Independence Day

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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.