Jerry Rawlings for President?

In following the build-up to the 2008 presidential elections in Ghana, you would think that Jerry Rawlings is the NDC ‘flag- bearer’. The guy is at every major conference held in country, and has something to say about everything the rival NPP does. You would never guess in a million years that Professor Atta Mills is, in fact, the NDC’s presidential candidate. The man is articulate and has some pretty decent policies, which would certainly help out some of the poor people up north. The only problem is that we never hear about them. And when something is said, it seems to be overshadowed by a comment ‘J.J.’ has made about say, a police escort the rival presidential candidate from the NPP received, or how the incumbent president is squandering monies.

Love him or hate him, individually, Jerry Rawlings has played a significant role in making Ghana what it is today: a democracy, which is certainly a paradox in Africa. But let us not forget that he launched the privatization project in the country; implemented the decentralization project, which diminished his – and the NDC’s – popularity among many influential chiefs; and that he ruled the country for 18 years, 10 as a dictator, and eight as a democratically elected president. There are those who would argue that these were necessary steps for modernizing Ghana, and that he should not be condemned for doing these things. People in the north are crying for change, hoping that the NDC come into power and replace an NPP government which they claim, has done nothing to raise their living standards. I often see their point but it is not these votes that the NDC need to win but rather those of the people in Accra who ‘remember’.

These are the people who benchmark the current regime against the 18 long years under Rawlings. ‘Yes, there has been money squandered and we are ever-increasing our debt under NPP,’ one finance officer I met randomly at a chop bar in Accra told me over lunch one day. ‘But it’s better than this foolish guy before him.’ I am by no means suggesting that J.J. is foolish. In fact, his passion is to be commended: he is a soldier and fighter, who I think wants the best for his country. And, as the country’s first elected president since Nkrumah, he is naturally eager to provide inputs into some of the things he started. But people like the guy in the chop bar need not be reminded about J.J because at this crucial time, the NDC needs votes. I am not saying that NPP backers will turn to Prof Mills but as one of my colleagues from Tamale put it, ‘they would indeed listen to him if Rawlings keeps quiet’. But J.J. is not letting this happen. People will always be reminded as long as he keeps making the cameo at UN conferences, and continues to go public with his complaints about how the country is being run.

You would think that Jerry Rawlings is running for president.

The illusion of the cooperative

Development practitioners love quantifiable entities. We are told that when it comes to administering aid, it is not the individual who matters but rather individuals. Development people want to show that their loans and grants are being dispensed to bunches of people, and often ask that these individuals, whether they are farmers, fishermen or miners, show some drive and commitment to working together, and form groups or cooperatives.

But why do the tens of millions of dollars in aid dispensed for supporting so-called rural cooperatives fail to have a major impact? After all, these are people who are supposedly working together and committed to achieving the same set of goals. Otherwise, they would not have formed a cooperative or association. The reality is that the cooperative is a façade: individual traders, merchants and subsistence producers have not worked, and do not want to work, together. The establishment of, say, the Accra North Farmers Cooperative is not going to change these peoples’ attitudes toward one another.

Let me shed some light on how things usually pan out with these ‘cooperative forming’ exercises by sharing some recent experiences from northern Ghana – specifically, those of the Talensi-Nabdam Small-Scale Miners Association. This is a rag-tag bunch of concession holders who were asked by the government to come together and form an association. This, it was explained, was the only way that they were going to get the equipment they desperately need in order to work: by coming together and sharing. The ‘equipment loan’ was in the range of 2.2 billion cedis, and included generators, pumps, compressors, wires and fuel. Of course, the requirement was that these guys again, come together and commit to sharing the equipment, something which would lead to increased yields and profits for all involved. The ‘association’ decided to appoint a treasurer, secretary and chairman, who on their own coin, travelled several times to Accra in late-2006 to present various aspects of their project proposal, detailing the equipment needs of the miners of Talensi-Nabdam, to receptive government staff. The equipment arrived for delivery and setup in late-2007.

Then, the problems started. It was agreed, beforehand, that the three generators be stationed centrally, to enable all of the concession holders to access its power. But that changed at the time of delivery: one concession owner decided to drop the biggest generator on his own concession. Another concession owner has complained repeatedly that the secretary of the association has ‘chopped the money’ earmarked for fuel. ‘He took all of the money,’ he told me. ‘That is 200 million cedis. Don’t mind him.’ There have been numerous complaints about the pumps, and the unequal sharing of compressors. People have also refused to share dynamite and the small amounts of fuel that remain. At a meeting organized for all of the concession owners last Thursday, the aim of which was to discuss how to move forward, I broke up three fights. One guy, in the midst of arguing, even took off his shirt, for reasons unexplained.

This is why so many cooperatives fail. We are told that the cooperative leads to bigger and better things: more sales, greater reputation, improved access to credit; and increased market access. But names and signatures do not necessarily equate to people wanting to work together. The reality is that people are lured into participating in the exercise because of the potential rewards: money, improved reputation, and in the case of Talensi-Nabdam, access to equipment.

But at no point does one think of one’s brother. Because if they did, they would be functioning smoothly, working together, and would not need the support in the first place.

Eating Tropical Fruit at the Source

Yesterday, whilst travelling from Bolgatanga, a town which has fewer quality fruits than my refrigerator, to Accra, I was in absolute awe when we arrived in the Brong-Ahafo Region some four hours into our journey. Green landscape was everywhere. And so were the smallholders, lining the streets with their mangoes, tomatoes, citrus, onions and mushrooms, hoping to attract the cars whistling by. Like hundreds of others, we were lured by the colourful baskets, and stopped to get some mangoes, pineapples and oranges. They were some of the most delicious I’ve had, fresh from the hands of the growers.

This got me thinking about a lot of things, however. Nowhere in the UK, and perhaps Europe, could you find fruit of this quality. In fact, the fruit you see at Tesco, Sainsbury or my local, Asda, does not even look the same: the oranges I avoid eating are orange whereas the ones I had yesterday were a natural green; the pineapples available at Tesco are bigger than my head and an unnatural orange colour, whereas the one I had yesterday was diminutive, yellow and sweet; and the mangoes I ate looked like nothing I’d ever seen before, a nice orange colour, unlike the green, rock-hard stuff supposedly imported from Brazil. This wonderful experience got me thinking about both the western consumer and the smallholder producers of these goods: they are both missing out – big time. The latter – let’s face it – has no market for his produce. His market is the roadside adjacent to his farm. He needs to attract cars in order to eat and feed his family. The former doesn’t even get a sniff of this produce. They are forced to eat the fruit harvested and packed by the Dole’s of the world. Even the fruit we are told is ‘Fair Trade’, collected straight from the producers, seems like a replica of these disgusting species: oversized oranges with zero flavour, and massive bananas which I couldn’t locate in anywhere in Ghana even if I tried (though the ‘Fair Trade’ bananas I saw at Spar a couple of months ago had the label ‘product of Ghana’ on them).

This is why I only eat tropical fruit at the source.

The myth of smallholder farming

The ongoing quest to make smallholder farming more sustainable in various stretches of sub-Saharan Africa is perplexing. We are well aware that a growing number of rural Africans are ‘branching out’ into non-farm activities because smallholder farming is unable to sustain them. Yet, we are burdened with commentary from the likes of the World Bank and various bilaterals that points to how 80 percent of rural Tanzanians or 70 percent of rural Ghanaians depend upon farming for their livelihood. Of course they do: who in rural Tanzania, rural Ghana or rural sub-Saharan Africa for that matter doesn’t have a farm, or aspires to own farmland? These people, however, are simply producing food for themselves and their families: corn, millet, groundnuts, maize, yam and cassava. It is the Tetleys and Nescafes of the world that are engaged in the business side of things in African agriculture, armed with the cash to pay for the requisite expensive inputs to harvest lucrative cash crops for export like tea and coffee.

So I understand, on the one hand, why African smallholders need support: they have to eat. But why the façade – specifically, why convey the impression that this support can help the smallholder compete with the multinationals in a liberalized agricultural market? I interviewed two women yesterday who explained that their farms, located some five miles from the mine sites where they work, produce two bags of millet each season. I repeat: two bags. Yet, there are countless projects here in the Upper East Region, carried out by dedicated staff, which aim to support these subsistence peoples’ agricultural efforts. Support them how? There is no water, only one growing season here, and more importantly, no money in Ghana’s north. These people already have goats, pigs and cows, which, along with their two bags of millet, can carry them through part of the year. But what about the other part of the year and their need for disposable income in general? This is where the mining sector comes in. As one of the ladies put it, ‘I can earn 500,000 cedis [50 US dollars] at times, which is enough to put my children in school and provide for the house’. Another noted than ‘400,000 cedis is a lot of money for me. It is hard work but I can support my farming and family’.

Maybe those engaged in providing support for agriculture in areas like this should engage in a ‘critical re-think’: instead of buying these ladies farm implements to harvest fields which, for the most part, have no crops, perhaps it is best to buy them gloves, to protect themselves from the rocks they carry in the mines – support for the activity which provides for their daily needs.

Oil, Ghana and 'Democracy'

The flavour of the month in Ghana is oil. A few months ago, the UK-based company, Tullow Oil, announced the discovery of 600 million barrels of light oil offshore from Ghana. The response from a jubilant President Kufuor was that, ‘Ghana is an African tiger…[that] even without oil, we are doing so well, already. Now, with oil as a shot in the arm, we're going to fly’. Indeed, the discovery of oil – or more specifically, the hype surrounding its discovery and the potential for there being even more reserves – has been a major coup for the ruling NPP party, which should ride this hype, secure external monies for their upcoming election campaign, and crush any competition from the challenging NDC party at the ballot boxes.

In reality, though, the oil reserves discovered in Ghana are not much to speak of. A colleague tells me that there is only four and a half years’ worth of oil here, which is nothing when compared to the proven reserves in the nearby Niger Delta, or the region’s ‘up and coming’ petro-states like Chad and Equatorial Guinea. All of the hype, however, centres on the question of ‘what if?’ Officers at Tullow claim that there is significantly more oil offshore, which would put Ghana right in the thick of things with the other major oil producers in Africa. What if they are correct? If they are, then all eyes will certainly be on Ghana.

We are all well aware of the corruption that plagues the petro-states of sub-Saharan Africa. Donors try and convince us that initiatives like the EITI will lead to improved governance in these states, in turn, enabling poor people to benefit from the huge sums of money generated from increased oil production. But we are well aware that neither Chad, Equatorial Guinea nor Cameroon has the institutional machinery in place to manage petroleum revenues effectively. In an effort to explain the abnormally poor economic and social performance of these, and other, oil economies in sub-Saharan Africa, political scientists and economists point to, inter alia, the propensity for rulers to ‘rent-seek’ and consequent grievance-based insurgencies. Simply put, oil breeds corruption. The imperialists and neo-liberalists always point to Norway as a success story and something for these countries to work toward – that with hard work and commitment, oil-rich countries in sub-Saharan Africa can also achieve high levels of economic performance. But does Norway have sparring tribes? Has it been decimated by slavery? Has it had an exploitative colonial history? In such an environment, the leaders of oil-rich states are only concerned with enriching themselves, their families, and occasionally, their tribes.

So where does this leave Ghana, which, for reasons unexplained, continues to be portrayed by the West as the beacon of post-independence sub-Saharan Africa and a ‘success story’? Because it has not had a large-scale genocide, has fewer tribal frictions, and no HIV/AIDS epidemic, it is a success story? Indeed, when compared to the likes of the Democratic Republic of Congo or Rwanda, Ghana is, as the president put it, ‘doing so well’: it has a free press, has had two fairly free democratic elections, and there are no coup d’etats looming on the horizon. But let us not forget that the country suffers from widespread poverty, has alarmingly high levels of corruption, and has serious power problems. Judging by what has unfolded in neighbouring petro-states, the discovery of significant amounts of oil will not correct any of these problems.
Any additional discovery of oil will indeed put Ghana’s so-called democracy to the test.

Ghana and HIPC

When it comes to politics in Ghana, I take no sides. All I really want is for a party to come into power that does something north of Kumasi. Presently, only 2% of the country’s development projects are located in its three poorest regions: the Upper East, Upper West and Northern. This, of course, has not helped the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) shed its ‘Ashanti’ or ‘Southern’ (party) image. Everywhere you go in the north, you find pockets of youth on the streets, in ‘chop bars’ and in the market condemning the NPP, praying for a regime change come election time in December. These discussions are riveting, animated and – quite often – senseless. After all, these very people are hoping that the rival National Democratic Congress (NDC) regains power, seeming to forget that for 18 years, the same party under Jerry Rawlings did little more (than the NPP is doing) to improve their quality of life.

What I do find bizarre about the ruling NPP government, however, is their apparent contentedness with Ghana being a borrower country. In fact, it seems as if party members take a certain pride in advertising Ghana’s perpetual debt. Everywhere you go in the country, there is the ‘HIPC’ insignia: on public toilets, garbage cans, schools. To the casual observer, the message – though perplexing – is clear: welcome to Ghana – we borrow money, we are proud to be borrowers, and we cannot finance the installation of a garbage can. The fact that a country has to resort to applying for HIPC funds is embarrassing enough but the way in which the government seems to flaunt the HIPC message in the streets of Accra, Kumasi and other major towns is even more embarrassing. Was this flaunting one of the (many) conditionalities attached to accessing HIPC monies? You would think that given the level of advertising, ‘HIPC’ was a local Coca-Cola. Granted, Jerry Rawlings initiated the privatization project in Ghana but did he paint signs signifying the implementation of adjustment programs, to remind Ghanaians that their country was now in the hands of the International Finance Institutions?

Welcome to Ghana: proud to be a borrower.

Bottled Water Anyone?

I hate Voltic. It has a chemical aftertaste that leaves me feeling nauseated. Voltic is Ghana’s ‘Evian’, its major bottled water. In fact, it has become so synonymous with drinking water in West Africa than when people want water, they ask for Voltic. For me, it tastes so bad that I crave UK tap water.

It also upsets me that I have to bring one of these bottles every time I visit a community, when I go and do my interviewing. In my view, it causes me to lose ‘face’, and reinforces a community’s perception that I am a weak, privileged Westerner who needs things like bottled water, malaria pills and chocolate to survive. I would go the ‘pure water’ route – that is, drinking the ‘filtered’ water from the sachets, now commonplace throughout sub-Saharan Africa. But last time I did that, I was sick for a week. At least with Voltic, you are assured of completing your interviews.

But the rapid proliferation of terrible-tasting bottled water in sub-Saharan Africa gets you thinking about what is being done here to fix the water quality problem. You hear about the tens of millions of dollars poured into, say, Sierra Leone, to fix the Goma Water treatment facility, only to realize that the label ‘water aid for the poor’ is simply a euphemism for privatization and exploitation of the impoverished. The hundreds of conditionalities attached to water aid turn what should be a freely-available resource for all into a priced good. The liberalization of water markets in developing countries, as we well know, is exacerbating poverty, Sierra Leone being a microcosm of the situation in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere in the developing world.

This, however, is a story that many of us are well acquainted with, and certainly nothing new. But the concurrent expansion of bottled water in sub-Saharan Africa is, and raises the question of whether there is some collusion taking place. Voltic aside, in Ghana, you will find Dasani and BonAqua, products of the Coca Cola Company, in most restaurants and chop bars, and on the shelves of every shop. For an outfit like Coca Cola, there is certainly reason to ensure that the quality of water does not improve anytime soon in a place like Sierra Leone.

I constantly complain about the taste of Voltic, but most Africans would welcome the day that Voltic-quality water flows from their taps. I am not too confident of witnessing this in my lifetime, however, because there is simply too much money at stake for donors and multinational companies to maintain the status quo: a privatized water sector and a complementary bottled water industry, both dominated by foreign players.

re: heat

In my efforts to identify how miners in Talensi-Nabdam can go about improving their livelihoods, I have overlooked one crucial element: the weather. The heat in the Upper East Region is oppressive; it is cruel; it is enough to turn any carefully-sketched plan to generate economic growth, developed in the office or abroad, into wastepaper. I wake up in the morning, and do not want to move from under my fan.

As I prepare my questions for the the NGO people I will be interviewing tomorrow about the child labour project they have launched in the mining regions of Talensi-Nabdam, I cannot stop thinking about the heat. I mean, we talk of alternative livelihoods but what can you possibly do here? In 40 degree, dry weather, farming prospects are limited. There are also very few vocational training programs in place. After all, you can only have so many teachers and policemen in one area.

The only solution is to forge ahead and support the gold mining operations that have surfaced in the area over the past 10 years. After all, it is an employment engine and certainly a blessing in these parts. This is something that the government claims it is working toward - something which I intend on investigating over the next few weeks.

Most of the mining operations up here, however, are dormant. In what is a cruel twist of irony, a surplus of water prevents these people from operating: they lack pumps. In addition to being scortching hot for much of the year, the Upper East Region experiences a series of heavy downpours - and I mean downpours - every summer, which make up its rainy season. The water that accumulates in the mine pits inhibits activity: miners cannot afford the pumps needed to remove the water.

So here we are, sitting in what is dry land, virtually devoid of vegetation but sitting on a gold mine. Yet, people are unable to work because, of all things, water.

Sometimes, you find yourself lost for words.