Coinciding with this historic assignment for Britain is an even bigger task for Prime Minister Blair: Steering the G8 Summit currently taking place in Gleneagles to confirm debt cancellation for highly indebted and poor countries, which includes Ghana. When the G8 Finance Ministers announced the debt cancellation two weeks ago, the main Ghanaian opposition party went into a sulk, more or less rubbishing the good news. That is typical Old Africa.

President Kufuor will not return home empty-handed from Gleneagles because it is a done deal that the debt cancellation would be confirmed together with other development aid packages. For Ghana to benefit fully from the G8 packages impose a new set of rules would have to be adopted, which will make it possible for all Ghanaians to be participants.

The British victory led by a Conservative team leader, a Labour Mayor and Labour Prime Minister in Singapore yesterday must be a salutary lesson to African politicians that government and opposition cease to have significance when the national interest is concerned. Hopefully, President Kufuor would come back from Gleneagles with this paradigm dictating the pace of his second term.

Ghana won the right to organise the CAN 2008 football tournament, but so far all is quiet on that front. What could be happening after all the claims that Ghana is a football-loving nation there is hardly any excitement… Below is a British media report on how London edged out Paris. .

London edge out Paris for games

London will host the 2012 Olympics after eliminating Paris in the fourth and final round of voting at the International Olympic Committee session in Singapore. IOC president Jacques Rogge announced the result in favour of the UK capital, who last held the Olympics in 1948, at the Raffles Plaza auditorium and it was greeted with wild delight by the 100 official London delegates. Crowds in Trafalgar Square cheered and waved flags as they heard the announcement on a giant screen.

London beat Paris by just four votes, winning 54-50, and it was the closest result since Sydney beat Beijing by two votes in Monaco for the hosting of the 2000 Summer Olympics. London led at every round except the second when Madrid went briefly in front.

The three other candidates in the opening rounds, Moscow, New York and Madrid fell out one by one in a system under which the lowest ranked candidate is eliminated in each round. The opening round was remarkably close. London led by 22 votes to 21 for Paris, 20 to Madrid and 19 to New York. Moscow, who picked up 15, went out even though it was just seven off the front-runner.

Madrid picked up most of the Moscow votes in the second round and led with 32 to 27 for London. Paris gained 25 and New York were eliminated with 16.The votes for the US city then went largely to London who went back into the lead with 39. Paris were second with 33, leaving Madrid eliminated on 31.Paris closed the gap in the final showdown but London held off its rival to win.

It was the fourth bid from Britain after failed attempts by Birmingham for the 1992 Olympics and Manchester for 1996 and 2000 and is an amazing victory for bid leader and two-time Olympic champion Sebastian Coe who was brought in last year to replace American Babara Cassani with London's bid trailing badly behind the French and looking doomed. London centered its bid on the massive urban renewal of a dilapidated area of East London and a brand new 80,000-capacity Olympic Park. Nearby will be an aquatic centre for swimming and diving events and a velodrome for track cycling.

The site will also contain an Olympic village for competitors, a hockey stadium and a multi-sport complex for basketball, handball, volleyball and modern pentathlon events. While sports temples like Wembley, Wimbledon and Lord's will also be venues and tourist landmarks will be transformed, with Hyde Park becoming the site for triathlon and road cycling events, Horse Guards Parade for beach volleyball and Regent's Park for baseball and softball.

The ill-fated Millennium Dome will be used for artistic gymnastics, trampolining, basketball and handball finals, while Greenwich Park will host the equestrian, modern pentathlon riding and running events.

Alexandra Palace in north London will be used for fencing competitions. Outside of London, the Eton College Rowing Centre at Dorney Lake near Windsor, has been selected as the venue for rowing and flatwater canoeing, while shooting will take place at Bisley in Surrey and mountain biking in Swinley Forest, Berkshire. Sailing will be staged at Weymouth-Portland.

The bid committee estimates the Games will cost £2.3 billion but could be worth more than £2billion in tourism revenue for the country alone and will bring "long-lasting benefits" to the areas of London where the competition will be held. While a major overhaul of London's rickety transport network is planned over the next seven years in the build-up to the Games.

Lord Coe said a dream had come true. He said: "There were five very, very strong cities, as sporting cities they don't get much bigger. "I'm absolutely ecstatic, we have the opportunity to do what we always dreamed about, getting more young people into sport. This is our moment. "I think we have an obligation as a host city not to think only about our own country's position. "The spin-offs are massive off the back of it.

"We have to look at more than just London and work alongside the IOC. We made commitments and we will stick to them. It's massive. It's huge." Prime Minister Tony Blair hailed London's successful bid as a momentous day.

He said: "It is a momentous day for London. It was genuinely a team effort. Seb Coe and Keith Mills and the team were just awesome throughout. They were just brilliant." I've never seen as good an operation in anything I've been involved in as that."

I couldn't bear to watch the final announcement." It is not often in this job that you get to punch the air and do a little jig and embrace the person standing next to you." It was a bitter blow for Paris who were long-time favourites but for the third time in 20 years were rejected by the IOC.