Although the Sudanese billionaire Mo Ibrahim has never met Esi Ansah, I suspect he would be enamored of her views on the refusal of his prize committee to award eligible African leaders in 2009.

Everybody knows Ghana is blessed with gold, cocoa and now oil, but one of its greatest resources is still neglected and untapped: the creative talents of its songwriters, composers, and bands.  If Ghana recognised, developed, and supported this talent, it could become a big source of wealth.

We will like to applaud the sentiments recently expressed by the CEO of Unilever Ghana Ltd., Mr. Charles Cofie, regarding the impact of counterfeiting on Ghana's national development. A counterfeit product seeks to misrepresent its source, manufacturer or contents, and thus to deceive consumers into buying something that they probably would have rejected had they been fully informed. In that sense, counterfeiting both breaches the rights of citizens/consumers as well as undermine trust in the marketplace, more often than not to the detriment of the most vulnerable in society, who rarely have the means for remedy.

When President Barack Obama steps foot in Ghana on the 10th of July 2009, he will be walking into one of the very few global contexts where George Bush will be a hard act to follow: “development aid to Africa”.

Everybody knows Ghana is blessed with gold, cocoa and now oil, but one of its greatest resources is still neglected and untapped: the creative talents of its songwriters, composers, and bands.  If Ghana recognised, developed, and supported this talent, it could become a big source of wealth.