Did anybody watch Robert Beckford's show just now? I don't think there's a better documentry maker than him.

Yeah I saw it....the bit about the ten yr old boy who just wanted to go to school, man it had me welling up.

I think its about time that IMF and World Bank policies were analysed and audited to see their effects.

I like the summing up at the end when he said something like indepence came a longtime ago but is incomplete while the economy is in the hands of foreign masters and that a new fight for indepence was needed and needs to be militant.

i only saw the last 20 mins of it.
i loved his summing up aswell
was quite disgusted that only 3% of coco from that place was really fair trade

also when he got everyone to try chocolate and it was described as bitter sweet. mmm

i love his docs, if i knew this show was on i would have watched it from the start

Although useful, the issues were dealt with far more thoroughly here.

Channel 4 - Faith and belief - The Great African Scandal


The Great African Scandal

Rice
Robert Beckford starts his investigation in Tamale, capital of the agricultural north of Ghana. By working with rice farmers and trying to survive on Ghana’s average national income of 60p a day, he finds out how western policies have affected local people. In the early 1970s, Ghana supplied nearly 50% of its own needs in rice. Arriving at the village where he is to start his investigation, Robert finds that hard to imagine.

The people are very poor. The nearest source of water, a mile from the village, is a pond infested with Guinea worm. Robert struggles to keep up with the women and children carrying home buckets of water on their heads. If he sold his bucket of water in the village, he would earn 5p.

Subsistence farming
He goes to work as a rice farmer. After some haggling, he is offered a wage of £1 a day – nearly double the average national daily income in Ghana – and starts work clearing rock-hard ground with a heavy axe to prepare land for a new rice field.

The farmers explain that, until the 1980s, the Ghanaian government handed out grants for fertilizer and machinery. Then the World Bank moved in and put a stop to state subsidies. The new mantra was the free market and privatisation. The farmers were back to square one.

At the end of the day, Robert has not managed anything like a full day’s work; he has earned only 25p. Adding 5p for the bucket of water, his day’s wages come to a total of 30p.

‘I think they’ve been fair,’ says Robert. ‘I could only last an hour out there in the heat.’ What he doesn’t think is fair is that these farmers have been put in this position in the first place. He says: ‘I can't see how in this modern day and age we would subject people to this kind of livelihood just to make our part of the world richer. … It's not something they've brought on themselves or willed, or concocted, or an act of God or some kind of misfortune. It's a calculated political process.’

Market forces

He then heads for nearby Botanga, where the Government and the World Bank have set up an irrigation project. The dam has enabled farmers to grow enough rice to sell commercially but here the wages are only 50p a day – less than the subsistence farmers paid him.

What Robert discovers here leaves him gobsmacked: ‘In the 1980s, as part of their strategy to open up the Ghanaian market, the American government supplied rice as food aid. It was like sending snow to the Eskimos. … Along with the sweetener of the food aid, the IMF, World Bank and the Americans told the Ghanaian government to cut subsidies to farmers and open up its markets to foreign imports. The food aid tailed off. Cheap foreign rice flooded in and Ghana’s rice production stagnated.’

While the IMF and the World Bank told Ghana to axe its subsidies to rice farmers, the American government pays as much as 72% of their own farmers’ costs. Robert finds local producers struggling to sell their rice in the market because people prefer the heavily subsidised, imported American rice.

She’s leaving home

Here, hundreds of villages have been reduced to abject poverty. One chilling side effect is that many of the girls, some as young as 12, are leaving their homes and families to try and earn some money in the city. Going in search of them, he discovers them living in squalid conditions in the town of Kumasi.

It’s shameful,’ says Robert. ‘The story of my packet of supermarket rice ends here in the awful slums of Kumasi.

‘Next time you buy subsidised American rice, think what it’s done to Ghana.’

Life and Debt | A Film By Stephanie Black

Third World Network Africa - TWN Africa


Africa Action: Activism for Africa Since 1953

Baby Milk Action

IMF


Global Issues : social, political, economic and environmental issues that affect us all

An Alternative to some of the Web sites links Channel 4 provided on the issues of globalization. and Africa.

Chocolate

Cocoa is one of Ghana’s most important exports and a vital ingredient of chocolate. Robert Beckford has heard stories of hard up parents in the north of the country sending their children south to work. He’s even been told that children are rented out in exchange for a sewing machine or a bicycle.

To find out what it’s like to be a child labourer, he gets himself a job on a cocoa farm. He will be working alongside the farmer’s 15-year-old niece, Alara, and 10-year-old nephew, Baba. To Robert’s amazement, they have never even tasted chocolate.

Child labour is illegal in Ghana, so people are reluctant to talk about it, but local expert Newman Ofosu believes that around 20% of children are working and that only 80% go to school. Newman says: ‘Even if it is one child, it is one child too many.’

No pay and no education

Robert Beckford discovers that Alara and Baba are not paid. They work just for their food and lodging. Alara says that she works six hours a day and has never been to school. Baba shows Robert how to cut down weeds with a machete. He has never been to school, though he would like to.

Shocked by what he has learnt, Robert says, ‘Maybe the advert for some of these big chocolate manufacturers should go along the lines of: Fantastic taste. The best chocolate in the world. Sexual, seductive, beautiful – and produced by illiterate 10-year-old boys like Baba.’

Robert Beckford has tried to ask Cadburys and Nestlé about their policies on child labour. Replying on their behalf, their trade organisation said that the big chocolate companies ‘do not want children to be harmed in the growing or harvesting of cocoa’. They pointed out that they fund projects to help farmers become more productive and support a certification scheme run by the Ghanaian government to register cocoa farms and monitor employment practices. However, the certification scheme is three years behind the original schedule and even when it’s in place will only cover 50% of the growing regions.

Fair Trade for some

More promising is a co-operative farm where, in return for slightly higher profits, farmers promise not to use child labour and are monitored to ensure that they don’t. The extra money goes into a fund which benefits the farmers and their villages, but the biggest difference here, compared to the other cocoa farms, is that the children go to school.

Even then there’s a catch for the Ghanaians: only 3% of the cocoa beans from the co-operative are bought at the Fair Trade price. The other 97% end up mixed with cocoa which may have been picked by children.

It’s impossible for non-Fair Trade chocolate manufacturers to guarantee the cocoa they buy here is child labour free. Buying Fair Trade chocolate from farms like this is the only way to be sure that it has not been made by child labour.

Gold

On the last leg of his journey to find out why Ghana, which is so rich in resources, is one of the poorest countries in the world, Robert Beckford heads south to the gold mining town of Obuasi.

Gold is one of Ghana’s most lucrative exports, and in Obuasi the biggest company is Anglo Gold Ashanti (AGA). Last year AGA recorded gross profits of about half a billion pounds from its global operations but to Robert it doesn’t look as if the local people are sharing in the bonanza.

In the 1980s the Ghanaian government supported by the IMF and the World Bank encouraged foreign investment. Robert travels to Dokyiwa village, where local people were persuaded to sell their land in return for compensation they now claim was too little.

Poisoned water

They also say that the impact on the environment has been devastating. A University of Ghana survey found high levels of toxic substances in streams, fruit and boreholes in Obuasi. In one village, arsenic levels in water were recorded as 1,800 times higher than the World Health Organization maximum values.

In the village of Binsere Robert discovers a pit full of toxic waste less than 100 metres from the houses. The people scrape a living illegally washing out the waste in the hope of finding slivers of gold. They claim that AGA are aggressive in protecting their property. Some even say that they have been beaten up by the police and the military, and show Robert the lacerations on their bodies.

Robert Beckford is utterly shocked. He says: ‘The way they are being treated here – I haven’t got words for it – the only word that you can use is that they are being made to be and live like ******s. People who are less than human beings.’

Unconvincing explanations

In response to complaints from local people, AGA say that they are helping the community. They have embarked on a $3-million programme to cult malaria by spraying buildings with insecticide. But the locals claim the stagnant ponds are a breeding ground for mosquitoes.

Whatever the truth of that claim, Robert says that, in this village where there is no work and very little food, it does not look like a company committed to the wellbeing of the community.

Robert decides to confront the bosses of AGA with his findings. The General Manager of Corporate Affairs in Ghana says they are aware of the problem and are trying to find ‘a holistic approach’. He claims that the contamination is not caused purely by mining and says he is not aware of beatings of illegal miners by AGA security. According to him, anyone arrested for illegal mining or trespassing, is handed over to the police. He adds: ‘What happens there, to me is not my concern.’

At a meeting with villagers the following day, years of anger and frustration flood out. They ask about the company training programme for young men who are looking for work, about the pollution, and about compensation. Robert Beckford is not impressed with the answers: ‘I’m disappointed,’ he says, ‘that there wasn’t some kind of olive branch from the company to give people real hope.’

What you can do

Robert Beckford’s epic and emotional journey convinces him that, while Africa may have its political independence, the economic strings are still pulled by foreign masters. But he believes that, as consumers and citizens, we can change this. He makes a rallying cry for us to demand from the powers that be that they ensure trade justice for Africa.

Find out more
Channel 4 is not responsible for the content of third party sites.
There are many organisations that are campaigning for corporate responsibility, trade justice and fair trade. Here are some websites where you can find out about what you can do to change things, and how and where to buy products that do not use child labour, exploit workers or damage the lands and livelihoods of ordinary people.

Christian Aid
Christian Aid
Christian Aid, which helped make this programme, is an in international development agency working with local partner organisations in more than 60 countries around the world. It works where the need is greatest, regardless of race or religion, and it seeks to challenge the structures that keep people in poverty. Its two key campaigns are Trade Justice and Climate Change and, on trade, they are currently campaigning for an end to damaging IMF and World Bank conditions such as Ghana has faced and is facing. Click here to find out more about Christian Aid’s World Bank campaign

Update: Flooding has wreaked havoc in northern Ghana – more than a quarter of a million people have been affected, most having lost their homes and harvest. Christian Aid is working with partners to identify possible opportunities to respond where needed. Find out more.

Cafod
Home page : CAFOD
The Catholic Agency for Overseas Development believes that all human beings have a right to dignity and respect, and that the world's resources are a gift to be shared equally by all men and women, whatever their race, nationality or religion. Fair Trade and Trade Justice are two of its many campaigns

Fairtrade Foundation
The Fairtrade Foundation, London, UK | Home of the FAIRTRADE Mark
Fairtrade is about better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability, and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world. The Fairtrade Foundation is a coalition of organisations which awards the Fairtrade Mark to UK products as a guarantee that they have given their producers a better deal.

Oxfam
Oxfam GB
Oxfam is a development, relief, and campaigning organisation that works with others to overcome poverty and suffering around the world.Its Make Trade Fair campaign presses decision-makers and governments for new trade rules – fair rules to make a real and positive difference in the fight against poverty.

Traidcraft
Traidcraft | Traidcraft - fighting poverty through trade
Traidcraft fights poverty through trade, by practising and promoting approaches to trade that help poor people in developing countries transform their lives. Established in 1979 as a Christian response to poverty, it is both a trading company and a development charity, which builds lasting relationships with producers, supports people to trade out of poverty and works to bring about trade justice.

War on Want
War On Want : Homepage : splash
War on Want fights poverty in developing countries in partnership and solidarity with people