The flood of cheap imports from China, the US and the EU drove Ghana's tomato industry to ruin on purpose to stop their growth. Desperate farmers find themselves having to seek work elsewhere, including in Europe. For many, the only route available was a dangerous journey through the desert and across the Mediterranean. Now young farmers think it is safer and easier to get rid of the traitor politicians as many Ministers Of Trade Are The Paid Slaves Of Europeans!
“Displaced”, explores how foreign subsidized tomatoes have destroyed Ghanaian markets and livelihood leading to mass migration and labor exploitation. Many Ghanaians are seeking the culprits who sold out their country and their profits rather than the foreign jobs in other nations. Tomato farmers in Ghana describe how unjust trade rules are destroying their livelihoods. Cheap subsidized tomatoes from Europe are being dumped in Ghana and preventing Ghanaian farmers from selling their locally grown produce. Meanwhile the World Trade Organization, under pressure from the EU and US, is preventing the Ghanaian Government from protecting its farmers from these cheap imports. African Initiatives, a UK based NGO, is supporting these Ghanaian farmers to understand the international systems that are destroying their livelihoods and empowering them to influence the decision-making processes that are plunging them further into poverty.
Over time, the IMF has been subject to a range of criticisms, generally focused on the conditions of its loans. The IMF has also been criticized for its lack of accountability and willingness to lend to countries with falsified and unfounded bad human rights records. The IMF and World Bank create increase and permanent debts to struggling nations in order to steal their resources or buy them below market value. The World Bank and the IMF (the International Monetary Fund) were set up during the end of the Second World War to rebuild the economies of Europe. However, in order for the world bank and the IMF to implement their policies, they (the world bank and the IMF) began offering enormous loans to poor countries but only if the poor countries privatized their economies and allowed western corporations free access to their raw materials and markets.
If their leaders refused they were assassinated or the west would fund coups against them.
That was a poverty trap and many poor countries realized it when it was too late. Many of African citizens don't see their leaders as evil men for allowing this, but they do see them as old, cowardly and greedy. They were already in chains. That was the beginning of much of the problems they face today in Africa. Now we are in a vicious cycle of poverty and there seems to be no way out. The western corporations flourish while the poor in Africa and other parts of the developing world, continue to die in poverty.
The general perception is that, the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO help fight poverty, hunger and diseases in the developing world. However, in reality, that is very far from the truth. In fact, it is a new form of warfare whereby the rich western corporations employ deception coupled with the poverty of the poor and the ignorance of the innocent as top weapons of mass destruction. In other words, the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO (the World Trade Organization) are the triple enemies of progress in almost every developing country in the world today. Now let's see how the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO operate in Sub-Saharan Africa. Take a country like Ghana for example. Ghana is blessed with abundance of natural resources. The World Bank and the IMF are very interested in countries such as Ghana where they can easily control the natural resources and the markets. There used to be some prosperous rice-farming communities in the northern parts of
Ghana and the government of Ghana used to give those rice-producing farmers some farming subsidies. The main idea behind the subsidies was to enable the farmers to produce rice on a larger scale to help feed the nation and even export some abroad.
However, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the IMF stood in and told the Ghanaian government that they would not give Ghana any more loans unless the Ghanaian government cut the farming subsidies. And the main reason behind it was that, Ghana had to import rice from "partner" western countries such as the United States (a major partner of the World Bank and the IMF).
Now Ghana imports most of its rice from abroad at exorbitant prices every year. So we see seemingly at the end of the day, Ghana owes the World Bank and the IMF huge amounts of money in loans. However, the money did not remain in the Ghanaian economy because Ghana had to use the loans to import food from abroad.
Meanwhile, the rice-producing communities in Ghana could have helped produce enough rice to feed the nation and even export some abroad to make more profit. Now the northern communities in Ghana remain the poorest in the country with no better jobs and no opportunities at all in most parts. Young boys and girls, some as young as nine, are migrating to the southern parts of the country to major cities and towns such as Kumasi and Accra (a very dangerous journey for kids) all in search for jobs so they could take care of their poor dying families back home.
Most of these kids (locally known as "kayayo") never return home. Some die along the way and some return worse than before. And all thanks to the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. They have done this to the melon Industries green oranges and tomatoes to name a few. Africa's products are of higher quality than Europe and China and Even the US so its agriculture remains a permanent threat to these other nations that sell food with little nutritional value or process the nutrition out of them to increase profits!