The Overseas Vote

The other day, I was speaking to a Ghanaian man at the train station who could not contain his excitement about the country’s upcoming elections. Ghanaians go to the polls on December 7th in what should produce an overwhelming victory for the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP). But what I found particularly perplexing was how this man could influence the elections: he had not been ‘home’ in over ten years, since the days of Jerry Rawlings (allegedly the reason why he fled the country in the first place). ‘I am voting NPP,’ he told me, ‘because I am a Kumasi man, and because the NPP are doing very good things, unlike the previous NDC [National Democratic Congress] government. So I am voting NPP just like I did last time.’

The allusion to ‘last time’ is, of course, inaccurate: the incumbent president, John Kufuor, only signed into law the Representation of the People Law Bill Amendment on February 24th 2006. During the elections of 2004, therefore, this gentleman would not have been able to vote if he was in Britain. But this law now enables him, and three million more Ghanaians who are resident abroad, to vote in the upcoming election: they will no doubt be converging on their embassies come election time. The opposition NDC, powerless to prevent the bill’s passing at the time, argue that an extension of voting rights to Ghanaians overseas all but assures that the ruling NPP party, which has significant support abroad, of another four years in office. But there is a more significant question worth asking here, which extends beyond the shores of Ghana: should people have a say in who rules a country which they do not live in and/or have no intention of living in?

Of course, the issue of overseas voting is not something endemic to Ghana. We were repeatedly reminded of its occasional absurdity during the US election, when CNN provided footage of scores of Americans piling into US embassies in Argentina, Japan, South Africa, Australia and France to cast their votes. Many of these people work and/or reside permanently abroad but because they were born in America, they are guaranteed a vote that must be cast in the state in which they last resided. In the US, voting rights extend to overseas citizens even though they may no longer own property or have other ties to their last state of residence, and, even if intent to return to that state may be uncertain. This meant that the lady working in the Peace Corps in Nigeria for the next five years was allowed to cast a vote for Barrack Obama, and the cowboy who has been living in the Australian Outback for the last 15 years was able to vote for Senator McCain.

I was recently asked by my father if I was going to vote in the Canadian election (for those of you who are not familiar with this country’s invisible political presence, there was a national election there in October), because, I was told, ‘I was eligible’ to do so. Out of principle, however, I did not: I have not lived there for nearly a decade, so why should I have a say in how my brother, my parents, my friends and the guy at the coffee shop are taxed? Or, whether they can use a cell-phone whilst driving? Or, whether or not they should be fined if they throw their chewing gum on the sidewalk?

Hopefully Ghanaians, and others living abroad, will begin thinking critically about the implications of overseas voting, and also think twice before participating in their ‘national’ elections.

A Quick Rant on the Development Consultancy Debacle…

A recent experience I had at a conference in South Africa effectively underscores the problem with the development ‘consultancy engine’ today. About a month ago, I delivered a pretty passionate talk about how the Kimberley people, by spreading word that Ghana was a potential repository for ‘conflict diamonds’ from neighbouring Cote D’Ivoire, were responsible for the downfall of Akwatia. I explained that their claims were unfounded, and whilst they would later admit the same, the reputation of the town had already been shattered: diminished confidence in Ghanaian product had a ‘ripple’ effect, resulting depressed payments for diamonds throughout the supply chain and, by extension, causing significant hardship. Some two years later, the town is still recovering.

But then I was asked the all-important question: what would I have done differently – that is, how would I have gone about investigating claims that Ghana may be trafficking conflict diamonds? This, admittedly, is something that I had never thought about; and, is the type of question which academics, by nature, cannot answer very well because they have not been trained to do so. Needless to say, I struggled.

Academics excel in carrying out research – to diagnose what problems are, why they occur, where they occur, and why they have happened in the first place. They are also good at filling information gaps: inter alia improving knowledge of the dynamics of a community; through field-testing, providing insight on which technologies can work, and which ones will not; and identifying vulnerable peoples in need of support. This, however, raises yet another an important question: why, then, are so many academics, whose strengths are diagnosing problems, being hired and asked to identify solutions to development-related problems? The result, in most cases, is a recommendation to hold another workshop or seminar to help ‘refocus’.

This underscores the true state of the development consultancy engine today: commissioning the wrong people to do jobs. There are people – external consultants who are more disconnected from theories and books – whose job is to identify solutions. They are asked to draw upon an information base compiled by the academics and other researchers. Now here is the problem with these people: rarely do they use the information provided to them to develop meaningful solutions. Rather, and is evidenced in the mining industry time and time again, the consultants are formulating solutions based upon their own assumptions and educated guesses. This, more often than not, leads to the implementation of ungrounded policy solutions: the implementation of an appropriate piece of equipment and the passing of ineffective laws.

So, to sum up, we have consultants in development who are not taking into consideration research findings whatsoever, yet are forging ahead, prescribing solutions. Moreover, many of these consultants are academics, who though good at generating an information base about pressing problems at hand, are not really good at formulating solutions to these problems.

And we wonder why aid rarely translates into anything meaningful on the ground…

The ‘Eat Well, Live Well Club’

In every African country, there are two groups of people whose lives should be intertwined but are not. On the one hand, you have – and forgive me for being extremely vague but it is simply for clarification purposes – the indigenous populations, whose people simply ‘get on with it’. Apart from exhibiting higher rates of poverty, these populations are little different than those in say, Europe or North America: they have classes, and are comprised of people from different ethnic groups and with different educational backgrounds. On the other hand, you have what I call the ‘Eat Well, Live Well Club’, or the collection of people of the expat variety whose mission is to help the burgeoning groups of impoverished but who seem to be eating well and living well at their expense. This division is more evident in Sierra Leone than in any of the other countries I have worked in.

Based on the couple of days I have spent in Freetown, I find myself questioning more and more what people from multilateral and bilateral agencies actually do in Africa, apart from driving the latest SUV down the potholed roads they are supposed to oversee the paving of and eating at the best restaurants in town. The purpose of the ‘UN mission’ here, for example, is very unclear. I went to an amazing restaurant on the first evening of my stay, which was populated exclusively by UN workers: we could barely turn our small taxi around in the parking lot because of SUV congestion. Here, prices are pretty much on par with London. I was told – and forgive me if I am wrong here – that the UN mission, the aim of which is to ‘peace keep’, will (finally) come to an end in December. But the last time I checked, there was no war here: there has been little need for peacekeeping, particularly the ineffective laissez faire type the UN espouses, in this country for years.

The UK Department for International Development’s (DfID) presence here is also a point of contention. After all, this is an agency being propelled by taxpayer’s money. Would we not, therefore, like to see our monies, earmarked in the name of development, being used to upgrade say, a water treatment plant, or to pave a road in a rural area? This country is Britain’s largest bilateral partner and there is little evidence of any of the hundreds of millions of pounds being spent on aid here being used meaningfully. Forget the fact that some of the roads in Sierra Leone have not been re-paved since the colonial period or that shanty towns still proliferate; rather, every time you open the newspaper, it seems that there is a new DfID tender for security or peacekeeping.

The development agenda is now heavily centred on the issues of good governance and transparency, the main focus being on the institutions and regimes money is being dispensed to. But while we are at it, why not kill two birds with one stone and do an audit of our own agencies? I think that everyone would be shocked to find out what the money is being spent on, although I can tell you right now: SUVs, good food, quality imported liquor and six bedroom houses.

Welcome to the ‘Eat Well, Live Well Club’.

Contributing to the Resource Curse Debate

As an academic who carries out research on mining in developing countries, it is almost impossible to sidestep discussions on the resource curse. In layman’s terms, the resource curse refers to a paradox: that of mineral-rich countries performing poorly economically. The debate centres heavily on the issue of Dutch Disease: that is, the propensity for mineral and oil booms to cause an appreciation in a country’s real exchange rate, which makes the agriculture and manufacturing sectors less competitive in the world market. This, in turn, leads to the financial resources that are normally earmarked for developing these sectors to be used elsewhere (more specifically, for developing further the booming sector) – a move which makes a country more one-dimensional economically. Proponents point to how in developing countries where minerals and/or oil account for the majority of exports, there is little development taking place: that countries such as Angola, Nigeria, Bolivia and the DR Congo have experienced negative per capita GDP growth over the past 10-15 years, and occupy the lowest ranks on the UNDP’s Human Development Index.

There are, of course, those who question the credibility of the arguments put forward by proponents of the resource curse. They point to how the data used have been selected at random, and argue that the cases of Botswana and Chile show how a resource curse-type situation is not necessarily an inevitable outcome in mineral and oil-rich developing states. They also suggest that GDP per capita and the Human Development Index are not very reliable indicators of economic performance.

But what puzzles me is how proponents and skeptics alike have focused overwhelmingly on the macroeconomic element in their discussions. Is it, after all, as clear-cut as is so often depicted? More specifically, is it a case of simply looking at what contributions, say, the gold mining industry is making to Ghana’s economy, and how prioritizing its development is affecting other industrial sectors? Or how prioritizing the extraction of oil in Nigeria has rendered its agricultural and manufacturing economies defunct to the point where they are ‘un-revivable’?

What never ceases to amaze me, however, is how the researchers supposedly analyzing the performance of reformed mineral economies fail to take into account the ‘hidden’ costs of intensified mineral or oil exploitation. For example, how many people have been dislocated as a result of increased gold production in Ghana and Tanzania over the past two decades? And Shell’s increased production of oil in Nigeria? Governments are often forced to bear the long-term costs of the inevitable dislocation and relocation exercises that take place in order to accommodate the influx of foreign-financed large-scale oil extraction and mine development; and, are forced to deal with the community grievances that surface along the way. And, what about the long-term environmental impacts? Who is responsible for financing rehabilitation efforts?

Collectively, these costs comprise something which I refer to as the ‘social dimension of the resource curse’. And, if these issues are taken into consideration, the costs of large-scale oil extraction and mining will certainly be far greater than is assumed.

Rice

Today, I consumed rice for the first time in three weeks. I consider myself a fairly good cook, and I can work wonders with rice. But every time I leave Ghana, I have to go through a period of ‘rice drought’ because I am so sick of eating the stuff.

My aversion of rice develops usually about one week into my trip. This does not bode well for me because in Ghana, an unwillingness to eat rice is practically sin. So I plug on, sitting there, meal after meal, eating chicken or fish with jollof rice, plain rice, fried rice, egg fried rice – the list goes on. You crave greens after a while, and I find that some two months into my stay, my appetite immediately dissipates at the sight of rice. By this point, rice can only be consumed with the assistance of water.

I think my hatred of rice goes beyond the edibility issue: it is mainly psychological. I find myself thinking whilst eating it – thinking too much, in fact. I mainly think about the locations from where it is sourced: Thailand, Japan and America. Why is Ghana and its neighbours importing rice from these countries when it actually grows the stuff, or has the ability to do so? Throughout the country, there are signs pleading for the consumer to buy Ghanaian-produced rice. You go down the streets of Akwatia, where I was about a month ago, and you see bowls of rice being sold, brought in fresh from Accra: not fresh from a Ghanaian farmer’s field but rather fresh off of a boat or a plane.

The answer is simple and obvious: in the global village, countries like Ghana simply do not have a chance when it comes to producing crops like rice. Liberalized markets have flooded the streets of Accra with cheap imported rice. According to OXFAM, the US, Japan and EU provide something like 16 billion US dollars in subsidies to their rice farmers. What, then, happens in Ghana as a result? An inevitable cycle of deterioration: the government gives up on promoting rice farming, rice farmers receive little support in the way of fertilizers and machinery, and the country stops producing rice beyond a subsistence level. I know they are protecting their citizens but why continue to promote a loss industry, when better quality goods can be produced elsewhere and more cheaply? A note to African governments: if developed nations insist on continuing down this path, do not even show up at future ministerial meetings of the Doha Development Round.

I am trying to make sense of world trade. After all, Ghana imports its toothpicks…

Subsistence Groups

It is amazing how development can change the status of subsistence groups so quickly. One minute, you and your group of herdsmen are labeled a ‘subsistence rural population’ who live off of the resources of say, a forest, and are the subject of intense anthropological study, your experiences heavily romanticized. The next minute, you are branded a bunch of ‘illegal loggers’ who are encroaching in the forests belonging to the government. Academics make so much out about the debate between traditional and commercial rights. But is there really any debate to speak of? The reality is, if there is little hope for the aborigines of Australia, whose lands are being ploughed by mining interests, and the First Nations of North America, whose livelihoods have been disrupted by an array of commercial interests – groups based in developed countries with significant NGO representation – what hope is there for the groups in say, the Niger Delta?

The most amazing thing about subsistence groups is how they become the topic of intense criticism for doing nothing - or more specifically, for doing ‘their own thing’. Groups, for example, who have been living in a patch of forest or in a wetland area for centuries, deploying the same hunting, foraging and gathering skills as their parents and their parents before them. It as if there is a multimillion dollar propaganda facility aimed at swaying public opinion about these subsistence groups. As soon as there is a mine that has been sited or patch of forest that is to be harvested, the articles start to be churned out by the hundreds about how these groups are ‘resisting’, are ‘encroaching’ on government lands, or are ‘criminals’.

This is what is happening throughout Ghana, and it extends well beyond the small-scale mining sector, whose operators, despite being branded as criminals, are making significant contributions to national coffers. It includes the Ewe fishing communities of the Bui area, which, despite having been there for a hundred years, are now being pushed aside to make way for the Chinese-funded Bui Hydroelectric Dam. And, the Fante fishermen of the Western Region, who will no doubt be pushed aside and whose interests will be ignored because of newly-discovered oil reserves offshore. Their inevitable resistance will no doubt get the propaganda machine going.

So a warning to all subsistence groups: beware of commercial interests. They could be in your backyard next and soon, you too could also be branded 'a bunch of criminals'.

Random thoughts on today’s travel

If you want to surround yourself with some of Ghana’s elite, take an internal flight from Tamale to Accra. Whilst the flight costs about 90 pounds, it is certainly beyond the budgetary means of the average Northerner, who must resort to using shared buses to get to the country capital. I took a shared bus up to the north on the way up to Bolgatanga, and the differences in the people you encounter and their attitudes – whilst perhaps obvious – are striking: conversations are no longer conducted in Twi but rather English; people drink bottled water, not the sachet water prevalent along the roadside; and people are seen drinking herbal teas before boarding as opposed to the Milo that I thought was a staple of every African’s breakfast.

The conversation you hear in the Tamale airport lounge is too predictable: personal competitions about accomplishments. One woman, whose suitcases were carried for her from her car through customs, and onto the plane, seemed to be having a competition with another man about who had been abroad the most. ‘I hate going through London when I go to Canada,’ the woman said. ‘It means that I am in transit for nearly four hours.’ To this, the man responded: ‘Just go through the States direct. Delta has a direct service from Accra to New York, and you can connect to Canada. First class is not as good as they say, though…’ The discussion soon turned to where their children were educated.

The most noticeable difference between taking the bus and the plane is people’s sense of time. Whereas time is a non-issue for people on the bus, many of whom appear glad when it breaks down, in the middle of nowhere, eager to share their stories with one another, people boarding the plane are highly conscious of the time. ‘I hope this plane leaves on time,’ another woman said, after looking at her watch for the 45th time and to no one in particular, ‘because I have a meeting in Accra at 9.’ The time consciousness stems largely from where these people were educated or where they have spent significant portions of their lives: in Europe or North America. The obsession with deadlines, though, seems almost forced: I mean, who in Accra actually shows up for a meeting on the day, let alone at 9 o’clock?

These same people have likely never seen the inside of shared transport in Ghana, have drivers to take them to the Lebanese-owned grocery stores in Accra, have a house with 10 bedrooms, and have children in the country’s top private schools. I attracted frowns from many of them, likely because I was the only one boarding the plane who was not wearing a suit of some sort. In all likelihood, I would have attracted even more frowns had they known that I occasionally drink sachet water, that I take tro-tros regularly, that I eat food cooked at the roadside, that I don’t have a driver, and that the only reason I was taking the plane was because I discovered 100 pounds in my bag that I never knew was there.

Boy, to be rich in Africa…

Rallying Call

The more you see of him, the more Nana Akufo-Addo looks the part. He is charismatic; he speaks eloquently; and most importantly, he is saying the right things. Whilst local media outlets portray Ghana as being politically polarized – which is indeed the case – the growing support for Akufo-Addo leaves little doubt that he will be enshrined as the new President of the Republic come December.

Like all politicians, Akufo-Addo is making plenty of promises, among the most interesting of which is the idea that the revenues generated from newly-discovered oil, projected to be in the tens of millions, would be used to bridge the development gap between the south of the country and the north, should he be elected. This certainly bodes well for the pockets of impoverished in the likes of Tamale, Bolgatanga and Wa, the capitals of the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions – Ghana’s poorest areas. His speeches on the issue have been almost convincing. The $15billion to be derived from the oil proceeds in the first five years of the crude oil export, he explained adamantly, would be used in the development of the country and not to line his pocket or that of members of his government. “I would put one billion dollars into the Northern Development Fund as seed capital to cater for the development of roads, construction of small scale dams and harvesting of rain water to modernize agriculture,” he said.

This, indeed, is desperately needed; but Mr Akufo-Addo’s virtual denial of the way the present NPP regime has ignored the development needs of the north makes you wonder about how genuine these speeches are. Many northerners still see the NPP as a ‘Southern Party’ which has focused strictly on developing areas of the Ashanti, Eastern, Central, and Greater Accra Regions. And they argue with good reason: under the watch of the incumbent, the north has attracted only 2% of the country’s development projects, and virtually none of the President’s Special Initiatives. But to deny the reality of what has amounted to – either intentionally or unintentionally – a ‘development bias’ in Ghana is denial that there is a problem altogether. He hailed Tamale, the capital of the Northern Region, as the most beautiful in the country. There is little arguing here about the accuracy of this statement but claims that ‘It [Tamale] was not like that seven and half years ago’, in reference to the NPP’s arrival, however, are delusional: the city is still scarred with rampant poverty, and has little in the way of income-generating activities. His response to remarks about the ‘development bias’ has been that ‘Development projects under the NPP were shared equitably, its programmes, policies and interventions have national character, these include National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), school feeding programme and capitation grant that had benefited all Ghanaians’.

The pledge to develop the north, as well as ensure that public universities are in each of Ghana’s regions, were the rallying calls of the incumbent’s election campaign, in 2000; neither has happened. The campaign of Mr Akufo-Addo is effectively the same thing. But whilst he sounds more convincing in his speeches on tackling these issues, his repeated denial about the failure of his party to deliver on several fronts raises questions about the genuineness of many of his promises. For the sake of Ghana’s poor, let us hope that, should this charismatic and eloquent politician be the country’s next president, he delivers.

The Power of the USB and Cellular Phone

When European explorers first braved the interior of the ‘Dark Continent’ they often marvelled at – and occasionally frowned upon – the nomadic nature of many of its people. Whether it was a group in the Congo or a tribe traversing the Sahara from Kano, it seemed that people moved with all of their belongings, whether it was a camel, shovel or blade. This kind of lifestyle seemed unthinkable to the European, whose sole aim, it seemed, was to accumulate wealth through the acquisition of land, riches and property.

But has much changed since in many parts of Africa? Let me clarify (and forgive me for slightly departing from the discussion at hand) with some examples. How do you gain the confidence of a government official in Africa, gain the trust of a professor, or even secure a date? In my experience, by providing one of two gifts: a mobile phone or a pen drive (USB). The big project work financed by development agencies, which has facilitated few improvements in quality of life in sub-Saharan Africa, has made the aforementioned all the more valuable. Because amid all of the civil violence and electricity brownouts you are often forced to endure in Africa, you can count on two things, regardless of how dire your situation may be: an effective mobile phone network, propelled by ‘pay as you go’ credit, and an internet café. This is why a mobile phone and a pen drive are so essential in this environment: they store all of the African’s information and are, of course, portable. These items are no longer symbols of wealth in Africa but rather necessities in what seems to be – albeit for different reasons these days – a place where people are constantly on the move.

Thus, if an African’s house explodes, it is not the end of the world; if his or her farm burns down, it is not grounds to shoot oneself; if his or her car suddenly stopped working, it is not a disaster. But for people constantly on the move, losing a pen drive or cellular phone, which contain the details of one's life, ambitions, connections and lifestyle, would be catastrophic.

Local Economic Development?

To what extent are mining companies contributing to local economic development? This question is being fiercely debated around the world. On the one hand, you have the companies, World Bank and investors pointing to how the industry has a mandate to hire locally, builds schools and libraries for indigenous groups, and attempts to generate local employment for affected peoples. On the other hand, you have NGOs arguing that because they are mechanized, mines provide very few employment opportunities; that the schools being built have no schoolteachers and that libraries are well-stocked but are in areas where no one can read; and that the efforts made to generate employment have been sporadic and ineffective overall. I tend not to get caught up in these debates.

But what I am interested in is how a company’s operations are contributing to local economic development. One way of doing that is to make use of local smallholders’ product. In Ghana here, it pains me to drive through rural areas and see tons of produce – mangoes, citrus, bananas, plantain – rotting on the roadside because it did not get to the market on time. I have seen this time and time again in mining communities, which raises the questions: to what extent are companies using local producers? This is something that needs to be investigated.

Someone once told me that in Ghana, one company does catering for all of the mining companies. That is a lot of money and more importantly, a lot of food. ‘It is ridiculous what some of these companies are doing,’ a Guyanese colleague once told me. ‘Here in Guyana, these companies are importing apples, when you have mangoes and papaya here; they are importing canned tuna, when you have the best shrimp and fish right here; and they are importing rice when you have the best rotis produced right here.’ Having eaten at several of the mining companies’ canteens in Ghana, there is certainly evidence of this taking place: the beef, potatoes, apples, pears and juices are surely imported, in true expatriate style. And fair enough, I guess. But there are also local dishes served alongside these luxuries, including fu-fu, banku and red red. These dishes use local ingredients: plantain, maize, yam, cassava. So where is the catering company sourcing its supplies of these goods?

Of course, a mining company cannot make everybody happy. But allowing caterers to go outside of catchment communities to secure food supplies seems senseless. I am by no means advocating that this is taking place in Ghana but communications with colleagues suggest that it is happening elsewhere in the world. Using local producers would certainly make a lot of people happy, and could go a long way toward restoring a company’s relationship with its communities.

After all, is not engaging with local producers a more beneficial CSR initiative than a school with no teacher?

Dirty Looks in the Akwatia Diamond Market

Last week, I visited Akwatia for the first time, despite having carried out research on mining in Ghana for nearly a decade. It is indeed a shell of its former self, in large part because the parent company, Ghana Consolidated Diamonds (GCD), has pretty much ceased operating. The purchasing arrangement inaugurated under GCD was unique, and provided tributers with security of tenure and, most importantly, a job. A decision by Antwerp to regulate exports of Ghanaian diamonds has further complicated things. Apparently, UN people have concluded that Ivorian diamonds are being smuggled into Ghana and exported as Ghanaian diamonds. Major buyers and retailers do not want to be caught up in buying ‘conflict diamonds’, and I see their point. But what I do not see is the justification for such a sweeping generalization, particularly when only isotopic analysis can differentiate between an Ivorian and Ghanaian diamond. Is this analysis being carried out? I hardly think so.

Every morning between 8 am 12 AM, the diamond buyers – or the few who can afford to sponsor diamond miners and/or purchase their product – converge in the centre of town. I was told that during the heyday, as many as 500 buyers were packed into its narrow streets. On the day I went, however, there were fewer than 40. ‘Business is tough these days,’ explained one buyer. ‘It is because of the Kimberley Process.’ Recognition of Kimberley signifies that these guys know what is going on – specifically, that forces beyond Ghana are responsible for their fate. This could explain why I received innumerable dirty looks throughout the day: perhaps they thought I worked for the UN or was, in fact, Mr Kimberley. The most depressing, and indeed identifiable, feature of Akwatia is its ‘(boom) bust-like’ appearance: abandoned stalls, shops selling goods that were once affordable luxuries, and empty hotels. With the exodus of mining, of course, has come poverty, which can only be fixed with, well, the resurgence of mining.

So let us hope for the sake of Akwatia’s people that the diamond embargo is lifted. After all, it has not been a location of civil violence, so why should its people also be victims of what unfolded in Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast and Angola?

Leftovers

It is amazing what you can find in an African market. The majority of goods available are second hand, of course: clothes, radios and shoes. Of the goods that are new, most are produced in China and India and are generally of poor quality.

On the one hand, the level of material reuse in Africa is commendable. Here, you have automotive parts that would be instantaneously melted down or discarded in the UK being refitted into a ‘tro-tro’ or communal vehicle: they are treated as raw materials. The continent is indeed the king of automotive refurbishment, and we in the West could learn a lot from these guys. But on the other hand, this simply underscores what Africa is for us: a repository for our waste and unwanted products. After all, the refurbished automotive parts were selected from, well, outdated cars in the first place – cars that would not be deemed fit to be on a European road; nor which anyone in Europe would want anyway.

Sometimes it is amazing what trade liberalization and de-regulated markets have created in the developing world. I mean, twenty years ago, who would have thought that African capitals would be epicenters for poor-quality used clothing manufactured in South Asia, used bicycles produced in the Far East, rice manufactured in Thailand and the US, and toothpicks – I repeat, toothpicks – produced in China. In Ghana here, the indispensable MSG-infested Maggi cubes that make or break the jolof rice, chicken dishes and light soups we consume, are manufactured in Malaysia; as is the ketchup used on our rice dishes, despite the fact that the country is a major producer of tomatoes. But what perhaps tops everything is the television program shown during primetime (Friday and Saturday nights). This is a Mexican soap (produced circa-2001) translated into English. Accra seems to stop on Friday and Saturday nights to watch it, and if you are in a building where it is being televised, you often see women pick up their cell phones to call their friends, sisters and mothers to gossip and reflect critically on what Carlos Raul or Alessandro has said, has not said, has done, or has not done. From what I hear, most African countries have similar soaps ‘imported’ from Latin America and the Philippines.

Sometimes the things you see in Africa are mind-boggling.

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.

Community dynamics

One of the biggest challenges in development is figuring out who is who, who does what, and what people want. Of course, many donor agencies have approached this by, well, spreading word that these are not problem areas at all - that there is no need to bridge these information gaps, and that responding to the calls of anthropologists and other social scientists to study the dynamics of rural communities is not a priority. Instead, donors have spent millions of dollars to impress upon an ignorant public that everyone in Africa aspires to be a farmer, or that everyone living in coastal India wants to be a fisherman. Is it correct to assume that every man, woman and child in a particular village, be it in Africa, Latin America, Asia, or even Europe and North America, wants the same thing in life?

Why is this happening? The cynical assessment would be to argue that development is an industry, the biggest in the world. But let us assume that practioners are committed to making a difference: to alleviating poverty and assisting impoverished people. Does it not make sense to determine what people want beforehand - that prior to spending millions of dollars on, inter alia, equipment, boreholes, and infrastructure, communities are sensitized or better yet, that interventions have the endorsement of their inhabitants?

It seems so simple, but repeated neglect of the importance of participatory approaches leaves one with the impression that those driving development do not want change. I am sure that many of my colleagues sympathize with my views, and understand why I am so frustrated with what is happening in so many mining communities in the developing world.

re: Development?

Development is a Western construct. We all know this. It is us in the West who ulitimately decide what development trajectory a particular country or group of people should follow: the donor people, the governments, consultants and yes, advising academics. But given the significant disconnection between policy and reality - a gap that those driving the development project have little intention of bridging anytime soon - how can these actors possibly know what is 'best' for poor groups?

Let us look at development more pragmatically, in a more basic sense. It is the act of improving or expanding or enlarging or refining or more simply, improving quality of life. The billions of dollars earmarked for doing this well, have failed to do so. These monies, after all, have gone toward privatizing parastatals, overhauling taxation regimes, keeping corrupt leaders in power, liberalizing trade markets, and removing subsidies on farm inputs - changes made in the name of development but which have rather made life even more difficult for poor people in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. So how, in light of increased hardship, do people go about improving their quality of life? More specifically, how do these people escape hardship and develop?

A recent story told to me by a Ghanaian colleague sheds light on how. He always buys his newspapers at a particular "stall" in Accra. Four family members and friends manned this particular stall at one point. But after some time, there were only three. "Where is the young lady?" asked my colleague one Tuesday morning. Her brother replied: "She has left. We all financed her travel." After some time, my colleague noticed there were only two of the original four manning the stall, and so he asked the same question. "He has joined the lady," replied her brother. "We saved and saved and financed his travel and secured his documents." And, sure enough, after some time, the brother was also nowhere to be seen. "He has left as well," the middle-aged woman explained, the only one remaining of the original four. "I soon will be joining them in Cleveland, Ohio."

Westerners have overseen the implementation of comprehensive policies and programs in the name of development. But many residents of the developing countries being exploited have responded by launching their own, equally-comprehensive, development programs...

The Power of Hope

Three years ago, I was speaking to some miners in the Ghanaian town of Prestea.

How to describe Prestea? A dilapidated village-turned-town with two paved roads, countless run-down houses, deteriorating infrastructure, and a collection of taxis servicing, well, no one. One miner - we'll call him 'Kofi' - explained that he owed some gold buyers some money. 'I borrowed money to buy a water pump,' he explained, 'to drain the pit so I can get the gold. But the pump broke and now I am not getting the gold. The water has to be hauled up by buckets and that is time. But i owe so much for this pump still.'

Shortly after hearing this depressing story, I got up to catch a shared taxi to Tarkwa, where I would connect to Accra. But before I left, Kofi asked me for my card. 'Please,' he explained. 'I beg. In case I need some investment.'

I explained that I was not an investor, but it did not seem to diminish his enthusiasm. He walked away cheerfully.

'That is Kofi's meal-ticket,' my colleague, Quarm, also a Prestean, explained.

'But I can't give him any money,' I responded. 'Nor will I ever be able to help him with equipment.'

'It does not matter. In fact, he will always carry that around, with the hope that by calling you, he can get some good fortune - whether it is money, guidance, or confidence...In fact, it is the power of hope. It does wonders for us Ghanaians. You know if he calls you, then it is problems he has. Because it is his last trump card. He stumbles into his pocket to get your card, hoping that he convinces the buyer he owes money to that you are his investor - that you are sending him money at the end of the week. If the buyer is not convinced, he will sometimes take the card and look you up on the internet. And if he is still not convinced, he will get him - Kofi - to call you on the spot and listen to the conversation. This could be the difference between eating this week and starving tomorrow: it is a fine line. If he convinces, he and his family get one more week maybe one more month to get the buyer his monies. So they eat. If not, the buyer takes his house and he and the family are homeless.'

Two days ago, at 2:30 in the morning - more than three years after having that conversation - I received a call from a man named Kofi. He insisted that we were 'good friends' and asked when I was coming to Ghana next to 'discuss business plans'. He spent about five minutes trying to refresh my memory on how we met and about our 'agreement'. I must have sounded convincing: he sounded very pleased by the end of the conversation, which, judging by the reception, was on speaker-phone the whole time.

In all likelihood, Kofi and his family will be able to eat this week.

Reflections on Methodology and ‘Post Methodology Sickness’

Which is a more onerous task: carrying out research or justifying that you did it in an ‘academically-sound’ fashion? As is the case with most disciplines, in Development Studies, it is the latter. Forget the fact that you had to travel two days and 200 miles to interview ten people in rural Mali; caught malaria en route to a remote village in the interior of Cameroon in order to participate in a village meeting; or had to live with former combatants for six months in order to build up some trust. The most Herculean task in most, if not all, cases, is justifying to your colleagues – many of who have never done any fieldwork and/or are not acquainted in the slightest with the rigours of undertaking research in developing world settings – that the work was carried out ‘correctly’. This leads to what I refer to as ‘Post Methodology Sickness’: the frazzled state a researcher often finds him/herself in following collection of his/her empirical data, brought on by the pressure of having to convince the armchair academics that it was obtained in accordance with instructions outlined in The Fundamentals of Qualitative Research Methods and Data Collection, Volume 20.

What complicates things even more is that things never go according to plan when undertaking research in the village: planned focus groups become discussion groups; participatory exercises turn into fist fights; and group meetings with elders become a meeting with the chief’s son because you haven’t convinced the elders that you are important enough to warrant any attention. Does The Fundamentals offer a contingency plan in the event that such a case arises (which it often does)? And, if not, how does one justify, academically, a move to more unconventional means of data collection generally not recognized to be part of the qualitative methodological machinery but which nevertheless are great at gathering important information? Some of the most interesting stories I’ve heard, and which have shaped my research, over the years were told in the most bizarre of settings and at unpredictable times: whilst eating at a local eatery in Mahdia; at an internet café in Paramaribo; and in a tro-tro on the Bogoso-Prestea Road. In each case, purely by chance, I stumbled across individuals who shared valuable information with me.

Reflecting upon these events brings to mind what Martin Bulmer said over twenty years ago: that when carrying out field research in developing countries, it is not only a question of a lack of data but in many situations, it is a case of there being no data at all. Two decades on, with so few people in the discipline committed to carrying out fieldwork and informing policy from the bottom up, we find ourselves in the same situation.

These days, I don’t really suffer from ‘Post Methodology Sickness’ much. As someone acquainted with the rigours and frustrations of doing research in developing world setting, I don’t care much about how the research approach may have drifted away from the guidelines outlined in The Fundamentals. Everyone undertaking empirical research has an epistemological starting point, a methodology, a discourse, a hypothesis, a set of objectives, a set of research questions. But before criticizing the approach taken and identifying how it does not conform to the blueprints outlined in The Fundamentals, does it not make sense to examine the data that has been retrieved? As supposed development practitioners, it is astonishing to think of how little we know about the countries we are supposedly assisting. So isn’t any detailed data about peoples’ habits, needs and struggles valuable information?

After all, every methodology has its flaws.