The Great
African Scandal - Lesson Plan #2
Competency: Understand the economic justice
challenges preventing Africans from living with dignity.
Linked Core Abilities:
-
Take responsibility for your actions and choices
-
Do your share as a good citizen in your school, community, country and the
world.
LESSON PLAN
1. The student class leader (previously selected
by the instructor) divides the class into 5 person
jigsaw groups.
2. The group leader selects one student in each group as the segment leader.
3. Segment the lesson into 5 parts. Students learn about modern day
injustice in Africa by
dividing the lesson into stand-alone segments on: (1) Water, (2) Rice, (3)
Chocolate, (4) Child Labor, and (5) Gold.
4. Students are given time to view their segment at
http://www.teachpeace.com/greatafricanscandal.htm and outline key points.
(1) Water - 3
minutes and 50 seconds to 8 minutes plus optional 40 minutes to 43 minutes and
46 seconds
(2) Rice - 13
minutes and 8 seconds to 18 minutes and 4 seconds
(3) Child Labor
- 18 minutes and 19 seconds to 23 minutes and 58 seconds
(4) Chocolate -
24 minutes to 33 minutes plus 44 minutes and 30 seconds to 45 minutes and
2 seconds
(5) Gold - 33
minutes to 43 minutes and 46 seconds
The segment
leader facilitates as students spend 15 minutes discussing what they have
observed.
5. Students leave their jigsaw group to meet with
four students who have each worked on different parts of this jigsaw assignment. The student
class leader facilitates to see that groups with students representing all five
topics are formed. Students discuss the main points of their
segment for 15 minutes and identify a leader to report back to the entire class.
6. Segment leaders summarize in 2 minutes key themes for the class.
7. The class leader observing each group, assists when segment leaders need
assistance. The class leader calls upon the groups formed in step 5 to summarize
their discussion.
8. The class leader summarizes key messages in the documentary by showing
the class 45 minutes and 20 seconds to 46 minutes and 51 seconds.
9. As time
permits and more likely as a dedicated separate class, students use their
creativity to solve economic injustices.
For the discussion guide,
click here.
To access
service learning leadership development opportunities,
click here.
Notes:
In this
thought-provoking documentary, academic Robert Beckford undertakes a
challenging, emotional journey to Ghana in West Africa.
Two
centuries ago, Robert Beckford’s ancestors were seized from Ghana and taken as
slaves to Jamaica. Now he is making a journey to the land of his roots to
discover the hidden costs of clean water, rice, child labor, chocolate and gold.
Working alongside
local people, Robert struggles to survive on the average wage of 60p a day or
about $1. He asks why, 50 years after independence, this country, which is rich
in minerals and is a stable democracy, is still one of the poorest in the world.
He examines the
activities of multinational corporations, as well as the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund, to find out whether they have actually made
countries like Ghana worse off. Robert asks how we, as consumers and citizens,
can make a difference.
Water
Robert starts his
investigation in Tamale, capital of the agricultural north of Ghana. By working
with rice farmers and trying to survive on Ghana’s average national income of
60p a day, he finds out how western policies have affected local people. In the
early 1970s, Ghana supplied nearly 50% of its own needs in rice. Arriving at the
village where he is to start his investigation, Robert walks a mile each way to
obtain water. The nearest source of water is a pond infested with Guinea
worm. Robert struggles to keep up with the women and children carrying home
buckets of water on their heads. If he sold his bucket of water in the village,
he would earn about 12 cents.
Rice
He goes to work as
a rice farmer. After some haggling, he is offered a wage of £1 which equates to
$1.5 a day – nearly double the average national daily income in Ghana – and
starts work clearing rock-hard ground with a heavy axe to prepare land for a new
rice field.
The farmers
explain that, until the 1980s, the Ghanaian government handed out grants for
fertilizer and machinery. Then the World Bank moved in and put a stop to state
subsidies. The new mantra was the free market and privatization. The farmers
were back to square one.
At the end of the
day, Robert has not managed anything like a full day’s work; he has earned only
25p. Adding 5p for the bucket of water, his day’s wages come to a total of 30p
or approximately 50 cents.
‘I think they’ve
been fair,’ says Robert. ‘I could only last an hour out there in the heat.’ What
he doesn’t think is fair is that these farmers have been put in this position in
the first place. He says: ‘I can't see how in this modern day and age we would
subject people to this kind of livelihood just to make our part of the world
richer. … It's not something they've brought on themselves or willed, or
concocted, or an act of God or some kind of misfortune. It's a calculated
political process.’
He then heads for
nearby Botanga, where the Government and the World Bank have set up an
irrigation project. The dam has enabled farmers to grow enough rice to sell
commercially but here the wages are only 50p a day – less than the subsistence
farmers paid him.
What Robert
discovers here leaves him gobsmacked: ‘In the 1980s, as part of their strategy
to open up the Ghanaian market, the American government supplied rice as food
aid. It was like sending snow to the Eskimos. … Along with the sweetener of the
food aid, the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and the Americans told the
Ghanaian government to cut subsidies to farmers and open up its markets to
foreign imports. The food aid tailed off. Cheap foreign rice flooded in and
Ghana’s rice production stagnated.’
While the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank told Ghana to axe its subsidies
to rice farmers, the American government pays as much as 72% of their own
farmers’ costs. Robert finds local producers struggling to sell their rice in
the market because people prefer the heavily subsidized, imported American rice.
It’s shameful,’
says Robert. ‘The story of my packet of supermarket rice ends here in the awful
slums of Kumasi.
‘Next time you buy
subsidized rice, think what it’s done to Ghana.’
Child
Labor
One chilling side
of the abject poverty is that many of the girls, some younger than 12, are
leaving their homes and families to try and earn some money in the city. Going
in search of them, he discovers them living in squalid conditions in the town of
Kumasi.
Child labor is
illegal in Ghana, so people are reluctant to talk about it, but local expert
Newman Ofosu believes that around 20% of children are working and that only 80%
go to school. Newman says: ‘Even if it is one child, it is one child too many.’
Chocolate
Cocoa is one of
Ghana’s most important exports and a vital ingredient of chocolate. Robert has
heard stories of desperate parents in the north of the country sending their
children south to work. He’s even been told that children are rented out in
exchange for a sewing machine or a bicycle.
To find out what
it’s like to be a child laborer, he gets himself a job on a cocoa farm. He will
be working alongside the farmer’s 15-year-old niece, Alara, and 10-year-old
nephew, Baba. To Robert’s amazement, they have never even tasted chocolate.
Robert discovers
that Alara and Baba are not paid. They work just for their food and lodging.
Alara says that she works six hours a day and has never been to school. Baba
shows Robert how to cut down weeds with a machete. He has never been to school,
though he would like to.
Shocked by what he
has learnt, Robert says, ‘Maybe the advert for some of these big chocolate
manufacturers should go along the lines of: Fantastic taste. The best chocolate
in the world. Sexual, seductive, beautiful – and produced by illiterate
10-year-old boys like Baba.’
Robert has tried
to ask Cadburys and Nestlé about their policies on child labor. Replying on
their behalf, their trade organization said that the big chocolate companies ‘do
not want children to be harmed in the growing or harvesting of cocoa’. They
pointed out that they fund projects to help farmers become more productive and
support a certification scheme run by the Ghanaian government to register cocoa
farms and monitor employment practices. However, the certification scheme is
three years behind the original schedule and even when it’s in place will only
cover 50% of the growing regions.
More promising is
a co-operative farm where, in return for slightly higher profits, farmers
promise not to use child labor and are monitored to ensure that they don’t. The
extra money goes into a fund which benefits the farmers and their villages, but
the biggest difference here, compared to the other cocoa farms, is that the
children go to school.
Even then there’s
a catch for the Ghanaians: only 3% of the cocoa beans from the co-operative are
bought at the Fair Trade price. The other 97% end up mixed with cocoa which may
have been picked by children.
It’s impossible
for non-Fair Trade chocolate manufacturers to guarantee the cocoa they buy here
is child labor free. Buying Fair Trade chocolate from farms like this is the
only way to be sure that it has not been made by child labor.
Gold
On the last leg of
his journey to find out why Ghana, which is so rich in resources, is one of the
poorest countries in the world, Robert Beckford heads south to the gold mining
town of Obuasi.
Gold is one of
Ghana’s most lucrative exports, and in Obuasi the biggest company is Anglo Gold
Ashanti (AGA). Last year AGA recorded gross profits of about half a billion
pounds from its global operations but to Robert it doesn’t look as if the local
people are sharing in the bonanza.
In the 1980s the
Ghanaian government supported by the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank encouraged foreign investment. Robert travels to Dokyiwa village, where
local people were persuaded to sell their land in return for compensation they
now claim was too little.
Poisoned
environment
They also say that
the impact on the environment has been devastating. A University of Ghana survey
found high levels of toxic substances in streams, fruit and boreholes in Obuasi.
In one village, arsenic levels in water were recorded as 1,800 times higher than
the World Health Organization maximum values.
In the village of
Binsere Robert discovers a pit full of toxic waste less than 100 meters from the
houses. The people scrape a living illegally washing out the waste in the hope
of finding slivers of gold. They claim that AGA are aggressive in protecting
their property. Some even say that they have been beaten up by the police and
the military, and show Robert the lacerations on their bodies.
Robert is utterly
shocked. He says: ‘The way they are being treated here – I haven’t got words for
it – the only word that you can use is that they are being made to be and live
like niggers. People who are less than human beings.’
In response to
complaints from local people, AGA say that they are helping the
community. They have embarked on a $3-million program to cult malaria by
spraying buildings with insecticide. But the locals claim the stagnant ponds are
a breeding ground for mosquitoes.
Whatever the truth
of that claim, Robert says that, in this village where there is no work and very
little food, it does not look like a company committed to the wellbeing of the
community.
Robert decides to
confront the bosses of AGA with his findings. The General Manager of Corporate
Affairs in Ghana says they are aware of the problem and are trying to find ‘a
holistic approach’. He claims that the contamination is not caused purely by
mining and says he is not aware of beatings of illegal miners by AGA security.
According to him, anyone arrested for illegal mining or trespassing, is handed
over to the police. He adds: ‘What happens there, to me is not my concern.’
At a meeting with
villagers the following day, years of anger and frustration flood out. They ask
about the company training program for young men who are looking for work, about
the pollution, and about compensation. Robert is not impressed with the answers:
‘I’m disappointed,’ he says, ‘that there wasn’t some kind of olive branch from
the company to give people real hope.’
What you
can do
Robert Beckford’s
epic and emotional journey convinces him that, while Africa may have its
political independence, the economic strings are still pulled by foreign
masters. But he believes that, as consumers and citizens, we can change this. He
makes a rallying cry for us to demand from the powers that be that they ensure
trade justice for Africa.
The Teach Peace Foundation invites you to get
involved to promote economic justice with service learning projects implemented
in your hometown or by joining us to implement
projects in Africa.
Click here for project ideas or
more information, please contact us at contact@teachpeace.com
or call 530-554-7061.
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