Bill Gates of Ghana

I ran across this article on The Guardian website.

Herman Chinery-Hesse was born and raised to Ghanaian parents in Ireland. He eventually went on to study in the US and after college moved to Britain.

He had a dream to develop a software company, and knew it had to be in Africa. He decided to move to Ghana and start his company in 1990. He had very little funds to start up, but owned a computer. He collaborated with a friend and started writing codes out and selling them out of his home.

His company SOFTtribe is the largest software developer in Ghana. The most popular software program they have is Hei-Julor!!! It is a mobile phone-based emergency security alert system. A customer can text or call the Hei-Julor!!! emergency number signal an alarm to prevent a home or business from being intruded.

Here is a photo of Herman.

Here is a link to the SOFTtribe website.

Fred Swaniker

I came across this video of Fred Swaniker on TED. He is a very interesting speaker. His goals are very admirable.  

 

Fred was born in Ghana but at the age of 4 moved to Gambia due to war. 6 months after arriving in Gambia a military conflict happened. They were able to escape the conflict. Eventually at the age of 8 his family moved to Botswana. He enjoyed Botswana. He noted that he used to watch South African news because Botswana didn’t have a national news channel. He would watch Nelson Mandela and admired his fight and leadership.

 

At the age of 12 his family moved to Zimbabwe. He attended high school there. He really enjoyed Zimbabwe and thought it was a prosperous country. After high school he went to the US to attend college in Minnesota and California. After college he returned to Zimbabwe. He couldn’t believe how much had changed in 6 years. He felt as if the country was in shambles. He realized at that time that bad leadership was to fault for the failure of Zimbabwe.

 

At that point he dedicated his life to making Africa great. He realized the one main failure in Ghana, Gambia, Zimbabwe was the weak leadership. In order for African countries to survive they need strong leadership like Botswana or South Africa.

 

Africa relies on good leaders and one good leader can make in Africa because Africa has such weak institutions. Since there are weak institutions they are in need of very strong leaders to make a difference.

 

In America we have strong institutions which are stronger than the leaders. In the US the president cannot just make a law. It has to be agreed upon by the House and Senate first. The US government relies strongly on their institutions.

 

In Africa because of the weak institutions the leads can make any decisions they want. They have all the power, so they need strong leaders to lead them to success.

 

Fred decided to develop African Leadership Academy to grow young leaders in Africa. It is a top of the line school. The students that are accepted are accepted not by their test scores but by the amount of potential they have to transform Africa.  If the students agree to stay in Africa after graduation they can even have tuition waive.

Here is a photo of Fred.

 

Here is a link to some additional information about Fred.

 

Here is the African Leadership Academy website.

 

 

 

Anas Aremeyaw Anas

This video that I watched was about the works of Anas Aremeyaw Anas under cover journalism. He remains anonymous by covering his face. He does this so he can continue his work. Also so he doesn’t get hunted down by the people he has uncovered through his work. He has been working in this type of journalism for 14 years. His 3 basic principles are naming, shaming and jailing. He wants to bring light to the people that are committing crimes, shame them publicly for the harm they are doing and put them behind bars and see justice served.

 

The first under cover story he talks about is called “Spirit Child”. It is about the murder of children born with deformities in African villages. When a child is born with a deformity the family feels as if it is not good enough to live in society. There was a group of people that were called in that would come in and create the concoctions to administer to the children. These concoctions were lethal and would kill the children. He set undercover cameras and used a prosthetic baby with a deformity and called in the group. The group came in to prepare the concoctions and once they were ready to administer to the fake baby the police busted them. They are now being tried in court for their crimes.

 

The second story was “The spell of the albino”. In Tanzania children born with albinism are sometimes considered unfit to live in society. Their bodies are mutilated with machetes and parts of their bodies are used to create concoctions/potions that are sold for money. He got hard evidence of someone speaking about how they obtain these body parts and was able to give the government in Tanzania enough evidence to fight and crack down on this type of horrific act.

Here is a image of Anas.

 

Wikipedia has some interesting facts about Anas. You can read that info here.

Africa's Giants

My kids and I watched a documentary on Animal Planet last weekend called “Saving Africa's Giants with Yao Ming”. It was a very interesting documentary in regard to elephants.

The goal of the documentary was to bring awareness to China in regards to the devastating reality of the ivory trade (hence the reason for Yao Ming being the spokesperson). China has the largest black market for the trade. There is an international ban on ivory trade that was created to help protect elephants, but because of black markets the trade still lives illegally. Elephants are now endangered due to this trade. It is said that 33,000 elephants are killer per year for their ivory. There used to be millions of elephants roaming Africa. According to the documentary there are only 470,000 left. There is no other way to get ivory without killing an elephant this is why they want to end the trade and defund it. There is a website that was created and campaign’s being Ivory free. You can take a pledge to join and be Ivory free.  Here is a link to the website.

 

The International Fund for Animal Welfare also has a pledge that people can sign. By signing it you pledge to “We all have a role in the fight to save elephants from extinction. I pledge not to buy or sell ivory carvings, jewelry, or other products that fuel the poaching crisis, and I will support government action to stop the sale of ivory in the United States.” IFAW website

 

 

Both images above are photos of mutilated elephants who have been killed for their ivory tusks.

These are tusks that were seized from a poacher.

 

Here is a link to Animal Planet in regard to the documentary.

Child labor in African mines.

The United Nation’s International Labor Organization estimates there are around a million child laborers ages 5-17 working in African gold mines. These are small scale operations and there are so many it is hard to actually step in and stop it from happening. It is also noted that due to family need sometimes these kids don’t have a choice if they want to survive. Child laborers make as little as $2 per day. The work that they do is very dangerous and difficult.

 Here is a interesting article.

According to a 2008 report published by the Geneva, International Labor Organization, it states that mining is by far the most hazardous area for children in regard to fatalities. Research shows an average fatality rate of 32 per 100,000 full-time workers between the ages of 5 and 17 years working in mining.

 

 

The report also states that Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest incident rate of 15.1 percent/38,736 incidents of children aged 5–17 engaged in hazardous work.

 

Mining is dangerous for many reasons some include:

Hauling too heavy of loads.

Being lowered into very small tunnels where oxygen is limited and the presence of dangerous gases exists.

Long term sun exposure.

The strenuous nature of the work.