Sarah Grant and Ghana

Supporting farmers to grow their vegetables!

2010-03-15T10:46:00.000-07:00

It’s dry season, and although the rains this year are threatening to arrive the main excitement around agriculture is dry season vegetable farming.

A woman weeds her onion farm.

This weekend I met Mr. Salia, a hard-working vegetable farmer in the town called Buipe. Mr. Salia is one of those guys that after meeting I have to write about. He’s a young guy who was hired by the government to teach. He’s only employed part-time (government youth employment program) and so he supplements his income by farming. In the dry season, he sets himself up next to the Volta River and grows vegetables. He’s making a ton of money, enough to send himself to university and to support his new wife and young son.

Mr. Salia and I chat about his farm.

Growing vegetables to me is one of those businesses that I think everybody should get into! It’s good for you! Like eating your veges! But very few people have copied Mr. Salia and set up shop.

Why?

It requires a few things that can be tricky to access #1. the right type of start-up capital #2. a lot of technical knowledge #3. great market access. This post focuses on the first.

This year Mr. Salia is struggling. Cattle came and ate his entire crop. About $500 worth of investment. He’s out this money and wondering if he should continue.

The only evidence left behind...

He built a fence but it was not very effective because it was basically thorny bushes piled in a line. Not enough to stop hungry cattle in the dry season!

Make shift fence

It occurred to me that most development projects aren’t interested in providing support to help farmers put up fences. They most commonly provide water pumping machines. Mr. Salia was offered one but he turned it down. Figured it wasn’t worth the cost of fuel and maintenance. He’d rather have a fence. They weren’t offering fences.

I think the development sector has got it wrong when it’s supporting vegetable farmers. All I ever hear about is pumping machines. Nothing about fences.

Two years ago I worked with vegetable farmers along the Volta River in a place called Daboya. They were just starting out and the business was doing well. They had saved up enough money to buy a water pumping machine. They lacked the capital to buy the pipes so I provided them a small loan out of my own pocket ($200) for the pipes. The group was able to pay their first installment of the loan. But by the time the second installment came along a donor had given MoFA some free water pumping machines to distribute. The farmers I was working with in Daboya received 2 free water pumping machines! Two! Two too many! Since then the farmers have not paid back the other half of their loan and have been quite elusive.

Farmers setting up their pumping machine that they bough with their own money.

By the way, two years ago these farmers also had their crops eaten by cattle. They also lacked a fence. They were lucky enough to know the farmers who own the cattle and were reimbursed for their eaten vegetables.

Convinced yet?

Two weeks ago I visited a community in Binaba. Their fence was impressive! It is 4 feet tall. Hand build. From mud. These farmers are doing well. And no pumping machines required.

Impressive wall. Impressive Onion farm.

Mr. Salia doesn’t have time to build a wall like this.

Why does the development sector insist on pumping machines into the agriculture sector instead of building walls?

I’m not really sure. It could be because machines are perceived as more modern and therefore more desired by development works and farmers alike.

Maybe this doesn’t matter. What matters more is that the development sector listens to Mr. Salia and provides him what he needs.

Twins and Frisbee

2010-03-05T15:07:00.000-08:00

There is a set of twins living at my house. Namawu and Ayisha. They are fraternal twins. Both are sweet, well behaved girls. They are also quite stunning but good thing they don’t know it!

Namawu (left) and Ayisha (right)

Every time I arrive home Namawu and Ayisha run up to me and grab by bags. They always greet me in the morning very politely. Their mother taught them well.

Last weekend I invited them to play ultimate Frisbee with a bunch of my foreigner friends in Tamale. They were both excited by this.

They were initially very shy and we’re really very aggressive. Not surprising since they were surrounded by a group of adult strangers. By the end of the game Namawu got the hang of it and made some great interceptions! Ayisha’s catching and throwing improved immensely.

What a treat it was for them!

They’ll likely join us again this week.

Honing our Frisbee skills

Back in Ghana and loving it

2010-03-05T14:49:00.000-08:00

So I’m back in

Ghana

. Perhaps because I’m only here for the next 6 months, I am making more out of life here this time. Every day I look around me and no longer take for granted the beauty that surrounds me.

Beauty comes unexpectedly as some cattle stop to nibble on the bougainvillea.

A local café. Modestly named ‘Try to respect’

Last Sunday I visited a friend, Florence. I met her through a previous EWB volunteer who worked at the agriculture college last fall. Flo is the top student at the agriculture college. She works her butt off to get amazing grades. She’s up at 3 am to study and normally goes to sleep around 11 pm. I don’t know how she functions on so little sleep!

I biked to visit Flo at the agriculture college, on the way I stopped to appreciate the beautiful sights.

Perfect mounds of dirt ready to be planted with yams once the rains begin.

A tree carries fruit that look similar to Christmas balls. The tree bears a seed called dawa-dawa that is a common cooking spice.

A man struggles up a hill with a ridiculous amount of sticks on his bicycle.

EWB has been working at the agriculture college for the past 8 months to help them develop an entrepreneurship curriculum. Currently, only about 10% of graduates from agriculture colleges find work with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. It’s estimated about 40% of grads find work with non-government organisations or with private companies such as input suppliers and private veterinary clinics. It’s a shame that 50% of these youth don’t end up using their talents.

Last week, a guy named Evan came to my office and dropped off his resume. He graduated from the agriculture college in 1993 and has been looking for work since! Since then he’s been selling cheap imported Chinese goods. That’s how I met him. He came to my office and gave me a pitch on the ‘best smelling cologne I’ve ever seen’. He also had a ton of other random goods – shoe shiner, condoms, flashlights…Is Evan better off than his friends whose parents couldn’t afford to send him to school?

So back to Flo another lucky college student. After graduation, Flo has plans to open up a dog grooming business. That’s quite a different ambition from her peers who mostly aim to be the lucky ones who will attain employment with MoFA. It’s likely they’ll end up like Evan struggling to make a living from a job they are overqualified for.

Flo wants to open a dog grooming business because she’s not going to take employment for granted. Flo figures dog grooming is the most profitable venture she can find in Ghana. A shame her talents won’t go to supporting the cattle sector in Northern Ghana, or the fowl industry in the South. Both industries have a ton of potential but are not growing due to a ton of challenges – imports bring down the prices, poor access to medicines make production inefficient, the people who raise cattle are among the most marginalized, underdeveloped cold storage facilities…

Hopefully, the work that EWB is doing at the agriculture college will help Flo and her peers find employment in the agriculture sector that will not only provide them with viable income but also stimulate the sector to grow and provide money to farmers pockets so they too can afford to send their kids to college.

Last fall, Flo applied to gain practical experience abroad. She was awarded this opportunity and will travel to Denmark for one month this summer. The EWB volunteer who worked with Flo, Carissa got her friends to raise money to buy Flo a camera. When I gave Flo the camera she just about died. She collapsed to the floor with shock! All over a small Canon point and shoot. Flo told me that she wanted to buy a camera and saved up her money. She had her eye on a $250 Panasonic camera. By the time she went to buy the camera they were all sold out and the cheapest camera she could find was for $400. Flo interpreted this situation as God’s doing. It would have been unnecessary for her to have 2 cameras.

Flo collapses to the ground in true dramatic style – in her free time she acts.

Flo reading the card with the words of encouragement and congratulations from Carissa’s friends.

I know Flo will make the most of her opportunity in Denmark. She takes nothing for granted as she has had to work for everything she’s earned. Much more than I. And after she returns, I hope that Flo will have opportunities to apply her skills in the agriculture sector to help it develop. Thanks Flo for being an inspiration!

Smiling in Ghana

2009-11-12T10:10:00.000-08:00

So I'm back in Ghana and am going through a bit of a honeymoon stage. Over the past 5 months much of my time has been spent away from Ghana and most definitely away from Tamale, the city where I currently call home.

As a result, I've been more observant and appreciative of some few things. I want to share them...

Tonight I bought phone credit from someone. He was just getting ready to pray. It was 6 pm and as a devout Muslim he was doing the ritualistic hand, feet and face washing that is necessary. Despite this he rushed over and sold me phone credit. I apologized for interrupting his prayer preparations.

He responded: "It's okay but I hope you are a Muslim.".

I replied: "No I am a Christian."

He said: "Oh that's also good."

In Ghana, Christians and Muslims are able to live side by side with none of that fighting we hear of in other countries. When a meeting is held it is typically opened by a Muslim prayer and closed by a Christian prayer (or vica-versa). I appreciate this acceptance of differences!

Second experience that brought a smile to my face. I went running yesterday morning. It has been so long that I've been able to run around my house that the landscape had drastically changed. In the past 6 months the rains have come. And apparently they haven't left the path I normally take along a large part of my run. So, I hiked up my running pants and tread lightly along the narrow ridge that separated me from a murky pool of old rain water. As I finished this tight-tope dance I saw two men preparing to walk the gauntlet. They were rolling up their pants. They looked up to me and smiled.

I smiled back. What else can you do when water blocks your path but roll up your pants and enter? In Ghana I appreciate that they do it not with grumbles but with smiles.

Last appreciation. When I'm gone for a long time at work and return, people always ask me where I've been. Actually first they say: "How's our two days?" Which means how have things been in this long time you've been away. (Note: If you want to make a joke you ask how's our three days!)

The second question people ask is: "What did you bring me from your trip?" This question initially bothered me as I felt offended that people would ask me for something and then guilty for not bringing anything. However, it is quite unrealistic to bring something for all 50 people at my office every time I travel. I learned though that you can respond with: "I brought my health." And people actually appreciate hearing this answer! So today as I approached my office and saw the countless vehicle drivers resting on benches under the tree I knew what was coming.

"Welcome Sarah!"

"How's your two days?"

"Fine and how are you?"

"Fine and what did you bring me?"

"My health."

laughter from all...

Use what you have to secure what you have not

2009-07-12T08:42:00.000-07:00

This will be my last post under this thread. The conference ended Friday evening with a bunch of my new friends and I heading to a progressive restaurant in downtown Halifax. In just 3 short days I had made numerous friends, one who took me into her home that night (the hostels were all full because Paul McCartney was playing) and the other who spent the Saturday showing me the province's beautiful country-side. This experience could have come from the EWB conference. But instead it came from a gathering of other social entrepreneurs from around the world through the Coady Institute. For me personally, this conference has been an interesting experience of exposure to a network that is not so unlike EWB's. It is a testament to the Coady Institute that they were able to bring 100 intelligent, thoughtful and passionate individuals. I think we, in EWB, could benefit from staying connected to this network.

At the end of the conference I was part of a small-group that discussed how we could better engage youth in the ABCD concept. This was in part because the average age of attendees was around 45.

From the network who was gathered, EWB is one of the leading organisations in Canada that is engaging youth in social justice. We are doing it through an asset-based approach. We start by recognizing the talents in everyone - from a chapter level where individual members are encouraged to find their place in EWB, to EWB's role in development which is built on the analytical skills of engineers but humbly recognizes the limitations that an engineering approach brings to development.

We are also big advocates of the strength and talents of individuals and communities in developing countries. We specifically talk about these people by their abilities to combat the relentless propagation that people in developing countries have tons of NEEDS and that we can help. One participant at the meeting, a baptist minister told a story of getting the people receiving the food to go behind the counter and go the giving. People grow more when they are on the giving side. So if we want individuals in Africa to grow, why to we keep on giving? Does that only help our growth? What I love about our overseas program is that it provides people in Ghana an opportunity to give. We send volunteers to live with families. I often hear volunteers say 'I feel I took more than I received'. This is great! We are swimming up-current when the majority of the development industry encourages people to 'communicate what you don't have - your needs, problems and deficiencies - to secure help from the outside.'

For the second half of ABCD, the citizen-led development, I think EWB understands this. With our new distributed model of an organisation, we strive to embody pushing as much power as possible down. Or rather, not taking the power away from those who are closest to the ground. This concept comes through Robert Chamber's books quite strongly - Who's Reality Counts, Putting the Last First, Putting the First Last.

Around the 'CD' there seems to be two definitions. One: citizen-led development, the other community development. I do think that EWB differs from the latter in that we don't see communities as homogeneous entities. We see them as having power disparities. We see that jealousy can sometimes prevent a community from cooperating.

My biggest recommendation for us within EWB, is to look at our work with a stronger asset-based lens. For example, with new members, we need to leverage their strengths better. With our work in Africa, we need to learn how to encourage our partners and us to start with what communities are able to do and move from there. This is a shift that I'm increasingly seeing is important to make with MoFA. One of the MoFA volunteers, Suzanne Fish, worked with 20 field staff in Upper West Region of Ghana to develop new ways of working with field staff that recognize that technologies don't need to come from research institutions but that farmers are able to innovate.

A life lesson I took away from this conference: label people more by what they are able to do than what they are disabled to do and they'll accomplish a lot more.

From clients to citizens - a paradigm shift

2009-07-09T19:05:00.000-07:00

From Clients to Citizens
Day two of the workshop. I’m starting to gain a better appreciation for what ABCD means. It’s yet another approach with another set of terminologies and paradigm shifts. The subtle differences between asset based citizen-led development and participatory approaches (PRA) and appreciative inquire (AI) have yet to really hit me. The most significant difference seems to be the network which gathers around these various acronyms.
All of them emphasize the difference between solving problems and appreciating the positive. The positive (asset based) approach has been practiced in communities for hundreds of years – it can be seen in First Nation Reserves, it can be seen in villages in Northern Ghana. Unfortunately these communities have developed a dependency towards outsider support due to years of outsiders coming to them and asking ‘what are your challenges?’ ‘what do you need?’. We’re lucky that in society we are treated as the haves, people see us as able, not dis-abled, gifted, not poor, this view can have a lot of impact on how a person sees themselves and acts in the world.
If asset-based and community driven development is a good thing, then what is the role of the outsider?
A couple of lively conversations ensured today around the role of a field worker, a non-government organisation, the government. The discussion began with a reflection around the term outsider. Some figured the term visitor is more appropriate to the role. Implying that being invited into a community is key. Others figured the role is non-outsider, facilitating between the community and other institutions. The role brings with it inherent challenges and opportunities but in the end we agreed that it’s necessary to be honest about the value one brings as an outsider and to be clear about that to the community. In doing this, you remove the outsider/insider dichotomy and become a contributor.
A major benefit to being an outsider is that critical perspective you bring. Sometimes it can be under the guise of ignorance that allows you to ask the ‘unaskable question’ such as: why are only some members of the community at this meeting? This role is important and should not be discounted for the sake of chasing after a romantic idea that an outsider does not intervene in community activities. In some ways I have been an outsider during this conference, not really feeling like I’m part of the ABCD community I’ve asked some risky and controversial questions. I don’t often end up mustering up the courage to ask my question.
A couple of good readings that I’ve been skimming between breaks at this conference:
http://www.coady.stfx.ca/forum/abcd/Lucie%20Goulet.pdf
http://www.coady.stfx.ca/forum/abcd/saleela%20patkar.pdf

What's in a name

2009-07-08T12:05:00.000-07:00

For a change, this post comes from Canada. I am writing from Antigonish, a town 180 km north of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The air is a bit cold here for mid-summer but the environment is warm. I’m standing in the corner of a beautiful room that is full of people dressed in vibrantly colourful outfits and lively conversation. We’re having our coffee break and I’m standing like a wallflower taking some time away to share this experience.
I’m celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Coady Institute. Coady Institute is part of the St. Francis Xavier University. It’s an internationally renowned development institute.
I am privileged to be here on behalf of Engineers Without Borders. Due to a generous grant I am eating, sleeping and travelling to this prestigious event. Because of this privilege I feel compelled to share what is happening so that the benefits can be shared.
This event is quite unique. I expected the typical workshop, a gathering of the minds where people have the opportunity to network and listen to speeches. However, the event is much more ambitious and creative, we as participants are expected to create something. We are expected to create ideas around a concept called Asset Based Citizen-Led Development, or ABCD.
Coming into this workshop I have very little idea about ABCD, and I still do. However after only 4 hours of sessions I am beginning to understand that ABCD is not an exclusive concept that has been branded by the development community and sold as the latest thing to learn in a workshop or in a book. It is a concept which we are able to explore, debate and attach numerous terminologies and language to. For those of you who are newer to the development industry, branding concepts and training people on them is an incredibly common activity. For those of you who are not new to the development industry, in a group of intelligent people you can understand how words are chosen very carefully.
These first 4 hours have brought up the question: How much value can be placed on a name?
A story related to this, I have met numerous people at this conference and had to explain over and over why engineers are not doing engineering work in development. Our name doesn’t actually explain much. However, it allows engineers within Canada to engage in EWB. It allows us to stimulate a community of engineers who are more globally conscious. It also misleads people as to what we are doing overseas. Below is a video which speaks more accurately about the work EWB is doing overseas!

As part of the creation of ideas, below is a poem written by Mam Adisa who works for the Africa 2000 Network, an NGO which EWB has worked with.

A dream come true Moses Coady
Yes that dream you dreamt
You dreamt when walking almost
Not noticing little details of
A normal walk
Because you were always deep
In thoughts for ‘how’ of
Better life for all
A life of the individual
In their own hands.

Yes a dream come true
Others after you with like minds
Are on your dream of ‘how’ for all
Communities over all parts of
The world are dreaming your dream
The dream you started.

Yes a dream come true.
Governments are changing all
Over the world for the
Dream of ‘how’ by all
‘How by all’ the dream of Moses Coady
A dream come true Moses Coady

We are here for the 50th year
Of your dream baby
Baby of ideas of ‘how’
The how school of development
By all
Moses Coady, Moses Coady, I saw Moses Coady your dream come true.

Video Accountability and Staying Longer in Ghana

2009-04-04T10:38:00.000-07:00

Check out the video above. It's a small story of some vegetable farmers I started working with a year ago. Their attitude towards farming and hard work continues to impress me!

The video was put together for a gala that the EWB chapters in Saskatoon are putting on tonight.

Enjoy!

Observation in the dry season

2009-03-02T06:49:00.000-08:00

The dry season brings with it spectacular views.

Look closely and you will understand what these people are all about. Observation is key.

It’s the dry season right now. The break between the last two rains was about 100 days. This is not unusual. Just the seasonality of the weather. And with the changing of the seasons comes a change in what people in Ghana do. The rainy season was an intense period where people worked long hours often sleeping on their farmland. It seemed there was nothing else on people’s minds except ploughing – planting – weeding – harvesting (a lucky few who have the resources and good access also thought of fertilizing and applying pesticides). During the dry season everything changes. People resort to other sources of income.

Making thatch is a popular past time for men.

What do they do? Answer: Anything they can. Some are more remote so their options are limited. The most common activity is collecting wood and making charcoal. This is evident from the dozens of bags that are stacked along the roadsides waiting to be purchased. The women in my household are a bit luckier – they live next to an urban centre so their options are more varied.

Preparing massive pots of food for one of the many celebrations which are had during the dry season. This takes advantage of the surge of income people have post-harvest and a bit more time.

The celebration: The head of my household becomes the 'chief of the young men' for Kanvilli community.
Memunatu and I pose during the chieftancy celebration.

This is why every week I’m surprised by what the women in my household are up to! There doesn’t seem to be an end to the small businesses they run. First it was selling boiled sweet potato at the school near my house, then it was processing a local seed into a paste that women use for soup (dawadawa), next processing peanuts to separate the oil. Both the oil and the by product are sold. Last week I joined in on processing shea nuts into butter. The process is long and complicated. I’m privileged to join in as the trade is mostly passed on from mother to daughter. I stepped in and joined the other young apprentices at the most enjoyable part – when water and air are added to the butter and it is stirred vigorously until a white creamy butter seemingly emerges from the brown fudge like substance I’d been stirring for the past half hour. My master took her job seriously and made sure I learned the proper stirring technique, even it meant embarrassingly highlighting my poor technique in front of the group.

The shea butter packaging centre located near my house.

Profile of another women during the dry season. Her name is Victoria Anamo. She is a widowed mother of 7. Four of the children are not hers but are from her late husband’s first wife. Victoria spends the dry season building her home. This season she is adding a wall – total cost $300 or one month’s salary. As the head of the household and single income earner the responsibilities to provide for the children all rest on her. Yet Vic doesn’t give up. She’s a strong and intelligent women who has even become a leader and role model in her community. Other women come to her for advice and help in times of need. And Vic’s generous nature provides.

Vic prepares a meal for myself and Shea Loewen, the volunteer who stays with Vic.

I got to know Vic because she is a MoFA field staff. Although she’s not trained in agriculture technologies, her natural ability to guide people and facilitate discussions makes her a talented field staff. She, like the women of my household are hosting a Canadian. It is because of this that I am able to understand Vic as a human being.

Vic and Shea hanging out at Vic's palace.

Spreading the message well

2008-12-19T19:04:00.000-08:00

Exciting news! Eating local is in. Especially when it comes to Ghana Rice. EWB and the Ghana Ministry of Food and Agriculture are running a marketing campaign that promotes Ghana rice.
It’s taken just over a year but the message has spread! Just over a year ago I made a pledge, to only eat rice grown in Ghana. I’ve kept to this pledge out of commitment to the farmers I work with and to make a humble statement about the injustice of the situation of rice in Ghana – highly subsidized rice is imported and has been marketed to an extent that Ghanaians have shifted their preferences towards the whiter and less nutritious imported grains. This has been tough – rice is good! And at restaurants it’s rare to find local rice on the menu.
Some rice farmers enjoying Ghana Rice during a meeting! This was the first time EVER that the Ministry served Ghana rice at a meeting. Before then, it was always imported rice.
I am working on a marketing campaign that will help spread these messages. It’s an exciting initiative that tries to even the score for rice farmers in Ghana. They want everyone to know that their rice is more nutritious (it’s processed in a way that keeps the outer skin on which contains most of the nutrients). They want people to recall that it’s fresh (imported rice often sits in warehouses before being shipped overseas to be sold). Too bad we aren’t marketing to Western consumers. Nutritious and fresh food is what we Canadians are demanding these days!
But we are marketing to urban Ghanaians. The ones who eat rice more often are from middle-upper class families. So this is our target audience. Ghanaians do care about nutritious food, they value strength and in turn food that will make them strong. So that’s our pitch – nutritious rice.

Meymuna and Hawabu proudly marketing their quality rice.

The people who buy rice are often cooking it because they don’t have time to cook traditional meals. So rice that’s easy to cook is good. Unfortunately a lot of Ghana rice has a lot of stones in it. The stones come from when the rice is threshed and dried on unclean surfaces. The stones need to be removed manually before cooking which takes a lot of time thus defeating the purpose of cooking rice! Not all rice is dirty! The rice we’re marketing is so clean! That’s our second pitch – clean rice.

Drying rice on a clean surface.

Check out the jingle to hear for yourself! This jingle is being broadcasted across Northern Ghana. Listen to it three times and you’ll catch yourself singing this catchy tune about quality Ghana rice! Some of my friends love it so much they’ve put it as their ringtone!

Click here to go to the Ghana Rice jingle!

The campaign has been delayed by about 5 months due to the need to keep so many people informed. This has been frustrating but it’s ensured that any assumptions I make are questioned! The main one came when I was deciding what advertising medium to use.
Initially when I was designing the campaign strategy I hardly considered the radio. I figured the power of advertising would come from a really big signboard on the main road. But as the campaign went on I received some critical input that the message will be more strongly spread through the radio than visually. I made a classic mistake. I, and you, come from a world where visuals are important – who doesn’t own a TV? Who doesn’t know how to read? In Ghana, the radio is an essential element in most households. What’s spoken on the radio is taken as ‘the word’. I wonder how many outsiders make the same mistake as me, design their program making assumptions about the context and misunderstand the way people learn and what they need.

The visual - a big signboard will still be posted along the main road in Tamale.
My guess is too many! I tons of development projects that chart their course for failure from the beginning when they fail to understand ground realities. A crucial yet often underestimated element when a project is being designed from the ivory towers of Rome/Washington/Accra. This is where EWB comes in. We move from the ground to the towers using our credibility and mobility to communicate realities. We don’t normally design and implement development projects – that’s left to Ghanaians, this case is an exception that I’ve indulged in! We’ve found a niche in communicating ground realities to help ensure development decisions are well-informed. This is my mission for the next couple of years. It’s a new sort of job for me but one that I look forward to! A new medium for messages!

The Two Myths of Africa

2008-10-16T03:29:00.000-07:00

I was initially inspired to write this year’s theme for ‘Blog Action Day’ is poverty. I’m a day late in posting (Blog Action Day was October 15th). The purpose of the blog action day is to create a discussion. I thought it would be interesting to discuss the two big myths of Africa. Read on…

Check out the picture below, what words come to mind?

A journalist friend of mine from Ghana recently asked me why the media in Canada only talks of the bad things in Africa? My response: “Bad news sells.” But it’s unfortunate that it also paints an inaccurate picture. I hope this post puts a splash of colour over the black streak that “Africa” has been smothered with.

To start with, the photo above is of Suli. Myth #1: Africans are poor. This myth could easily be propagated by the photo of Suli – a starving child in Africa that for only $1/day can be saved. But Suli’s just a boy who lives near my house and comes to visit his grandmother. He doesn’t like to wear pants and has those large imploring eyes that melt your heart. Suli certainly has enough to eat, bathes twice a day and is surrounded by mothers, sisters and a grandmother who loves him dearly. He will attend school when he’s old enough as his elder siblings have.

Contrary to the first myth, I look around me in Ghana and see wealth. It’s a wealth that is not commonly talked about in Canada. It’s the wealth of entrepreneurial spirit exemplified when Suli drags around a toy truck he’s made from used tin cans. It’s the richness of social support that exists between my family and in communities.

Years of the media marketing Africans as poor has created this perception in our mind (and inevitably in many Africans minds as well!)

Tofik - he lives at my house and is too young to think that 'Africans are poor'. He's just interested in wearing some cool shades.

Aside from living in a very cozy house, I’ve been working in Ghana with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture on a program called “Agriculture as Business”. The name is often interpreted to mean that we’re getting farmers to take agriculture as a business. But what does this really mean? Farmers, by default are operating a business. There’s no way you can farm and use some of your harvest to buy things like soap, cloth or school fees. Farmers are interested in turning a profit just like any other business-man. I asked my host father what he wants to do with his profits, he said he first wants to afford to feed his family, then send his kids to school and ideally put some money into home renovations and maybe get a motorcycle to help him get to his farm. He may not keep business records the way a Western business-man would but he’s certainly adapt at managing his business in this highly uncertain environment.

So that leads us to Myth #2: Poor people aren’t rational. This myth isn’t spread as explicitly as the first. It’s spread by development organizations though as they communicate their work to donors and the public at large. The message spread, especially with agriculture is that a certain technology or idea is needed to be imparted to people so that they can improve their lives. I didn’t understand why farmers didn’t plant their rice in rows, MoFA had been telling me that row planting is ‘the right thing to do’. They said they have problems getting farmers to ‘do the right thing’. In June I spent a day doing planting rice in rows with a farmer that MoFA had asked to arrange to demonstrate this technology to other farmers. I got a speckle bit of appreciation for the ‘right thing to do’ when at the end of the day we had 1 acre of rice planted in rows with precisely 20 cm by 20 cm spacing. It had taken us over 6 hours and roughly 20 people.

'Dibbling' or making holes in which to put the rice seeds.

The Crew

So was it worth it? Honestly, I can’t find the numbers to tell you. But farmers certainly experiment with these types of activities on their own and given the information they have at hand, their ability to take risk, social pressure and countless other factors they settle on what makes the most sense based on this complex reality.

So, just because farmers don’t adopt the technologies that are promoted by organisations doesn’t mean that they aren’t rational. Poverty certainly affects people’s priorities, their decisions and ultimately is reflected in their behaviours.

"Traditionally, farmers have either been too poor or too afraid to take a chance on these new varieties, even though they can triple their yields," – Expert in agronomics in East Africa

I think that this statement, are still too general to really understand the determinants of decision making and so the myth is propagated.

Check out the table below that analyzes the returns from fertilizer use from an experiment conducted in Kenya. Using the fertilizer amount recommended by the Ministry of Agriculture can increase yields by 90%, however, rate at a loss of 40%. While using smaller amounts of fertilizer (Panel B ½ tsp.) is more optimal for profitability! Yield and profitability are only two factors although they are the most scientific.

I have tried to understand the other less tangible factors. I have tried to place myself in the shoes of a farmer, removing the biases that the farmer is poor and irrational has been helpful but I still don’t understand the entire spectrum of factors influencing farmer’s decisions on their farm. It seems that neither does MoFA or the countless donors that fund development projects that try to influence farmer’s behaviours in certain directions.

What our Agriculture as a Business Program is actually about, is getting MoFA field staff and farmers to discuss these factors. To start by analyzing the profitability of crops, of using fertilizer of whatever agriculture activity the farmers are engaged in. To look at market opportunities. To talk about the risks. And ultimately see if this increase in analysis and thoughtful planning can help farmers make more from their business.

Sitting with farmers

Today is World Food Day (October 16th). Some people are fasting to remember the millions who lack access to proper nutrition. Some are discussing the political and economic situation around food. Some are discussing the challenges of climate change and bioenergy. For me I choose to think about farmers and remind myself to respect their business that brings us all food.

Tarsi - The grandmother of my house and a farmer I greatly respect.

In 12 Months what have I accomplished?

2008-09-25T07:46:00.000-07:00

It’s September, a time of changes. The leaves turn colour, the Saskatchewan winds turn cold as the sun more reluctantly hides emerges in the mornings. School starts. This September I’m undergoing some changes. Perhaps because of the school years September is ingrained in my mind as the month of transition.

Saying goodbye to some friends and being honored with traditional hand-woven cloth.

I’ve finished my year as a volunteer with EWB in Northern Ghana. Have decided to stick around for another 2 years though and am honoured to now receive a small salary and a bunch of responsibilities that go with it.
I’ve been remiss with blogging in part because all this transition has had me really focused on me. I haven’t taken the time to ask myself – what’s going on in Canada? What are people doing right now? It seems I blink and there’s an election happening in Canada. And no time for political hoopla either. I don’t even know if I’ll have enough time to vote.
It’s quite the opposite in Ghana where almost every day there is some sort of political rally. The streets are coloured red-black-and green for the New Democratic Party and red-blue-and-white for the New People’s Party. Tough to say which party will win. I won’t speculate much due to the public nature of this blog.

So in a year, what have I accomplished?
I a liken my placement to that of a geologist. For 12 months I was an explorer. It was an appropriate was to approach the 12 months. At the beginning of my placement EWB decided to develop a program that would guide our work with MoFA over the long-term. Previously, volunteers had come, figured out what to do, done it and left. This cycle of 12 month placements was decent but wasn’t really accomplishing the significant impact EWB knew we were capable of.
So with MoFA EWB decided to really commit to something. We began this process by evaluating our past work. I was tasked to evaluate our past work. I checked out what we had done, what significant change we had had on MoFA and came to some conclusions:

EWB has created a culture of organizational growth within MoFA. The Region, which was previously a bit ignorant of its shortcomings and not too critical of its ability to meet its mandate had developed into a group of people who were passionate about discussing organisational problems such as: "Why aren’t farmers adopting the technologies we promote?" and "Why don’t farmers repay the loans we facilitated for them?"
EWB has a unique approach working with MoFA. Most organisations develop blue-prints for projects, give MoFA money and monitor MoFA’s implementation. At times, when they realize MoFA lacks the ability to effectively implement, funding is provided for training workshops.

After this evaluation mission was complete I started working with field staff and farmer groups. I moved from the city (Tamale) to a rural town (Damongo). I spent 9 months searching for the nuggets that EWB could do with MoFA that would get more money into farmer’s pockets.

So did I strike gold?
I’m looking at my workbook. On one page is the budget for my maize and pepper farm. The whole thing costs just over $200 for a little under one acre. Hopefully we’ll make a decent profit from the farm. I’ve calculated expected profit to be $200 but that’s based on a couple of generous assumptions. My business partner (host mother) has no idea how much money we’ll make and wasn’t too excited when I shared my profit estimates with her. Didn’t strike gold there.

Relationships are worth more than money. Shaking hands with Mr. Osman, a MOFA field staff that I worked with. With 2 other EWB volunteers we organized a conference to recognize the contributions of these field staff which in a very hierarchical organisation often go unnoticed.

On the second page are notes from a meeting with a farmer groups. The Kanye group (translation Kanye = patience) decided to plant a group farm of an acre of beans intercropped with cashew. They had previously been a non-functional group. Waiting for a loan that never came. We convinced them to try something together and they chose this. The notes from this meeting show that I tried to calculate the group’s return on investment for their farm. The group was very excited about the profitability of their farm both in the short-term from the beans and the long-term from the cashew. If all goes well with the rains and they sell at a good time year 1 would bring them roughly $85. Year 5 will bring them roughly $220. This may not seem like much to a Canadian consumer and frankly it’s not really astounding to a Ghanaian farmer. However, the worth is more than the dollar. It represents to the group a small start. Something that they have started together. I believe that the group has a wealth of potential buried under their history of waiting. This experience may just help them start to realize this themselves.

Kanye group with MoFA Field staff Mr. Gedo (back left)

In total, I worked with 4 MoFA field staff and 11 farmer groups trying to get MoFA to have farmer groups operate more like businesses so that in the end farmers could make more money and their families would be better off. From the experiences with farmers and MoFA I extracted a curriculum that future EWB volunteers will try to use. The curriculum is actually a collaborative effort with other EWB volunteers. We were each exploring with farmer groups and field staff. In the end we’ve come out with something that is shiny and of high value to MoFA. Hopefully it’s not just Fool’s Gold!

Proof - the group's record book that show their expenses. Note the list of group members who are 'serious on the farm'. It's tough to get everyone convinced that this is a good idea. Some members will just watch and see how it turns out.

The curriculum promises to get farmers making profitable investments in their farm through conducting business analysis, market studies and getting their group more organized and active.

A sample from the 'curriculum'. This photo shows the card that farmers look at. It has a story and accompanying photos of a group that successfully markets their watermelon.

So what am I starting this September?
I have the honour of supervising future volunteers who will get field staff and farmers using and benefiting from the curriculum. We’ll be mining results for at least the next 3 years as we reach 5000 farmers and 250 field staff and get this tool adopted by the national level of the Ghanaian government.

This sample from the curriculum is the part that field staff use to accompany the photo and story on group marketing. This part of the curriculum tries to get groups acting together in the market in a way that'll get them more money than if they were marketing individually.

Even though September is a time for change, I hope to keep with me the connections that I have with you, my friends and family in Canada. Thank you to everyone who has followed along with this blog and supported me, emotionally, financially and challenged my thinking. Reading over my blogs I can see that this year has been one of tremendous personal growth. I hope that this new chapter will allow me to continue sharing my learning and growth with you.

Posing in front of my old office with a friend and colleague. See how much I've grown!

Elusive Results

2008-07-14T01:36:00.000-07:00

A friend mentioned that when I first arrived in

Ghana

I was adamant about dressing locally and that lately I’ve developed the habit of wearing jeans matched with a Ghanaian top. My behaviour had changed but I hadn’t noticed it. When I first arrived in Ghana and hopped in a car I instinctively reached for the seat belt. Last week I went on a trip and someone else reminded me to buckle my seat-belt. It sure felt strange to buckle-up!

I spend a lot of time trying to notice and promote behaviour changes in farmers and my colleagues at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA). I want to see farmers use more fertilizer on their fields because my calculations show that this most likely bring them more money. I want to see Ghanaians eating only local rice instead of imported rice. I want to see MoFA staff developing the behaviour of assessing the profitability of certain agriculture practices before promoting them to farmers.

Behaviour change is a difficult thing to work on. It’s not exactly an easily understandable activity for me to work on or communicate with friends and family let alone my colleagues at MoFA. Last year, when I worked for a wind energy consulting company the work was much more tangible. We knew we’d succeeded once the wind turbines were up and running, or perhaps once our clients started to reap a profit from their wind farm. This year my work is not easily packaged up and presented as a ‘project’. Because of this results can seem elusive.

Four years ago, I finished my engineering degree and headed to the Philippines to work on a computer literacy project for underprivileged youth. I didn’t really know how good I had it! Below is an email I received this week from a beneficiary of the projects.

Hello EWB! I'm Antonio Barlaan, a SCALA gradute in the Philippines last May 2006 at Misamis Occidental Information and Communication Technology Training Center. Thank you very much to your project because it leads me to school in college. Now I'm a 2nd year student of Misamis University taking Bachelor of Science in Information Technology. Supposedly I'm a 3rd year student but being a working student in the university, I cannot comply with the required units because it has a limitation for the working student. Give my special regard to Sarah Grant and Neha Bangar....thank you very much EWB!

M..A..B..U..H..A..Y!!!!!!!

Aside from the challenges behaviour change brings because of it’s intangibleness, it’s a really tough thing to work on! I’ve learned that it’s not simply a matter of ignorance that is preventing people from changing their behaviours (although this is the easiest problem to work on). For example, the government has been warning Ghanaians of Guinea worm, a de-habilitating worm that comes from drinking contaminated water. The government has pulled out all the stops – posters, radio, and TV broadcast the issues of Guinea worm and the simple thing you need to do to prevent it: strain your water through a muslin cloth. Workshops and the provision of muslin cloths from the government have done all but strain the water for families. However, it’s not enough – Guinea worm still persists even as people are aware of the dangers and required change in their behaviour.

A couple Sundays ago I went to the farm with some women from the community. We were after shea nuts, a valuable commodity that grows wild in Northern Ghana. We had walked for nearly an hour. The weight of our harvested shea nuts only seemed to increase as the sun continued to beat on our backs. Finally we stopped by a water hole. The aches and pains we all felt didn't prevent me and my friends from pausing to enjoy the moment.

My friends pause and enjoy some shea fruit. Can you see the sweat on their brows!

After I snapped the picture I realized my friend Mary was missing. I found her down this well fetching some water for drinking. I snapped her but not before silently noting the lucidity of the water. Too bad my friends didn’t speak English or else I could have engaged in a conversation with them about this behaviour. At the same time, I understand why they did it. These women are thirsty, we still had 2 hours of walking ahead of us and 5 hours of work already felt in our bodies.

Mary holds some very cloudy looking water she fetched from this well.

Education is one aspect of promoting behaviour change. It’s not enough to simply understand the costs and benefits of behaviours. It’s a complex web of incentives and disincentives. My work with farmers and MoFA is just one force among this web. For example, do you recycle? If so, what prompted you to start recycling? If not, why did you stop? I’m sure everyone reading this can recite the three R’s and can recognize the recycling symbol. What incentives exist to promote reducing, reusing and recycling? Is there a recycling depot near to your house? Does someone come and collect a box of recycling? Is this a paid service by the city? Are there rumours about the recycling all just going to a land-fill if even one piece is incorrectly placed?

Over the past 10 months I’ve only just started to understand the incentives and disincentives that surround the behaviour changes I’m trying to promote. I’ve started implementing work whose results are still a long way off and are difficult to measure and communicate. I know I certainly won’t ever receive a feel-good email such as I have from Antonio! Even still, I’ve decided to stay with EWB for another 2 years in order to put some of my understanding to use and to stick with the work I’ve started. After all it’s exciting stuff! In the meantime I’ll see if I can’t just help Mary develop the behaviour of bringing a bottle of water before she heads to the farm next time.

My and my motorcycle. I've developed the positive habit of wearing a helmet.

Will the subsidy encourage fertilizer use?

2008-06-16T10:22:00.000-07:00

Today I sit in front of a group of farmers. They tell me honestly that last year they didn’t use fertilizer because it was too expensive.

Paul - a farmer who honestly didn't use fertilizer last year.

The Ghanaian government recently announced that it will subsidize fertilizer to lower the price and help out farmers during this food crisis. Currently a bag of fertilizer cost $42, the subsidy promises to lower the price to match last years: $25. But is it enough? Or is the link between policy and benefits for those on the ground too ellusive? It all hinges on the behaviours of farmers this farming season to determine if the subsidy will encourage fertilizer use.

For the past few months, I’ve been very focused on profitability analysis of farming. With all businesses, there are many ways to maximize profits. There are four broad areas to analyze: inputs, outputs, finances and markets. With farming this analysis can help reveal some interesting things, such as – it is profitable to use fertilizer.

Crop Profitability for Rice, Maize, Groundnuts, Soyabeans and Cowpea.

With fertilizer, it makes good business sense to not only use it but to use the correct amounts. If a farmer uses the recommended amount of fertilizer, they should get average yields and depending on the time of year they sell they should make around $200 - $300. However, if farmers don’t use the correct amount of fertilizer, their yield is severely lower and profit can range between $80 - $180*.

A rare sight from last season - this farmer used the correct amounts of fertilizer.

For one acre of maize, MoFA recommends 150 kilograms of a combination of nitrogen-fixed fertilizer and ammonia sulphate as top dressing. The average fertilizer application rate across Africa is 3.2 kg/acre. From what I’ve seen, this is true, most farmers I have met don’t use any fertilizer on crops other than maize. And with maize they skimp on fertilizer using way less than the recommended amount. So why aren’t farmers using fertilizer?

For the maize calculation I did above, the fertilizer expense eats up 24% of income. So using fertilizer is a big investment in the farm. However, profit is not the whole picture. For a farmer in Northern Ghana their business is more closely connected to their family’s well-being than business owners in Canada. Bankruptcy is not an option. Insurance is not available. The difference between not having enough to eat and being able to send kids to school is too slim.

Sometimes agriculture companies such as the Ghana Cotton Company provide fertilizer to farmers on a loan that is paid back once the farmers sell their produce to the company. This arrangement ensures farmers use the fertilizer. Otherwise, farmers don't often have the money to buy fertilizer so they take the profit loss. And even if farmers have the money, things like ploughing and school fees are prioritized as was the case for the farmers I'm meeting with.

Sometimes development projects work with farmers to introduce new varieties of crops. Seeds and fertilizers are provided to the farmers for free to encourage them to try the new technology. Normally, after the trial period completes and project support terminates farmers continue to use the improved seed but the habit of using fertilizer declines.

The application of fertilizer didn’t used to be an important part of farming. However, with increasing populations resulting in more intensive land use in combination with improved seeds that have higher yields, fertilizer is a necessary part of the equation of farming for profit.
So how can we encourage farmers that using fertilizer has more benefits than cost that the risk is worth it? MoFA field staff Francis Oppong and I have just helped some farmers calculate the profit they made from farming maize last year. We sit and watch the group contemplate the results. The group sees that the profit was slim. We ask them what they can do to increase profits. The group comes up with several ideas, one being to use the recommended amount of fertilizer. The group agrees to give it a try this year. We’ll see if they follow through on their promise and I’ll see if helping farmers do the math themselves is a necessary component to link policy with results.

*Profit calculations based on 2007 market information available from MoFA in Damongo.

Integrity takes strength

2008-05-31T06:24:00.000-07:00

When I first met Salamatu I was a bit frightened. Next to Salamatu I look like a scrawny mite. Salamatu is my host mother and the type of person with a strong presence – her hefty structure and booming voice are both used to communicate confidently. When she talks her children listen, well and so do I!

Last night I left work and traveled to the home that Salamatu has expanded to include me. It was about 5:30 and getting dark. Salamatu had traveled but her children were home and busy preparing supper. As the light faded and the fire cast shadows on our faces Salamatu walked up the path to our house. She looked tired but her face made a smile as her children rushed to welcome her and carry the burdening goods she had collected on her travels. She sat down and we gathered around her to hear about her journey.

I learned she had been away to attend a workshop run by MoFA. Since Salamatu is a successful business-women in her community she had been invited to attend a workshop on entrepreneurial skills. Salamatu has never gone to school, speaks little English but has managed to single-handedly raise 5 well-educated children through this business. As Salamatu began to explain the workshop she opened a notebook that had been provided to all workshop participants. Inside the notebook were crisp white pages with nothing on them. I wasn’t sure what was going on since no one was translating into English for me. She flipped through the pages and came to one that had a few scribbles at the top. Everyone laughed. I turned to my trusty translator Faisa who explained that at some point during the workshop everyone had been commanded to take notes. Salamatu had obediently taken up her pen and scribbled the following: 5 W r S 3 2. The writing looked like a 5 year olds.

In that moment my fear for Salamatu evaporated and my heart swelled with reverence. Some parents choose not to send their children to school. Not having gone themselves they don’t see the worth. Salamatu instead devotes her whole self to raising well-educated children. It doesn’t bother her that she herself is uneducated and is strong enough to joke about it! But don’t be fooled into thinking that Salamatu is entirely unselfish. It is expected that her children will take care of her in her old age. Salamatu just has the foresight and business sense to make sure she will have a comfortable ‘retirement’.

Faiza - her nine year old reads the Berenstein Bears book I brought her from Canada.

Women like Salamatu are integral to Ghana’s development. If only there were more of her. This morning I met with a group of women whose attitude is a stark contrast to Salamatu’s. The women I met run the same business as Salamatu – they grind cassava into a flour-like product for consumption. The women told me how they had been given a grinding mill from a non-government organization. Initially the mill helped them a lot, they were able to grind cassava faster and make more money. Eventually the mill broke down. I asked them what they had done about it. They answered: nothing. I asked them if they had any savings to repair the mill. They replied: We do not. What was I to do? Their main concern was to repair the mill in case the organization were to come back. They told me it was important to look good for this organization so that they would receive more assistance. Ahhh!!! I reeled back in disgust at these women’s attitude. I had met these women to discuss their business. I had planned to help them analyze their profit and see what they could do to improve it. But these women weren’t interested in making money that way through strengthening their business. They were waiting for outsiders to help them. I asked myself: How can I encourage these women to run successful businesses if the development sector provides better incentives?

At this point the MoFA staff I was with gave the group a lengthy lecture on the merits of self-sufficiency. He explained “A person standing at the bottom of a tree can not be helped up. But a person who tries to climb on their own can be boosted up.” Eventually the group conceded to raise money to repair the mill. We’ll be there to watch them through this but they know that we won’t lift a finger. Will the group succeed? These women seem strong so I am hopeful. And if the women can do it then they’ve done it with integrity.

Salamatu cooks our supper with the help of her youngest.

Independence Day

2008-03-18T13:54:00.000-07:00

What is a nation? Is it just a national government, a flag, a uniting song, a beverage of choice? A way to measure economic progress for a set of people?

On March 6^th Ghana celebrated it’s 51^st year of independence. To honor the inaugural day there was a big festival in the town park. Children from schools all over the district marched around the park as part of an annual tradition. They marched past traditional and government authorities, signifying the independent nature of both authorities in Ghana.

These kids are holding the colours of Ghana - red, yellow, green and black.

On March 6^th, 2008 I saw that Ghanaians are very proud of their country. My Ghanaian sister, Faiza marched proudly past my camera. Every day for the past month she had been practicing her march. I later became disillusioned when I learned that each school’s marching was judged – she was marching more to win than as an act of patriotism.

Faiza is second from the right in the back row.

I’ve been reading a book called ‘The State of Africa’, it’s a fascinating look at the history of Africa from just before independence to date. The book talks of the excitement shared on March 6^th, 1957 as people had received the prize of a free country. Ghanaians were ecstatic to be rid of foreign rulers. Nationalism had spread through the country like wild-fire inspired by charismatic party leaders like Kwame Nkruma – convicted of treason and freed of charges days before he would become Ghana’s first president.

However, as I read on through history I read about foreigners continuing to meddle in Africa with our own agenda. Countries are supported to prevent them from going to the ‘dark side’ of communism. Aid is given to countries with severe contingencies – workers must come from the aiding country, specific roads must be built which will give foreign investors better access to Ghana’s gold. Is development just neo-colonialism? Am I a part of this system where helping others is tied up with your own agenda?

Rice is a classic example. Countries like the US subsidize their rice farmers – in 2003 rice was exported at a price 26% below cost of production. This results in a surplus of rice which is either given as food aid to developing countries in times of need or dumped on these countries in times of surplus production. Imported rice in Ghana has become preferred – it’s whiter, cleaner from stones, well packaged and marketed to children. The price is the same as the high-quality Ghanaian rice. Although it’s not as nutritious consumer tastes have unknowingly shifted towards a dependence on it over the years.

A market display of rice - some local and some imported (the packaged stuff is imported).

As the US aims to help Ghana through laudable aid programs, these programs are suspiciously void of assistance for rice farmers.

The Ghanaian Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) is working towards food independence for Ghana and for Ghanaian households.

The program I am working on with the MoFA aims to influence consumers towards a preference for local rice. Ghanaian rice has more protein. Perhaps I will play to Ghanaians people’s sense of patriotism. But I know I will be more successful at convincing people to eat Ghana rice through pitching the nutritional benefits. Physical strength is a strong value in Ghana and mothers want their children to grow up strong and healthy.

I'm excited about promoting Ghana rice because it could get more money into farmer's pockets.

In this global world, sometimes things that are foreign are perceived as more modern and more desirable. People prefer to roof their homes with zinc roofing sheets instead of thatch from local grasses – zinc is costly, thatch is free, zinc doesn’t leak and is a one-time installation, thatch better regulates the inside temperature but a new roof needs to be made every year. The decisions people make often come down to what their more prestigious neighbour is doing. This rice campaign aims to get the prestigious neighbours buying and cooking Ghana rice. Hopefully this will nudge Ghana towards MoFA’s aspiring national goal of food independence.

Posing in front of the newly constructed football stadium in Tamale.

Aid - No longer a moral obligation but an investment

2008-03-18T13:24:00.000-07:00

For the past five days I have been working in a remote area called Lingbinsi. I chose this area partly due to the remoteness, I felt a moral obligation to help those who most commonly miss out on development projects and are last to receive government services. To get to Lingbinsi here during the dry season is not too difficult. A 2 hour road trip followed by a 10 minute boat trip to cross the White Volta River and another 15 minute road trip. During the rainy season the trip can become lengthy to impossible as the river swells and inevitably overflows. Muddy paths and water-covered roads cut off Lingbinsi people from essential services such as health care and schools as well as businesses.

For farmers, this is a big deal. Although the land is fertile in Lingbinsi and the river offers income from fish, it’s bitter-sweet as farming produce is often sold for rock-bottom prices. Businesses are basically non-existent in the area forcing farmers to make the trek themselves when they need fertilizer or want to sell their surplus grains. I don’t know how a typical break-down of expenses goes for Canadian farmers, but just to transport one bag of maize eats up 17% of the income (excluding passenger fare).

Lingbinsi people are isolated but things are improving. Just today a cell phone company commissioned their communication tower. Now people can use cell phones. I know this will be a beneficial tool for farmers. Instead of guessing when to go to the market to sell, they can monitor prices and confirm that the buyer will be able to pay them before making the trip.

Pig farmers are abundant in Lingbinsi but selling pigs outside of Lingbinsi is a problem.

But how will they charge their phones? The place still doesn’t have electricity. Like most villages where mobile reception comes before electricity, people will have to depend on the generosity of friends who live in places with electricity. These sort of social connections are so important in Ghana – Ghanaians both believe and act as though no one person is an island. Reciprocity is still confusing to my Western mind that thinks of every transaction as a calculated sum of cost-benefits.

For the past five days I have been traveling around Lingbinsi on the back of a motorbike. I’m working with a MoFA field staff – Iddi Braimah and currently taking more than giving. Iddi is a soft-spoken, hard-working, and intelligent man. When I first arrived I asked him how we could help farmers make more money. He responded: ‘let’s not give any loans, instead let’s invest in these farmers’. His response surprised me. Providing loans are the bulk of what MoFA does and so I expected him to put his hand out for more. But investing in farmers! I like the paradigm shift, it’s less patronizing than providing a morally obligated hand-out and recognizes the nature of our work – calculated yet with uncertain results.

Iddi demonstrates proper land preparation for maximum water retention of vegetables.

We’ve started investing in some cashew farmers. Cashew is a cash crop and is riddled with challenges preventing farmers from early more income. Last year nuts were not purchased from these cashew farmers. Reasons listed include low levels of production and low quality of nuts. Because of this farmers have a poor attitude to a commodity that could be a significant ladder out of poverty. Farmer’s didn’t weed around the trees and so the bush fires that plague the lands during the dry season killed numerous trees – down goes production this year. Farmer’s are unwilling to make investments in their crop – pesticides are not purchased, nuts are not collected from the trees but let to dry as they fall – down goes quality.

Cashew - isn't it a crazy looking fruit and nut?!?

Farmer’s are currently unwilling to invest in cashew and prefer to invest in crops like maize which they can both eat and easily sell. Farmers want assurance of links to the market for their cashew crop. Iddi and I have decided to help these farmers to invest in cashew. We’re doing a small study of the cashew industry to both provide market information to farmers and try to encourage buyers of the profit potential in Lingbinsi. I myself am not sure how profitable our investment will be, given farmer’s poor attitude towards the crop and the uneconomic location of Lingbinsi. However, I know Northern Ghana has a comparative advantage of cashew nuts over the rest of West Africa, and I know farmers in the North would love to have what southern farmers have – a commodity like ‘cocoa’ to provide them cash.

Soloman, a cashew farmer shows us his harvest.

I think it’s healthy to recognize that the nature of this work as investments carry a level of uncertainty. I am fortunate that both Iddi and my job descriptions allow for this flexibility in work and ambiguity in results. We’re investing in these farmers – not because it’s our job but because we have faith in the results of our investment and of reciprocity.

The landscape in Ghana is littered with half-started investments - houses are the most visible but many development projects follow this path of big dreams and insufficient investment during implementation.

Learning to make aid work

2008-02-10T08:52:00.000-08:00

My plea: For as long as we, outsiders, continue to intervene in other’s lives there is an urgent need to learn from our past mistakes.

It is challenging to evaluate development results

For the past few months I have travelled across the northern region of Ghana to meet with farmers and MoFA field staff. The purpose of this often dusty and tiresome yet interesting travel has been to evaluate EWB’s past work with the Ghana Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA). It has also turned out to be great way to kick-off my placement – I have gained valuable exposure to inspiring insights into farmer’s lives as well as the frustrating challenges of the development sector.

By mid-December I completed my travels and attempted to write a report which encapsulates my observations and opinions on our past work with MoFA. As I sat down to write the report I began reflecting on a major limitation I faced through-out – how difficult it was to reveal our past mistakes! This limitation isn’t just specific to my situation, it’s a significant barrier that prevents the development sector from playing a stronger role in ending world poverty.

The biggest learning comes from failure

I remember learning how to ride a bike. When I was 7, I decided it was time to remove my training wheels. One summer Saturday afternoon, my dad and I attempted to learn how to ride my new 2-wheeler. It began with my dad supporting the back of the bike until I got enough momentum and he would let go. I would pedal for a few cycles and then bail – too scared to go any further on my own. This continued through-out the afternoon until my dad’s patience wore out and he called it quits.

This left me and my hot pink bike alone. Determined to learn to ride I began to go on my own. This time, my falls were more brutal but each time I fell I got back on my bike and could go a little further. Eventually I made it down the entire block. To my surprise I had learned how to ride and had also learned the important lesson how failure can teach.

“With decades of development assistance and the increasing scale of poverty, it is clear that many development projects fail. The mistake is potentially a vital piece of knowledge which can point to future lines of enquiry and changes of policy.” – Eric Dudley, author of The Critical Villager

Bridge failure - Who knew that this bridge was started in the 60s? At least it is serving a purpose!

The systems of development hide failure instead of learning from it

With private companies, learning is simple. Corporations like McDonalds, that offer fast food to their clients aim to please customers. If clients suddenly stop buying BigMacs then McDonalds sees a decline in revenue and adapts their marketing strategy – they add the McSalad to their menu.

Development agencies get their money not from their customers, in MoFA’s case small-scale farmers, but from international donors such as the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). So to keep staff employed, MoFA has incentives to keep donors happy while accountability to farmers remains low. Examples of this scary truth are listed below:

Anecdote 1 - Fine china for guests

I’ve just moved to a district office where I learned that all of the field staff will be shifted in the district. The reason? The hard-working field staff will be located in areas that are on the main road, areas that donors typically visit more than the more isolated areas.

Anecdote 2 – Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, keep flattering it

This week I attended a meeting of MoFA managers. There was a riveting discussion about a certain project that encourages farmers to raise ‘grass-cutters’ – grass-cutters are similar to guinea pigs and their meat is highly valued. All MoFA staff admitted the project was a failure, poor cage design, high mortality rate, and most of all farmer’s lacked the interest to engage in the project. Both farmers and MoFA jumped at the chance to engage in this project due more to the offered resources. Due to continuing flow of resources it’s doubtful that the discussion had during the meeting will be shared with those who control the purse strings.

These women and children don't control the purse strings. They are cattle herders from Mali called Fulanis. They are of the most marginalized members of society.

What to do with development?

This week I learned that an organisation will be conducting an evaluation of MoFA. I observed MoFA staff “coaching” their field workers with the answers they should provide to the evaluation staff. I felt frustrated at this system, yet I totally empathise with the MoFA staff, after all who wants to put their career on the line?

I cringe at the thought of a MoFA staff or worse, CIDA reading this blog entry. Yet, for me, I have the freedom of knowing that ramifications would be much less and understanding from the readers more forthcoming.

Power relationships made explicit as I greet the chief during a farmer meeting that has all the feel of a special occasion.

EWB doesn’t provide direct resources to MoFA so incentives to butter us up are greatly diminished. At the same time I am free to provide critical feedback to MoFA and already have. I am thankful our relationship with MoFA is more open and am grateful for the insights that have resulted because of it.

However, I still have a way to go to see the raw version of development because farmers instinctively put me in the same category as resource providing donors. I have tried to get past that with farmers but inevitably end up with a wish list of material items. My most recent visit yielded a lengthy list that includes crutches, solar panels, a tractor, and a motorcycle. Most items requested by the wealthier members of the community. I don’t want to play development Santa. I want to provide well-informed interventions with MoFA that won’t break after boxing-day.

I know that only time, listening and humble efforts to show I’m not above hard-work on the farm and at home will break down the power-relationship between myself and farmers. To all those who have become overwhelmed and jaded by the complexities of development – don’t yet give up, there are challenges but there are also those of us doing our best to learn and make aid work.

A New Home

2008-01-27T02:38:00.000-08:00

What at is a home? It is where the heart is? Where you hang your hat? Where you dance around in your underpants?

As human beings we have ways to easily identify ourselves in society. Our home is one of them. For me, living overseas for several years now and shifting geographic locations, I’ve had to re-define what home means to me.

This past Sunday was the first game of the Africa Cup of Nations. The first match of the Ghana hosted tournament was Ghana versus Guinea. I crowded around one of the few TVs in my community to watch the inaugural match. During the match, I was overcome by waves of emotions (and not just due to the numerous missed shots and eventual 2 – 1 victory from Ghana’s Black Stars).

My first day in Ghana I spent the afternoon holed up in a hotel watching a football match and feeling rather sorry for my lonesome bag-less self. This past Sunday, I realized how lucky I was in only a short time to have somehow become “un-lonely”. In contrast to my first day in Ghana, last night I watched a football match sitting next to Faiza and Manshara, two girls who sleep under the same roof as I, and amongst 30 people of the community which recently accepted me as a new member.

Above - In this community making 'gari' a roasted flour from cassava is the primary source of income for women.

I’ve found a new home with fantastic family. First, there's Faiza and Manshara who are 7 and 8 years old and are great fun to play with. Yesterday we spent the day riding my bicycle around town in the blistering heat, laughing all the way as the two of them tried to learn how to ride. In the evenings we sit together and play waori – a Ghanaian board game which is 20% strategy and 80% luck, or at least it is to us!

Close-up on Manshara as Zalaifa and Faiza play waori in the background.

In the mornings I wake up to the chilly weather this time of year brings, but also to warm greetings from Salamatu, the head of the household, who also feels inclined to constantly remind me to bath…at least the water is also warm! Being clean and well-fed I hop on my Japan-made bicycle and travel to work. On the way I pass swarms of children and adults who shout friendly greetings.

Salamatu and Zalaifa prepare a delicious bean cake called tubani

In the evenings I come home to Zalaifa, the hard-working 19 year old who is usually stirring supper or sweeping the yard. She is always patient with my eager yet clumsy attempts to cook, speak the local language (Gonja) and question her about her culture.

Zalaifa stirs TZ - the most common staple dish in Northern Ghana. In this area it's made with maize and cassava flour. Stirring it is really tough work!

I really love it here and am blessed to have found a family and a community that has welcomed me so acceptingly. And for now, as I keep up home in Saskatoon through emails and phone calls, I will also enjoy this new home that has been added to the patchwork of homes that sometimes defines who I am.

Posing with Manshara - she's dressed up because it's market day and we're going!

Corrected Blog Address

2008-01-12T10:58:00.000-08:00

Here's the correct address for my friend Dan's blog (referenced in the blog titled 'Top Down or Bottom Up'). We just updated it so definitely encourage you to check it out if you're interested in a home-grown education focused project!

http://achievingqualityoflife.blogspot.com/

Celebrate!

2007-12-23T09:30:00.000-08:00

To follow up a bit of a heavy post, this post is light and fluffy and full of feel-good pictures!

Christmas is around the corner and as you prepare to celebrate a Canadian Christmas I want to share some celebrations that I have been able to experience.

First, National Farmers Day, Christmas for MoFA! (Ministry of Food and Agriculture, my partner organisation). For the past two months, that’s all MoFA staff have been talking about and working on – National Farmers Day is a BIG DEAL! A chance to celebrate farming and the farmers whose hard work allows the country to eat.

A big banner overhangs the local and regional government heads who attended this celebration on Dec 7th.

During the event, I volunteered my services as multi-media person. I spent the day holding my camera within one foot of diplomats giving speeches on farming and shooting exuberant farmers who were awarded bicycles and other farming toys for their hard work.

Most innovative farmer next to his prizes (isn't his hat great!?!)

The day also felt special because all of us MoFA workers were dressed up in MoFA stenciled clothing. Here you see Trevor and I dressed up with Nina (an EWB volunteer who was visiting from Zambia)

The second celebration of the month took place in Burkina Faso. The 7 of us EWB volunteers who are currently working in Ghana took the 17 hour bus trip to a city in Burkina Faso (Bobo-Diolasso). There we spent three days “retreating” from some of the everyday challenges of working in a developing country and connecting with our French speaking friends volunteering north of the border. Two days of the retreat were dedicated to some fantastic workshop-style sessions while the middle day was all about being a tourist.

Below you see us celebrating…well I think we are celebrating being strong enough to push ourselves out of our comfort zones and for the small successes we have achieved in with our development partner organisations. This may sound cheesy but it’s very important to celebrate the small successes in a world where attribution for results is difficult (everyone wants to take credit for results so they get more money!) and big dreams can’t be realized in a day and even during a year-long overseas placement.

Despite a difficult growing season, this year farmers are still celebrating – babies are born and this new life is celebrated, chiefs are sworn in as their predecessors pass on, and harvests that are healthy and abundant are hard to come by so aren’t taken for granted!

My friend, Alaji of Sanguli village celebrates his healthy rice harvest.

So December has been full of celebrations! To my family and friends whom I’m sorry I won’t be celebrating the holidays with you, I hope you too take the time to celebrate.

Top Down or Bottom Up

2007-12-23T08:21:00.000-08:00

To implement a project that is designed from the 50^th floor of a building in Rome, a program that is the brainchild of the top academics and development leaders, or to implement a program that doesn’t really have a grand master scheme but is one idea from one community member with minimal resources and training?

The current hot debate in development seems to focus around the conundrum of developing a program that can address the numerous numbers living in poverty complimented with locally appropriate and sustainable projects. “Can demands for generalizable actions be reconciled with location- specific solutions?” - asked simply in The Critical Villager, a fantastic book by Eric Dudley.

Well, what do you think?

I get excited when I read a proposal for a development project. For example, IFAD (the United Nation’s International Fund for Agricultural Development) has proposed a project for Northern Ghana. The rhetoric for the project promises sustainable economic growth for the agriculture sector in Northern Ghana, growth that will not leave the poor behind but allow them to drive it! Wow, that’s super fantastic! From my minimal development experience, the project proposal is actually quite impressive and seems to be innovative and holistic in approach – a rare combination!

Now to actually achieve this good thing this project is planning to work with MoFA (Ministry of Food and Agriculture, my partner organisation) so I will be able to see and maybe even influence how this project rhetoric is turned into results.

Trying to put development into boxes

On the other side of the coin, I get slightly nervous when I hear of someone who has donated directly to get someone in school or given fertilizer to help a farmer plant more this season. These actions are surely bleeding-heart responses that give immediate gratification. But what about the project plan? How will these interventions be measured? What’s to say these resources couldn’t have been given to a project that will in theory have a broader and more lasting impact?

At this very moment I am sitting in an internet café with a new friend Dan. We are creating a blog that will let the Western world know about his idea for a development project (achievingqualityoflife.blogspot.com). Or rather, his solutions to a situation that he’s seeing in his own community. So while I continue to support his small-scale development project, I still continue to ask: “If we’ve been doing this development thingy for half a century, how come we can’t seem to make things work?”

Dan's best guess - get a girl of 14 years in school (Suraya)

I’ve come across several community leaders finding small-scale solutions but we run away from those since they are perhaps not “sustainable” or “scalable”…it’s almost like the development industry is too good for that kind of work. We prefer to have frameworks and figure everything out before we jump in and try things (sound familiar to those of you who are engineers?).

Iterations of “best guesses” is so not the way to do things, or is it? I’m starting to think so. So while I grapple with my engineering instinct that tells me to figure things out, put boxes around it and analyze everything before beginning, I recognize that small ideas are popping up in front of me almost daily. And to let those go by seems wrong (and I don’t think I’m just listening to my heart).

In an ideal world, community-based interventions that are participatory and big thinker programs can be harmonious components of effective aid. For starters, big thinkers can try harder to put themselves in the shoes (or bare-feet) of the beneficiaries. Secondly, field workers can try harder to inform to the big thinkers and funders of development aid that the aid process should follow the development process more closely by accepting the complex and dynamic nature of people’s lives and the need for iterations of community-based interventions. But don’t get me wrong, these are not my “solutions” to all the problems of international development, just best guesses from my perspective.

Dan and Sarah. My perspective on development is being shaped from inside his family's compound.

Going beyond the party line

2007-12-03T02:54:00.000-08:00

This post was initiated by my Grandpa who expressed gratitude at me sharing my cultural experiences via blog post, but still wasn’t clear on the purpose of EWB overseas (or at least of my placement aside from an amazing cultural exchange). Caution – the following post contains more questions than answers, for those who enjoy in putting a box around the “final” answer do not continue reading; for the rest please enjoy some controversy and feel free to share your love or discontent with the ideas I share below. The “party line” for my placement is in the header of my blog: “I work for small-scale farmers in Northern Ghana through a partnership with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) in Ghana.”

Me working for a small-scale farmer by watering his tomato garden.

But what does this mean?

In order to try and figure this out I have embarked on a 2 month learning tour. I am learning how incredibly complex, diverse and locally specific the lives of small-scale farmers (and their families) is! It has been particularly challenging as white people typically get exposure to the best farmers (see all October posts for some examples of "best farmers").

I am starting to discover why some farmers adopt a business-like mentality towards their farm while the majority of farmers take low-risk decisions that keep them farming for subsistence. Is it really just a matter of the educated vs. the uneducated? The entrepreneurial vs. the common majority? What other common indicators set these farmers apart? Am I just doing the classic outsider thing of simplifying the situation too much? At some point simplification of this incredibly complex and dynamic situation is required to move forward, to communicate my ideas to others and to ultimately do something. How can I find that balance?

I am also learning about the ways that MoFA tries to help these small-scale farmers develop their livelihood to something more secure, more profitable and ultimately something that provides a better life for their children. The ideas and what actually happen on the ground are often quite different (micro-credit loans have a repayment rate of less than 40% and the productivity of farmer’s fields hasn’t increased in the last 5 years despite countless interactions between farmers and MoFA field workers)…Accountability for projects flows upwards to the donor instead of downwards to the beneficiaries…Grandioso development projects are planned nationally or internationally with great rhetoric but lack the understanding of the realities surrounding implementation and consequently expectations of field workers are sky-high while resources fall short. How can I, as an eager outsider make my mark in this mess of development?

I have been worrying about this through-out my 2 month learning tour – until last week when I visited a fellow EWB volunteer Sarah Lewis. She is also working with MoFA but in a different region and has got a 6 month head start on me. I believe she has started something very exciting, something that will hopefully transform the way MoFA works and has already touched the lives of 9 farmers.

Last Thursday I was privileged to accompany Sarah Lewis and her co-worker a MoFA field worker (Lawrence) on a trip to visit a beautiful vegetable garden and meet the people who were tending to it. Every year these farmers work together to grow vegetables during the dry season. It’s a risky undertaking because once the veges are ripe and ready to be sold they need to be sold asap and at whatever price the market is offering! Veges also seem to be more prone to pests and diseases than other crops. But if all goes well, vegetable gardening can pay off and can provide a supplementary income during the difficult dry season.

Lawarence, Sarah Lewis and a farmer inspect the onion crop.

The farmers Sarah and Lawrence were working with had doubled the area they planted, thanks to Sarah’s and Lawrence’s support of fertilizer and labour to dig the wells for irrigation. Initially I was shocked to learn that Sarah had provided inputs! EWB is supposed to be a capacity building organisation, not a donor organisation! But I’ve also seen that one place where development projects fail is they fail to consider to equal importance of financial and technical assistance. I’ve seen development projects whose solution to a lack of acceptable results is to crank up the resources, like the Ghanaian analogy of applying more fertilizer on a poorly planted crop it’s basically a waste of money! Others look to provide only training or capacity building, for example: informing resource-poor farmers about the negative impacts of poor natural resource management only means farmers get the free soft-drink and crackers provided during the training!)

So enough ranting, as this is just the extreme of two approaches. What’s exciting about Sarah Lewis’ approach is that she and Lawrence are finding local solutions to help these 9 farmers. Grand plans are confined to these 9 farmers. Everyone is learning as they go along, Sarah, EWB, Lawrence and these 9 farmers. I’m not sure how scalable or sustainable her approach is, or what the development industry would make of it, but I do know that already these 9 farmers stand a better chance of yielding at least twice as many vegetables as they did last year. I consider that one small victory for farmers, MoFA and EWB among this mess of development.

Beautiful onion crop

So What Does MoFA Do?

2007-10-29T14:26:00.000-07:00

Before I jump into this question I want to take this time to display a somewhat incriminating photo of a fellow friend and EWB volunteer - Luke Brown. He is just completing 2 years in Ghana and was privileged to become a "cheif of friends" in Tamale. I observed the very elaborate and formal "cheifing" ceremony with some other EWB volunteers. So what does an EWB volunteer do after 2 years in Ghana...

Luke before he becomes a chief. The actual chief is sitting behind him. Note the small girl in the top-right corner, she's fanning Luke!

Me recording this momentous occasion on Luke's sound recorder.

So what does MoFA do? To answer this question, I went overseas… My first step to understanding what MoFA does brought me overseas with “Prince” an employee of MoFA. So I’m guilty of cheesy Ghanaian humour. “Overseas” is an area of the Northern Region that is accessible either via boat in 2 hours or via road which takes a 5 hour detour. Since we were in a truck we had to do the 5 hour detour.

The intention of Prince’s visit was to assess a farmer who had been nominated for the prestigious national award for “Best Farmer”. Every year, MoFA organises a one-day event called “National Farmers Day” that is intended to raise the profile of farming within Ghana. Even though National Farmers Day is over one month away, it is foremost in the minds of all MoFA staff. When I first heard of the event, I figured it was just a big PR thing and wasn’t really sure why MoFA was so excited about it.

I asked Prince what the big deal was and he explained to me that the day is also an opportunity for MoFA to explicitly thank the farmers that they work for – the people that MoFA are essentially accountable to, after all without farmers in Ghana the role of MoFA would be quite different. To me, the event was also a great opportunity to profile farmers who model best practices – whether those best practices be entrepreneurial in managing the farm as a business or perhaps responsible use of natural resources – these best practices are the messages that MoFA strives to share with farmers and highlighting farmers through National Farmers Day is just one approach to encouraging farmers to adopt best practices.

The farmer we met, Alhaji Imoro, had been farming for the past 30 years. This year he planted rice (100 acres) and maize (50 acres). Unfortunately, all of the maize was destroyed by the floods that affected a huge amount of people in Northern Ghana this year and received international attention (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6996584.stm). However, Alhaji with his keen knowledge of animal husbandry, and a critical understanding of market opportunities, will not suffer this year. Alhaji is smart to grow rice – a crop that actually thrived this year during the drought – the market opportunities for local rice are growing due to a combination of a government school feeding program and a growing popularity of rice as a starchy food by children!

Prince and Alhaji chat it up

Alhaji also rears cattle – an extremely profitable venture in Ghana, but an opportunity that is rarely exploited due to farmer’s attitude towards cattle. From what I learned from the farmers I lived with in Chayili village (recall groundnut picking adventure), cattle is viewed as a form of savings and is killed for a funeral or sold in desperate times to buy food. Alhaji was rearing over 500 cattle and was definitely looking at his cattle as a profitable venture, not a mooing, grass-chewing, form of saving.

Encouraging farmers to adopt the best practices that Alhaji exemplifies is a crucial component of MoFA’s work and arguably the most effective grassroots approach to making poverty history in Ghana. Encouraging farmers to adopt best practices is more than providing technical education on proper farming techniques – like the correct spacing for maize, or the proper amounts and timing of fertilizer application – it is encouraging a behaviour change that shifts farmers from viewing their cattle and crops as part of a business venture. That’s tricky stuff!

Alhaji is successful because he has solid technical knowledge of cattle rearing and rice and maize production but he also has the attitude of a businessman. When I asked how Alhaji learned cattle rearing and why he’s been successful with his farm, Alhaji answered that he learned from his father. At the end of our visit with Alhaji he asked Prince about growing mango trees, the market for mango fruit has been getting a lot of attention both internationally and locally and Alhaji wants to expand his business to mango production.

Prince was more than happy to share information. I watched as he reached above him to a tree that I noticed for the first time was a mango tree. Prince grabbed a branch and proceeded to demonstrate grafting – a technique that involves preparing and planting a branch from a live mango tree so that it will develop into another tree.

Grafting part 1 - remove a small branch and strip the leaves

Grafting part 2 - wrap the branch with a small piece of plastic and plant.

With farmers who aren’t as lucky as Alhaji who inherited not only a profitable farm but an approach and the practices that led to continuing prosperity, MoFA staff work towards changing farmer’s behaviour. Changing farmer’s behaviour is certainly not as easy as grafting a new mango tree from an existing one and so National Farmers Day is but one approach in the basket.

I pledge allegiance to rice

2007-10-27T08:06:00.000-07:00

Work has begun! But don’t expect to get a full detailed briefing on “what exactly I’m doing in

Ghana

”. Right now I’m in a learning phase – I’ve been given the freedom to travel around the Northern Region of Ghana and basically “job shadow”. I started at the regional level of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) and have started a 7 week tour of MoFA's district offices (one level below regional). I’ve uploaded a map that shows where I’ll be going in the next 2 months – and that’s as much as I’ll share about the nitty gritty details. Below is a story from a trip I took with a regional staff…

Follow along on my Northern Region "District Learning Tour"!

Posing with a Regional MoFA staff - dressed "fine" in a Ghanaian dress

Today I make a pledge – I pledge to only eat Ghanaian rice. This commitment is motivated by meeting with the Kalegu rice group – a group of women who together are leading the way in rice processing – a growing market in Ghana. I met the Kalegu rice group with Luke, a regional staff at MoFA who is to go-to-guy on all “farmer based organizations” in the Northern Region. We made the 4 hour trip to meet with the women and learn from them – how are they successful in the rice processing business and more importantly how are they able to work together?

Kalegu women selling Ghanaian rice

But asking these questions was not so simple! To even begin the field visit, Luke had to push hard to get the money we needed to travel. I give Luke tremendous credit for working so hard to realize a trip that was planned over a year ago! Since he wasn’t certain as to whether he would get the money and be able to go, he didn’t inform anyone about our visit. But money we received and the journey we did take.

When we arrived about 4 hours later, dusty and myself exhausted from the bumpy ride along a pot-hole infested road, I was astounded to see Luke literally jump into work-mode as soon as the vehicle stopped. We were fortunate to come across a community meeting that had in attendance some of the key people Luke was hoping to speak with and so he was able to schedule meetings with the farmer groups for the following day.

Luke’s persistence paid off, and we began the following day by meeting with three groups that grow rice. These groups are composed almost entirely of men (since men in Ghana do most of the food production while women do most of the food processing).

Luke checking out some unprocessed rice grains.

The conversation was enlightening for me, I suppose I had this rather romantic view of “farmer based organizations” – people coming together to support each other with a sort of community spirit – in actuality these groups were mostly formed to get money. Small-loan schemes for farmers are one of most prominent development interventions in Ghana – it seems every project and every organization gives out “micro-credit”. I have mixed feelings about micro-credit but in my humble opinion don’t see it as a “silver bullet solution” that the development community seems to tote them as (you may have heard of the Grameen Bank organisation in Bangladesh that gave micro-credit loans to rural women). With MoFA for example, the recovery rate on the loans they give to farmers is incredibly low, and as a result MoFA staff are asking critical questions about micro-credit.

In short, these men formed a group because that’s the only way they could get a loan. Once Luke finished talking with the men’s rice groups and I had adjusted to yet another bubble full of romantic ideas of development being popped to reveal the reality, we traveled to the local market. Today was market day, so as Luke and I made our way through the lively commerce and past hoards of groundnuts, yams and other produce we came to the women’s group. They were busy selling rice but paused long enough to chat with Luke and post for a photo.

Luke in action, interviewing the women's group.

All of the women - the pride in their faces is incredible!

After we left the women’s group, Luke pointed at a pile of very white and polished looking rice that was also being sold in the market. Luke explained that this rice is imported and that most people prefer the imported rice because it looks nicer (is whiter, less impurities like small stones and cracked rice grains), however, the local rice is actually more nutritious. To add to the ridiculousness, the price for the local and imported rice was the same! Thus was born my pledge – to only eat Ghanaian rice. So far I have been successful in supporting my farmer friends who derive their living from growing and processing rice (although I have been surprised by the number of vendors who sell imported rice!). I shared my pledge with Luke and he quickly jumped on board! More than making a simple pledge to change my consumer habits, the persistence and dedication Luke demonstrated on our field visit reinforced my pledge to work with MoFA over the next year.

PS – Ridiculous market situations seem to be prevalent when it comes to food – check out my friend’s Alanna’s blog on mango processing and exporting in Burkina Faso - http://alannapeters.blogspot.com/2007/09/next-time-you-see-dried-mango-think-of.html

Working for Peanuts

2007-10-10T11:04:00.000-07:00

I’ve emerged from 17 days stay in Chayili village – a village where only on person speaks English and everyone’s livelihood is centered around farming. Since I took a ton of pictures and couldn't possible capture everything in words, I've included numerous photos dispersed through-out this post. Enjoy!

The 17 days I spent in Chayili seemed timeless – partly because time has a different meaning in a place where calendars and watches are irrelevant. But I emerge with stronger hands from working on the farm, darker skin from being out in the sun and a bigger heart to work with people in Northern Ghana – my heart goes out to many of the family members I stayed with – a household that was created from a former chief and thus was quite large with the chiefs wives, children and their wives and children. I got to know and love everyone in the house.

Photo above: Too many to name! Some are wives and children of the head of the household, others are wives of the head of household’s children.

I set out to this village to basically immerse myself in rural life in Northern Ghana – my objectives were to learn the local language, and to forge a strong understanding of rural life and farming as a livelihood. It was an incredible experience, now that I’m back in Tamale with electricity, paved roads and vibrant commerce I can truly appreciate the experience – having an understanding of rural life is incredibly important since that is the context which my partner organisation (the Ministry of Food and Agriculture) works.

Photo above: First impressions of Chayili

Life in a village was just as romantic as I pictured – the strong sense of community that exists, the thatch roof huts, cooking with metal pots over a fire and enjoying food fresh from the farm. But this romantic view was quickly dashed when I started to partake in the work. Carrying water, cooking, cleaning, farming all require muscle strength and stamina that after 17 days I was only just starting to develop (my back and neck still ache!). I have tremendous respect for my friends in Chayili who work hard everyday and still made time and effort to teach me and let me contribute to their work – however incompetent I may be at it!

Working hard (and enjoying it!) pounding maize (corn) into flour with a friend.

My visit was well-timed to learn firsthand about farming in northern Ghana. It is the end of the rainy season which marks the beginning of the harvest. Peanuts or groundnuts as they’re known in Ghana, were the crop of choice for Chayili – they were just ready to be harvested, and I was able to participate in this amazing experience. I was able to spend a couple of days harvesting groundnuts with the men in my family. In the picture below, you can see we had quite a crew! I understand the motivation to have many children! We were working on an elder’s field who is the senior most women elder in the community and seems to get help from everyone in the community since she no longer has a husband. With a strong crew we were able to harvest 2 acres of groundnuts in just hours!

Peanuts or Groundnuts. This variety is called ablain in the local language. It's best for oil.

Harvesting groundnuts...yeah I know I was fascinated when I finally saw how peanuts or groundnuts grow!

Harvesting groundnuts with the men in my household.

Groundnuts drying in the sun Zarea and Owaho (elder women in my household) in the background.

Most of my days were spent with the women in the village. One very prominent thing I experienced was the gender separation in Ghana – the line between jobs that are done by women and jobs that are done by men is pretty black and white – in short women take care of household chores such as cleaning and cooking, and the children while men generally do the farming. However, for groundnut harvest-time women play an equally important role on the farm. I was able to see and experience the role women play. I’ve typed out an entry from my journal below written after my second day on the farm with the women.

Fetching water with Maymuna (one of the girls in my household). Fetching water is definitely a women's job. (This was my first attempt to carry the bucket on my head thus the splashes of water down my butt and legs...)

“This morning I woke up at 6:20 am. Just as the rain stopped. Every night since I’ve come to Chayili it’s rained. I’ve been told that visitors bring good luck, so I’m the reason it’s rained. Even though the sun is rising, the rain has just stopped and I’m crawling out of bed, Senatu (head women in the house) has prepared breakfast and heated water for my bath. Today, I helped harvest groundnuts. It’s the season for harvesting so I’ve seen plenty – drying in the sun – roasting to eat – grinding into groundnut paste, or peanut butter as we know it in Canada! – bagging to sell and of course in the farm fields.

I spent the entire day with the women doing what they’ve been doing for the past week – harvesting ground nuts. We left at about 6:30 am for the farm. Food and buckets were carried on the children’s heads, babies on mother’s backs. The trek was about one hour to the farm. When we arrived, there were already plenty of women and children chatting and sitting amongst heaps of freshly uprooted ground nuts. We spend the whole day removing groundnuts from the plant.

Trek to the farm (Maymuna is just in front of me)

The day was very social as women rotated to uncompleted mounds of groundnuts and chatted with each other. Since I understood little of the language I just worked as fast as I could taking pride as my pile of groundnuts grew substantially throughout the day. I kept recalling the time I spent as a child picking strawberries with my mom and sisters – those trips were always fun but usually ended after about 2 hours with a stomach ache from too many strawberries. I had no idea what I’d gotten myself into today – no clue how big this field was or how long we’d be staying. Since I only had minimal knowledge of the local language and none of the women spoke English, I had no way of asking we’d be going home.

Communal labour

Harvesting with Magajia (most senior women in the village) - it was an honour to join her!

As the sun started to hint at setting (meaning around 5 pm) suddenly everyone started packing up, we’d finished our work for the day! I checked out my days work – I had collected 4 buckets worth and was proud of it, despite the fact that one of my companions had outdone me while she tending to her 5 month old baby all day. I gathered my things and followed everyone as we set off. But instead of heading on the path home we veered left and came to a crowd of women and two men sitting on a heaping mound of groundnuts. The men were the land owners and were collecting their harvest. For our hard days work, we were paid 1/5 – 1/3 of the grounds we were able to collect. It was only fair since it was this man’s land and labour that had grown the ground nuts.

Payment for the labour: this women didn't get too many groundnuts so she gets to keep 1/3 of them. The pile in the background is the landowner's.

So after a solid 11 hours of steady work, I walked away with ¼ of a sack of groundnuts, worth about $7…well I now literally understand the phrase worth peanuts!”

I bet you were waiting for a nutty joke J But seriously, the experience I had in Chayili will help me frame my work over the next year. As I post this, I have just finished my second day of work at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA). And as I learn about how MoFA endeavours to help rural farmers, I ask questions for my friends in Chayili: What do MoFA’s messages about farming mean to them? Will MoFA’s approach to farmer education enable lasting positive change in the lives of my friends in Chayili?

Left to right: Pakaw, unknown women, Senatu (with groundnuts on her head) next to Magajia (women elder in village) and Magajia's groundnuts from her farm.

Baby Steps in Ghana

2007-09-15T06:12:00.000-07:00

I write this from Accra City (capital city of Ghana). It’s been almost one week since I set out from Toronto for Ghana. I arrived in Accra, Ghana on Friday evening and have been biding my time in Accra waiting for my mis-placed bag to arrive. Even though the waiting has been an exercise of patience and some anxiety, it’s also allowed (*cough* forced) me to pace myself in

Ghana

. Despite a huge amount of eagerness to start doing something, I won’t be showing up to work until a month from now. During that time, all I do will be centered on learning. I will learn about how the Sarah Grant I know will fit with

Ghana

and live here for a year. I will learn from Ghanaians about rural livelihoods and focus on agriculture and agricultural markets. I will try to speak as many languages as possible or at least learn the greetings (I think there are about 70 languages in

Ghana

). Last, I will learn how to make friends in a new country – and hopefully succeed!

My first day in Ghana, feels like miles ago – even though the steps I took were quite small. I remember how nervous I was just to walk on the street to take out some money! Today, I decided to make a bit of a leap and make the most of my time in Accra. I figured that as long as I’m in the capital city – which is the economic hub – I should try to capitalise on this.

I decided that it would be interesting to learn as much as possible about the tomato market in Ghana. It was through this that I met Maggi. This afternoon I spent sitting in a crowded market behind a table stacked high with tomatoes that Maggi sells. Every day except Sunday Maggi spends about 12 hours selling tomatoes in the Makola market. Maggi has been doing this since she was a child. She is very intelligent about the tomato market in Ghana and was able to share information about price variations, different varieties and how she runs her business. For even though it may look like a make-shift set-up of stacked tomatoes on a rotting wood crate, this set-up keeps a family of five happy and healthy.

Maggi and her Tomato Stall

Across from Maggi’s stall was a stand of canned goods. Piled high were a variety of tomato paste in cans. Most people cook with both canned and fresh tomatoes to make a sort of stew. While the fresh tomatoes are mostly grown in Ghana, canned tomatoes in Ghana have a tumultuous history. In the 1960s, three processing plans were established in the newly independent Ghana. Currently there is one processing factory in Ghana which is operating at only 10% capacity. Due to subsidies in Europe, the tomato market in Ghana can’t compete. Ghana is the second largest importer of tomato paste in the world, second to Germany. This seems ridiculous considering the abundance of fresh tomatoes I saw at the market!

With no cannery business to sell tomatoes to, farmers in Ghana have no bargaining power while people like Maggi are left with little options but to operate a small and highly volatile business. Maggie purchases crates of tomatoes at a time from a transporters that deliver the crates to the market. Some days the crates are 200,000 ($20), other days the price is double this. It all depends how many tomatoes the transporters were able to purchase from northern Ghana. The quality of the tomatoes varies. Sometimes entire batches will spoil in only a day. At the end of each day Maggi sifts through each batch removing the rotting ones to slow down the decay process.

Today I set out to learn broadly about the tomato market. I started by purchasing tomatoes from vendors and asking them questions. I was generally unsuccessful. By the time I met Maggi, I had accepted the fact that I would not be able to learn very much without language abilities and a more formal context. As I passed the rest of the afternoon at Maggi’s stall I started noticing little things that outline how complex her business is! Initially, Maggi’s business seemed quite simple – buying tomatoes and selling them at a higher price – but really it is quite involved. She needs to rent a stall in the market, pay the guard to watch her produce at night, establish a solid customer base, get along with her neighbouring competitors, bargain with transporters to purchase tomatoes, decide which variety of tomatoes to sell, and set the price of the tomatoes. Quite a business!

At 5:30, the market vendors started packing up. I was escorted to a taxi by Maggi and 4 of her friends with promises of visiting again. I left reflecting on the ambitious learning goal I had set out for myself that afternoon. I realized that I actually learned a great deal. As for the tomato market, I learned that there are opportunities to help the rural farmers in Northern Ghana. The government has just passed a bill which puts a temporary ban on the importation of tomato paste and concentrates into the country with effect from November 1, 2007. The government is trying to develop the tomato market by revitalizing a tomato processing factory. But efforts can not just come nationally, with a strengthened tomato market comes the need for more and better tomatoes. Farmers need to be engaged in a process that develops their ability to produce what this more fair market will demand. Happily, this is exactly the role that my organization in Ghana – the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) – plays with rural farmers! I look forward to learning more about MoFA’s work in the coming months.

Today I was reminded that this next year will be a beautiful journey and I must be patient with tiny steps but I must also remember to sit down to embrace the frustrations of change in plans and the deeper learning and friendships that will result.

Me with my friends from the Market

(most of them are wearing red to honour their friend who recently passed away)

Temporary Break

2007-09-08T10:35:00.000-07:00

I am writing this post in the Toronto airport, poised to leave for Ghana. I leave 5 weeks later than planned. At the end of June I fractured my collarbone. Don’t worry though, no surgery was required and I travel to Ghana with the blessing of a legitimate Toronto medical doctor. Below is a picture of my x-ray, if you squint you can see a small fracture just at the outside tip of the collarbone.

As I leave for a one-year placement in Ghana where my parent’s biggest fear is that I’ll return in one piece, I am leaving with a healed collarbone and the proof that it’s possible to hurt yourself even in the wonderful city of Saskatoon. The decision to play rugby – as a much need spare with team Saskatchewan – has reinforces that rugby’s reputation as being a dangerous sport isn’t true, except when you haven’t played for 3 years and go up against a 180 lb 18-year-old – man was I out of my league!

Sometimes I feel like I’m out of my league when I think about the upcoming journey. For the next 12 months I’ve committed to a placement with Engineers Without Borders. I’ll be travelling for the second time outsides of Canada to a place where I’m not quite sure what to expect – will I like it in my new home? Have I brought the right things? Will I make friends? How easily will I learn a new language? How will I deal with the frustration of working in a climate that is limited in resources but where foreigners are expected to provide?

Already I can feel my whole body opening up in anticipation of this experience. My eyes are eager to observe new and fascinating sights. My stomach gurgles to try some new grub and my mind is teaming with thoughts and worries.

Today I learned that you can’t break your bone in the same place twice because your body repairs the bone to be even stronger. I look forward to stepping off the plane for the first time, probably tripping and falling a few times along the way but knowing that I am stronger for it.

A shot of the nine of us looking strong. We shared a month-long session of learning and preparation for our overseas placements in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Malawi and Zambia.

Why this blog?

2007-08-08T10:59:00.000-07:00

Ghana and Sarah Grant collide and embrace in a one-year placement with Engineers Without Borders (EWB). Although I think that to describe it as a "placement" is insufficient. I anticipate a life-experience full of challenges, adventures, love, learning and growth.

I want to thank you, my friends and family, who are supporting me financially and emotionally in this endeavour. I hope that this blog will help me thank you as I share my experiences, stories and bring life in Ghana a bit closer to you.

To set the tone for this journey, some advice from Bilbo Baggins of Lord of the Rings:

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."

To learn more about Engineers Without Border's work, please visit www.ewb.ca.

Sarah Grant and Ghana

Supporting farmers to grow their vegetables!

Twins and Frisbee

Back in Ghana and loving it

Smiling in Ghana

Use what you have to secure what you have not

From clients to citizens - a paradigm shift

What's in a name

**Video** Accountability and Staying Longer in Ghana

Observation in the dry season

Spreading the message well

The Two Myths of Africa

In 12 Months what have I accomplished?

Elusive Results

Will the subsidy encourage fertilizer use?

Integrity takes strength

Independence Day

Aid - No longer a moral obligation but an investment

Learning to make aid work

A New Home

Corrected Blog Address

Celebrate!

Top Down or Bottom Up

Going beyond the party line

So What Does MoFA Do?

I pledge allegiance to rice

Working for Peanuts

Baby Steps in Ghana

Temporary Break

Why this blog?

Video Accountability and Staying Longer in Ghana