Quickies: Obama Arrives in Ghana, GIPC Killing Businesses, $20B For Food Security, GHC23M To End Poverty in Ghana

Here’s a quick round-up of interesting stuff I’ve found elsewhere online in my Internet travels today.

Obama Arives in Ghana:The city of Accra, I’m told, is ablaze with American and Ghanaian flags. At 9:15pm, Ghanaian dancers and drummers welcomed Mr. Obama and his family to Accra’s international airport where they were met by Ghana’s leader John Atta Mills. Barak Obama– the American president– will be giving a speech to announce a major US policy for Africa. Weather permitting, Mr. Obama and his family will also visit Cape Coast Castle, from where slaves were shipped across the Atlantic to the Americas for nearly 300 years.

G-8 pledges $20 billion to fight world hunger after appeal from Obama: At the end of the Group of 8 summit, President Obama says the leading industrialized nations made progress on climate change and nuclear nonproliferation. Leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations also promised twenty billion dollars (US$20B) to increase food security in poor countries. Here is VoA’s take on this.

My Plan To Solve Ghana’s Economic Woes With Just GHS 23 Million: The personal finance website Financial Joe proposes an interesting solution to the US economic crisis with a mere $233 Million, instead of the billions of dollars that are being thrown here and there in various bailout packages: give one million dollars to every American 18 years and older with strict guidelines on what to use the money for. The idea seemed so simple, yet so sound, that I was immediately convinced it would work in Ghana too. But just before I could run out into the streets in my underwear to to proclaim my discovery, reality hit me: Financial Joe got the maths wrong– by three zeros. That’s what happens when you copy blindly like many of us often do.

Nigeria – Ghana business face-off lingers, shops remain closed: In November 2007, the Ghana Investment Promotion Council (GIPC) closed many shops and businesses owned by Nigerians and slammed a hefty US$300,000 fee for Nigerian businesses to operate in Ghana. Their crime? The GIPC claims too many Nigerian businesses are setting up shops here, and with better access to capital, these Nigerian businesses will choke out their underfunded and mismanaged Ghanaian counterparts. Hmmm. Sounds ironic to me that an investment promotion organization is closing businesses that have committed no crime, except the crime of responding to the call by this same organization for foreigners to invest in Ghana.