Dela Dovlo

Public Health Professional retired from WHO Health Systems

[Benjamin Boakye @benboakye]

Respectfully, this is exactly why Agyapa was stopped. Had Agyapa gone ahead, the main beneficiaries of today’s global gold prices would have been the 49% private shareholders. Your numbers simply do not add up:

1. Start with basic arithmetic. Using 2025 large scale output of about 3m oz, at a minimum royalty rate of 3%, Ghana earns roughly 90,000 oz. At current prices, this translates into more than $450m in annual royalty revenue.

2.Under Agyapa, Ghana would not have received 51% of total royalties. It would have received 51% of whatever dividends the Agyapa board chose to declare. The remaining 49% of royalty flows would permanently accrue to private shareholders.

3.Critically, non producing concessions and all future mines were committed to the transaction. In exchange for a one off payment of about $500m, investors would have secured 49% of royalties from mines that did not even exist at the time. This was indefensible.

4.Regardless of how highly Agyapa might have been valued today, Ghana’s annual benefit would still have been limited to dividends after operating costs, reinvestment decisions and management expenses. That can never outperform direct receipt of 100% of royalties. There is real world data to compare. Franco Nevada, the biggest streaming company, will pays out ~$300m in dividends from expected revenues of roughly $1.5bn. Note that Agyapa’s revenue would mainly be the assigned royalty streams today. I welcome debate on this—linked to point 9 below

5.The surge in gold prices reinforces the argument that Ghana’s royalties were grossly undervalued. The valuation model capped prices at ~$1,500 and effectively valued the country’s future royalties at $1bn, roughly 2 years of royalties at current prices.

6.I have no doubt the architects of the deal understood this, not just because the extent of cronyism pointed out by Martin Amidu but also deliberate mobilization in its support. That is why the structure was rushed, opaque and resistant to scrutiny. That may also explain the subsequent defence in the face of overwhelming evidence.

7.When challenged, Ken Ofori Atta dismissed substantive critique as ideological. Time has proven otherwise. Stopping Agyapa protected Ghana’s long term fiscal interest, and nothing of its kind should survive in Ghana.

8.We consistently emphasised the fundamental difference between state royalties and royalty streaming companies. A zero risk sovereign royalty cannot be equated to risky commercial streams. If a mining company goes bankrupt, a streamer loses revenue and its investment. Ghana retains its resources in the ground. Listing state royalties on the stock market would have amounted to selling Ghana’s sovereignty over its gold resources and empowering the market to approve sovereign decisions on royalties was simply absurd.

https://t.co/iTTLEWsFyD Agyapa, royalties assigned to MIIF were mismanaged. If there is any doubt about how Agyapa reinvestment would have played out, examine what happened to the more than $1bn channelled through MIIF. Those flows were squandered, while original royalty inflows were repeatedly declared as profit. You were on the board.

10. The key correction occurred when Ato Forson restored royalties fully into the budget, where they now support socioeconomic investment. People now ask where the money for projects like the Accra Kumasi expressway will come from. It was already there, sitting with MIIF, gambled away and undermining the very rationale for charging royalties in the first place.

[Michel Sidibé @MichelSidibe]

Honoured to witness my brother Elhadj As Sy deliver his inaugural lecture as the first Chancellor of @LSTMnews.
His call to see “health not only as damage, but as response” is the leadership our world urgently needs.
#GlobalHealth #HumanitarianAction #LSTM @Elhadj_As_Sy @AwaMCollSeck

[Ghana Police Service @GhPoliceService]

PRESS RELEASE:

UPDATE ON ARREST OF SUSPECT IN VIRAL DOMESTIC VIOLENCE VIDEO

[Dela Dovlo @Kevivuvu]

Hey, Checkout https://t.co/WFko9lifrC

[EUGENELENS @EUGENESLENS]

Watch the admirable arrival of Mawuli School’s old students as they drive onto campus in a grand convoy to celebrate the school’s 75th anniversary. #mawulishs #anniversary #mawuli@75 @EiiScanty @HeadlessYouTube

[Andrew Fraser @Arfness]

The investigation:
1. It didn't happen
2. Ok it happened but the shot came from Hamas
3. Ok it wasn't Hamas, but he was a terrorist.
4. Ok he wasn't a terrorist. It was a mistake
5. Why are you still asking questions? Are you an anti-semite?

[Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus @DrTedros]

Little Maria is one of the seven patients from #Gaza, who arrived in #Switzerland today for specialised medical care needed to treat their injuries. They arrived with 27 companions.

The patients and companions were evacuated from Gaza yesterday by @WHO.

I thank @SwissMFA and @EDA_DFAE for their generosity and solidarity.

I call on more countries to receive patients, who urgently need treatment they cannot get in Gaza.

[Ṣẹ̀yẹ Abímbọ́lá @seyeabimbola]

Please read our new @LancetGH paper led by @bayinganaa — "Dignity-based practice in global health research: a framework of expectations" https://t.co/vNyriAazme

We went from "complaints on knowledge practices" to "expectations that affirm the dignity of marginalised knowers".

[boycat @boycatapp]

UN’s Special Rapporteur drops a bombshell report exposing global giants—Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Palantir, Lockheed Martin, Airbnb & more—for aiding Israel’s war on Gaza. From AI-powered surveillance to illegal settlements, corporate complicity is everywhere. 🛰️🏗️💰

Francesca warns: this isn’t just business—it’s profiting from apartheid and genocide. And under international law, that’s a crime. ❌

[Ṣẹ̀yẹ Abímbọ́lá @seyeabimbola]

Thank you for writing this very much needed thread, @d_krugman!

@TheLancet should not have published this article in this form. Or should at least have published an editorial at the same time, to reframe it in a way that takes seriously the agency of people in the global South.

[Elhadj As Sy @Elhadj_As_Sy]

Honored and proud to serve as the first chancellor of Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Counting on the support of all friends and colleagues to take tropical diseases out of neglect.

[Dela Dovlo @Kevivuvu]

@Elhadj_As_Sy Congratulations 🍾 Well deserved!

[Osagyefo Oliver Barker-Vormawor @barkervogues]

Yes I can confirm the Ghana Police Service took me to the hospital and couldn’t pay for my drugs and medical tests.

On the first day, they kept harassing the just released protestors who came to see me at the Hospital to pay for the medications prescribed by the Hospital. They refused and called the Police out on it.

Eventually my brother gave the CID 100 cedis to pay for part of the drugs. The other drugs prescribed were not procured. Also they didn’t pay for the blood tests that I had to do that day.

When the news broke that they didn’t pay for the drugs. They sent Momo to Priscilla - one of the arrested protestors - to reimburse the money they took from my brother. We are also ready to share the receipt of the Momo transaction, where they paid back the money gotten.

I was in fact returned to the cell that, without the other medication being purchased.

The next day, as early as 4am, one CID came to my cell, to accost me; and scream profanities at me, over the fact that the protestors had made the fact of their inability to procure medicines public.

I ignored him.

Later that morning we returned to the Hospital for further tests. That’s when part of the other drugs were paid for by the Police. After the fact. Not before.

I am granting my consent to the Ghana Police Service to share the receipts they claim; to show the date the prescribed drugs were procured. Apparently they are hiding behind that! Let them do it.

Beyond, me however. Let us be clear, the police take several suspects to the hospital (when they eventually do after weeks of begging); and then bring them back to the cell without paying for their medications.

This is routine! So routine that as recently as literally yesterday, I sent my relatives to purchase drugs prescribed for an inmate. I have the receipts.

The individual had been sick for a whole month before he was sent to hospital. They kept claiming that they call the CID and he doesn’t show up. So that’s all they can do. And even when he came and took him to the Hospital, none of the drugs prescribed was purchased. They just dumped back in the cell at 1 am and left.

Let’s be clear! These issues are routine and systemic.

When it comes to me, they act as if all this is strange and new. The constant playing to the gallery that the Police do in my case, confirms at least to me that they are aware that what they do is wrong.

Just this morning, I engaged in a verbal confrontation with the Police over an individual who has been in custody for 2 weeks without being brought to court. Because the CID, one Abada, says the guy should confess first.

The abuses are so routine that if I begin, I will writing an encyclopedia.

But do you Ghanaians really care about the truth? If not, just read their laughable press statements and move on!

[Dela Dovlo @Kevivuvu]

Join us on 23rd October!

[Dela Dovlo @Kevivuvu]

@IreneAgyepong All join us to launch his mémoires at the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons, Accra on 23rd October 2024

[Irene Agyepong @IreneAgyepong]

#MosesAdiboHappy96 Dr Adibo is 96 years old today. If you are in Accra on 23 Oct do not miss the launch of his memoirs. His impact the health system and health policy in Ghana has been outstanding

[Dela Dovlo @Kevivuvu]

@Lucy_Gilson @jrockstrom Congratulations 🍾

[Boston Smalls @smalls2672]

Best take I've seen so far in regards to Trump's assination attempt.

[Dela Dovlo @Kevivuvu]

@DrBoureima Good luck Boureima!

[Dela Dovlo @Kevivuvu]

@john_ataguba @UPTuks @lekanayoyusuf @UoM_CHS @AfHEA_Africa @PEPnetwork @uct_heu @MallamPelliks @annrebi Congratulations 🎈🍾