When the BBC Worldservice Called from London...When in Accra

Let me get this straight. For the past few days, the BBC Africa Service has been travelling through the sub-region in a bus to get a feel of the so-called football fever in the run-up to the FIFA 2010 world cup in South Africa.

The "Africa Have Your Say" programme is live on air in Africa every Tuesday to Thursday. The "Africa Have Your Say" bus started off in Cote d'Ivoire, landed at the Western region of Ghana's capital--Takoradi--on Tuesday, Cape Coast on Wednesday, and landed in Accra on Thursday. They even had a live session of the programme yesterday looking at electricity provision

It is to that end that one Ishta Kutesa Nandi contacted me asking:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ishta Kutesa
Date: 2010/6/3
Subject: Message via your Google Profile: Electricity in Ghana
To: ekbensah@gmail.com


Hello Emmanuel,

My name is Ishta and I'm contacting you from the BBC World Service in London. I've read quite a few of your blog posts and I find your views on utility provision in Ghana quite interesting. I'd love to talk to you about possibly taking part in a live debate we're holding this afternoon. Please reply with a phone number I can contact you on so that we can discuss this further.

Kind regards,
Ishta

So, after a response and exchange of emails, I got a call shortly after. We talked for some 15 minutes, in which she asked a whole host of questions and asked for some solutions that I see for the way forward:

1. the government should continue to invest in the old electricity sytstem, which has been under-invested for many years

2. the government should establish more sub-stations to cater for a rapidly-growing population

3. ghanaians should have at their disposal a FREE hotline--not one where you pay landline rates on a mobile!

4. we should be getting streetlights as every blessed customer pays for them

5. if Ghana can provide our neigbouring countries (Cote d'ivoire and Togo) with electricity, we ought to have regular provision HERE in Ghana!

Ishta was supposed to call back and help me make inputs into the live session, but I never got that call. I know a fellow blogger--Golda--who was there at the live session, but didn't hear her name on air.

Whatever the case, a few ghanablogging members got recognised--and for that I am happy. To be recognised by no less than the BBC on the issues that concern us most--electricity; streetlights; utility provision, etc--is the biggest boost anyone can get.

Never mind writing about our own lives...

Enter Left for Ghana in ECOWAS, as Ghana Plays Host to a Regional Electricity Agency

Two important developments within the past two days have reminded me that Ghana might not be playing a low-key role in international diplomacy, albeit African geo-politics.

Now that one of my long-time blogger-followers since 2005--Daniel Hoffman-Gill--has migrated from my other blog to this one, I think it behooves me to be as clear as possible about where I am going with this post, as even in Ghana, few care about what ECOWAS means.

The Economic Community Of West African States is a regional organisation--just as the EU is of 27 countries--that has been in existence since 1975. It successfully, albeit controversially, resolved the crisis in Liberia, primarily by expanding its mandate from an economic imperative to a peace and security one as well.

In 2007, it changed its structure to an EU one, whereby there are now ECOWAS Commissioners for trade, human security, etc. The Secretariat in that year also became a Commission, rather than a Secretariat, with greater powers to facilitate a more people-centred organisation that would be meaningful for West Africans.

Now the boss, since 2001, has been a Ghanaian by the name of Dr.Ibn Chambas. Yesterday, I learnt from reports online that he has just landed a top-job in the Brussels-based African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP Group).

In the same vein, I found out today that the promise that Ghana would play host to one of the ECOWAS agencies--in this case the ECOWAS Regional Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERERA) has been honoured, and it is in a very visible place on the famed-Spintex Road!

This evidently means nothing about Ghana in ECOWAS foreign policy, but the developments within the past two days is certainly nothing to be sneezed at.

For the record, I do hope that as the EU meet today to decide who becomes the President of the newly-empowered EU Council(thanks to the Lisbon Treaty) Tony Blair will miss it by inches--not because he is not competent, but because I don't think someone who never accepted that he botched the justification for the invasion of Iraq will be accountable to EU citizens!