Opening Up The Rural Areas [of Ghana]. Part 1

Even though the attention is on Ghana, the observations and prescriptions in this write-up can be applied broadly to practically all African countries. It is a review of something I wrote in 1995 but very much still valid, considering the tottering efforts we have seen so far, despite three regime changes in Ghana.

Undoubtedly, one cannot expect people who do not have an idea of what "development" is to bring about development. It is simple! You can't do what you don't know. This crisis of the failure of the "educated" African élite to know how to bring socio-economic development about deserves renewed focus. But, suffice it to mention here that some underemphasised causes lie in the miseducation of the African with heavy emphasis on liberal subjects with little focus on science and vocational subjects; distortions in the leadership structure of African countries and communities linked to the advent of the miseducated, hungry and greedy motley crew of commoners of slave and peasant origins with no family history of leadership mixed with equally mentally warped scions from the traditional royalty taking over the reins of the colonial legacy, and the imposition of foreign socio-cultural preferences and choices into the African space in all its ramifications. The combination of all this are the resultant failed states all over Africa, with standards of living much lower than when independence was gained!

These “educated” African élite have been attempting to "develop" their respective colonially-carved out countries since the gaining of flag independence over 50 years ago, to little avail. Current data show that many actually have human development indices used by UNDP lower in real terms than for 1960! That also included Ghana until recently, a country which many Ghanaians still like to boast of as the forerunner in almost everything good in sub Saharan Africa. It is therefore sobering to learn that Zaire (now Congo DRC) under the decisively brutal, abashedly thieving, definitely megalomaniac Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga, ("all powerful warrior who, because of his inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake", which he indeed did, considering the bloody mess he left behind when he ran away to Morocco in diapers!), has managed to raise its adult literacy level to 71.8 % by 1990, compared to Ghana's 60.3 % ! (UNDP HD Report 1993). Ghanaians, who often boast of the highest proportion of educated Africans in sub-Saharan Africa at time of independence, must be missing something in their earlier education which Mobutu and his fire-spitting cohorts had! The educated Ghanaian élite, just as their other African counterparts elsewhere, have shown clearly that they do not exactly know what development is about: the qualitative change of the cognitive mind engendered by the material circumstances of a people which leads them to seek and change their socio-economic and political values, institutions and physical landscape. It is at once a change in the cosmogony and cosmology of a vanguard group, not necessarily the leaders, in the society, which vanguard group assumes leadership by one means or the other – revolution or through the electoral process – to enforce their vision of society on all; whether they like it or not. But when this vanguard group is miseducated, misinformed and brainwashed as in Africa, we can only expect dire , negative results.

No wonder, attempts to transform the Ghanaian society, economy and institutions of governance, as often is the case for practically all African countries, have taken a top down approach, beginning from the few urban centres, and ending in chaos! The formula involved mainly imported models devoid of indigenous cultural and aesthetic relevance to the mass of Ghanaians. It means heavy emphasis on acquisition of all kinds of the paraphernalia of "development" - mere physical expressions of economic growth in Western societies - for the burgeoning urban areas: schools, roads, pipe borne water, "low cost" houses which are anything but cheap and affordable to the "common man", electricity, health centres, schools, recreational facilities (parks and gardens, cinemas), hotels, telephones and what not. More often than not, absent is the mind-set to maintain them – something cultural – which is not an import commodity per se, as culture is mainly acquired by nurture, long association, immersion and diffusion. Cultural theorists of development have not been loud enough in pointing out these, fearing accusations of racism being levelled against them, I presume. But we have to listen to them more.

As for the rural areas, the basic minuscule facilities created by the colonial authorities with the able assistance of the chiefs were left to actually deteriorate. The ubiquitous telegraph poles soon collapsed and the copper lines became ornaments! Can't say exactly whether the former happened first – the collapse of the poles - before the local goldsmiths discovered that the copper wires made good inputs in satisfying the insatiable desire of our women-folk and some vain men to adorn their bodies with all kinds of imaginable objects; or the discovery was made first and the copper thieves set to work stealing the copper wires from the poles before they collapsed.

The bush, of course, slowly reclaimed the "feeder roads". Roofing on the local elementary schools lucky not to be under trees rusted and soon began to leak heavily during the heavy tropical rainstorms. Soon the roofs were no longer even serving the purpose of sun shades and somebody hit upon a Parent Teachers Association to remedy the situation: every parent should contribute so much cedis towards re roofing of the Local Authority Primary and Middle Schools. Teachers to contribute, as usual, by "devotedly" teaching the pupils, even when that meant special "extra classes" at extra cost to parents. The confidence mechanisms holding rural exploitation in place work in mysterious ways!

That decision might have been taken about ten years earlier. The old corrugated roofing sheets had been removed by the local carpenter, who was happy to get the "contract", and have stayed removed since then! The carpenter is yet to be fully reimbursed for his efforts. The Town Development Committee has recently been wooing the local, "mediocre B", rural bank, (which has less than 500 shareholders in a "catchment area" of over 100,000 people), to "adopt" the school. They did help with some money years back, the single largest contribution when the project was initiated, not to mention the unpaid loan for the electricity project. This, of course, is not the only outstanding loan and by any means the biggest: it was not rated by BoG "Mediocre B" for nothing! Better than "Distressed" though.

Before these events, just under a 100 males and over 50 females had contributed to the Town Development levy of ¢5000 (GNC5) and ¢3000 (GNC3) respectively for adult "indigenes" resident "abroad"; and ¢3000 and ¢1000 (GNC1) respectively for those at "home", towards the rehabilitation of the feeder road. That was nearly thirteen years ago. And you still wonder why some pupils are going to “school” under trees?

No one is quite sure whether the "misunderstanding" involving the stipulated higher contribution of ¢10,000 apiece by "settler farmers", or the higher sums stipulated for "indigenes abroad" had any correlation with this low rate of payment. At best, we may deduce a spurious effect! But the fact of semi-feudal land tenure systems persisting in much of Ghana is not only grounds for endless local conflicts and litigations. It is also a testimony to the failure of the educated Ghanaian élite to establish a legal-rational State that could ensure certainty and predictability in socio-economic activities and relations in the country. The rural areas suffer most from this failure.

A disturbing aspect of this contribution saga is the designation of fellow Ghanaians earning a living in another part of the country as "settlers" or "strangers", subject to discriminatory treatment, and sometimes worse afflictions comparable to anything the neo-nazists and fascists of Europe have been dishing out to foreigners. This, over 50 years since Ghana gained "statehood"! It is ironic that many Ghanaians who had taken or intend to take foreign citizenship in order to enjoy certain privileges in the West, clamoured for dual citizenship in Ghana, while some Ghanaians at home are yet to gain full recognition as bona fide Ghanaians wherever they are in their own country. So the "settler" becomes an "indigene abroad" subject to unfair double taxation in his/her own country! Something ought to be done about this anomaly very fast!

All this "good" decisions of our fictional town were taken in the spirit of the new wind of self reliance blowing across the African continent. SAP was the word on everybody's lips. But it also meant removal of literally all government support for farmers, such as supply of and subsidies on seeds and other inputs, and open or disguised re introduction of school fees to the lowest level, through all kinds of charges: text-book, furniture and library fees, for instance.

Then, of course, decentralisation of government functions to districts without the equivalent decentralisation of the revenue sources to the grassroots meant no funds to carry out the devolved functions. Electricity and roads to, at best, through the centre of the district capitals and the bigger towns hardly touch the lives of most ordinary rural dwellers living in the countryside, far away from such facilities. Even the big farmers and retired top bureaucrats, for example, cannot afford to buy poles to extend electricity to their already wired houses, a kilometre or two from the centre of the town.

The policy of the Electricity Corporation (EC), whereby one pays full cost for the meter, the electric poles to ones house, and these become the property of the EC after a day in use represents an obtuse logic of the highest order to many in even the cities. With no arrangement existing for making such "voluntary donations" tax deductible or cost sharing by those that tap from the poles later, very few in the rural areas can afford, or are willing, to extend electricity to their homes. The "lucky" few enjoying electricity must share the increasingly high overhead costs of facilities and the increasingly fat salaries these utility workers are enjoying of late, making them magnets for desperate job-seekers, and infuriating our university teachers who want some more too.

Decentralisation, very desirable in itself, not only as a means of reducing budget deficits, soon becomes an excuse for many a government in Africa to run away from the responsibility to provide social amenities to rural producers and tax payers as done in all "developed" and "civilised" countries. The rural people, already indirectly overtaxed and impoverished through the exploitative arrangements associated with the marketing boards system, and thus nursing a life-time of broken dreams cultivating the "export cash crops" and food crops, just to receive minimum "stabilised" or "controlled" prices for their outputs, could hardly take on these added responsibilities, which they hardly hope to benefit from.

With a properly constituted and empowered local government system in place, 25 year maturing local government bonds could be issued, subscribed to by rural and other banks and rich individuals to provide the money to re-roof and/or build the local schools, roads, electric poles, etc. Re-payment would be spread through small and affordable levies on all adults in each locality or district.

ON HOUSING, the vast majority of Ghanaian workers can hardly afford the cheapest of the so-called "low cost" houses of the urban areas, a fact lost on most rural development planners and policy makers in Africa, including Ghana. Thus the rural housing "problem" can hardly be solved by the SSNIT type of "workers" houses springing up in the suburbia of the urban areas. Many senior officials, some who returned from abroad over several years ago with second degrees in their various fields, could hardly afford one of those "posh" houses at New Lashibi, Sakumono Estates or Spintex. Trassaco Valley? You must be dreaming! Many with families make do with "hall-and-chambers" in the suburbs of the Accra-Tema area, without any sort of amenities. Some actually squat on friends or relatives for years. Yes! Some sleep in lotto kiosks, shops, etc. They came from the rural areas where, depending on their socio-economic status, better or worse housing might be available to them. But no one can deny that rural housing also needs a big innovation and change. But not even the new exotic inventions which are perfected in laboratories overseas, with the machines for manufacturing the "superior and cheap" bricks made by a foreign firm, can solve the rural housing problem. Renovation of the old clay/swish houses and use of local, time tested building materials offer the cheapest and quickest way of providing decent accommodation to the rural people.

I saw in Nigeria how whole districts rely on sun dried clay bricks for building. The houses are then plastered with cement, which is used as mortar between the bricks. Big, nicely painted storey buildings, rather cooler inside than cement-block houses, are built this way. A non-native could never know that he/she lives in a swish house, something regarded as of low status in even rural Ghana these days. Rural clay dwellings are therefore being allowed to deteriorate and collapse, while the dwellers pray and dream nightly of building cement block houses, having hit it big on the local banker-to-banker aptly named "Jesus is our Saviour Banker-to-Banker”.

There is an obvious urgent need for a re-education - conscientizsation - of Ghanaians of all walks in order to make them base development on transforming our culture/s, instead of importing others wholesale. This represents one solution to the rural housing problem too.

ANDY C.Y. KWAWUKUME
[email protected]
© London