and subsequently the rest of the landmass which was tightly tied to the development of this country full of natural resources.br //ppstrong span="" style="color:#cd0e0e"uCoup d'états:/u/strong When there is a coup anywhere in Africa, is it caused by a foreigner or rather an individual from that very country. Thirty three out of the 53 African nations have experienced such acts of sudden, unconstitutional deposition of legitimate (or not so legitimate) governments, by a small revolt groups whose members hail from that very country. These revolutions are often followed by famine, death and epidemics. If the West is to compensate Africa for carrying its kinsmen across the Atlantic for over a decade, then don't you think that our own countrymen also owe us a fortune for for harm they have caused to Africa and its children?br //ppbr / /p/em/em/spanemem/em/emdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8924357768583608269-4535323212002685714?l=tagoeblogger.blogspot.com'//div
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9:17
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Tagoe Blogger
a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sb5SNOE-qxI/AAAAAAAAACE/R7QOGgfm078/s1600-h/hawker2.jpg"img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 153px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/Sb5SNOE-qxI/AAAAAAAAACE/R7QOGgfm078/s200/hawker2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5313774997414521618" border="0" //a
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{mso-style-type:export-only; margin-bottom:10.0pt; line-height:115%;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} -- /style!--[if gte mso 10] style /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} /style ![endif]-- p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"i style=""span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:quot;;font-size:12;" “The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in Africa”.Enterpreneurs solve problems. Take away electricity, and they sell generators and inverters. Take away a stable financial system, and they make their money on speculating on foreign currency. Take away their employment, and they set up kiosks in the street.”o:p/o:p/span/i/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 200%; font-weight: bold;"span style="line-height: 200%;font-family:quot;;font-size:12;"
br //span/pp class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 200%; font-weight: bold;"span style="line-height: 200%;font-family:quot;;font-size:12;" For this month I have really enjoyed reading Vijay Mahajan’s Africa Rising. The part that caught my attention the most was the quote above which seeks to bring to fore the natural entrepreneurial instincts scattered along the streets of Africa. It is this very instinct that ensures the survival of the illiterate and the jobless class in Ghana and many other African counties if not all.o:p/o:p/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 200%; font-weight: bold;"span style="line-height: 200%;font-family:quot;;font-size:12;" For some strange reasons I was never intrigued by the sight of all these hard-core entrepreneurial attempts made by these people within the continent. A drive through the streets of Accra or other major suburbs of the city will bring to light a very strange but money making opportunity. Drivers and their “mates” find it difficult to walk into banks to request for change of theirs notes in the form of coins. Considering the fact that most drivers wake up hours before tellers and bank managers even go to bed, it is near to impossible for such tro-tro drivers to walk into these financial institutions to request for coins as change. This problem has been solved by the many young people on the roads who provide these drivers-in-need with the coins they need. Frankly I am tempted to think these middle men do not get their coins from the banks either!!o:p/o:p/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 200%; font-weight: bold;"span style="line-height: 200%;font-family:quot;;font-size:12;" I do see the business as one that practically describes the above quote from Africa Rising. These “businessboys” run after their potential clients every now and then to exchange the “mate’s’ bigger denominations into smaller ones mostly coins. How do they make money? That is quite easy. For every one Ghana cedi transaction they make a 10 % profit since in return they pay to their customers 90 pesewas.o:p/o:p/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 200%; font-weight: bold;"span style="line-height: 200%;font-family:quot;;font-size:12;" One other shocking business in Ghana is the “human blood bank” available in our hospital. In big hospitals such as Korle Bu and 37supth/sup Military Hospital, there are lots of individuals who have made it their job(or is it work rather ?) to provide blood transfusion services to members in need. More often than not, relatives of patients in critical conditions are required by the Hospital to transfuse blood for a major operation. In some cases it is easy for these family members to come up with the needed amount of blood. In other times however, the “merchandise” they come up with is either inadequate for the operation or they simply don’t seem to get a family member who is qualified in courage and in compatibility to go through the process.o:p/o:p/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 200%; font-weight: bold;"span style="line-height: 200%;font-family:quot;;font-size:12;" These “blood transfusers” are on standby to solve this problem very problem the latter group faces. Most of them are universal donors. They approach these individuals in need and offer to go through the blood transfusion process for a fee. This is what I call “Using what you have to get what you want”.o:p/o:p/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 200%; font-weight: bold;"span style="line-height: 200%;font-family:quot;;font-size:12;" There is this other group of social entrepreneurs who wake up very early to join queues in very busy embassies such as that of the UK or US. These are Ghanaians who have never applied for a visa and probably never will. After spending some time in the front part of these never-ending queues, they mark their position in the queue with a rock or by other unarguable means, and begin their quest for potential buyers who usually are in the rear section of these “away from Hell” queues. Since most of these burger-to-be would do anything to get the consular officers earlier, there is always an available market. The reserved position in the front then goes to the highest bidder. So a few hours of sleep trade-offs could earn the seller as much as GH¢ 5 or GH¢10; fairly more than the average minimum wage in Ghana.o:p/o:p/span/p p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 200%;"span style="line-height: 200%;font-family:quot;;font-size:12;" span style="font-weight: bold;"There are a lot more informal and crude means by which Africans make money. Though some of these, on a few occasions fall within the illegal bracket I still believe the entrepreneurial instinct in Africa is alive. How else do the over 2 million unemployed people in Ghana survive?/spanspan style="" /spano:p/o:p/span/p div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8924357768583608269-6681183322861327044?l=tagoeblogger.blogspot.com'//div
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4:37
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Tagoe Blogger
a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SXbxLXW1G6I/AAAAAAAAABk/Y1OEzk53Ajg/s1600-h/image209.jpg"img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 250px; height: 163px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SXbxLXW1G6I/AAAAAAAAABk/Y1OEzk53Ajg/s400/image209.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5293683589571222434" //abr /span style="font-style:italic;"This month on my blog readers get the chance to read a short story I wrote to bring to light how so many people suffer in different parts of the country just because a politician failed to fulfill his(for obvious reasons I wouldn’t add “or her”) campaign promise. “Utopia” captures the story of a very young African girl who has lost trust in the politician because of the deceit she had experienced. As a result of this her village and those in it are deprived of the very basic of social amenities. Yet the politician comes to the village every four years with a campaign message/spanbr /br /br /The 4 X 4 wheel drives rushed past Aminatutu’s slimy body and that of her five friends she had gown in her poor compound with. The machines just drove as fast as the dusty roads of Okegbame would allow them, as thought they cared not about the little ones who had line up along the bushy path that lead to the only stream in the village. For some reasons Aminatu could simply not count how many of those big and new vehicles had driven past her. The first among them all was because she had never been thought the science of counting; she happened to be one of the many unfortunate kids in the village who had never seen the walls Onayiri Primary School, the only one located more than fifteen miles from Okegbame .The other reason was because the vehicles were so many that even if she was gifted with that uncommon art of counting, she would have lost count any way. The politicians from the castle had come and with him an entourage to help him tell a better lie.br /br /Four year ago Aminatu had heard it all, from a different mouth though. The politician in the big black suit from the City promised the village of Okegbame heaven. He also promised the parents of every child in the village a better life and a clinic to help them treat the frequent cases of Malaria. What caught the attention of the whole village was his promise to put up three different bore-holes to provide potable-drinking water to the one thousand or so farmers and their little ones. Then, Aminatu was so excited to hear about this. Mainly because she no longer would have to wake up at three, before the rooster in her step-mother’s compound sounded in the mornings to follow her friends to the stream. Another reason Aminatu screamed upon hearing this campaign promise was that with the introduction of the bore holes, she foresaw an end of the guinea worm epidemic that had slowly eaten up three of her younger brothers and tens of other kids in other neighboring huts.br /br /Years passed and nothing was realized. Neither the promises nor the mouth that made them. No foundation had been started for the village primary, no engineer had come to drill a single hole to provide potable-drinking water and no Doctor had been there since to start the clinic as promised.br /br / Four years have passed, slowly though and a new campaign season has come.Pajeros screeching, trumpets blowing and handkerchiefs flying. Same promises of better lives, free elementary school education, improved sanitation and a clinic to combat malaria.br /Aminatu together with more than half of the people in her village had never been to school and might never be. She, like all the other girls of her age helps her parents with the household chores and farm works so that her younger brothers can finish Primary school and go on to continue their education in a bigger village or town miles away. In Okegbame,it was considered a waste of families toil and sweat to invest scarce funds earned from the sale farm produce to finance a female’s education. In the end she would be going into a different family will all her knowledge learnt after all.br /br /Aminatu had seen it all, the Malaria, Guinea worm, Diarrhoea, Cholera and the most recent one Buruli Ulcer. Ailments that had divorced people she personally knew from her childhood. The fetish priest said it was a punishment from the gods. At least so was the conviction, until one day the priest himself saw a three foot worm wriggle from his eight-decade old foot. From then it was clear that it could not be a punishment from the gods. It no longer was a punishment because the chief priests were all above reproach in the village of Okegbame and thus could not be punished by the gods.br /br /Up till now no one knows with utmost certainty where these sudden diseases come from, not the oldest grey haired witch of the village nor the greatest warrior from the most-feared family. They however heard the college boy who comes there once a month said it was from the streams or so. It’s hard to believe though. How could it be that the stream contains no worms seen by them and yet was said to produce such long worms later.Aminatu together with all the other people form her village found it difficult to believe such a myth. They feared to express their disbelief in his presence.After all he is the one from the city. He is the one who is sent by the government once every month to educate the people on cleanliness and other understandable things that was above Aminatu’s illiterate understanding. “College boy” they all called him. He spent at most two hours in the scorching sun to educate the people of the village about the need to keep their surroundings clean. He spent half of the time talking about the prevention of diseases such as Malaria and Guinea worm. And then spent the rest of the time reading and translating into the local dialect the letters the villagers had received that month from their sons and daughter in the big towns and cities. Of course “Collegeman” did not do this extra-curricula activity for free. He charged the poor villages 40 shillings per page of translation. In fact most of the letters were almost only a page long. He supplemented his meager National Service allowance with such income.br /br /Aminatu wished she were like “Collegeman”.How honorable it would be to be sent by the government to educate people in villages on cleanliness and other topics no matter how understandable they may seem to be. And the icing on the cake for Aminatu was the bicycle the government had provided him with. To her it was far safer and better than the big vehicles the politician had come in. She wished she could read and write. She wished her brothers had never been infected by the deadly long slimy worms. She wished the politician meant every word he said. And above all she wished she could hold the politician accountable in the future should it turn out that he never fulfilled any of his promises.Especially the one concerning the bore holes.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8924357768583608269-7614808936080391885?l=tagoeblogger.blogspot.com'//div
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Tagoe Blogger
Africa is a continent with very little respect for education. It is estimated that at every point in time only about 6 percent of the people living on this continent have a post-high school certification of some sort. What bothers my mind the most is the attitude of the powers that be towards such matters of serious concern. They treat issues relating to education with a pinch of salt. In Ghana for instance the very pillars built to serve as public universities are the same which stand even today.
The biggest problem facing Africa undoubtedly is education. This I guess is not a matter of opinion but of fact. All other problems that face us and seem to be bigger than education can be resolved as soon as the primary problem of education is nipped in the bud.
I would like to draw your mind to a silent killing phenomenon which seems to be Ghana's dilemma although we hardly pay attention to it. I am talking about a cycle which always ensures that the best of students enter into University and the next level of students enter polytechnic.The third level of students find themselves in training colleges either as teacher trainees or as nurse trainees.
If we took the time to closely evaluate the calibre of entrants into the training colleges,we would realise that most (not all) of these students could not obtain high grades in English and Maths. These are the very people who will one day come out of such institutions to teach our kids English or Mathematics. My question is Why open up teacher training institutions for them, just because they did not obtain the necessary qualifications for into the University or Polytechnics ? I believe the willingness to teach should be a matter of choice and interest and nothing else.
I am looking forward to seeing a day when the best of students from our high schools would love to go into teacher training colleges to become tomorrow's teachers for our kids to benefit from their knowledge.
Next time you go into a government hospital and you do not get the best of treatment from the nurses..............think again probably she is not there because of interest rather she was pushed into nursing.
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Tagoe Blogger
a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SVp249U3yrI/AAAAAAAAAAo/xqY83cYYLuk/s1600-h/voting.jpg"img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SVp249U3yrI/AAAAAAAAAAo/xqY83cYYLuk/s320/voting.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285667833579555506" //abr /The long awaited December 7th Presidential and Parliamentary elections are over. As I write this particular blog, the 28th Presidential re-run is ungoing.Fortunately or unfortunately for others there is no church today in most places. So therefore I feel no guilt whatsoever for missing church today.br /br /One question that I keep on asking myself about this election in Ghana is “Why on earth would Ghanaians with warm homes start queuing from as early as 3 am in the morning?”What exactly motivates these electorates to forsake hours of sleep just to exercise their franchise? Since primary school days, we have been given the civic education that admonishes all registered voters to exercise their franchise when the time is due. The question is “are we just supposed to vote because Mr. Karikari taught us to do so in SSS (or SHS for the new computer babies generation) or is there supposed to be an intrinsic motivation that should fire us up to vote for the candidates we respect and trust?br /br /As I sit here, I personally and truthfully feel nothing within me that will spear me on to take part in the selection of the next executive leader of Ghana for the next four oil-finding years. Had the candidates lived up to expectation during their terms of office, I would not have needed any other reason to walk up to my polling station to cast my ballot. Here I am listening to the same promises that were made by opposing candidates either campaigning for Change or for extension of mandate. Are Ghanaians not sick and tired of such empty messages?br /br /For some, a few cedis, a free bus trip or a bag of rice should be enough a motivator to spark the civic spirit in them. It is on record that more people registered than voted. Most people I believe registered because of the benefit the national ID presents and nothing else. For others like me however, it would take honesty and accountability in the previous term of service by a government. For me this is a mere formality to select the next Ghanaian leader who would claim has the panacea to all our problems and yet did nothing or little to nip such dilemma in the bud when his party was in government. After such candidates have been voted into power, they hold press conferences just to tell the very electorates that put them in power, that most of the promises they made during their campaigns are unachievable within the four years designated him! And this has been the cycle or should I say trend.br /br /For me I believe there was a very good reason for millions of people in the United States to have come out of their homes in their numbers to select a president who would steer the affairs of the most powerful economy in the world. What kind of motivation is there for Ghanaian? Is it just because there are hundreds of thousands of ballot sheets waiting to be thumb-printed? Is it just because it’s our civic responsibility? Is it because we have been given a free bus-ride to our constituency? Or should it be because we belong to one tribe or another?div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8924357768583608269-3586396671009566836?l=tagoeblogger.blogspot.com'//div
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Tagoe Blogger
a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SVs-UT9YY3I/AAAAAAAAABc/O43w3rsxG_4/s1600-h/legon.jpeg"img style="cursor: pointer; width: 130px; height: 85px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Kk9gdIe9r2E/SVs-UT9YY3I/AAAAAAAAABc/O43w3rsxG_4/s320/legon.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285887106325439346" border="0" //a
br /meta equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"title/titlemeta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 2.4 (Win32)"style type="text/css" !-- @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } -- /style p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;" align="justify" span style="font-size:100%;"Long before Entrepreneurship and MBA students got their certificates from the Harvard Business School and the like,the sons of black men down here in Africa were exhibiting rare entrepreneurship through their natural instincts for survival and for comfort./span/p p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;" align="justify" span style="font-size:100%;"The young and the old down here were solving their own problems the African way (which more often than not proves to be the hard way).This stint of entrepreneurship in our blood has trickled down generations,and today we see this third world continent humbly gathering its kinsmen to come up with long term solutions to its problems. Their techniques are odd are their methods,non-electronic,thus such strategies are considered crude./span/p p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;" align="justify" span style="font-size:100%;"A typical example I would want to cite is thei “Perching”/i issue on our tertiary campuses. “iPerching”/i for the sake of my foreign readers, is a system where by a a bed supposed to be occupied by one person is shared with another fellow. As such a normal student-size bed built to hold the body of one student ,now has to do more work by carrying two. Its sounds crude,unhygienic and immoral,huh!But compare this evil, to that of forfeiting further studies in college just because one could not afford to pay for hostel accommodation near-by. Between these two evils,I personally think the former is a sweeter pill to chew. Somebody, sometime, somewhere, either forgot to increase the accommodation capacities of our halls of residence ,the young African in his quest to gain knowledge was told to commute between a far away village and his campus./span/p p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;" align="justify" span style="font-size:100%;"To the group of brilliant students hit by this problem which came as a result of someone's carelessness,this came as a shock. They therefore took the bull by the horns and solved this problem in their own way. Thus the birth of a brilliant solution that has solved the student accommodation problem at least half way:”iPerching”/i. /span /p p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;" align="justify" span style="font-size:100%;"Today I know of lots of people in very respectable positions who perhaps would not have made it had it not been for this novel and creative idea. So “iPerching”/i although is frowned upon,I see to be the only way a maximum number of poor African students can reach their goal....at least until whoever caused this very problem comes to his right senses and begins to come up with a long lasting solution to this problem (Though I seriously doubt it is going to be any time soon,call me a pessimist...I care not!)./span/p p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;" align="justify" span style="font-size:100%;"So then this ad-hoc solution I see to be the brain child of our African ingenuity and in-born entrepreneurship skills. I stand to be corrected but had this problem hit a different continent in the same situation,they would have found it somewhat difficult to solve./span/p p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;" align="justify"
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