Ghana – Ian Birrell

How the old clothes you give to charity shops or dump in donation bins end up in putrefying heaps on the shoreline of West Africa

Published by The Daily Mail (23rd March, 2026)

A glorious tale of greed

Published by The Spectator (26th August, 2023) Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Swindled the World by Yepoka Yeebo In the early months of 1981, investors in a Swiss […]

Africa / Aid / Ghana

The charity guru who duped the world

Published by UnHerd (24 October, 2018) It is hard to think of a more famous global academic than Jeffrey Sachs. He advises the United Nations, collaborates with presidents, […]

Africa / Aid / Ghana

Proof that foreign aid does not work

Published by The Mail on Sunday (14th October, 2018) As I drove through villages in northern Ghana, bumping along pitted dirt roads and passing mud-splattered men pushing bicycles, […]

Africa / Aid / General / Ghana

Africa’s leaders look to move beyond control and charity of aid

Published by UnHerd (7th December, 2017) Few people are in better position to observe the pace of political change across Africa than the Sudanese-born billionaire Mo Ibrahim. Flying […]

Africa / Aid / Congo / Economics / Ethiopia / General / Ghana / Nigeria

Our image of Africa is hopelessly obsolete

Published in The Observer (26th August, 2012) Think of Ethiopia and what do you see. Perhaps a starving child, flies in her eyes and belly distended. Painfully thin adults […]

Aid / Ghana

African village where every household is getting £7,500 from British taxpayers spent on them

Published in The Daily Mail (June 30th, 2012) As I drew up in the bustling village after a long journey, the last 21 miles bouncing along a red […]