• A statement from the Bank says further funding is being frozen until authorities in Uganda provide adequate policy to protect minorities, including the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other groups commonly categorised as LGBTQ+.

The World Bank has suspended any future funding for projects in Uganda, citing human rights violations from the recent enactment of the anti-homosexuality law.

A statement from the Bank says further funding is being frozen until authorities in Uganda provide adequate policy to protect minorities, including the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other groups commonly categorised as LGBTQ+.

“Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act fundamentally contradicts the World Bank Group’s values. We believe our vision to eradicate poverty on a liveable planet can only succeed if it includes everyone irrespective of race, gender, or sexuality,” the Bank said on Tuesday.

“This law undermines those efforts. Inclusion and non-discrimination sit at the heart of our work around the world.”

In May, President Yoweri Museveni signed into law the Anti-Homosexuality Act, providing penalties as high as a death sentence for “aggravated homosexuality.” It drew condemnations from rights groups and Western countries such as the US who threatened sanctions.

The US is a key shareholder in the World Bank and has almost always produced its president.

The World Bank said it has been prevailing upon Kampala to reconsider the law.

A team from the Bank, it said, have been speaking with Ugandan officials on “additional measures that are necessary to ensure projects are implemented in alignment with our environmental and social standards.”

“Our goal is to protect sexual and gender minorities from discrimination and exclusion in the projects we finance. These measures are currently under discussion with the authorities.  No new public financing to Uganda will be presented to our Board of Executive Directors until the efficacy of the additional measures has been tested.

Same sex relations had been illegal in Uganda, even before this law, under the old penal code.

But critics charged the new law seals any possible protections for minorities who may now not be able to rent property as the new law promises punishments to those who conceal homosexuals.

It also provides for capital punishment for serial offenders against the law including those who transmit terminal illness like HIV/AIDs through gay sex. Promoters of homosexuality can be jailed for up to 20 years.

Recently, Ghana’s parliament also passed a similar law against LGBTQ and when officially signed by president Nana Add Dankwah Akufo-Addo, who also happens to be a human right lawyer, could see Ghana go head to head with World Bank.

Source: thecitizen.co.tz

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That was after Aisha had pleaded not guilty to the charge of engaging in sale of minerals without license, and mining without license.

The proceedings today (Sept 14) was without drama as one of the suspects charged alongside Aisha, Jong Li Hua, collapsed in the course of the hearing.

Aisha Huang was arrested through a National Security operation after she reportedly ‘sneaked’ into the country to again undertake the illegal mining activity.

Aisha is currently facing criminal charges with three others at an Accra Circuit Court.

The other accused persons, all Chinese,  are Jong Li Hua, Huang Jei and Huiad Hiahu.

The three have also pleaded not guilty to the sale of mining equipment without license

Cousnel for the accused, Nkrabeah Effah Dartey, in his bail application described the charges as minor and wondered why after 14 days of Aisha’s remand, the police had not been able to complete its thorough investigations.

According to him, the the media had placed too much emphasis on what he described as “A small case”.

Bail opposed

Chief Inspector Frederick Sarpong, opposed the bail application on grounds that if granted bail, the accused persons would hamper investigations.

“As Aisha stands here she cannot tell the court how she got into the country,” the prosecutor added.

He clarified that the accused were charged with criminal offences and not merely before the court by virtue of their nationality or colour.

He prayed the court to remand the accused persons into police custody assuring the court that counsels will have access to them anytime they wish to.

Ruling

In his ruling, the judge said the “accused may not appear to stand trial and may interfere with evidence and hamper trial”

The judge subsequently remanded the accused persons to police custody.

The suspects are to re-appear before the court on September 27, 2022.

Facts

The prosecutor, Detective Chief Inspector Frederick Sarpong, told the court that Aisha had previously escaped prosecution in Accra when she was arrested.

According to him, Aisha returned to China and changed her identity, only to come back to Ghana to commit the same crime for which she had escaped prosecution earlier.

Togo visa

Inspector Sarpong said the accused person applied for a Togolese visa and entered Ghana through its border with Togo and back to the galamsey business in a town in the Ashanti Region.

The three others with her, according to the prosecutor, sold mining equipment and dealt in gold in Accra, without a valid licence.

They were arrested upon intelligence by the National Security.

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According to him, her re-emergence raises concerns about whether she left Ghana in the first place.

Speaking on a Ho-based radio station, as part of his tour of the Volta Region, he expressed reservation about the nefarious activities of Aisha Huang and affirmed his support for her prosecution.

“I’m not still sure whether she was in fact deported. Or whether she fled the country the first time and has now come back. There still seems to be some uncertainty about it.

“But whichever way it is, she’s become the sort of nickname for all that galamsey represents”, he said.

“We have concerted to work at it. We need to have the coorporation of the courts. Until recently when I came, the punishment for people caught was relatively light. [But] we’ve changed the law to stiffen the punishment for people caught,” he added.

Commenting on the fight against galamsey, he also stated that compared to the past, the fight has become more popular in his regime.

In his view, efforts to clamp down on illegal mining have seen a massive improvement under his watch as President.

The President, therefore, urged Ghanaians to sustain the momentum in dealing with the menace.

“The efforts have brought a lot of fruits first of all. Galamsey is now a subject of national discussion. Everywhere you go, there’s this matter of galamsey. We’ve at least achieved this purpose of heightening consciousness about it as an evil.

“When I came, nobody was talking about galamsey. Since we came and focused on it, it is now the subject of discussions in homes, in offices, in meetings and all across Ghana. So that’s one positive development”, stressed

Meanwhile, the Attorney General, Godfred Yeboah Dame, has expressed his resolve to prosecute notorious ‘galamsey’ poster girl, Aisha Huang for her past and recent crimes.

Aisha, whose nefarious activities came to light again was recently arrested and arraigned before court.

Following this development, there have been rife public concerns about the activities of the Chinese lady in Ghana.

But the Attorney General says his outfit will deal swiftly with the issue and bring her and all collaborators to book.

Source: JoyFMonline

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Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary under Boris Johnson, has been made the new Chancellor of the Exchequer.

He will be in charge of the nation’s finances as soaring energy prices cause pain for households and businesses.

The new UK government is expected to announce package costing billions to cap typical energy bills at around £2,500, with full details expected on Thursday.

The son of parents who emigrated from Ghana to the UK as students in the 1960s, Kwarteng was the first black Tory cabinet minister.

Kwasi Kwarteng: the basics
Age: 47
Place of birth: East London
Education: Trinity College, Cambridge University, Harvard University
Family: Married to solicitor Harriet Edwards with one daughter
Parliamentary constituency: Spelthorne (Surrey)

Kwarteng’s parents moved to the UK from Ghana as students in the 1960s. He was born in east London in 1975, the same year as Ms Truss.

His economist father and barrister mother gave him a traditional Ashanti first name, meaning “born on Sunday”, when he was actually born on a Monday. He told the BBC’s Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast that his parents stayed silent on the matter when he jokingly pulled them up on it.

The Church was a strong part of his mother’s life and she is a lifelong Conservative voter.

He was just three years old when Margaret Thatcher came to power, and she would remain prime minister until his GCSE year. He has said in the past that his mother deeply admired Thatcher as someone “who wanted to rely on their own efforts” and has described himself as a “pragmatic Thatcherite”.

He attended the exclusive private school Eton College after winning a scholarship there and went on to graduate with a double First from Cambridge University in classics and history.

One well-known anecdote about the young Kwarteng harks back to his admissions interview for Trinity College. The self-confident 17-year-old told the tutor, who had arrived late and hadn’t conducted many of these interviews before: “Don’t worry, sir – I’m sure you’ll do very well.”

He was part of the Cambridge team which won University Challenge in 1995, although he generated headlines for uttering a swearword after he buzzed in and forgot the answer to a question.

He has since questioned how much being good at quizzes “relates to anything in what people call ‘real life’”.

He attended Harvard University in the United States on a Kennedy scholarship, returning to Cambridge University to complete a PhD in economic history in 2000.

During his second stint at the university, Tristram Hunt, the former Labour MP and now head of the V&A Museum, joked that his then roommate Kwarteng was “quite ungovernable and dishevelled”.

He worked as a columnist for the Daily Telegraph and a financial analyst at banks in the City of London, including JPMorgan, and got involved in Conservative politics as chairman of the Bow Group think tank.

He has remarked that “politics was always something I was drawn to”, and he made his first attempt to become an MP in 2005. He stood as the Conservative candidate for Brent East at the general election but came third. There was also an unsuccessful run for the London Assembly in 2008.

However, he became part of the “class of 2010”, a cohort of politicians entering Westminster for the first time that year. He was elected as MP for Spelthorne in Surrey and entered Parliament the same time as future colleagues Liz Truss, Priti Patel and Sajid Javid.

Focus on wealth
His maiden speech in the House of Commons came with some comments he described as “controversial”, when he used the opportunity to criticise the former Labour government led by Gordon Brown and how it tackled the 2008 financial crisis.

“They have not once accepted any blame for what happened and they seem to think that we can just sail on as before,” he said, also setting out the view that “wealth creation is the most important element in getting us out of this recession”.

Although Kwarteng was tipped to become the Conservatives’ first black cabinet member as early as 2006, he spent eight years as a constituency MP before he became a minister.

He held weekly surgeries in his constituency and used his spare time to write several books and pamphlets on topics from Margaret Thatcher’s final six months in office to the British Empire and its legacy.

He has argued that “the debate around Black Lives Matter and imperialism or colonialism has a cartoon-like view of history” and has said he thinks that view is true on both sides of the issue.

Kwarteng also co-authored the book Britannia Unchained with several Tory MPs, including Liz Truss. In the 2012 text, they claimed: “Once they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world.”

He has since distanced himself from this view. He told the BBC that the context of the pandemic, huge government spending on measures such as the furlough scheme, climate change challenges and Brexit mean that it is very difficult even to apply comments from five or six years ago today.

He backed Leave in the 2016 Brexit referendum, and in 2017 became a ministerial aide to the then Chancellor, Philip Hammond, before becoming a junior minister in the Department for Exiting the European Union.

A promotion to minister at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy followed, where he worked for more than a year before becoming business secretary 18 months later.

The ascent has been described as a “reward” for his backing of Boris Johnson during the race for party leadership.

The realities of the pandemic and the soaring cost of energy, however, have meant that his views on state intervention in industry have moderated.

“There’s nothing [better] to convert someone from being a radical free marketeer to seeing the virtues of government action than making them an energy minister,” he said at a 2019 Conservative party conference event.

That same year, he married the solicitor Harriet Edwards, having previously dated the former home secretary Amber Rudd.

More recently, Kwarteng who is opposed to tax rises, has been focused on change and challenges.

From a pandemic job market, to net zero – the new top finance minister will now need to decide with colleagues how best to balance these issues with tackling bills and boosting the UK’s domestic energy sources in a bid to protect British consumers and businesses.

Source: Asaase Radio

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Of course, there is also the age-old tradition in which women are supposed to passively adorn and humanise their husbands and so we are not often educated in their backstories.

But Fathia Halim Ritzk held her own. Born into a middle-class Egyptian family in 1932, Fathia’s mother had to raise her and four other siblings as a widower.

Fathia’s father, a clerk at a telephone company in Cairo, passed when she was young.

Her family was Coptic. She schooled at Zeitoun’s Notre Dame des Apôtres or Our Lady of Apostles, where she became literate in French.

After school, Fathia taught for a while at her alma mater but was reportedly not enthused with the job. So she went to work in a bank. And that’s where fate and politics would find her.

About 2,500 miles south-west of Egypt, a young intellectual was making himself a nuisance for the British colonial government in the Gold Coast.

Kwame Nkrumah had fast established himself as the people’s man in the country that he would lead to independence. The colonial administrators were not pleased.

So when Nkrumah got Isis Nashid, an Egyptian working for the colonial government, pregnant, he had to hide it.

In the little-known story revealed in 2015 by Souad El Rouby Sinare, Nashid had to leave Nkrumah and the Gold Coast to her native Egypt. Upon arrival, she quickly got married to avoid the shame of having a child out of wedlock.

Nkrumah continued with the freedom struggle.

But not long after the episode with Nashid, Nkrumah was convinced by Said Saleh Sinare, a businessman and personal friend, to look for a wife, preferably the woman who had his child in Egypt.

But instead of Nashid, Fathia was found available and ready.

Souad Sinare recounted: “When we informed Dr. Nkrumah of our find of a bride [to-be], he was very happy that he also informed the President of Egypt, Gamel Abdul Nasser, who was happy that his friend…had decided to marry from his [Nasser’s] country.”

Both had not met before. But she was also excited even if her mother did not like the idea of marrying a foreigner.

Her brother had already married an English woman in the 1950s and had gone away. Fathia tried to convince her mother that Nkrumah was like Nasser, a freedom fighter, but the older woman would have none of that.

Fathia effectively travelled to Ghana in 1957 to marry a man whom she did not know except for his reputation. And she did so with just one uncle but without her family’s blessings.

Gamel Nkrumah, her first son, would later say of his mother: “The new bride, who had cut herself off from her family and country by marrying Nkrumah, was isolated in more ways than one.”

She spoke little to no English and Nkrumah spoke neither French nor Arabic. She had to learn so that by the end of her first year, Fathia was delivering speeches in English.

Fathia was happy, not only about her marriage but also about Ghana. It was not a conservative society in the same mould as Egypt.

The Ghanaian women Fathia knew in the early 1960s were fiercely independent, educated and wealthy.

She endeared herself to this wealthy category of women who were mostly retailers of wax prints and the famous traditionally woven cloth called kente.

By their wealth, these “market women” were powerful and influential. They named a kind of kente after the first lady, calling it “Fathia fata Nkrumah”, Akan for “Fathia is perfect for Nkrumah”.

But before they would accept her, the market women and wives of powerful men, were actually very angry with Kwame Nkrumah. He was going to marry a “white woman”.

The women’s wing of Nkrumah’s own Convention People’s Party (CPP), reacted in the harshest way possible, telling Nkrumah they were disappointed in him.

Nkrumah had to explain to them that in spite of her skin colour, Fathia was African. This tension is microcosmic of modern-day discussions around the Africanness of continental North Africans.

But Nkrumah’s determination to defend Fathia’s Africanness also raises questions about whether he thought of her as a tool of political expedience to his hopes of Pan-Africanism.

Gamel Nkrumah himself wrote: “It was not meant to be a marriage made in heaven. It was a political union between Mediterranean-oriented North Africa and the rest of the continent, often pejoratively termed sub-Saharan or Black Africa.”

Carina Ray writing in 2006, also said of the marriage: “The US State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were rumoured to be primarily concerned with whether the marriage was intended to create a political union between Egypt and Ghana”.

Whether she was a tool in their game or a completely loved wife, Fathia Nkrumah found meaning for her role and she played it well.

Before going to Ghana, Fathia, it is said, spoke to Egyptian President Nasser. He wanted to be sure if the wife of a powerful man from a place she had no idea about is what she wanted to be.

The young woman reiterated her readiness, maybe naively.

Despite the culture shocks and noticeable temperature differences for an Egyptian in Ghana, Fathia would go on to play hostess to some of the world’s most powerful leaders; an unofficial envoy for her country, and the wife of a man whose life was constantly under threat.

In 1966, when Fathia’s eldest child was only seven, Nkrumah was overthrown in a coup d’etat. She herself was 34, still youthful and energetic.

Fathia flew out of Ghana with her three kids to Egypt, from where she would once again be an outsider looking in. It is not known if she ever saw Nkrumah again until his own death in 1972.

That was not the end of her relationship with Ghana. She was invited to live in the country but in 1979, Fathia’s mother-in-law, Nkrumah’s mother Nyaneba, died in the arms of a bitterly sad Fathia, at the age of 102.

Feeling like those who loved her were no more, Fathia left Ghana again, this time by choice and not compulsion. She would return to visit in 1997 for the country’s 40th independence.

In 2007, she died in Cairo aged 75.

Fathia had been a young woman with convictions of grandeur but also the victim of political nastiness. Above all, she had dared to follow her dreams and that is what probably matters.

• FacetoFaceAfrica

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A Toyota Land Cruiser V8 vehicle believed to be a property of Ghana plunged into the Odaw River at Circle, Accra, early hours of Monday morning.

Although, it is still unclear what led the accident, the car with registration number GV 2400-16 lost its way and crushed into the river.

However, no deaths have been reported but the good news is that it has been lifted from the river and sent to an unknown location possibly for maintenance.

The driver of the vehicle has also been sent to a nearby hospital for first aid and medical check up.

More to follow…

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Ghana’s senior national team captain Andre Ayew has been ordered to appear before the country’s parliament next week to answer questions following the Black Stars’ shambolic performance at the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations held in Cameroon.

The Black Stars failed to win any of their three games played in the group stage -the country’s worse ever performance – leading to the sacking of coach Milovan Rajevac.

As a result, a four-man new technical team involving Otto Addo as the interim coach and two assistants Didi Dramani and George Boateng, as well as technical advisor in the person of former Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur boss Chris Hughton have been appointed to steer the affairs of the team for the upcoming Fifa World Cup qualifiers against Nigeria next month.

However, Ayew and some top members of Ghana Football Association, GHALCA and Ministry of Youth and Sports have been ordered to appear before Ghana Parliament this week and next week to answer several questions which bothers on the team’s future.

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Ghana Police Service have confirmed the arrest of one Oliver Mawuse Barker-Vormowor for allegedly threatening to stage a coup d’etat in the country if E-Levy is passed by parliament.

Oliver, just like many Ghanaians, is not happy with the government’s new mode of taxation dubbed E-Levy where every transaction involving money which will be made on all mobile telecommunication networks in the country will attract a 1.57 per cent tax.

However, it seems he went a step further with his frustrations and took to Facebook to write about a possible coup d’etat adding that the country’s army are nothing but just ‘useless’.

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According to him, the money was initially directed at the various campaigns that sought to inform and educate Ghanaians on the Covid-19 and its safety protocols.

“We’ve provided $430 million to Ghana to fight Covid. And this includes different activities including initially the communication campaign, the sensitization campaign, equipping labs, equipping new facilities to receive patients, to treat patients,” he said on JoyNews’ PM Express, Thursday.

He added that the World Bank further provided an additional $130million purposely for the purchase of vaccines.

But while the World Bank was actively supporting Ghana’s Covid-19 fight, it also set into motion several projects to enable the country’s economy to stay afloat.

Pierre Frank Laporte noted that these projects were targeted at Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)which are the backbone of Ghana’s economy.

He stated that the Bank accelerated the disbursement of projects like the Ghana Economic Transformation projects which targeted SMEs in particular.

“The Tourism project that was suffering from other places before Covid. The Minister has done an excellent job in pushing these activities forward, helping a lot of small businesses,” he said.

He added that the World Bank was further accelerating the disbursement of its social protection project while approving $100 million more to support the project.

“So a lot of things are happening. We’re hoping that the Development Bank, the Development Finance will also get resources for small businesses so a lot happened that we’ve done,” he said.

Meanwhile, Pierre Laporte has revealed that Ghana could receive a further $60 million to help in its Covid-19 fight.

“You see the Omicron variant has reminded us of something that we should never think that Covid will just go away like that. It may go away, it may not. At this point in time, we’re discussing a further tranche of support for Covid.

“If all goes well it should be available early March. We’re looking at $60million dollars, which 20 will go directly for more vaccines and the 40 for additional treatment centres,” he said.

Source: Myjoyonline

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Ghana’s Youth and Sports minister Ussif Mustapha was reportedly rushed to the hospital following a fisfight in Parliament between some Members of Parliament on Monday night on the disagreement during the voting on government’s E-levy bill.

The fight ensued when the MPs were voting in a headcount to decide whether the E-levy bill should be accepted under a certificate of urgency or not.

However, the Minority members in parliament rose from their seats to prevent the First Deputy Speaker, Joseph Osei Owusu, who was presiding over the House, from leaving his seat in his attempt to participate in the voting process.

In their bid to prevent him, the majority got infuriated and quickly rushed to the Speaker’s table to and a chaos started.

According to the Minority MPs claims, Mr Osei-Owusu, while in the position of Speaker, does not have the right to take part of the voting process.

Before the sitting, the Majority had held a press conference stating the whereabouts of the Speaker, Alban Bagbin, was unknown.

However, since the bill had been laid before the House, the First Deputy Speaker took over proceedings in the House.

During deliberations, the Minority MPs challenged the decision by the Majority MPs to place the Bill under a certificate of urgency.

Although a voice vote was taken with the First Deputy Speaker ruling favouring the Majority, the NDC MPs called for a headcount instead.

Mr Joseph Osei-Owusu then decided to swap positions with the Second Deputy Speaker, who had voted to take part in the decision making.

However, the Minority MPs who disagreed with that position swiftly moved to the Speaker’s seat to stop the swap. Members of the Majority also moved to the Speaker’s seat, which led to the crash.

The Youth and Sports minister Ussif Mustapha was seen trading blows with some NDC members and had his nose mask torn. There was a slap from MP of Ashaiman Alfred Kwame Agbesi which landed on his face before he was dragged away by his colleagues.

Reports later revealed that the Youth and Sports minister has been sent to a hospital nearby for check up and treatment.

More to follow…

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