A True End to Poverty

                                                                    My cassava farm.

Today I would like to talk about something I believe will probably become a reoccurring theme in my posts and currently the focus of my non-profit Clash International—farming as a tool for poverty reduction and development.  Again, I am only speaking based on my experience in Ghana, but I think the importance of agriculture is relevant in many countries.  Often times, I feel poverty is viewed in the development sector as something far more complicated than it actually is—some mysterious illness without any known cure.  Consequently, development organizations often end up treating the more immediate symptoms of poverty: illiteracy, malnutrition, disease, etc.  Little attention is actually spent searching for and implementing a cure.   The cure, however, lies in what I don’t think many of us feel comfortable talking about: money.  Poverty exists, because people do not have money; poverty would not exist if people had money.  That is all there really is to it.  So, how do we get money to the people who don’t have it?  And not just for now, but for the rest of their lives?  By creating jobs—jobs that are accessible to everyone regardless of their literacy level, location, or demographic.  As a farmer whose harvests put him and his brothers through junior high, senior high, and university, this is where I believe agriculture can facilitate job creation and poverty reduction.

For so many of us in Ghana, farming is not a foreign concept.  Many of us have been farmers since birth, carried to farm each morning strapped to our mothers’ backs with a two-yard piece of cloth.  We are familiar with the techniques and accustomed to the labor, but we don’t always know how to turn this technique and labor into a profitable business for ourselves and our families.  While we often know how to farm, we don’t always know how to run a business.  We easily overlook business strategies.  For example: market-assessment.  When is there a good market for our produce?  Are we planting and harvesting accordingly?  Or, we don’t always consider investing in our farms.  If we have a profitable year, we often take all that money as personal profit instead of using a portion to expand our business the following year.  Sometimes we even take the next year off, waiting for the money to run out before we head back to our farms.

Simply put, we often don’t view farming as a legitimate occupation at all.  We don’t see it as a way to generate sustainable revenue, but as a means to an end.  Farming, of course, will not be for everybody; but for so many of us, it’s a skill set we already possess and an occupation that is readily available to us.  It is a gaping, untapped opportunity in Ghana.  We can create our own jobs, use these jobs to make our own money, and use this money to end our own poverty.  It is the development and facilitation of this process and processes like this that I believe can truly end poverty country-wide.  So to those of us in the development sector, let’s move away from treating the symptoms, and start administering the cure.

The Mosquito Net Epidemic

I started this blog with the hope of sparking meaningful discussions that could move us towards more efficient and effective development agendas.  I write with no intent to personally belittle or ridicule the work of current or past development programs, but to simply point out some contradictions that I’ve witnessed as a “beneficiary” of these programs and how these contradictions inform my current work in the development of my country.  That being said, I would like to discuss what I feel is a fairly rampant misuse of resources by multiple development agencies in Ghana, and I suspect in other countries: mosquito net distribution. 

I do not deny the existence of malaria in Ghana; however, I do question its supposed prevalence.  My suspicions are primarily founded in the fact that I have been diagnosed with malaria seven times throughout my life.  Never once have I been tested.  Every single one of my friends and family members has shares a similar experience.  In fact, I know many people who visited the hospital and complained of headache, weakness, and nausea just to get a prescription for Artesunate-Amodioquine on behalf of a friend or family member who may actually be suffering from the sickness. 

Stories such as these make it difficult for me to accept many of the published malaria statistics.  These statistics, however, are often used as the basis for mosquito net distribution and result in subsequent floods of nets to community health offices.  They are often given to the community nurses or health volunteers with some sort of qualifier.  For example, one agency may say, “Distribute these nets to all the pregnant women every three months.”  The next will say, “Give these nets to each child under the age of five,” or “Provide nets to each household in accordance with its size.”  They will be given at the clinics, again at infant weighings, and again during house-to-house distribution.  Before you know it, a family of five that typically sleeps in one room under one net (if they choose to sleep under their nets at all) will have upwards of eight mosquito nets; and, in a couple of months, nets will be distributed again.

Moreover very little, if any, follow-up is done to verify that these nets are actually being used.  If it was, development workers would find their nets in use at the rivers for catching fish, at farms for packaging and carrying produce, and in homes two wrap and protect personal belongings.  They would most likely find many nets years old and still in their original packaging unused and forgotten.  So, what is it with mosquito nets?  Why such an obsession with their distribution?  And, why not try re-allocating these resources to an area that is more meaningful, effective, and better received?

Unable to Get to the Heart of the Matter: Kayaye in Ghana

The Ghanaian government’s dealing with kayaye displays a problematic approach that I feel permeates much of government and non-government development in Ghana.  They simply cannot or will not get to the heart of the matter.  For those of you who may not know, kayaye refers the work of porters who aid passengers with their loads as they are alighting from public transportation, preparing to travel, or shopping in the market places.  In short, they help people carry things with the expectation of a tip.  Many of the people who take up this occupation are from Ghana’s northern regions and migrate to the southern urban centers (i.e. Accra, Kumasi, Takoradi, etc.) where the population and wealth are greater.   Many of them are children, and many of them are girls. With no family in these cities and very little consistent income, these kayaye workers often make their homes on the streets or in make-shift housing.   The areas where they stay are most frequently characterized by crime, pollution, disease, and overpopulation.  In Accra, this area is referred to by most every Ghanaian as Sodom and Gomorrah.

In an attempt to better their situation and reduce crime and disease, the government has taken on a number of initiatives to support those performing kayaye work.  They have attempted to sponsor vocational training for these workers—to provide them with a more marketable skill set that could potentially get them off the street and involved in a more reliable form of work.  Government officials have also discussed demolishing the make-shift communities in which these workers live and relocating them to government-subsidized accommodations on the outskirts of town.  Implementing such a task, however, would be extremely daunting.  Not only are there thousands of kayaye workers in a number of cities, the birth rates are also high in these communities, and the number who would actually agree to move away from their only means of subsistence are few.  The former initiative is far more realistic, but it still leaves me wondering if the government is truly trying to eradicate kayaye, because the heart of the matter is not in these urban centers; it’s in the hometowns of these workers.

I believe if the government truly wanted to deal with the issue of kayaye in our country, they would address the issues that these workers first faced before deciding to migrate to the cities for kayaye work.  Very few kayaye workers were provided with even basic education.  There were either no schools in their hometown, or no teachers to teach in these schools.  Putting on a school uniform and walking around a classroom with no teacher for six hours would seem a waste of time to anyone; so, not knowing of the conditions, it is often even the parents who encourage these individuals to travel and take up kayaye work.  There are also no jobs in these communities.  Unless they are willing to do the work of their grandfather’s, there is no other work available to them within their town; they have to travel outside.  As much as I am a proponent for agricultural development in Ghana, not everyone is meant to be a farmer.  How can every single person in an entire town be expected to take up the same occupation?  Lastly, it is the thoughts, or should I say wonders, of amenities that drive many to the urban areas, and this is something that I can personally attest too.  We are all human, living on the same earth.  We know there is a place where water runs from the tap.  We know there is a place we where can see shiny new cars and hundreds of street lights, and we want to see them.  So, we go to the places where we know these things are, and we try to survive there.  So, if the government truly wants to rid our country of kayaye, they should do more than address the current population of kayaye workers.  They need to address the population of future kayaye workers.  More specifically, we need schools, teachers, jobs, and electricity and water would not be so bad either.

Let me introduce myself...

I'm the "local", the "host-country national."  I'm from "the field" where the grasses are rooted. 

I have a degree in community development from the University for Development Studies in Ghana, but I believe much of what qualifies me to speak about development is my first-hand experience "being developed."  And that experience is what I intend to share in this blog.  My name is Mankama, and I'm from a community called Kananto in Ghana's northern region.  Kananto was when I was growing up and continues to be today a rural community comprised of  roughly 400 people.  There is no electricity, no running water, 1 functioning bore hole, and minimal cell phone reception.  My intention in this description is not to encourage pity but to explain the perspective that I'll be speaking from, as these are all commonly cited points in the development field.

I've witnessed the implementation of a number of development projects throughout the course of my life-- some successful, some not so much, and some that were simply detrimental.  I would like to share these stories and start a discussion that moves us towards a better kind of development-- a development that more accurately assesses the problems faced by our society and more genuinely seeks their solutions.  I don't intend to make this a blog of criticisms, so I hope it doesn't evolve into that.  We are all entitled to mistakes, however, it is important that we claim and take ownership over these mistakes as we would our achievements.  I believe in this way we can truly learn, grow, and make a reality out of what we now relegate as idealistic thinking.