Ghana
This piece is cross-posted from Morgana Wingard’s Wanderlust blog.
In Ghana, 8 out of 10 children under the age of five and 3 out of 10 adult women suffer from some form of malnutrition, including stunting, wasting, and/or deficiencies in iron, iodine, and vitamin A. I recently visited Nyankpala Community Management of Acute Malnutrition in Tamale, Ghana, a Health Service (GHS) project that integrates and promotes community-based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM) services and supplies.
With funds from USAID and UNICEF, GHS has established support units for acute malnutrition at the national, regional and district levels. Between 2008 and 2011, Ghana has increased CMAM from two learning sites in two districts to 403 sites in 31 districts. In total, 2,040 health care providers have been trained on CMAM services and 5,973 children with severe acute malnutrition have been admitted to the program. Of these children 71 percent were cured, 2 percent died, and 1 percent did not recover; 26 percent failed to follow up.
Mac-Jordan Degadjor is a Ghanaian social media entrepreneur and rising star among global tech bloggers. The 26-year-old recently spoke about the positive effects of social media at the TEDxYouthInspire conference in Ghana’s capital city of Accra and was spotlighted in the Christian Science Monitor’s “Thirty Ideas from People Under 30.” We asked Mac-Jordan to explain why mobile tech advancements are important for Ghana’s economic and social growth.
Why is Ghana ready for a mobile technology boom? Are investors looking to Ghana as a market ready to advance with mobile?
Anytime I’m asked if Ghana is ready for the mobile technology boom, my answer is always YES. In Ghana, there are two major organizations providing locals with the business and technology skills they need to leverage ideas into successful mobile web companies: Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology and Mobile Web Ghana.
New opportunities are showing up that make it possible for low-income economies to leapfrog other countries by adopting technologies that are suitable to their specific circumstances. I’m happy to say that Ghana is taking that bold step in adopting new mobile technologies. Take a critical look at the continent: Africa has more than 110 million Internet users, a number that is poised to grow by 2400 percent in this decade alone.
What about Ghana’s market makes it ready for mobile phone technology? How are smartphones being introduced into the market? Can bandwidth improvements keep up with the technology?
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Life happens here at the Tema Clinic in Accra, Ghana. Babies trade a death sentence for life. Mothers transform their sickly skeleton figures to healthy, able bodies. Tema offers hope in a place that was once hopeless and ravaged by AIDS.
Funded by the Global Fund through financial support from Product (RED), Tema Hospital cares for 2,200 people living with HIV. We recently visited their facility again –- their work never ceases to amaze me. The Global Fund make it possible for the hospital to provide ARV treatment and PMTCT (prevention of mother-to-child-transmission). Thanks to these interventions, only 4 percent of babies at Tema with HIV-positive mothers are born with the virus.
SEE ALSO: Tema Clinic in Accra, Ghana
Photographer Morgana Wingard reports on a USAID-funded water project in Afadjtator, Ghana.
When I wake up, I groggily roll out of bed, and half-asleep, I jump into a hot shower. Then, I fill up my water bottle with cold water from the tap, brush my teeth with water from the faucet, and wash my hands. These simple amenities that we take for granted are truly luxuries. Because in Africa, 70 to 80 percent of disease is related to water. Most people don’t have a faucet with running water, or even clean water nearby that they can drink or brush their teeth with.
We visited a joint project with USAID and Rotary International that provides clean water to thousands of people in Afadjtator, Ghana. As we arrived, the townsfolk swarmed us with welcoming cheers. Though we didn’t build the wells they are benefiting from, our tax dollars did. The United States is contributing approximately $13.4 million to improve water and sanitation in Ghana over the next four years. And thanks to this join project in Afadjtator, 86,000 more people will be able to wake up in the morning and get a glass of clean water.
Captions, from top to bottom and right to left: New well build through the joint water and sanitation project with USAID and Rotary International; Woman from the community carrying water from the well back to her house; Ed Goeas walks with children from the community; Jen Pihlaja walks with children from the community; Women filling up at the new water pump; Sheila Nix, ONE’s US Executive Director cuts the ribbon with local chiefs for the newest water pump in the community; Laurie Moskowitz, ONE’s Senior Director of US campaigns, laughs with local community members.
Several of us from the US team are currently in Ghana on a listening and learning trip with a group of bipartisan political influencers. The group includes four Republicans and four Democrats, all of whom have very strong ties to key leaders, decision-makers and presidential candidates within their parties.
TAMALE, GHANA: A health worker checks a child for malnutrition at Nyankpala Community Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) during ONE’s listening and learning trip to Ghana. Photo by Morgana Wingard
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Agriculture Griot Ofosu Asamoah talks about National Farmers Day, Ghana’s national holiday which commemorates the agriculture sector, an important part of the country’s economy.
Ignatius Agbo national best farmer receiving his awards from vice president John Mahama
Every year, on the first Friday of December, Ghanaians celebrate National Farmers Day in honor of the gallant farmers who feed the growing population and contributing to the nation’s GDP.
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This piece was originally published on ONE’s Africa Blog.
It’s time to announce our second finalist in the 2011 ONE Africa Award.
After our piece on a project in Togo, we went on to Accra, Ghana to meet the Alliance for Reproductive Health Rights (ARHR). The alliance was established by a group of NGOs in 2004 and evolved from a defunct Save the Children program on sexual and reproductive health. ARHR Executive Director, Ms. Vicky Okine, is the former Save the Children program manager, and recognized the importance of the continuation of this program. It builds on the potential of community health organizations to empower their communities and drive the demand for better access to sexual and reproductive health care.
The Alliance for Reproductive Health Rights team
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