The richest 225 people in the world own a combined wealth equal to the annual income of almost half the population of the earth. 1.2 billion of humanity exists in subhuman conditions at less than a dollar a day when 4 per cent of the wealth of these filthy rich 225 persons would be sufficient to pay the additional costs to achieve and maintain universal access to basic education, health care, maternity care, adequate food, safe water and sanitation for the whole human race. The statistics are not new. They have been well known. Now even the perpetrators of the system which produces and reproduces this inhuman system quote them – of course for their own purpose. Read article

Thanks to the recent incredibly successful mobilisation by the Make Poverty History (MPH) coalition, never before has Africa been so much in the public conscience in the United Kingdom. But as what? Tony Blair’s imagery of Africa is that of a scar on the conscience of the rich world. A scar is an ugly tissue left after a wound has healed or is healing. It acts as a reminder of a past painful experience. If the sight of it abhors you, look away or otherwise help to make- it-over in one form or the other to improve the aesthetic effect. There are some that feel strongly that the imagery of Africa presented through our airwaves and TV screens, and the justification that the pundits make for action under the MPH agenda is one of making-over an otherwise ugly, disturbing blemish that is also an unwelcome reminder of the past. My eight year old, who has not been back in Ghana in three years, asked me, “Dad, why are all Africans so poor and so miserable?”  Read article