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New Jersey-based woman convicted for trafficking girls from Togo, Ghana; her lawyer says jury misunderstood culture while prosecutor says it’s violent abuse of teens…. Special to USAfrica The Newspaper, Houston, [...]
Ghana wins Under-20 World Cup for first time, beats Brazil in shootout By Jerome Pugmire (CP) – Special to USAfricaonline.com CAIRO, Egypt — Ghana held on with 10 men to beat Brazil in a penalty shootout to become the first African team to win the Under-20 World Cup on Friday and end a decade of [...]
Kosmos has estimated the Jubilee field could potenitally hold recoverable oil and gas reserves between 650 million and 2 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
Exxon is one of the largest producers in Africa and has operations in Angola, Chad, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria. Company also is exploring for oil in Libya, Madagascar, the Republic of Congo and the Nigeria-Sao Tome and Principe Joint Development Zone. But Exxon had held back on jumping on Ghana bandwagon — until now.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame — whose government has been voted the top world reformer in the recently published World Bank report Doing Business 2010 — said his government and citizens are working to be the “best we can be” in their quest for prosperity.
“What we have done is what other people can do. It is not magic,” he said. “We have focused on stabilizing our country, making sure there is peace and security … [and] institutions of governance that deliver the public good as required.”
Signally, Obama’s White House chose the small west African country of only 23 million peoples, spurning Ghana’s neighbor, the “giant of Africa” Nigeria with its 125 million citizens and the largest economic demographic clout, questionable political leadership, endemic corruption, ethnic and religious violence, environmental destruction of its Niger Delta and creeks, political assassinations and kidnappings, epileptic electricity supply, and a list enough to fill the Galveston bay.
For many African-born citizens of America such as myself and millions of continental African professionals, Barack Hussein Obama is not only the 44th President of the United States of America, he’s an outstanding son of Africa who on November 4, 2008, achieved the previously unthinkable: one of our own being voted in to lead the most powerful country in the world.
Obama is in Ghana principally for America’s core strategic interests: Oil. I know that oil and stable access to oil are vital parts of U.S national security interest across the west African Gulf of Guinea region. Ghana recently discovered billions of barrels of oil reserves. U.S corporations, especially Exxon Mobil and Chevron are also investing heavily in the area. Operationally, the U.S has re-fueling hubs in Ghana. Also, worthy of note is the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) estimates that by 2015, 25 percent of American oil imports will be derived from west Africa. It is roughly 14 to 16 percent to date, amidst massive disruptions in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. Ghana is stable while the Middle East and parts of Nigeria are increasingly dicey for America’s hard-nosed, long-term interests. Ghana is certainly valuable to the U.S convergence of interests on the arenas of military, oil and democratic credentials.
