Football Fans: Friends or Foes?

This week’s column was published here, and appears below:

Like most people in Ghana, I’m looking forward to the upcoming Ghana 2008 football championship. At least, I think I’m like most people in Ghana. Certainly the endless streams of promotional materials, advertisements, and merchandise are creating a feeling of anticipation, and I’ve talked to lots of Ghanaians who seem excited about the upcoming tournament.

I have also, however, been part of a number of discussions now in which Ghanaians took quite a negative view, if not of the tournament itself, then of what it will mean for the country. While the Cup of Nations’ corporate and government sponsors are touting the money that will pour into the country along with foreign visitors, many Ghanaians I have spoken to are convinced that the major imports during the Cup will be drugs, diseases, crime, and immorality.

You have the Right

This week’s column was published here, and appears below:

Since my very first column some months ago, I have actively avoided mentioning what brought me to Ghana in the first place. It’s not that I’m ashamed of my work here, I’m proud of it, but I didn’t feel it had a place in this space. This column is a forum for my own personal views and observations, and I didn’t want to give the impression that I was writing as the representative of the organisation I work for, rather than as myself alone.

You see, I work with the staff at The Ghanaian Observer, but I don’t work for The Ghanaian Observer. I am employed by an organisation called Journalists for Human Rights, and my purpose in Ghana is to build the capacity of the reporters I work with at GO and beyond to write the best human rights stories they can. You may have noticed some of the results of my work already in these pages; I hope you will continue to long after I have left the country.

I’m sure you’re now wondering why, after five months of failing to mention my reason for being here, I’ve suddenly decided to bring it up. There’s no big story here, no sudden need to “come clean” with my readers. The entirely mundane reason is Human Rights Day.

Wading through the AIDS Quagmire

Can you believe it? My 20th column was published here, and is reprinted below:

Last week I spent a day and a half at the HIV/AIDS conference that was held here in Accra. At the end of both days, I left the conference centre with a head bursting with (mostly depressing) statistics. Two-thirds of the world’s HIV-positive population live in sub-Saharan Africa. A further 59% of those cases are women. A shocking 91% of children living with HIV/AIDS are also in sub-Saharan Africa. Only 23% of Africans needing anti-retroviral treatments receive them, compared with 75% in other developing areas like the Caribbean and Latin America.

There’s more. In some African countries, HIV affects as many as a third of the population (Swaziland—33%, Botswana—24%, South Africa—19%). Life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa has dropped by five years since 1990, when estimates say it would have risen by a whopping 26 years in South Africa if there were no AIDS, and 10 years here in Ghana. Across the continent, the pandemic has resulted in significant decreases in economic productivity, agricultural production, school enrolment, and expenditures on basic necessities.

And that’s still only a drop in the bucket.