CELLOU BINANI/AFP.
Eric: Hello and welcome to another edition of China in Africa podcast. I’m Eric Olander and as always, I’m joined by Cobus Van Staden, a senior China, and Africa researcher at the South African Institute of international affairs in Johannesburg, South Africa. A very good afternoon to you Cobus.
Cobus: Good afternoon.
Eric: Cobus when you are in China and you go to the market or you go to a restaurant and you order fish on the market. Most people assume that the fish comes from the local shores. You see fishermen in Shanghai or Hangzhou and they are coming in and they are dropping their catch off for the day and I think most people have no concept for what the supply chain is of the fish that actually ends up on their table. To be fair, I don’t think anybody in most countries really understands the global supply chain of anything that they consume. So I don’t think Chinese consumers here are any different, but what is interesting about fish, in particular, is that the volume, the quantities of fish being consumed in a country as large as China are such that it is impossible for China to sustain itself on its own supply of fish. It has to go further and further afield in order to find and catch fish.
What it’s doing is that it’s using something called the distant fishing fleets. These are these massive industrious sized trawlers who go all over the world. Off the coast of Argentina, off the coast of Mozambique and, of course, off the coast of Ghana. We’ve talked about this in previous shows with activists and what they are doing is they are scooping up vast amounts of seafood and what it is it’s really something that is terrifying because the quantity simply is not sustainable in the current environment that we are doing it and it is being done oftentimes in questionable legal circumstances. What we are learning now in places like West Africa is that Chinese entities, and I don’t really know who they are, are engaging local fishermen to basically undermine governance and some of the fishing rules and regulations. That’s what we are going to focus on today. Cobus, it really does bring up this question of understanding the supply chain of where our food and our products come from particularly as it relates to food and fish.
Cobus: Yes, and that’s very difficult I think in any country. Some countries have systems set up for sustainable seafood where you can track apparently how things were caught, in which circumstances and where, but their systems aren’t infallible. In places like China, they figuratively don’t exist at all. What you don’t see what the environmental conditions are of the fish, but you also don’t see what the local community impact was of that fishing. Who used to fish there and who can’t fish there anymore because of the massive trailers that are now fishing there and what the wider social implications are in places like Ghana?
Eric: So, Ghana is going to be our focus today on the discussion in part because what’s happening here is more critical and more acute than in many other parts of Africa, but there are similar stories that are unfolding again in Southern Africa, in other parts of West Africa. Furthermore, on this, we are really just so thrilled to have on the program for the first time Kofi Agbogah who is the executive director of Hen Mpoano which is a great name in the Fante dialect which means ‘Our Coast’ and that’s an NGO that focuses on conservation governance, coastal immunity advocacy and better management of Coastal and marine resources and he joins us on the line from Ghana. Kofi, thank you so much for taking the time.
Kofi: Thank you for having me.
Eric: It’s a pleasure to have you. I’d like you first to start our discussion and because this is a new topic for a lot of our listeners and just introduce us to the concept of what Saiko means and what is saiko and why is it important in this discussion of fishing in Ghana.
Kofi: Thank you very much. In times past in the early 70s, perhaps there were a few distant water fleets that were manned by Japanese or Taiwanese or anybody from Asia who is interested in fish, and they had access agreements with our countries and they were able to fish in our waters. What happened was that any time our local canoe fishermen saw them on the high seas, they were either dumping some fish or fish that they didn’t like they tried to give to the local fishermen. Now whilst dumping the local fishermen thought that this fish was also good fish for them, but the Japanese in the Japanese language, it was bad fish and therefore they called it saiko. Saiko is spelled as S-A-I-K-O which is, ‘good’ in Japanese lingo. Sorry, ‘bad’ in Japanese lingo, but Ghanaians said well, it is good for them so they said then it is saiko. Good in Japanese is saiko and therefore they started giving out this fish to local fishermen in exchange for water, vegetables, well, anything that will make them sustain themselves on the water.
Therefore, it was a barter trade where fish is given to the locals and locals exchange it for some form of essential commodities. So, then the trade continued and a business was born. Initially, it wasn’t a problem, but coming down to the early 2000s, where the business began to flourish, where now people saw an opportunity to make money out of this kind of trade, money started exchanging hands. Today, it is a very big business running into millions of dollars a year and when I say millions it gets to about a hundred million plus a year. This money is not seen by anybody except those who give the money to the trawlers or the trawlers themselves receiving that money and using it for other purposes. That is the best explanation I can give for the saiko trade.
Cobus: So, the idea is that this used to be some kind of barter trade and now it’s essentially turned into a full one economy where people fish illegally or catch what they shouldn’t be catching and then sell it on to the canoes and it becomes almost untraceable by the authorities. Am I getting that correct?
Kofi: You are getting it correct, but if I can explain further the trawlers are licensed to trawl bottom and therefore, they are supposed to get high-price fish like the gropers, the snappers, some of the sperrys, octopuses, shrimps, crabs and what have you. Those high-value fish, but now they found a way of not trawling the bottom. They trawl mid water to surface water to get the fish that local people normally catch on the surface. That is the small pelagic and then they sell this fish back to fishermen who are in dire need of fish.
Eric: So just to give some sense of the context here first, a small country like Ghana about 100,000 metric tons of fish were landed through saiko in 2017 and that was worth, as you said, tens of millions of dollars, about 50 million dollars. So, for an economy, the size of Ghana is a huge amount of money and obviously 100,000 metric tons is a lot. Let’s talk about Chinese involvement here. Chinese by no means as you’ve mentioned are the only ones behaving this, but it seems to be that the Chinese distant fishing fleet is behaving in a way that is on a scale much more significant than other countries. They have also adapted their methods in some ways to make it more difficult to enforce anti-saiko types of measures. Talk to us a little bit about the role of the Chinese in the saiko trade off the coast of Ghana.
Kofi: The genesis of this is that if you look at Ghana law, foreigners are forbidden to trawl or to operate within the trawl industries. It’s purely reserved for Ghanaians, but what has happened in the last many years is that they have found a way around the issue where Ghanaian front men they could be businessmen, they could be politicians, they could be friends who get the license and then invite the Chinese boats or trawlers into the country. Ostensibly, these boats are owned by the Ghanaians, but largely operated by the Chinese.
They are beneficial owners somehow, but the law says that you need to have a 25% foreign crew and 75% Ghanaian crew. That is very much obeyed, but then the 25% crew, which are largely Chinese they control what happens at sea. They determine where to fish, what to fish, how to fish, and when to fish.
When this is done the local operatives of the saiko who are not fishermen, but business people have built new boats with retrofitting so that it does not look like the ordinary wooden canoe that they take out to sea, but this is fully covered at the top and inside the safes has a freezing compartment where they pay their monies early on before even the trawlers set sail and when the trawlers get enough fish that they could sell to them they call them on phone or by whatever means and give them their GPS position. They have a meeting point, a rendezvous point there out in the sea. So, these guys just go out, collect the fish and also come and sell to make profit at the expense of ordinary genuine canoe fishermen who have to go out there to hunt for the fish before bringing them to shore. There is a lot of inequality in terms of who is getting the fish and how they get it and it is really problematic.
Cobus: What is the economic effect on the fishing community that is dependent on this fish?
Kofi: Well, at this time our small pelagic fishery has totally collapsed. The few that is left out there which will re-populate the sea are being harvested by the trawlers and sold to a few fishers. In one of my discussions, I said that one saiko canoe will provide 1.5 jobs for local fishermen, whereas the ordinary canoe fishermen if you take one canoe it provides about 60 jobs. The ratio is about 1:40 and you can understand over the last 10 years or so poverty has doubled in coastal communities. People are out-migrating to other countries because a lot of the coastal communities are becoming ghost towns. Fishermen go to sea and come back with an empty net. Their activities are highly subsidized by the government so all these subsidies that are put in the fishery sector they just bend it off and do not bring anything. It is creating a lot of economic hardships in the coastal communities. There is squalor, there is prostitution, and there are drugs, there is, call it anything that could be associated with people who are marginalized. Our coastal communities are not as vibrant as they used to be maybe 20, 30 years ago.
Eric: So, if the stakes are as high as you say they are given in terms of the economy and obviously providing a source of protein and food for significant numbers of people not just on the coastal community, but also inland as well who want to consume local fish. Why isn’t the government in Accra doing more to crack down on this and to use their relationship with the Chinese government through ambassador Edward Boateng who is in Beijing to communicate the importance of cracking down on this and somehow preventing it from happening? Where is the breakdown in the governance part of this that allows this to happen?
Kofi: The law which was passed in 2002 forbids transshipment of fish at sea because of that anything transshipment is illegal. Talking to government officials they tell us that they do not support illegality, therefore, anything that is illegal, they don’t have anything to do by way of statistics, by way of monitoring, by way of that. So, we as a civil society organization took it upon ourselves and for the first time, we had to do our own research to bring out the issues because either to nobody was talking about this kind of trade. Yes, the government may have met once or twice to discuss, but there was no in-depth study about what was going on until in 2014 we decided to take a hard look at what is going on out there and that is when we began to bring out the issues talking to those who are doing the saiko fishing, talking to trawlers, talking to local community people to really get a good hang of what is happening out there.
Then we decided to do advocacy, get to government, tell the government that this is what is going on. Again, when we did that the economic figures, we couldn’t bring out immediately so we had to continue working hard, trying to get our calculations right, see how much a slab of saiko fish cost, how many lands it is. So, we decided over the years to painstakingly look at all these things. Recently we published a new report which shows that from everything that has happened, they are selling fish at sea to the tune of about 51 million dollars a year. Then when it comes to land those who also sell it out make about 80 million. So, anything between 51 and 80 million. The 51 goes to those who are out there on the water and then the difference is pocketed by these businessmen who I mentioned have found an opportunity in this. So, it is only recently that we are bringing up the real numbers to let the government become acutely aware of the issues that are related to saiko and how much government is losing. Because if they get all these monies at sea this is local monies or local Ghanaian cedis. If they are Chinese, they have to get some dollars back to the beneficial owner so it puts pressure on our currency. The currency is weakening against the dollar by the day because of some of these things that are happening which are unseen.
No tax is paid on the revenue that they get from selling this fish on the high seas, the law forbids them anyway. It’s become a murky and a very complex trade that nobody talks about. Recently, I was showing people the hit map of trawlers off the coast of West Africa and you know that there is a high concentration of trawlers in Ghana compared to Cote D’Ivoire, compared to Togo, Nigeria, and Guinea, Sierra Leone. Maybe you go out there to Senegal and you see that there is another huge hit map of trawlers in there. But what we have noticed is that Ghana is a country that when these trawlers come in the licensing fee is so low and then the benefits are very attractive. It is not a high-risk business where you will be arrested for illegalities. So, everybody finds heaven here from out there and most of the trawlers that we have in our waters are about 76 to 80 haul of Chinese origin and we have gone deeper into finding exactly where it was built, who owned them first and then how it got to the country.
What we realized was that there is one big shipping company that has sent most, if not all these ships into Ghana and they still maintain the Chinese names including where they are coming from, but it is shared among so many different companies. One of the issues that I raise every day is that if you have a boat called Kofi One and you have another one called Kofi Two, Kofi Three I don’t see why somebody like you out there should also have the same boat Kofi Four, Kofi Five, Kofi Six. Another person has Kofi six, Kofi Seven and Kofi Eight. When you go back and you trace where it is coming from the same company. It is like you build it, you send it out there they work and they bring back the money. The issue of beneficial ownership is something that we have to tackle and lift the corporate veil to see who is really behind all this. Who is fleecing our country of our fish and also destroying our ecology and the monies that should be accruing to the state is going rather to some third persons that we do not know?
Cobus: Well, speaking about that obviously you make a number of recommendations in your report about how the Ghanaian government should crackdown on this issue, but how much time do they have to actually get the mechanisms in place before the fish stocks actually completely collapse?
Kofi: Well, I belong to a science and technology working group and we have done some stock assessments and we are estimating that by 2020, 2021 there about our small pelagic stocks will be completely gone.
Eric: That’s next year, right?
Cobus: Next year.
Eric: I mean, let’s be clear. That’s next year that it’s going to be gone. That’s incredible.
Kofi: Yes, so we are doing our advocacy pushing government to take some steps to reverse some of these happenings, but you know government working is so slow. They are not as fast as civil society would want them to, but the debate is on and we are trying to let the government know that there is a suite of measures that they have to take to correct the effort. If you notice or you have read about this for the first time last month and the month of May there was a one month close season for the artisanal fishers to stay at home and not go to sea at all because they claimed that it is August that they get the best fish out of the sea. There are problems there anyway. So what government is saying now is that in August, September the trawlers will also go on a holiday so that the sea is a little quiet and only locals can be there to fish.
The problem is that in August, which is the spawning season for the small pelagic if we allow fishermen to go out there to catch as many as there are it means that we are still hurting the recovery effort that is going on. One would have thought that a closed season in August, September for many years to come would begin to get our fishery somehow back on track. In our own estimation if the close season continues for the next five, six, seven years in the month of August we should be able to recoup almost 90,000 metric tons of fish that is currently lost to the sea and the only way we can re-populate the sea is to allow the small pelagic to spawn and then populate the sea.
These are issues that we are doing advocacy on. We are pushing the ministry and the government very hard to listen to us. Then they tell you that they are social issues associated. There are other economic issues so it has to start gradually. Personally, I was not in favor of the May, June close season, but the lessons we have learned from this is that at least for the first time in over 20 years that the close season is on the law. Fishermen have themselves agreed that they will put down their tools for one month. It is a good beginning, but we don’t expect any benefits from it at this time. Perhaps as we move forward, we should be able to adjust the months a little to get to the optimal time when the fishes are breeding then we can have some new cohorts into the sea. So, these are some of the things we are doing to get the government to understand that we are working in support of them.
Eric: I don’t know. I’m a little bit skeptical right now about what the government in Accra will do or not do just because based on what we’ve seen over the past say five, maybe seven years with the illegal Chinese gold mining in Ghana where everybody knows the problems there. Everybody knows where they are. From time to time they have these raids where they come in in a very high-profile way. They deport a group of Chinese gold miners and then things kind of go back to the way they were and it just doesn’t feel like the government is willing to confront China on this.
The reason why the government in China has some stake in this is that, and Cobus, I don’t remember the report that I read on this, but that there is some financial connection between the Chinese government either through tax breaks or direct subsidies of the distant fishing fleets. It does strike me as this is not simply a private enterprise activity. That there is a connection with the Chinese government and this has to be raised on the government to government level. It just doesn’t seem like from my reading of China Ghanaian relations that the Ghanaian government is willing to do that and willing to really do what’s needed to crack down on both illegal Chinese gold mining and illegal Chinese fishing in its coastal waters. Am I being too negative there and skeptical pessimistic or is that an accurate reading of the politics of the situation right now?
Kofi: I would say that through our advocacy, we are using all means to get to the political top. Perhaps these issues have not been articulated very well to the top of the political hierarchy to see how grievous it is. Myself-
Eric: Are they listening to you? When you sit down in the room are, they listening to what you have to say?
Kofi: Well, it’s all out there, but sometimes the seriousness that one expects that will be applied is not the case yet. What I would say is that the immediate people who are the government workers or people who work in the ministry must take this thing up first, it has to go to the minister, and the minister must go to cabinet and explain these issues. If it is not going that way, then we will have to use the back door and as I speak to you now, we have called, we the CSOs have called to meet the parliamentary select committee in charge of fisheries. We have written to the vice president. We want to seek audience with him to give him graphic details of what is happening.
Sometimes before it goes through third persons, forth persons the issue is slightly diluted and it doesn’t really come up well. So, we want to meet these groups either parliament that represents the people or get to the vice president if he has someone hour or so for us to present the issues, show him documentaries of how they are stealing our resources and taking them away. It is only when we have the highest political capital and the president or vice president and people like that are making statements in any of their speeches, then the press and others will take it up just like they did for the illegal gold mining so that in everywhere everybody is talking about.
We have been talking to the press to carry the issues as they did with the gold mining, but as I speak to you now occasionally it comes into the press, but the fervor with which was done for the illegal gold mining we haven’t reached that crescendo yet. We are still talking to our friends in the media so that they can actually prick more of the public consciousness about this concur, then we can all put pressure on our government to stem what is happening. At the moment I must say that it doesn’t look good.
Cobus: I guess the one actor that can also be appealed to is Europe because as you mentioned as these economies collapse a lot of people are migrating and then some of them will end up in Europe as well. Do you have any indications about what the impact on migration is from this collapse of coastal economies?
Kofi: Well, I was in Thailand in February to give a presentation on saiko. My opening speech or my first few words was that all those Europeans in the room should reflect and try to understand why young people are leaving coastal communities, walking through the desert wanting to get to Europe because the fisheries that drive their economy that gives them sustenance is being depleted and there was need for some concerted action. Europe should also put pressure on our governments. Any international body that deals with our government should be talking to our president and our vice president and our ministers about this concur.
In 2013 when the yellow card was issued to Ghana, Ghana quickly within a period of one and a half to two years was able to put systems in place. I’ve always told my friends in government that if we do not take time there would be another yellow card which will make fishermen poorer. So, we must begin to take steps to correct some of these things. I must say that this is a very huge business that people can easily bribe others, give money here, give all their and therefore everybody keeps quiet. I must say that the politicians are the biggest culprits because they have friends out there and they go for the licenses or their proxies go for these licenses and then they call the Chinese to come into man their vessels. When you question, they say the Chinese are their employees and therefore they report to them.
I was with the head of MCS and we were having a discussion when we got to know that one trawler has been arrested in Liberia for illegal fishing. Quickly whoever was their representative was invited to the office and asked whether he is aware. He said, well he doesn’t even know where that vessel is and I said well if you own a vessel on day to day basis you must know that it is in the waters of Ghana or Cote D’Ivoire. I mean, there has to be and this is a guy who says he owns the boat, but he doesn’t even know that the boat is in Liberia and has been arrested.
This gives us the reason to think that those who come forward and say that they are the owners of these boats and therefore they take licenses for it don’t know anything about fisheries. They just are sitting there and when the Chinese make enough money, they give them some [inaudible 00:31:50] and then they are happy. These are some of the problems we face and it is so opaque that you need a lot of effort to get behind and find information, but because people are not willing to talk because when they start talking people are going to lose their jobs and all that and the little monies that they are making on the side. We have an uphill task.
Eric: I mean and an uphill task is putting it quite mildly actually. It just doesn’t seem like there is a lot of incentive given the money that is involved here for politicians to crackdown. The alignment of the interest of greedy politicians with greedy corporate interest with the lack of power, ability of NGOs and Civil Society Groups like your own to be able to affect change does suggest that the next two to five years as you indicated are going to be devastating for the fish stocks and then, as a result, will have a consequential impact on the communities that depend on those fish stocks. This doesn’t look like it’s going to end well.
Kofi: Well, our fish stocks are really, really at the lowest of the low. Last year looking at 70-year statistics collected by the fisheries commission last year was the lowest ever recorded for the small pelagics and the year before was a little bit above what was recorded last year. So you will notice that since 1996 there about the stocks have gone down to the extent that what we harvest today is below the 10% of the historical maximum that has ever been caught in our waters. It is a big problem and we need more than just CSOs like ours and EJF and others to advocate. We need a lot of pressure from the international community as well on our politicians and the people in high places who have anything to do with this so that we can curb the situation. I mean you can’t go to China and start operating the way they come in here and operate with nonchalance.
Eric: No, no it wouldn’t be possible. Kofi, thank you so much for taking the time. Kofi Agbogah is the executive director of Hen Mpoano which is ‘Our Coast’ that means in the Fante dialect which is a civil society organization fighting really the noble fight to protect those fish stocks and the communities and the people that depend on them. If you aren’t just terrified by what’s happening in Ghana you should be. For those of you sitting in Europe, I think Kofi’s warning should be really sobering. That these people are not going to sit still when the food stocks run out. They are going to be on the move and guess where they are going to go? They are going to cross the Mediterranean again.
There is a lot at stake for people far beyond just Ghana on this. I think a lot of times when we talk about these environmental issues we say, well, that’s somebody else’s problem. Well, I think what we’ve seen over the past three or four years is that somebody else’s problem far away rapidly becomes your problem. We are seeing that now in the United States on the Southern Border as well. These are global problems and Kofi is on the front line of that. We really appreciate you taking the time. If people want to follow the work that you are doing and stay in touch with what Hen Mpoano is doing what’s the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Kofi: Well, our website is www.henmpoano.org. My email is kofi.agbogah@gmail.com or kagbogah@henmpoano.org. I’m also on Skype, Kofi.agbogah. So, I can be reached through these channels, media channels.
Eric: Fantastic. We’ll go ahead and put the links to all of that. Also, you should check out this report that was absolutely fascinating. Stolen at Sea: How illegal saico fishing is fueling the collapse of Ghana’s fisheries. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes as well. Kofi, thank you so much for joining us and we wish you the best of luck.
Kofi: Thank you so very much.
Eric: Cobus, last year we were talking about the fact that South Africa was going to be running out of water and Cape Town was within 30 to 45 days of running out of water. We are looking at the levels of deforestation in places like Gabon and throughout the tropical rainforest belt in sub-Saharan Africa. Then we are looking at the spread of the Sahara Desert. There are natural parts of climate change that are happening. Natural in the sense that it is nature actually doing it. Then there are the human parts which is like this illegal fishing issue and then also in Gabon with the illegal logging issue. Too often it seems that the Chinese are the main player in this. Now, this is not to say that the Chinese are the only player in this and I think that’s really important context to keep here. There are French, American other entities that are also involved.
The Chinese seem to be operating at a scale in Africa that dwarfs many of the others and that’s why it’s a point of concern. I think it’s one of these issues where the Chinese are missing a huge opportunity for leadership. So, what we saw in 2017 when president Xi Jinping banned ivory was an immediate public relations boost for the Chinese. Now we are seeing two years later elephant stocks going up and the population going up and it’s just phenomenal. People are really giving credit where it’s due. On the other hand, on things like timber and on illegal fishing and on pangolins the Chinese government doesn’t seem to be taking any action and they are missing a tremendous opportunity. Do they have the ability to run all of this in? Probably not. Do they have the ability to do more than other governments? Absolutely.
I really do hope that people start to recognize that there are some things that we can control climate change and there are some things we can’t right now. This is definitely one of them that we can.
Cobus: Yes, definitely. I completely agree with you and Xi Jingpin has made such a point of China becoming a leader on multilateralism, a leader on issues around environmentalism. Someone who is willing to lead should lead. There’s a big vacuum at the moment in the international community for a powerful country to really step into that role. Whether it’s China, whether it’s Europe I don’t think realistically it’s probably going to be the United States right now, then they should. Part of that work is cracking down on this kind of companies, cracking down on this kind of economies, putting pressure on other governments, but part of it is also creating new ideas about what it means to live well. I think we need to put this in context. We are not only talking about African poverty here. I think part of the larger dynamic we are seeing is China has only become rich very recently. I mean a lot of Chinese people aren’t rich and will never be rich as some of the work of Lauren Johnson who interviewed last year has shown.
What you have is a large number of Chinese people who are newly wealthier than they used to be. It’s a very natural thing for people like that to want to live better. To not live a life of deprivation like their parents did. I think then it becomes a big thing to show different alternative ways of what living well could mean, ways that don’t fall back into old patterns of consumption that will burn out the planet. Think of ways that, for example, a plant-based lifestyle can be fun and luxurious and stylish. You know what I mean? So, it’s not only a thing of regulation and government, it’s also a thing of media and aspiration and putting the quite massive resources of Chinese media and Chinese discourse and the Internet economy in China to bare on different ways of being in the world. That’s a way of leadership.
Eric: I mean. It is, but I mean just to push back a little bit on that I think you’ll get the urban [inaudible 00:41:01] in places like Shanghai and Shenzhen who might come around to that, but food is a really powerful force in Chinese culture as it is in most cultures. Getting people to think about where their food comes from, reducing their consumption of protein and beef and even fish is going to be a very, very hard sell on that. It may happen, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. What I do see happening is the government really starting to put pressure on a very powerful constituency the fishing industry I’m sure in China like it is in other countries probably throws a lot of weight around politically and it’s going to be tough for the Xi administration to actually do anything against this. My guess is that these are powerful folks and they are not just operating in Africa these are probably multinationals that are operating off of in South East Asia, in South America and other places. This is a big fight that you would have to pick if he was to do something about this. Hard to see him doing that now given what he is up against with the United States and the trade war there, but it is something that needs to happen because we are going to see fish docks now in many parts of the world just evaporate.
As Kofi said we are talking next year. You know when we talk a lot about environmental issues sometimes, they say, well in 2035 and 2045 something is going to happen. Literally, we heard it here that it’s going to happen next year that certain part of the Ghanaian fish stocks is going to become- incredible. Just absolutely incredible. Anyway, this is part of our ongoing coverage on sustainability issues. We are going to be doing a lot more of this in part because it is so critical to the China Africa discourse and understanding what it is and we would love to hear what you think. What do you suggest can be done in a case where there is weak governance on the Ghanaian side, a lack of will on the Chinese side, a lack of awareness among Chinese consumers and maybe just apathy from the international community? All of that combined together puts Kofi on the front lines almost alone in fighting this and so what would you recommend need to be done. Practical, actionable solutions, that’s what we’d like to hear. If you share some with us, we would be happy to post them up on our social media channels and social media feeds to continue this discussion. You can find me over on LinkedIn, there is a great discussion going there. Just look for Eric Olander and make sure you sign up for our weekly email newsletter on Friday that goes out and we put a weekend review of all the top stories that basically lets you go into your weekend with a little bit to read as you make your way through Saturday and Sunday. We’d love to have you part of that community as well. Cobus and I will be back next week with another edition of the China in Africa podcast. Thank you so much for listening.
Source: chinaafricaproject.com
