Leaders miss the chance of a lifetime

Fifty-one percent. This is the alarming dropout rate of Ghanaian girls who do not complete junior high school. Many drop out to get married. Child marriage is a common practice that affects 4 out of every 10 girls in sub-Saharan Africa.

In Ghana, 27% of girls are married before reaching the legal age. The percentage is even higher in rural areas and among the poorest population, particularly in the Northern Regions, where it has increased in recent years, impelled by cultural practices and poverty. 

With news around the world focussing on the Corona crisis, it's easy to forget that one of the most common killers in Ghana and globally is a disease we already have a treatment for: tuberculosis. Approximately one-quarter of the world’s population has been infected, although the majority don’t ever develop active disease.

Like the Kyoto Protocol before it, the drastically over-hyped Paris climate treaty has fallen victim to political and economic reality.

Now that President Donald Trump has officially pulled the United States from the accord, it is time to declare the entire Kyoto-Paris approach to global warming dead and buried. Instead of scrapping over the treaty’s corpse, this is an opportunity to try a new, better and more efficient approach to solving global warming.