A “Planet” in Ghana

Kwame strikes a Ben 10 mania pose!

Children dabble in flights of fantasy which tend to change with the speed of light. For my son Kwame his newest craze is outer space triggered by Ben 10  and unmistakably The Adventures of Tintin in Destination Moon. I must add that these Tintin comics are a tad too expensive in Accra but I digress. Last weekend after this industrial existence got in the way so many uncomfortable times Kwame and I got to visit Ghana and I am told West Africa’s only “planet” on earth.

Visitors at the Ghana Planetarium ready to stargaze.

To be exact this “planet” is in reality what is properly called a planetarium. At its spatial locus in Cantonments this learning centre looks like an igloo from the outside given its very oval pate and lily white hue. You understand the nature of the roof once you get inside. The innards of this planetarium are essentially wired to trigger curiosity about this our universe. Posters of the various stars and planets stare down from the walls and the dome serves as a giant screen where simulations of the pitch dark night sky dotted with planetary bodies appear and educational movies on astronomy, the space industry and all things galactic are shown. As I expected Kwame was blown away; I could imagine his mental universe stretched a quadrizillion times; his imagination animated and fired up. For days the ears of abusuafo(the clan) have known no peace from this encounter. For myself as an adult it was both a learning and reflection experience. 

Long before Allotey and  Hawkings the Dogons of Mali knew that sigi tolo (Sirius in English) is the brightest star and had appropriated their advanced astronomical knowledge for social organization. Our own fisher folk at Chorkor, Apam and elsewhere utilize their esoteric knowledge of the movement of the stars to navigate the vast watery expanses of the oceans. I have pondered this infinite expanse beyond this earth where water glides away(you simply cannot fetch water in space) and where the human body is prone to muscular and bone atrophy. Today nations are staking territorial claims in this void with Chinese taikonauts making the latest bid. In the space race is locked the eternal power question: has Africa lost out(too many if not all of the stars have European/Western names; naming power huh!) ? This is my strategic mind wondering.

Dr. Ashong and his team at the Ghana Planetarium have shown great courage and determination in pushing this project forward to allow Ghana’s children to DREAM. How I wish more funding will pour in especially from government(and hopefully corporate Ghana without their buntings,logos and other advertising frills taking over)  to make this “planet” grander and reflective of its national and West African pretensions. I dream of lush greens; oriental ponds; exquisite landscaping; rolling trees; a larger planetarium that can seat at least 2000 children(from all over Ghana) and their parents and all that will trigger meditation and inspiration on the infinite powers of the human mind and the inventiveness and courage of the human spirit.   

             

WHILE WE DISPENSED THE FROTH…….

The week gone by will go down as one of this our Fourth Republic’s most paroxysmic, comical,  farcical and emboldening too. In a near manic outburst a legislator had in essence raised worrying questions about the ongoing biometric registration in the Odododiodio constituency which was by his lights turning into some ethnic accounting system: if you fell into the appropriate column you could register. Unwisely our legislator urged retaliation. Irked the state initially invited the legislator and then proceeded to arrest this unarmed citizen with a blatant display of force and power as crass as the raw emotion with which the initial alarm was raised. Then the grand farce began in which our institutions of state displayed so publicly and tastelessly their putrid underbelly. Just laying the charge was dramatized and involved location theatrics marked by a sudden change in the choice of court. And then with blinding speed the charges swung crudely from treason to terrorism to genocide. In one fell swoop the legislator had taken on the lives of Jerry Rawlings, Osama Bin Laden and Slobodan Milosevic. And all this for an irate command that no intelligent citizen obeyed. An accidental hero is subsequently made in the full glare of national and international publicity in the facebook age. An ashen faced state recoils leaving its defense to febrile assigns whose perverted logic will shame Lucifer himself.

While we dispensed the froth freely the students of my Leadership Class in Ashesi University presented their end of semester projects. The students trawled through communities ranging from Nima, Osu, Mamprobi, Berekuso right up to Goi in the Volta Region trying to give back to their compatriots. Their remit was to identify some challenge in these communities and respond to them in a creative, sustained and engaged way. Our students among other things taught adult literacy classes; built a website for a budding theatre group in Nima; organized a book fair; built bookshelves for the primary school in Berekuso and acquired malaria testing kit for an ante-natal clinic which did not have one and raised millions of cedis in the process. The comments from the students were heartwarming. One struck me: their projects had taught them that Ghana’s problems were theirs and that in their actions they were in reality helping themselves. And this from nineteen year olds without the power to order tanks unto the streets or hot water cannons to spew their lethality. One would have thought that these are the dire social problems that our State will train its maximum efforts on and not the exercise of free speech that had crossed bounds of decency and reasonableness. 

Truth also is that after the legislator’s comments our peoples went about their normal lives. No one was asked about his or her hometown before seeing the doctor or entering my class. In order words Ghanaians can differentiate a bark from a bite. At this point however cool heads must prevail across divides and the opportunity has been offered for some serious policy work on arresting the coarsening of our public discourse and indeed the abuse of our media space. For me that is the deeper lesson after the dust has been cleaned from the armoured car that carried the legislator.        

POLICY/ECONOMIC HITMEN AND WOMEN

I have been observing the public sphere and the sometimes very confounding analysis emanating from some quarters. I have been reading John Perkins Confessions of an Economic Hitman(2005, Random House) and I think our policymakers, academics and broadcasters need to read this book.Perkins was essentially a first degree holder who was transformed(recruited into a putative think tank called MAIN) into a fake economist and econometrician providing fake figures and reports for international organizations like the World Bank and "advising" a swathe of countries in the developing world on engineering, energy and construction projects.Perkins was part of a massive racket involving fake CVs, conjured track records and the publication of dubious "academic articles" . These individuals and entities are STILL HERE!!! My chapter in this work http://www.brill.nl/african-engagements looks at some of these issues.

A few quotes:

" The fact was that I had never thought of myself as a bona fide economist.I had graduated with a bachelor of science in business administration from Boston University with emphasis on marketing. I had always been lousy in mathematics and statistics(Perkins,2005:137)."

" My status as chief economist.....could not be attributed to my capabilities in either economics or planning(Perkins,2005:137).