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.