In the GNA-sourced Ghanaweb Business News of Thursday, 5 February 2009, titled “US to provide 1.1 million dollars for KIA projects”, we were told that the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) will provide 1.1 million dollars to upgrade the capacity of the Kotoka International Airport (KIA).
According to the news bulletin, a press release from the US Embassy in Accra on that fateful Thursday, the project will consist of refurbishment of the passenger terminal, development of a new Air Traffic Control Centre (ATC) and modernization of the Meteorological Services Department (MSD). The Release was silent on the Ghana Government unlike in the case of FAA’s similar statement on Korea category 1 status.
The story was too good to be true however spiced by GNA. As Nkrumaists, we have never bought US-spiced stories. Readers will recall how under CIA anti-democratic guidance Ghanaians, pumped up with drugs shot fellow Ghanaians and put corpses in refrigerators in Flagstaff House and treasonably overthrew the constitutional Government of Ghana. In addition, the Obama Government, according to authentic British sources is currently focused on US domestic policy above all. So we started investigations into the matter, namely the real US domestic agenda.
Our investigations took us to the documents of the ICAO and into why The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration will be so interested in the air transport matters of Ghana at this critical juncture.
Our investigation led us to the following summary: USTDA is rather providing funding for 3 feasibility studies in the following three areas: (1) indentify architectural and engineering services to improve passenger flow, renovate the arrivals area and add new ticketing building, concourses and departure gates; (2) the specifications and location for the new facility as well as recommend the ATC equipment needed to accommodate both near-term traffic and projected traffic over the next 15 years; and (3) to modernize the Department to establish a central WFO, equip all airports in Ghana with Automated Weather Stations or radar surveillance.
The actual projects that will therefore arise from the feasibility studies will generate business as follows: (1) airport consulting, engineering and design services, equipment for baggage handing, security, electronics, boarding bridges, communication and building services of at least 25 million dollars. As usual the actual cost will be far higher when you factor in the 10%s at the relevant usual levels; (2) Estimated total capital requirements of at least 47 million dollars. As usual the actual cost will be far higher when you factor in the 10%s at the relevant usual levels. The total cost of the three projects before inflation, cost increases and 10%s is at least $72 million.
The US report did not tell us where the funding is going to come from to fund the projects themselves and whether such funding will be in the form of grants or loans or a combination of both. In the current credit crunch of freemarket socialism for the benefit of investment banks, insurance firms and manufacturers, it is most likely to be a loan which Ghanaians will be expected to pay.
The 3 feasibility studies announced as projects in the press release are NOT projects in themselves; they are simply put feasibility studies FULL STOP. The GNA report however misled us to think that USTDA is funding projects. It is not. Can Ghanaians recall serious US grant funding, despite American wealth, for anything worthwhile in Ghana? We mean serious funding – not recycled visa fees - such as they are doling out to Goldman Sachs, Barclays and AIG etc?
But the USTDA funding of feasibility studies was sold to us as providing us with the following: (1) Ghana will achieve IASA Category 1 status; (2) Ghanaian carriers will have direct service to the US; (3) Ghana’s ability to trade with the US will increase; (4) Ghana can handle 2 million passengers by 2024 with the right goods and services; (5) Ghana will be able to safely handle her airspace; (6) Ghanaian institutions like VRA will all have pertinent and improved weather information. One of the questions for instance that Ghanaians must be asking GACL and the US Embassy is whether such weather information will put an end to the Akosombo Dam problems. The real funding motive was thus hidden inside a lot of benefits to Ghana, an approach which is standard CIA practice.
The real motive according to our research was the fact that if Ghanaian carriers will have direct service to the US, then so will US carriers; hence, which US carriers in particular are of so much interest to the USTDA, FAA etc.
This raises the question of what trade could have interested the then US Bush Government so much that they will invest in KIA feasibility studies. Readers will note that the announcement was made after Barrack Hussein Obama came to office although the plan was logically hatched during the Bush Presidency and his visit to Ghana under John Kufour.
The product that would have interested the US so much turns out to be none other than OIL – Ghana’s black gold. More of which we are discovering.
The central question thus raised by the USTDA investment is why will the USTDA so falsely present feasibility studies through the US Embassy as Projects “to help Ghana” rather than advancing US domestic policy of oil security? What are they so trying to hide from Ghanaians?
Our research with the help of an article in The New African has revealed that the upgrade enables AFRICOM to use KIA to secure West African oil exports to the US. US Oil security is what is behind the so-called KIA projects. AFRICOM itself is an African-rejected military force now stationed in Germany.
The purpose of the USTDA-funded category 1 status will thus enable military aircraft, increased secret service agents and military personnel operating under AFRICOM to secure West African oil from Ghana in the event of a Liberia, a Sierra Leone, a Rwanda or a Dafur. Readers should note that under freemarket rules or lack of rules such events can be deliberately triggered to trash and cash resources at very profitable prices of countries the US wants contrary to international law.
In the meantime the funding will generate millions of dollars of business for US businesses by giving US companies leverage in monopolising the contract to supply all the capital requirements and the airport consulting, engineering and design services. For the US Embassy it is a win-win situation now and in the future.
Those who have known or argue that the present US Embassy is a military base may not be far from the truth. What is now becoming clear is AFRICOM/KIA as a central part of US’s West African oil security interests. Neither Ghana nor Ghanaians feature in the oil equation.
The way forward is for Ghana to nationalise oil, keep TOR under public ownership and order the immediate closure of the US Embassy in its present form.
BACKGROUND: • Readers must note that KIA itself is named after an Ewe soldier who along with others that the US funded with $13,000,000 through the CIA to overthrow a constitutional government of Ghana. The soldier is the hero of Ghanaians like JJ Rawlings, Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, to name a few. President Mills, an Nkrumaist Young Pioneer, is therefore wrong to commend USA for supporting Ghana’s democracy because USA has never supported Ghana’s democracy. USA has rather funded coups amongst others on the African continent. JJ must who must surely know what is really going on must tell Ghanaians this rather than targeting the Mills administration. • • In order to promote the idea that USTDA is coming to our rescue there was a mysterious airport blackout at KIA. This blackout according to the Electrical Manager was as a result of the failure of KIA’s distribution network. The Managing Director of GACL which is one of the parties named in the misleading USTDA Press Release assured us all that GACL will make KIA an “an aviation destination and hub in West Africa”. The same GACL is partnering USTDA. • • The GIPC, created to foster the privatisation of Ghana under the now discredited unregulated US-led globalisation programme, Readers will note, has for a long time promoted the idea of Ghana as the golden gateway to Africa. This, of course, Readers will observe is the corruption of the leading role that Ghana, under the illustrious and divine leadership in turn of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, played in the decolonisation of the African continent.
OTHER BACKGROUND: • “Africom’s Agenda Still Baffles Africa”, New African, Feruary 2009. • AFI CNS/ATM IMPLEMENTATION PLAN 1995 – 2005 • EASTERN CARIBBEAN CIVILAVIATION AUTHORITY – ECCAA, The Regional Approach to Improve Safety Oversight, Presentation by: Mr. Herald Wilson, Director General, 2005 • Structure of ICAO Secretariat, 18th November 2008 • INTERNATIONAL CIVIL AVIATION ORGANIZATION, RVSM/RNAV/RNP TASK FORCE 14 MEETING REPORT, (NAIROBI, 26 – 28 May 2008), Prepared by the APIRG RVSM/RNAV/RNP TASK FORCE • • MEMBERSHIP LIST OF THE ALLPIRG/ADVISORY GROUP, Planning and Implementation Regional Groups (PIRGs), • INTERNATIONAL CIVIL AVIATION ORGANIZATION, NORTH AMERICAN, CENTRAL AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN OFFICE, FOURTH MEETING OF DIRECTORS OF CIVIL AVIATION, OF THE CENTRAL CARIBBEAN, (Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands, 17-20 May 2000) • • International Civil Aviation Organization WORKING PAPER, CONFERENCE ON THE ECONOMICS OF AIRPORTS AND AIR NAVIGATION SERVICES, Montréal, 15 to 20 September 2008 • • INTERNATIONAL CIVIL AVIATION ORGANIZATION, WESTERN AND CENTRAL AFRICAN OFFICE, AFISNET SATELLITE NETWORK MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE (SNMC), COORDINATION MEETING, Dakar, 26 March 2008 • • International Civil Aviation Organization, Corporate Plan • FAA Gives Republic of Korea IASA Rating of Category 2, August 17, 2001 • • Ministry orders investigation into airport blackouts, General News of Wednesday, 4 March 2009, Ghanaweb • • Mills commend USA for supporting Ghana's democracy, General News of Wednesday, 4 March 2009, Ghanaweb • • US to provide 1.1 million dollars for KIA projects, Business News of Thursday, 5 February 2009, Ghanaweb
NOTE ON WRITER: Kwami Agbodza is a member of the Convention Peoples’ Party (CPP). Readers will recall that USA and its CIA that either funded or sponsored coups across the African continent and turned the post-colonial dream into a free market Washington Consensus nightmare that has left the majority of Africans poor on less than $2 a day and siphoned off its scientists to work for American capitalism dubbed Globalisation. Kwami believes that the US provision of 1.1 million dollars for KIA project was not what it seemed at first. Alerted by his suspicions of wicked US policy towards Africa, this led him into investigating the real motive for the funding that led him to Africom. As a CPP member he has no faith in American democracy even under Obama or its anti-democratic intentions towards CPP specifically and Ghana in General. He is urging Ghanaians never to trust US policy in Ghana and Africa.
