Opening Up The Rural Areas [of Ghana]. Part 2

ON ACCESS ROADS. Rural people cannot be expected to use their cutlasses and hoes, with some few spades thrown in, to construct feeder roads from their homes to their farms. In most districts a bulldozer, a grader and a couple of tipper trucks thrown in for those far from laterite soil, would go a long way in greatly alleviating the problem of access roads to the remote farming areas, not to mention from the villages to the trunk roads. With these facilities, the people can then be mobilised to contribute the necessary labour to clear and widen the footpaths to distant farms into adequate "motorable" roads.

But wait a moment! What sort of vehicles are suited for these access roads? Certainly not the expensive and luxurious Landcruisers and other heavy vehicles presently in use on our roads, but very light means of transportation. We must think of providing for these rural "roads" two- and three-wheeled bicycles and rickshaws as already used on Asian roads, and two- and three-wheeled motor bikes and scooters with or without carriages. The heaviest vehicle must be the light three wheeled vehicles common on Asian streets fitted with carriages and roofs for these unmacadamised roads. It is important that heavy vehicles such as timber trucks, except tractors, be kept away from these access roads.

Tarring will eventually come, when increased economic activities provide the means to meet much of the cost, thereby avoiding crippling national debts due to external loans. A young woman can easily paddle a rickshaw with the fire-wood or harvested crops in the carriage to the house or market, and gone are the days of human beings as beasts of burden.

What is singular is that Ghana has the technological skill and infrastructure to produce or assemble these means of transportation locally. With the resultant boost in industrial production for the existing and new assembly plants suitably located in the district capitals, the workshops of mechanics and the local blacksmiths will all have their hands full with manufacturing these vehicles, repairing and making parts for them. The aim is to provide alternative means of gainful employment for the rural school leavers.

HOW CAN THIS INDIGENOUS DEVELOPMENT BE FINANCED THEN? Easy! I have read some authors who said the commercial and rural banks have not been borrowing money to rural people because of lack of investment opportunities in the rural areas. That's rather odd, to say the least. Outrageous and plain nonsense, my real opinion. Then what is the whole idea of rural development about? And the million of dollars being borrowed under SAP to "develop" the rural areas, what are they being "invested" in? It is simply an admission of lack of vision and imagination about how to transform the rural areas; plainly lack of understanding how others brought "development" about in their countries.

Rural banks have mobilised billions of cedis (though, unlike others, it's my informed opinion that they have woefully failed to mobilise the "available or potential mobilisable funds"). A large proportion of mobilised funds are now invested in government securities or kept with commercial banks. Some was being used to purchase Akuafo cheques, (for only 1 % commission), which they had a hard time reclaiming from BoG. Most Managers, for the sake of the higher speculative interest rates, would have preferred borrowing this portion too to salaried workers, who now take over 80 % of loans most rural banks make to customers. Commercialisation of the rural banks entails speculation! It was high time such mobilised funds of rural banks are used for their original purpose of developing the rural areas.

First, all eligible borrowers shall be expected to be stakeholders in the rural banks before benefitting from loans and services. This implies a drive to get most adult community members to be shareholders before enjoying the services of rural banks in their areas of residence. Individual or collective purchases of the means of transportation listed can be financed. Development is no charity ball, and depositors' money cannot be expected to be means for maintaining local patronage systems! And free-riders cannot be permitted any longer. We are sinking! All able hands on board must be mobilised to save the rural boat of poverty and backwardness from sinking deeper!

Secondly, long-term savings could be converted into stocks and bonds issued by local authorities with central government guarantees, instead of purchasing goverrnment securities as done presently. A particular stock issue goes towards re roofing the local elementary schools. Another goes towards providing furniture to the new SSS. Another provides electric poles for the suburbs of the town, from the middle of the town where the main line stopped. Other projects can be financed this way. These securities mature in 5 to 25 years, or are paid in mortgaged instalments covering that period, or longer.

The government and external donors make their contributions through provision of grants and technical support to projects identified and initiated by the local people themselves, with the able support of change agents in NGOs with empathy to local people and their needs. Meaningful and genuine local participation in community organisations, instead of attempts at control of the rural populace by bureaucrats and politicians, become the vehicle to rural development. For these community organisations to be effective, a way must be found to control the debilitating impact of the local élite as well. This revolves around the question of local government and drastic reform of chieftaincy along lines I had tackled under a different topic, Taming the Ghanaian State: Reforming Chieftaincy, Part 2.

Development is a long time process, not a project to be executed according to laid down targets within a particular period. We cannot expect current adults alone to carry the burden of development and pay for it. Repayment of principal and interest on the mortgages and loans to local authorities must therefore be spread over a long period and over many tax-payers, some not yet born! A parent may therefore end up, in the long run, paying an affordable GNC20 for re roofing the local elementary school and GNC30 for electric poles. Once the product is delivered, less reluctance to pay up through levies and taxes can be expected from the beneficiaries.

Apart from this, appropriate measures on recalcitrant evaders of taxes can then be legitimised, justified and be acceptable to the community people, very averse to paying taxes at present. After all, in the rural areas of Ghana, people who fail to turn up for "voluntary" work without justification invariably have some form of sanction visited on them, before being allowed to enjoy the fruits of that labour. So there is actually nothing like a "free lunch" in the rural communities, relations being largely regulated by the principle of reciprocity: hand come, hand go!

FROM HAMLETS TO TOWNS: There are many obstacles to be faced in this rural development effort. The rural areas of Ghana, as in many African countries, present a demographic nightmare to development planners. Whereas this is obvious in the three northern regions, it is the case in much of the forested regions of Ghana too. In the absence of any transportation to farms, it makes sense to build new homesteads new ones farm or fishing grounds. The dispersal of population over a wide area in tiny villages and hamlets, and at times, in inaccessible tracts of land makes provision of expensive facilities such as safe drinking water, roads and electricity to a large section of the population an impossible task. Such facilities can hardly be provided economically and sustainably to isolated settlements ranging from one person to a hundred people found in many districts.

Opening up the rural areas by providing means of transportation and communication, as outlined above, should be a means towards getting people to live in settlements of at least a couple of 1000 people, in strategic existing settlements, where they can be easily provided with amenities. The people can then commute to their isolated farms daily by the means suggested earlier. What is envisaged here is not forced settlements of the ujamaa style in Tanzania under Nyerere, not to mention Stalin's disastrous collectivization of the 1930s. Existing settlements chosen by the rural people themselves with the assistance of experts will be upgraded up, and the new access roads radiate from them to the interiors. After all, Tikobo No. 2 and 3 resulted from the need of some inhabitants of Tikobo No. 1 to have easy accessibility to their farms, not for love of living deep in the bush!

Town life will become the focus for new industries and services, allowing the specialisation of the rural economy through a process of differentiation of occupations, increasing specialisation in functions and the resultant variety of goods and services available for consumption.

Multiplicity of occupations, which practically all rural dwellers engage in, lies behind the low production, low productivity, and consequent low exchange and consumption of value added goods and services in our economy as a whole. Most so-called "subsistence farmers" in Africa are hardly full-time farmers at all.

In fact, it is strange that people still refer to some Ghanaian farmers as "subsistence farmers" who produce for their own consumption and not for sale. I did not meet a single full-time farmer I can describe in such terms during my travels in the southern part of Ghana for a period of over three months in early 1993. It'd be outrageously hilarious to define Anlo shallot farmers, for instance, in such terms! I sampled my first onion soup in far away Norway!

If a rural "farmer" does not sell output from his/her farm, then he/she is likely to be earning a living as a carpenter, a mason, a fisherman, a blacksmith, a petty trader, a seamstress/tailor, a store-keeper, a teacher, or one of the myriads of other occupations people engage in to make ends meet in Ghana. Having a small farm is just another part of the "job variation" and, perhaps, "work enrichment" process, in the rural areas. Giving farming loans to such people is one bizarre incidence in existing rural credit schemes, a practice contributory to the high default of so-called "agricultural" loans.

As a matter of fact, there are too many people (about 60 % of the labour force) directly on the land already, and it makes no sense at all haranguing the youth to return to the land. This position, seen as one reason for the low production and productivity in the food crops farming sector, has been argued elsewhere in another article. Most able rural dwellers cannot be expected to be farmers!

Such a lack of specialisation, as known to even "O" Level economics students, brings with it low (or too much) output and less (or too much) for the market, which means low income and then low capital formation, low investment and consumption, and consequent low and poor standards of living for all except a few. Time to begin to break the vicious cycles by opening up the rural areas through original and creative thinking.

ANDY C.Y. KWAWUKUME
[email protected]
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