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Misplaced Priorities of the EU migration policy and its relation to aid

The idea of states with border-controls is a very recent phenomenon. Just 100 years ago people could move more or less freely across the globe. But times have changed. Borders have been erected and patrolled, and as a farmer in Northern Ghana observed in 2016: “now they turned into transparent bullet-proof walls”. Reflecting on the different stages of ‘development’ between our continents he adds: “You are already way ahead! Can’t you stop chasing the money? Don’t you know that it is all about being together? You’re just creating more pressures!” The pressures he is referring to are the ostentatious ways-of-life Westerners (and other global elites) like to flaunt via online platforms ranging from Facebook, Twitter to Instagram. At the same time progress in many so-called ‘developing-countries’ has been rather slow. Countries that the World Bank ranks as “Lower-Middle-Income” [i] , such as Ghana, where the average Gross National Income per person per year is s
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"Let's speak the truth to power... if somone will fund us"

Research and development are - at least to me - intrinsically linked. To successfully develop, that is to grow, expand, progress, evolve, mature and prosper,we must experiment, investigate, analyze, examine and reflect, or in one word: research. Critical, self-reflective minds are the cornerstone of both: successful research and development.  However, just like the Darth Vaders' of development, researchers are usually forced to operate within 'the system'. A system that has been dominated by the privatization of a long list of public goods, including education, and in particular research at university level and beyond. Government institutions and it's henchmen are still involved in the funding of the later, but mostly with specific research goals predefined and usually the private sector and its own benefits in mind. A beautiful and scary example of government-funded, private sector focused research support for development projects in Africa is the announceme
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The Darth Vaders' of Development

​" Darth Vader has not developed his own humanity. He's a robot. He's a bureaucrat, living not in terms of himself but in terms of an imposed system. This is the threat of our lives that we all face today. Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes? How do you relate to the system so that you are not compulsively serving it? It doesn't help to try to change it to accord with your system of thought. The momentum of history behind it is too great for anything really significant to evolve from that kind of action. The thing to do is learn to live in your period of history as a human being. That's something else, and it can be done. ...      By holding on to your own ideals for yourself and, like Luke Skywalker, rejecting the system's impersonal claims upon you. " (Campbell, Joseph  (1988) The power of Myth with Bill Moyers , p
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Uni Freiburg Interview: Die Kleinbauern ziehen den Kürzeren

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Die Kleinbauern ziehen den Kürzeren Internationale Organisationen stecken viel Geld in Ghanas Landwirtschaft – warum kommt es nicht bei denen an, die es brauchen? Freiburg, 20.08.2018 Hilft Entwicklungshilfe wirklich? Diese Frage treibt die Freiburger Geografin Jasmin Marston um. In ihrer Doktorarbeit hat sie untersucht, welchen Einfluss das Geld und die Arbeit zahlreicher Organisationen vor allem aus den USA und Deutschland auf die Landwirtschaft in Ghana haben. Dafür hat sie 16 Monate im Land verbracht, 260 Interviews geführt und auf den Feldern in der Nordregion Ghanas gearbeitet. Ihre Ergebnisse sind wenig ermutigend. von Thomas Goebel https://www.pr.uni-freiburg.de/pm/online-magazin/forschen-und-entdecken/die-kleinbauern-ziehen-den-kuerzeren?fbclid=IwAR3ipCtFwc2icp15b0VdCBndhS-wNgCvp98cYuawpez85eeE6YMnFua4
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Uni Freiburg interview: Small Farmers Draw the Short Straw

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Soy farming in the Norther Region in Ghana, 2016 Small Farmers Draw the Short Straw International aid organizations are putting a lot of money into Ghana’s agriculture – so why is it not reaching those most in need? Freiburg, Aug 20, 2018 Does development aid really work? That is the question that nags Freiburg geographer Jasmin Marston. In her doctoral thesis she investigated the influence of power and ideas of aid organizations, so-called Development Partners from the USA and Europe, on agriculture in Ghana. She spent sixteen months in the country, conducted 260 semi-structured interviews and worked in the fields in the north of Ghana, to find out. Her results are less than encouraging.. https://www.pr.uni-freiburg.de/pm-en/online-magazine/research-and-discover/small-farmers-draw-the-short-straw?fbclid=IwAR3ipCtFwc2icp15b0VdCBndhS-wNgCvp98cYuawpez85eeE6YMnFua4
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Book: Barraccon - the (uncomfortable) story of the last slave

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  Zora Neale Hurston's 1930's interviews with the last known survivor of the trans-Atlantic slave trade - Oluale Kossola or as he was later called Cudjo Lewis - was finally published in 2018.  Cudjo has arrived in Alabama in 1860, a good half-century after Britain and the USA officially abolished the international trafficking of African people to the "New World". Yet an estimated 3,873,6000 Africans were nevertheless exchanged for gold, guns and other European and American merchandise from African "elites"/rulers, such as the King of Dahomey (the kingdom of Dahomey was located in modern-day Benin/Nigeria). While enslavement of people was not unusual among African tribes, the sell of prisoners was particularly importance to accumulate wealth as well as political dominance. Hurston uses vernacular in her book, so as for Cudjo to tell his story directly and authentically - his capture, his sell and crossing, his five and a half year as a slave in
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DUMSOR - the on and off electricity in Accra

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Oh Dumsor, not sure if I should love you or hate you. Off and on is our relationship. Leaving me hot or cold. You remind me constantly what a precious commodity electricity is, how easy my life has been, and that yes, it is possible to go without it. You surprise me every day anew. Always lurking around the corner. Never certain how long you will stay or when you go again, but grateful that you are with me while I am writing these lines. DUMSOR. My first Twi word I learned. Dum means off, Sor means on, as for the constant on and off for electricity. Jubilation is almost louder when its back on than when the Black Stars score a goal ;) The aforementioned Nkrumah, while controversial at the end of his term, was responsible for building the first large scale hydroelectric power dam in Ghana - Akosombo Dam. Finished in 1966, its construction created the largest man-made lake in the world - Volta Lake - to produce electricity for the aluminum industry they tried to bu
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