I was required to take a course in sociology this term, African Social and Political Systems. The idea of it didn’t excite me. I felt like I knew the basics of the subject already (my willingness to profess “basic” knowledge on topics of which I am completely ignorant is at times a bit alarming) and I was meekly opposed to the prospect of studying “traditional” Africa or Africa as a unitary whole (perhaps a tenuous position given the fact that I’m seeking an MA in African Studies). I won’t say that all my concerns were unfounded. Most of the basic texts were written by colonial era anthropologists, who, despite being formidable intellects and earnestly desirous of accurately recording observations of African societies, were still very much embedded in the project of politically subjugating the subjects of their research. The bias isn’t too hard to point out when terms like “primitive man” are pepper the text. In any case, while I didn’t have a transcendent academic experience, the course did drive home an important point: the basic concepts we use to organize our social world are not universal concepts.
Family, for instance. If you asked me the difference between an African family and an American family a few months ago, I probably would’ve mumbled something about there being no such thing as the typical African family, and then given the same response that would go at the top of the Family Feud board: African families are larger. Far be it from me to correct popular wisdom. I think on average they probably are. A more interesting question is why. The standard response there is land abundance/labor scarcity has been a defining feature of African history; consequently the ability to mobilize labor has often translated into the capacity to accumulate wealth, acquire political power, and even to survive. Tracing who has rights to whose labor is a fast way to discern the distribution of power in any social system. Does a wife’s trading enterprise generate enough income over which she can maintain control to grant her a degree of autonomy from her husband? That example starts to take us into differences in marriage, like the fact that most married couples keep separate accounts and a large portion of Akan couples don’t live in the same household [in a matrilineal system, a person’s ties to his or her mother and siblings often take precedence over ties to a spouse], but we won’t follow that rabbit hole here.
Another way to approach the question of why the tightly circumscribed nuclear family is not the norm in Africa (again, in places in Africa it is) is to look at the terminology of kinship. I groaned and skipped this section of the course reading the first time around and only came back to it during my preparation for the final. It’s actually fairly interesting. The first point is that Americans tend to address their relatives according to their genealogical relationship. So my dad’s sister is my aunt, and my mom’s brother’s daughters are my cousins. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, though. Close friends of my parents become uncles and aunts, their children cousins.
A number of African societies employ what’s called classificatory terminology. Here the terms derive from social, rather than biological, relation. My dad’s sister might be called my mother (or even father). This reflects the fact that she’s in the generation above me [the same generational relation to me as my parents] and plays a similar role to that of my mom (or dad). In fact, I might refer to all the women in the community of my parents’ generation as mother, though our responsibilities to each other wouldn’t be the same as those existing between my biological mother and I. Just as in the example of my parents’ friends becoming kin, there are examples of establishing fictive kinship in African societies. According to my musty source penned in the 1940s, there are/were groups in the Transkei of northern South Africa which say that if a man drinks the milk of a cow belonging to a different lineage (broad family grouping), he becomes a member of that lineage and can’t marry any of its daughters. There are plenty of other interesting examples (a Shona man will refer to his mother’s brother, his mother’s brother’s sons, and their sons as his grandfathers), which may or may not apply now or ever have actually worked in the manner described by the authors. The general point, my brother/sister, is that classificatory terminology tends to broaden the scope of whom you look upon as kin and so can expand the size of your family.
For me, the real value of the course was to reinforce the pitfalls of transferring concepts willy nilly from my cultural context to another. Example: raising the income of the family breadwinner doesn’t necessarily raise the standard of living of all within the household. Needless to say, a typology sufficiently nuanced to capture the dynamics of my family remains to be articulated.
13 December, 2008
The winner is
It’s a runoff. Nana Akufo-Addo: 49%; John Atta Mills: 47%. Since no presidential candidate garnered the 50%+1 required to win in the first round, Ghanaians will vote again December 28. Mills’ party (NDC) won a narrow plurality of parliamentary seats, but the election of a handful of independent (NPP defectors) and third party candidates means that the new president regardless of his party will have to build coalitions to get bills passed. There were a few isolated incidents, but the international monitors declared it a free and fair election.
03 December, 2008
Ghana Votes
Ghana votes this Sunday. A conversation I had with a taxi driver the other day encapsulated a lot of the themes that I’ve been hearing about the election since I’ve arrived. He told me that he would vote for the National Democratic Congress (NDC, opposition) candidate, John Atta Mills. When I asked him why, he told me that he had voted for the current president, John Kufuor, of the National Patriotic Party (NPP) during the last two elections in 2000 and 2004. He felt like the economy was in decline (GDP growth has been modestly positive on the back of favorable cocoa and gold prices), and what’s worse, that the NPP had made promises that it could never have hoped to have kept, especially reducing the price of oil and food. He also expressed general disillusionment with “African politicians.” For those reasons, he was voting for change, which in this case means voting for the candidate who served as vice president for the previous president.
I don’t see anything unusual in this rationale. Voting for personalities instead of issues and on your own personal economic situation rather than economy as a whole are logical approaches to vote casting in Albany just as much as in Accra. The desire for better political leadership is universal as well, though poor leadership and poor governance are seen as a fundamental hindrance to the realization of Africans’ ambitions and more of a matter of casual complaint in the U.S. (although there are notable exceptions, the response to Katrina comes to mind).
So not unlike the US elections, the coming vote in Ghana is in many ways a referendum on the last 8 years. The current New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration took over in 2000 from the National Democratic Congress (NDC), which had ruled for the previous 8 years with Jerry Rawlings at its helm. Rawlings had ruled autocratically for the nine years prior to the 1992 elections after being installed (for the second time) by a coup. Rawlings made Ghana the darling of the IMF, steering the country through what was widely regarded as a model structural adjustment program. Deficits were reduced and the civil service scaled back, but inflation and lackadaisical growth continued to dog the economy. In 1992, as pressures for democracy mounted across the continent, Rawlings and the NDC consented to submit their mandate to a vote, but a flush of pre-election spending (which resulted in a return to the government deficits that the SAP had pruned) and other political maneuvering meant that the opposition had little chance to gain a real foothold. Rawlings peacefully handed over power in 2000 to now president John Kufuor.
Many Ghanaians have told me - and my observations have not disproved it – that Ghanaians tend to vote for personalities rather than positions. I’ve been a bit hard-pressed to separate the candidates on the issues, though the NDC nominally sits a bit to the left and NPP a bit to the right. The NPP candidate, British-trained lawyer, son of a former president, and himself a former foreign minister Nana Akufo-Addo, is running under the slogan “We are moving forward,” to which NDC supporters continually respond, “Forward to where?” The NDC candidate is John Atta Mills, “A Better Man for a Better Ghana.” Atta Mills is a former professor of law at none other than my own institution, and, as already mentioned, he served as vice president under Rawlings.
By all accounts (except the state run newspaper which has Akufo-Addo polling 15 points ahead), the election is too close to call. Lest you doubt me, the BBC magazine Focus on Africa cover story on the Ghanaian elections was titled “Ghana Elections: Too Close to Call.” Everyone is hoping for a peaceful election. There were some problems with voter registration (not enough materials, allegations of foreigners and minors being registered) which led to its extension. There have also been some violent encounters between partisans; however, prospects for an election without major incident seem high. The Focus on Africa article claimed that no one would be so confident in their predictions though after Kenya, but the situation is really much less tense here. Kufuor is stepping down regardless, and the country has already had one power transition. Nevertheless, this is an important election for the consolidation of democracy in Ghana.
I don’t see anything unusual in this rationale. Voting for personalities instead of issues and on your own personal economic situation rather than economy as a whole are logical approaches to vote casting in Albany just as much as in Accra. The desire for better political leadership is universal as well, though poor leadership and poor governance are seen as a fundamental hindrance to the realization of Africans’ ambitions and more of a matter of casual complaint in the U.S. (although there are notable exceptions, the response to Katrina comes to mind).
So not unlike the US elections, the coming vote in Ghana is in many ways a referendum on the last 8 years. The current New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration took over in 2000 from the National Democratic Congress (NDC), which had ruled for the previous 8 years with Jerry Rawlings at its helm. Rawlings had ruled autocratically for the nine years prior to the 1992 elections after being installed (for the second time) by a coup. Rawlings made Ghana the darling of the IMF, steering the country through what was widely regarded as a model structural adjustment program. Deficits were reduced and the civil service scaled back, but inflation and lackadaisical growth continued to dog the economy. In 1992, as pressures for democracy mounted across the continent, Rawlings and the NDC consented to submit their mandate to a vote, but a flush of pre-election spending (which resulted in a return to the government deficits that the SAP had pruned) and other political maneuvering meant that the opposition had little chance to gain a real foothold. Rawlings peacefully handed over power in 2000 to now president John Kufuor.
Many Ghanaians have told me - and my observations have not disproved it – that Ghanaians tend to vote for personalities rather than positions. I’ve been a bit hard-pressed to separate the candidates on the issues, though the NDC nominally sits a bit to the left and NPP a bit to the right. The NPP candidate, British-trained lawyer, son of a former president, and himself a former foreign minister Nana Akufo-Addo, is running under the slogan “We are moving forward,” to which NDC supporters continually respond, “Forward to where?” The NDC candidate is John Atta Mills, “A Better Man for a Better Ghana.” Atta Mills is a former professor of law at none other than my own institution, and, as already mentioned, he served as vice president under Rawlings.
By all accounts (except the state run newspaper which has Akufo-Addo polling 15 points ahead), the election is too close to call. Lest you doubt me, the BBC magazine Focus on Africa cover story on the Ghanaian elections was titled “Ghana Elections: Too Close to Call.” Everyone is hoping for a peaceful election. There were some problems with voter registration (not enough materials, allegations of foreigners and minors being registered) which led to its extension. There have also been some violent encounters between partisans; however, prospects for an election without major incident seem high. The Focus on Africa article claimed that no one would be so confident in their predictions though after Kenya, but the situation is really much less tense here. Kufuor is stepping down regardless, and the country has already had one power transition. Nevertheless, this is an important election for the consolidation of democracy in Ghana.
23 November, 2008
Recent travels
A few weekends ago I took a day trip to Aburi Botanical Gardens, about an hour due north of Accra. Aburi sits atop the Akuapem ridge, a green wall that rises abruptly off a scrub plain. The Gardens were established by the British as an agricultural research station. Some research still takes place there, but most people retreat to Aburi’s cooler climes to escape the heat of Accra. The Gardens are just down the road from Tetteh Quarshie’s cocoa farm, though I didn’t visit. The history of Ghana has been inextricably linked with the history of cocoa. Tetteh Quarshie introduced cocoa to Ghana from Fernando Po (google it if you want the date). Ghana was the world’s leading producer of cocoa until it was overtaken by Ivory Coast (again google if you want the date), but it remains number two. Ghana exports the vast majority of its cocoa, processing only about a quarter of the crop in country. At independence, Nkrumah, like a number of African leaders, carried over agricultural marketing boards from the colonial era. The government had a monopsony (sole buyer) on cocoa purchases, which it used to set prices below the world price. The idea, perfectly in line with international development orthodoxy of the time, was to transfer surpluses from the cocoa sector to industry and thus spur modernization. The policy stirred a great deal of opposition among cocoa growers in Ashanti, one of the factors which led Nkrumah to ban opposition parties in the early 60s (google if you…). Generally, the trend starting during colonialism has been to focus on the development of cocoa to the detriment of food crops, which is why you have people still calling for a green revolution in Africa four decades after the start of the original. Something to think about as you chew that Hershey’s Kiss.
This past week I spent a few days in Big Ada, a town situated near the mouth of the Volta about 100 kilometers east of Accra. I wanted to get off campus before I really got into preparation for finals. Ada is a place with a great deal of natural beauty. Low lying mangroves stretch throughout the river delta; palm trees line the river banks and the coast. During the day, the brightly painted fishing boats with messages like “sea never dry” and “forgive them Lord” stare down the ocean. During the evening, their solitary lanterns sit along the horizon, standing in for the stars obscured by the Saharan dust blown in by the Harmattan.
Ada, like Amatlan for those familiar with the trip to Mexico, is out of the way enough to be a get away but close enough to Accra to be accessible. Consequently, there are a lot of vacation homes there. The juxtaposition between wealth and poverty is rather striking. Taking a boat ride along the river, I passed a string of sizable homes. The last of which was a salmon-colored, two-story structure with two satellite dishes, a gazebo, and a jet ski. The property was demarcated with a ten foot wall covered in a pink flowering crawler. 15 yards further down the bank, a fishing village: mud walls, thatched roofs, wooden dugout canoes. I asked myself what else could be done to enable the people who live here to benefit from the economic potential of their home?
I took a boat to a firewood market, and then took a ferry back. The picture above is taken from the ferry.
(I'll post the pictures as soon as the internet lets me)
This past week I spent a few days in Big Ada, a town situated near the mouth of the Volta about 100 kilometers east of Accra. I wanted to get off campus before I really got into preparation for finals. Ada is a place with a great deal of natural beauty. Low lying mangroves stretch throughout the river delta; palm trees line the river banks and the coast. During the day, the brightly painted fishing boats with messages like “sea never dry” and “forgive them Lord” stare down the ocean. During the evening, their solitary lanterns sit along the horizon, standing in for the stars obscured by the Saharan dust blown in by the Harmattan.
Ada, like Amatlan for those familiar with the trip to Mexico, is out of the way enough to be a get away but close enough to Accra to be accessible. Consequently, there are a lot of vacation homes there. The juxtaposition between wealth and poverty is rather striking. Taking a boat ride along the river, I passed a string of sizable homes. The last of which was a salmon-colored, two-story structure with two satellite dishes, a gazebo, and a jet ski. The property was demarcated with a ten foot wall covered in a pink flowering crawler. 15 yards further down the bank, a fishing village: mud walls, thatched roofs, wooden dugout canoes. I asked myself what else could be done to enable the people who live here to benefit from the economic potential of their home?
I took a boat to a firewood market, and then took a ferry back. The picture above is taken from the ferry.
(I'll post the pictures as soon as the internet lets me)
14 November, 2008
13 November, 2008
Take the second left then stay straight. It's the first stool on the right. You can't miss it.
The new Presidential Palace (pictured above) was commissioned on Monday. They’re still putting on the finishing touches, but according to an interview with the Minister of Information I heard on Joy FM that morning, the President plans to occupy it before the end of his term in office – so within the next two months. This is an election year, and the opposition party has been particularly critical of the structure’s cost. Again according to that same interview, the palace was originally expected to cost $30 million. The Minister of Information didn’t know the final cost, much to the chagrin of the opposition member on the other line.
The current home of government is certainly historic, though not reflecting the chapters in Ghana’s history with which any current leader would wish to associate himself or his administration. The government currently operates out of Christiansbourg (or Osu) Castle, a slave fort constructed by the Danish in the 1660s. After passing through various colonial and indigenous hands (one chief apparently still has the keys to the fort which his people used to control), it was purchased by the British in 1850, six years after the treaty which established their colonial dominion along the coast. In 1948, colonial police fired on demonstrators outside the castle, energizing the nationalist movement that swept Nkrumah into power 3 years later as Head of Government. In 1957, Ghana became the first nation in Sub-Saharan Africa to win its independence.
But why is President Kufuor moving into a giant “H”? The architecture evokes the Akan stool, symbol of chiefly power. In the 17th Century, the Golden Stool fell from the heavens into the heart of Ashanti (The Ashanti are the most populous branch of the Akan ethnic group. Ashanti was a British corruption of Asante. I’ve heard some people here use Ashanti to refer to the territory centered around Kumasi occupied by the Asante.) Upon the occasion of the Golden Stool’s descent, the priest of King Osei Tutu, the Asantahene (ruler of the Asante) at the time, issued laws for the Asante confederation. To this day, Akan chiefs occupy stools, but they do not own them. If the chief’s behavior is found un-chiefly, he can be de-stooled. Interestingly enough, stools are also used in Asante girls’ nubility (initiation) rites.
The new presidential palace taps into a rich history of political and architectural symbolism in Ghana. To take just one instance, President Nkrumah was enstooled as a chief at Nsaeum in 1962. Also consider that chiefly authority is not a relic of “traditional” times. 80% of land in Ghana is held under customary tenure; chiefs hold allodial title, which means that they decide who gets access to the land and its product (usufruct).
As a concluding note, one of my hostel co-habitants was impressed but also a bit disappointed when I told him that the striking building between campus and downtown was the new presidential palace. He thought that maybe it was going to be a night club.
The current home of government is certainly historic, though not reflecting the chapters in Ghana’s history with which any current leader would wish to associate himself or his administration. The government currently operates out of Christiansbourg (or Osu) Castle, a slave fort constructed by the Danish in the 1660s. After passing through various colonial and indigenous hands (one chief apparently still has the keys to the fort which his people used to control), it was purchased by the British in 1850, six years after the treaty which established their colonial dominion along the coast. In 1948, colonial police fired on demonstrators outside the castle, energizing the nationalist movement that swept Nkrumah into power 3 years later as Head of Government. In 1957, Ghana became the first nation in Sub-Saharan Africa to win its independence.
But why is President Kufuor moving into a giant “H”? The architecture evokes the Akan stool, symbol of chiefly power. In the 17th Century, the Golden Stool fell from the heavens into the heart of Ashanti (The Ashanti are the most populous branch of the Akan ethnic group. Ashanti was a British corruption of Asante. I’ve heard some people here use Ashanti to refer to the territory centered around Kumasi occupied by the Asante.) Upon the occasion of the Golden Stool’s descent, the priest of King Osei Tutu, the Asantahene (ruler of the Asante) at the time, issued laws for the Asante confederation. To this day, Akan chiefs occupy stools, but they do not own them. If the chief’s behavior is found un-chiefly, he can be de-stooled. Interestingly enough, stools are also used in Asante girls’ nubility (initiation) rites.
The new presidential palace taps into a rich history of political and architectural symbolism in Ghana. To take just one instance, President Nkrumah was enstooled as a chief at Nsaeum in 1962. Also consider that chiefly authority is not a relic of “traditional” times. 80% of land in Ghana is held under customary tenure; chiefs hold allodial title, which means that they decide who gets access to the land and its product (usufruct).
As a concluding note, one of my hostel co-habitants was impressed but also a bit disappointed when I told him that the striking building between campus and downtown was the new presidential palace. He thought that maybe it was going to be a night club.
08 November, 2008
Election Reflection
I’m sure you can guess which candidate the majority of people here were pulling for. There was an ad in the paper a day or two before the elections announcing a prayer meeting on behalf of Senator Obama. My roommate contrasted the slim margin of victory in the American election with the response of the losing candidate in Zambia’s recent presidential election. The loser, bested by a margin of 2%, alleged that the election had been stolen by “a bunch of thieves.” International election monitors didn’t report any serious irregularities. The losing candidate prior to the election had said that there was no way that he would lose.
I don’ t know that I have too much to add to the general storyline that you’ve been reading. The election clearly has won us lots of goodwill, even in a country like Ghana where the majority of the population was already favorably disposed towards the U.S. Obama’s victory is a tremendously powerful symbol. And the expectations which many Africans have attached to the man are completely unrealistic. In many ways, those expectations reflect an idealized understanding of America itself. Streets of gold, so to speak. Better in every way. In a recent editorial Nicholas Kristof wrote that America is best when it’s not just a place, but also an idea. I agree with the sentiment, but not the phrasing. For people who don’t live in America, America is always an idea. The idea may be that the US is the breeding ground of cultural arrogance and militant imperialism or the idea may be that it’s a place where you really can go as far as your abilities, not your connections or your skin color, will take you.
One thing that is important to add: many of the people I’ve talked have a pretty sophisticated understanding of American politics. The headline of the most popular newspaper on the day after the election was: US POLICY WON’T SHIFT. So there’s still an appreciation that American leaders will privilege American interests. And that’s ok, as long as long as that pursuit is tempered by respect for the rest of the world.
I don’ t know that I have too much to add to the general storyline that you’ve been reading. The election clearly has won us lots of goodwill, even in a country like Ghana where the majority of the population was already favorably disposed towards the U.S. Obama’s victory is a tremendously powerful symbol. And the expectations which many Africans have attached to the man are completely unrealistic. In many ways, those expectations reflect an idealized understanding of America itself. Streets of gold, so to speak. Better in every way. In a recent editorial Nicholas Kristof wrote that America is best when it’s not just a place, but also an idea. I agree with the sentiment, but not the phrasing. For people who don’t live in America, America is always an idea. The idea may be that the US is the breeding ground of cultural arrogance and militant imperialism or the idea may be that it’s a place where you really can go as far as your abilities, not your connections or your skin color, will take you.
One thing that is important to add: many of the people I’ve talked have a pretty sophisticated understanding of American politics. The headline of the most popular newspaper on the day after the election was: US POLICY WON’T SHIFT. So there’s still an appreciation that American leaders will privilege American interests. And that’s ok, as long as long as that pursuit is tempered by respect for the rest of the world.
30 October, 2008
“The Enemy Within” or “Look, Mom: Proof That I’ve Been Reading”
A common thread common running through much of the reading, both assigned and personal, that I’ve digested since arriving has been a sustained, biting critique of the political elite of post-independence Sub-Saharan Africa. The main elements of the attack are as follows. The African state is defined by neopatrimonialism (pervasive patronage). Bratton and van de Walle writing on the “Third Wave” of democracy that resulted in multi-party elections in several African nations in the early 90s, argued, “State elites in Africa have sought political power primarily to obtain and defend economic benefits, to the point that they have blocked private accumulation by independent groups in society thus undermining the entire project of economic development.” Another scholar (Sklar) has asserted that accessing political power has been the primary means of class formation in Africa. African scholars have been no less acerbic in their criticism. Mamdani claimed that the post-independence state de-racialized but didn’t democratize. I think the most damning indictment has been the call for a “second independence.” Petals of Blood and The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born transform this criticism into great, if not exactly uplifting, fiction. My understanding is that Fanon writes along these lines as well.
Why didn’t the idealism of the independence struggle translate into good post-independence governance? First of all, I’m not prepared to endorse such a sweeping generalization. Africa is not one big country. We can’t just pay lip service to the diversity here. At a minimum, if we’re going to speak about Africa as a whole, we at least need to qualify our statements.
But why generally did elites look first to consolidate power and second to development? I know the answer that I don’t like. I’ve read/heard an argument that culture has a role to play in all of this, and I’m extremely wary of that one. The idea is that a “big man” has expectations to take care of his kinship network, and these social obligations are carried into the political realm. This hypothesis was advanced by a student in my sociology class and seemed to be favorably received. I specifically asked, “What do I tell my friends back home when I tell them about that argument and they say, ‘Of course. Africans are corrupt.’ I still have more reading to do on this, but here’s my preliminary answer. Colonialism destroyed and distorted indigenous political institutions, many of which had checks and balances interwoven into them. Huntington also notes that modernization happened in the developing world a lot faster than it did in the West. The rapidity of social change further dissolved indigenous institutions before new ones could arise. Institutional weakness opens the door to corruption.
So to state that response as an answer to the above question: I’m inclining more towards the “perverse incentives” argument that institutions constraining the top echelon of government are extremely weak (in large part because colonialism vested absolute power in individuals at all levels of government) which means opportunities to derive rents (for corruption) are manifold, and the executive needs those rents to maintain power because of the deep, often non cross-cutting cleavages in many of these nations (ethnicity and rural/urban).
This set of arguments should be put alongside dependency and modernization theories, which I will post on soon. So just withhold judgment for a bit. In the mean time read Mamdani, Citizen/Subject; van de Walle, African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis; and Young, The African Colonial State in Historical Perspective.
Why didn’t the idealism of the independence struggle translate into good post-independence governance? First of all, I’m not prepared to endorse such a sweeping generalization. Africa is not one big country. We can’t just pay lip service to the diversity here. At a minimum, if we’re going to speak about Africa as a whole, we at least need to qualify our statements.
But why generally did elites look first to consolidate power and second to development? I know the answer that I don’t like. I’ve read/heard an argument that culture has a role to play in all of this, and I’m extremely wary of that one. The idea is that a “big man” has expectations to take care of his kinship network, and these social obligations are carried into the political realm. This hypothesis was advanced by a student in my sociology class and seemed to be favorably received. I specifically asked, “What do I tell my friends back home when I tell them about that argument and they say, ‘Of course. Africans are corrupt.’ I still have more reading to do on this, but here’s my preliminary answer. Colonialism destroyed and distorted indigenous political institutions, many of which had checks and balances interwoven into them. Huntington also notes that modernization happened in the developing world a lot faster than it did in the West. The rapidity of social change further dissolved indigenous institutions before new ones could arise. Institutional weakness opens the door to corruption.
So to state that response as an answer to the above question: I’m inclining more towards the “perverse incentives” argument that institutions constraining the top echelon of government are extremely weak (in large part because colonialism vested absolute power in individuals at all levels of government) which means opportunities to derive rents (for corruption) are manifold, and the executive needs those rents to maintain power because of the deep, often non cross-cutting cleavages in many of these nations (ethnicity and rural/urban).
This set of arguments should be put alongside dependency and modernization theories, which I will post on soon. So just withhold judgment for a bit. In the mean time read Mamdani, Citizen/Subject; van de Walle, African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis; and Young, The African Colonial State in Historical Perspective.
24 October, 2008
Kick Polio Out of Ghana
On Saturday I had the privilege to participate in an iconic Rotary event: polio immunization. Rotary has dedicated itself to eradicating polio from the world. It has mobilized considerable resources for the effort and perhaps even more importantly brought considerable attention to the opportunity to ensure that no child ever has to lose her life or ability to walk to this scourge. I joined another Ambassadorial Scholar and two Rotarians from the Rotary Club of Accra in a neighborhood of southern Accra for the last day of immunizations. Most of the children had already received the oral vaccine, deworming tablet, and Vitamin A dosage at their schools on Thursday and Friday. Led by three volunteers from the area, we moved from house to house “mopping up” any children who didn’t have the tell tale purple ink stain on their left pinky finger.
I would never have been able to get as intimate look at the communities we visited without this program. At the same time, I did feel a bit uncomfortable at times tramping into people’s homes and looking around to “see how they live.” I have no aspirations to be a poverty tourist. I suppose I can justify my presence there by sharing it with you. Life is difficult for many in these communities. They are literally on the city’s margins, in this case the southern margin, next to the coast. Mothers were genuinely happy to see us. No one questioned the value of the service or hesitated to have her child vaccinated.
I was glad to see that Rotary’s polio vaccination initiative had really transformed over the years into a true partnership with the Ghanaian government. A local government clinic provided much of the logistical support for the vaccination. I’ve been doing research on aid and debt forgiveness, and too often the provision of a key public good like health or education by a foreign or private donor ends up eroding government capacity. Because the government can depend on the private sector to provide the service, it diverts its resources to other endeavors. See van de Walle, African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979-1999 if you’re interested. That did not appear to be the case here. The Rotarians whom we accompanied told us that polio has become exceedingly rare in Ghana, the last recorded infection incurring a few years ago.
I would never have been able to get as intimate look at the communities we visited without this program. At the same time, I did feel a bit uncomfortable at times tramping into people’s homes and looking around to “see how they live.” I have no aspirations to be a poverty tourist. I suppose I can justify my presence there by sharing it with you. Life is difficult for many in these communities. They are literally on the city’s margins, in this case the southern margin, next to the coast. Mothers were genuinely happy to see us. No one questioned the value of the service or hesitated to have her child vaccinated.
I was glad to see that Rotary’s polio vaccination initiative had really transformed over the years into a true partnership with the Ghanaian government. A local government clinic provided much of the logistical support for the vaccination. I’ve been doing research on aid and debt forgiveness, and too often the provision of a key public good like health or education by a foreign or private donor ends up eroding government capacity. Because the government can depend on the private sector to provide the service, it diverts its resources to other endeavors. See van de Walle, African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979-1999 if you’re interested. That did not appear to be the case here. The Rotarians whom we accompanied told us that polio has become exceedingly rare in Ghana, the last recorded infection incurring a few years ago.
22 October, 2008
12 October, 2008
11 October, 2008
White Lightning Strikes University of Ghana. 37 Escape, Barely.
That's the top headline in all of the national media outlets today. Yesterday the University of Ghana held its interhall 12 kilometer cross-country race. Though I live in a graduate hostel, I've been training early, early in the morning with a group from an undergraduate dormitory, Akuafo Hall, laboremus et sapiamus.
I am proud to report that despite difficult conditions including heat, hills, and many faster, more athletic runners I persevered and came in first. First of all international students running in the race. First of all masters students running in the race. First of out of the 10 runners who finished last. So just 37 other runners barely finished ahead of me by only a matter of tens of minutes. So you can see my hearty dinner of fufu and goat meat was well deserved. I would like to take this opportunity to thank my fans and to announce my retirement from long distance running while I am at the top of my field - my field consisting of other slow, American, African Studies students.
I am proud to report that despite difficult conditions including heat, hills, and many faster, more athletic runners I persevered and came in first. First of all international students running in the race. First of all masters students running in the race. First of out of the 10 runners who finished last. So just 37 other runners barely finished ahead of me by only a matter of tens of minutes. So you can see my hearty dinner of fufu and goat meat was well deserved. I would like to take this opportunity to thank my fans and to announce my retirement from long distance running while I am at the top of my field - my field consisting of other slow, American, African Studies students.
09 October, 2008
Parlez vous francais? Non. Wote Twi? Daabi. Do you speak English? I thought so…
I’m learning as I go on a number of fronts, not the least of which is language. Soon after arriving, I learned my first Twi phrase: eti sen? (ehtee sayn, how are you?) to which the appropriate response is eye (ay-yay, fine). I can’t reproduce Twi orthography on this keyboard so you’ll have to accept the anglicized version. After starting strong, my Twi vocabulary building entered a drastic recession, which was especially unfortunate given how little there was to recede from. At the university, everyone speaks English. You hear people conversing in Twi and other languages with regularity, but no one has trouble understanding you or (seems to) holds it against you if you use English. So instead I focused on French.
French will serve a few purposes. Most practically, I’m planning on traveling to Cameroon over the winter holiday. I may want to work in Francophone Africa at some point, so brushing up my very dusty French skills which were never very well polished to begin with seemed like a logical strategy. Additionally, the French Club is very active here, so I’ve used that as an opportunity to meet and interact with other students. My French is improving slowly, but I was reminded that I still have a long way to go the other night when I attended a lecture on writers of the African diaspora delivered by a professor from the Sorbonne. I thought I understood or had at least previously heard 75% of the words he was using, but I was considerably less successful in piecing together their meaning. So I have a few more hours to devote to Radio France Internationale and the works of Leopold Sedar Senghor.
Recently, I’ve realized that although I may not require Twi to survive in Accra, by not studying it, I’m missing something important. My catalyst to start learning was the woman who sells me porridge in the morning. Every day, she would greet me in Twi and then throw out a few extra lines with an expectant look on her face. I felt like she was testing to see how serious I was about being here. I’m serious about being here, so I tracked down a copy of “A Comprehensive course in Twi (Asante)” with the accompanying cassette. I’ve been devoting a little time each day to teaching myself. It’s already made me feel much more connected to this place. The benefits have been, and I expect will continue to be, small, piecemeal, and realized over the long term. And that’s ok with me.
My biggest linguistic surprise has come from the language with which I expected the least trouble. English is English, or so I thought. I’m realizing more and more that even when I’m communicating in English there are subtle gaps in meaning that can often bedevil the conversation. So I’ll think that I’ve scheduled to meet one of my friends at a certain place only to find that he’s somewhere else. Or I’ll plan a route to run with one of the guys on the cross country team only to find out that we meant radically different courses. It’s hard to explain because I don’t understand what’s going on myself. Part of the story is that the vast majority of homes do not speak a European language as their first language. But I don’t want to imply that the gaps in communication are emerging because the people I’m talking to somehow have an inferior grasp of the English language. Quite the contrary. To hazard a terribly speculative guess, I think that languages are systems of meaning and that you impose your mother tongue’s system of meaning onto your new language, but the overlap isn’t perfect.
One final thought on language. Ghana has about forty different ethnic groups. Although a strong plurality of them speak Twi, linguistic fragmentation is a fact of life here as in much of the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa. English as a national language is problematic, but I wonder if without it, would the nation even be possible?
French will serve a few purposes. Most practically, I’m planning on traveling to Cameroon over the winter holiday. I may want to work in Francophone Africa at some point, so brushing up my very dusty French skills which were never very well polished to begin with seemed like a logical strategy. Additionally, the French Club is very active here, so I’ve used that as an opportunity to meet and interact with other students. My French is improving slowly, but I was reminded that I still have a long way to go the other night when I attended a lecture on writers of the African diaspora delivered by a professor from the Sorbonne. I thought I understood or had at least previously heard 75% of the words he was using, but I was considerably less successful in piecing together their meaning. So I have a few more hours to devote to Radio France Internationale and the works of Leopold Sedar Senghor.
Recently, I’ve realized that although I may not require Twi to survive in Accra, by not studying it, I’m missing something important. My catalyst to start learning was the woman who sells me porridge in the morning. Every day, she would greet me in Twi and then throw out a few extra lines with an expectant look on her face. I felt like she was testing to see how serious I was about being here. I’m serious about being here, so I tracked down a copy of “A Comprehensive course in Twi (Asante)” with the accompanying cassette. I’ve been devoting a little time each day to teaching myself. It’s already made me feel much more connected to this place. The benefits have been, and I expect will continue to be, small, piecemeal, and realized over the long term. And that’s ok with me.
My biggest linguistic surprise has come from the language with which I expected the least trouble. English is English, or so I thought. I’m realizing more and more that even when I’m communicating in English there are subtle gaps in meaning that can often bedevil the conversation. So I’ll think that I’ve scheduled to meet one of my friends at a certain place only to find that he’s somewhere else. Or I’ll plan a route to run with one of the guys on the cross country team only to find out that we meant radically different courses. It’s hard to explain because I don’t understand what’s going on myself. Part of the story is that the vast majority of homes do not speak a European language as their first language. But I don’t want to imply that the gaps in communication are emerging because the people I’m talking to somehow have an inferior grasp of the English language. Quite the contrary. To hazard a terribly speculative guess, I think that languages are systems of meaning and that you impose your mother tongue’s system of meaning onto your new language, but the overlap isn’t perfect.
One final thought on language. Ghana has about forty different ethnic groups. Although a strong plurality of them speak Twi, linguistic fragmentation is a fact of life here as in much of the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa. English as a national language is problematic, but I wonder if without it, would the nation even be possible?
02 October, 2008
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
Eid Mubarak, a few days late. Tuesday was Eid al-Fitr, the conclusion of the month of Ramadan, which means that many of my friends on campus (Yes, I do have many friends) can now partake in food and water during daylight hours. President Kuofor declared Eid al-Fitr a national holiday just a few years ago.
Speaking of the President, I just learned that he was an active member of the Rotary Club of Accra, my very own host club. Continuing the free association, I just joined two other Ambassadorial Scholars in giving brief presentations on our backgrounds and respective cultures to the club. I exchanged the flag of the Downtown Greenville Club with the President of the Accra club.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading since I arrived. I just completed Ayi Kewi Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Armah (b. Takoradi, Ghana 1939) penned this scathing critique of political corruption in post-independence Ghana just eleven years after the country attained independence. The novel’s setting straddles the end of the Nkrumah regime and the first military government, so circa 1966. Images of pollution and filth permeate the work. It is a book about life after the death of hope, of a dream rotting on the vine. I highly recommend it.
I was startled to come across such a direct indictment of Kwame Nkrumah and the Convention People’s Party. Dr. Nkrumah is afforded a great deal of respect throughout Africa. In a BBC poll a few years ago, Africans rated him as the continent’s Man of the Millenium. He is often referred to with his honorary title, Osagyefo, “the victorious one.” The new African Studies building, my academic home, at the University of Ghana is called the Kwame Nkrumah Complex. An informal survey of my classmates generated an acknowledgement that ministerial corruption was a black mark on the CPP reign, including one minister who notoriously purchased a golden bed. However, they were quick to stress Dr. Nkrumah’s unparalleled contributions to the nation’s infrastructure. They told me that he was also something of a progressive in terms of gender. He established a quota system that resulted in the election of a number of female MPs, and he secured places for the training of several female fighter pilots. Nkrumah’s role in the struggle for independence and his commitment to forging Ghanaian and Pan-African identities secure him a prominent place in the history of the continent.
The political science literature, at least until recently, has not been so kind to Dr. Nkrumah. It tends to stress the flaws in the CPP’s state-directed development policies and points to a creeping authoritarianism in the administration’s attitude toward political opposition. At least one of the works that I read, however, referred to something of a revisionist movement of late that sought to rehabilitate the former leader’s image.
Regardless, my impression is that the legacy of Nkrumah and the tumultuous years that followed his ouster is a complicated one. That’s about as deep as my assessment goes for the moment.
Speaking of the President, I just learned that he was an active member of the Rotary Club of Accra, my very own host club. Continuing the free association, I just joined two other Ambassadorial Scholars in giving brief presentations on our backgrounds and respective cultures to the club. I exchanged the flag of the Downtown Greenville Club with the President of the Accra club.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading since I arrived. I just completed Ayi Kewi Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Armah (b. Takoradi, Ghana 1939) penned this scathing critique of political corruption in post-independence Ghana just eleven years after the country attained independence. The novel’s setting straddles the end of the Nkrumah regime and the first military government, so circa 1966. Images of pollution and filth permeate the work. It is a book about life after the death of hope, of a dream rotting on the vine. I highly recommend it.
I was startled to come across such a direct indictment of Kwame Nkrumah and the Convention People’s Party. Dr. Nkrumah is afforded a great deal of respect throughout Africa. In a BBC poll a few years ago, Africans rated him as the continent’s Man of the Millenium. He is often referred to with his honorary title, Osagyefo, “the victorious one.” The new African Studies building, my academic home, at the University of Ghana is called the Kwame Nkrumah Complex. An informal survey of my classmates generated an acknowledgement that ministerial corruption was a black mark on the CPP reign, including one minister who notoriously purchased a golden bed. However, they were quick to stress Dr. Nkrumah’s unparalleled contributions to the nation’s infrastructure. They told me that he was also something of a progressive in terms of gender. He established a quota system that resulted in the election of a number of female MPs, and he secured places for the training of several female fighter pilots. Nkrumah’s role in the struggle for independence and his commitment to forging Ghanaian and Pan-African identities secure him a prominent place in the history of the continent.
The political science literature, at least until recently, has not been so kind to Dr. Nkrumah. It tends to stress the flaws in the CPP’s state-directed development policies and points to a creeping authoritarianism in the administration’s attitude toward political opposition. At least one of the works that I read, however, referred to something of a revisionist movement of late that sought to rehabilitate the former leader’s image.
Regardless, my impression is that the legacy of Nkrumah and the tumultuous years that followed his ouster is a complicated one. That’s about as deep as my assessment goes for the moment.
24 September, 2008
Getting My Rotary Fix
On Sunday and Monday, I had the good fortune to attend Rotary functions on consecutive days. On Sunday, I and the other Ambassadorial Scholars at Legon joined the campus branch of Rotaract for its second meeting of the year. Rotaract is a Rotary-affiliated fellowship and service organization for people aged 18 – 30. Some Rotaract clubs are located on college campuses, but others are independent. This particular Rotaract club is supported by my host club, the Rotary Club of Accra.
At the Rotaract meeting, after rousing renditions of “When the saints go marching in” and “Clementine,” we heard a former Rotaracter give an engaging account of the history and purpose of Rotary and Rotaract. I was previously unaware that one of the first projects undertaken by Paul Harris and company in the early 1900s was to purchase a horse for an itinerant preacher so he could make his rounds more efficiently. I also learned that the next District 9100 conference will be held in Togo around Easter 2009. The other scholars and I had the opportunity to introduce ourselves, explain the purpose of the scholarship, and answer questions. The picture immediately above this post is of me exchanging the Rotary Club of Greenville’s banner with the Rotaract president, Collins.
On Monday, I made my way to the sprawling International Trade Fair Center to join 91 Rotarians for a special Accra intercity Rotary meeting to kick off the celebration of 50 years of Rotary in Ghana. In 1958, one year after independence, the Rotary Club of Accra was formed. It was the first in Anglophone West Africa, preceded in the region only by clubs in Dakar, Senegal (ca 1939) and Abijan, Ivory Coast. The young Accra club helped found other clubs, such as Kano in Northern Nigeria. In 1969, Accra West broke off from the founding club to form the second Ghanaian club.
The meeting itself was very enjoyable. The president calls the meetings to order by striking with a mallet two metal plates attached to a replica stool. The stool is a symbol of power in Ghana (this will receive its own post soon). The sound is distinctive – like stones falling in a bucket - as is the rhythm, two slow followed by two quick strikes. The members were enthusiastic in song and donations. They expressed hopes that one day Ghana would become its own Rotary district. The flags on the club’s front table spoke of exchanges with Rotary clubs from all over the world. At the table seated to my right was a former marketing executive who had managed accounts with Unilever; to my left was the former ambassador from Ghana to the United Kingdom. To describe the Accra clubs as cosmopolitan is perhaps a bit of an understatement. I will certainly look forward to further events like these.
At the Rotaract meeting, after rousing renditions of “When the saints go marching in” and “Clementine,” we heard a former Rotaracter give an engaging account of the history and purpose of Rotary and Rotaract. I was previously unaware that one of the first projects undertaken by Paul Harris and company in the early 1900s was to purchase a horse for an itinerant preacher so he could make his rounds more efficiently. I also learned that the next District 9100 conference will be held in Togo around Easter 2009. The other scholars and I had the opportunity to introduce ourselves, explain the purpose of the scholarship, and answer questions. The picture immediately above this post is of me exchanging the Rotary Club of Greenville’s banner with the Rotaract president, Collins.
On Monday, I made my way to the sprawling International Trade Fair Center to join 91 Rotarians for a special Accra intercity Rotary meeting to kick off the celebration of 50 years of Rotary in Ghana. In 1958, one year after independence, the Rotary Club of Accra was formed. It was the first in Anglophone West Africa, preceded in the region only by clubs in Dakar, Senegal (ca 1939) and Abijan, Ivory Coast. The young Accra club helped found other clubs, such as Kano in Northern Nigeria. In 1969, Accra West broke off from the founding club to form the second Ghanaian club.
The meeting itself was very enjoyable. The president calls the meetings to order by striking with a mallet two metal plates attached to a replica stool. The stool is a symbol of power in Ghana (this will receive its own post soon). The sound is distinctive – like stones falling in a bucket - as is the rhythm, two slow followed by two quick strikes. The members were enthusiastic in song and donations. They expressed hopes that one day Ghana would become its own Rotary district. The flags on the club’s front table spoke of exchanges with Rotary clubs from all over the world. At the table seated to my right was a former marketing executive who had managed accounts with Unilever; to my left was the former ambassador from Ghana to the United Kingdom. To describe the Accra clubs as cosmopolitan is perhaps a bit of an understatement. I will certainly look forward to further events like these.
20 September, 2008
The skin of a living thought
A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
To re-frame Justice Holmes' observation: words are receptacles of cultural meaning. My Twi (language of the Akan) vocabulary is still shamefully limited, but two recent lessons on word etymologies have reminded me of the importance of expanding it.
Lesson One.
I was recently assigned a reading on Akan proverbs and myths relating to women. Although Akan society is matrilineal, many myths portray women negatively. Ananse, the trickster spider who often plays the protagonist, has a habit of manipulating women for his own advancement. The smattering of proverbs provided by the author was similarly female unfriendly. For instance: “The hen also knows that it is dawn, but it allows the cock to announce it.” Subversively, one of the women’s halls on campus appropriated that proverb, shortened it to, “The hen knows it is dawn,” and adopted it as the hall motto.
The Twi word for proverb derives from the term for palm tree. The palm tree has several uses. Palm oil is a ubiquitous ingredient in local dishes. Palm wine (which I have yet to try) and raffia for clothing also come from the plant. The utility of the palm tree, however, is not readily apparent. I thought they were for drinking Coronas under, not food, drink, and clothing. You see the connection to proverbs, then. A proverb’s meaning is neither unitary nor immediately accessible. The same proverb employed in different contexts justifies different, maybe even contradictory, actions. Proverbs are not wisdom candy; they require mental rumination.
My current favorite: when your hand is in the baby’s mouth, do not strike it on the head.
Lesson Two.
I recently attended a forum on Afro-German identity at the WEB Dubois Center in Accra. The event featured two movies focusing on Afro-Germans followed by a panel discussion. Identity is a function of position. An Ashanti and an Ewe meeting by chance in Heathrowe are going to share a common identification as Ghanaians and Africans, in no small part because that’s how the other people in the terminal see them. When they return to Ghana, however, the unique features of their more localized identities will re-emerge.
Identity, especially when it straddles cultures and continents, is to say the least a sticky concept. How you negotiate your own self-concept is complicated by the ways in which society tries to negotiate it for you. One panelist observed that in Germany, she’s black; in Ghana, she’s white. In both cases, she isn’t fully accepted. Which brings us to our second word derivation lesson.
Obruni was originally translated to me as “white person,” but in fact it’s not a reference to skin color. Black Americans, for instance, are called obruni. Obruni is instead an assertion of the target’s status as a foreigner, an outsider, as indicated by dress, language, or any of the other innumerable factors that betray a person’s non-native-ness.
Three derivations of the word were offered: 1) from the word for wicked person or liar; 2) from the word for corn; 3) from the Portuguese word for white person. I’m obviously least comfortable with the first account, but, even if that is the authentic origin, a trip to Elmina slave castle should preclude any snap judgments on its continued use.
In any case, the word’s derivation is much less important than the spirit in which the word is used. Sometimes obruni is thrown out as part of a casual, non-pejorative greeting. Sometimes it’s shouted to get your attention or chanted by children seeking attention, money, or a pen. Sometimes you’ll pick it out in an otherwise impenetrable conversation among Twi speakers. On days when I particularly want to blend in, its use is a rather blunt reminder that I haven’t and can’t and this can be rather tough to swallow. I, nevertheless, understand that my race is part of a system of privileges into which I was born. I have no cause to complain.
The quest for cross-cultural understanding goes on.
To re-frame Justice Holmes' observation: words are receptacles of cultural meaning. My Twi (language of the Akan) vocabulary is still shamefully limited, but two recent lessons on word etymologies have reminded me of the importance of expanding it.
Lesson One.
I was recently assigned a reading on Akan proverbs and myths relating to women. Although Akan society is matrilineal, many myths portray women negatively. Ananse, the trickster spider who often plays the protagonist, has a habit of manipulating women for his own advancement. The smattering of proverbs provided by the author was similarly female unfriendly. For instance: “The hen also knows that it is dawn, but it allows the cock to announce it.” Subversively, one of the women’s halls on campus appropriated that proverb, shortened it to, “The hen knows it is dawn,” and adopted it as the hall motto.
The Twi word for proverb derives from the term for palm tree. The palm tree has several uses. Palm oil is a ubiquitous ingredient in local dishes. Palm wine (which I have yet to try) and raffia for clothing also come from the plant. The utility of the palm tree, however, is not readily apparent. I thought they were for drinking Coronas under, not food, drink, and clothing. You see the connection to proverbs, then. A proverb’s meaning is neither unitary nor immediately accessible. The same proverb employed in different contexts justifies different, maybe even contradictory, actions. Proverbs are not wisdom candy; they require mental rumination.
My current favorite: when your hand is in the baby’s mouth, do not strike it on the head.
Lesson Two.
I recently attended a forum on Afro-German identity at the WEB Dubois Center in Accra. The event featured two movies focusing on Afro-Germans followed by a panel discussion. Identity is a function of position. An Ashanti and an Ewe meeting by chance in Heathrowe are going to share a common identification as Ghanaians and Africans, in no small part because that’s how the other people in the terminal see them. When they return to Ghana, however, the unique features of their more localized identities will re-emerge.
Identity, especially when it straddles cultures and continents, is to say the least a sticky concept. How you negotiate your own self-concept is complicated by the ways in which society tries to negotiate it for you. One panelist observed that in Germany, she’s black; in Ghana, she’s white. In both cases, she isn’t fully accepted. Which brings us to our second word derivation lesson.
Obruni was originally translated to me as “white person,” but in fact it’s not a reference to skin color. Black Americans, for instance, are called obruni. Obruni is instead an assertion of the target’s status as a foreigner, an outsider, as indicated by dress, language, or any of the other innumerable factors that betray a person’s non-native-ness.
Three derivations of the word were offered: 1) from the word for wicked person or liar; 2) from the word for corn; 3) from the Portuguese word for white person. I’m obviously least comfortable with the first account, but, even if that is the authentic origin, a trip to Elmina slave castle should preclude any snap judgments on its continued use.
In any case, the word’s derivation is much less important than the spirit in which the word is used. Sometimes obruni is thrown out as part of a casual, non-pejorative greeting. Sometimes it’s shouted to get your attention or chanted by children seeking attention, money, or a pen. Sometimes you’ll pick it out in an otherwise impenetrable conversation among Twi speakers. On days when I particularly want to blend in, its use is a rather blunt reminder that I haven’t and can’t and this can be rather tough to swallow. I, nevertheless, understand that my race is part of a system of privileges into which I was born. I have no cause to complain.
The quest for cross-cultural understanding goes on.
08 September, 2008
Greeted by Success in Hohoe
It is the rare day when a young man gets to shake hands with Success. My chance came Friday night. I had taken a bus to Hohoe (“ho-hwe”), the second largest town in the Volta Region of eastern Ghana. Stumbling groggily into the rather ambitiously named Grand Hotel, I met Success, the front desk clerk. Soon a large Star beer slowly started to disappear in front of me, faster once Libya scored on the Black Stars in the 83rd minute.
The next morning my travelling companions and I made our way to Agmusta (Wli) Falls. There, we were guided across swollen streams and through dense rainforest to the upper falls. Up – past fields of cassava and yam. Up – under the shade of palm, banana, and mahogany trees. Up – with butterflies at our knees, mist on our lips, and bats in the cliffs shrieking on the cliffs overhead. After two hours, the muffled roar of the falls gave way to a constant thunder. The path ended, and there, from a stream scarcely fifteen feet across, the whole might of the rainy season poured forth (Agmusta in Ewe means “let it pour forth), nearly on top of us.
It would have been a pleasant day if I had just taken a stroll around the tallest waterfall in West Africa and supported a community ecotourism project (60% of the 8 Ghana cedis I paid to go to the upper falls went to support community projects in Wli). But I didn’t hike the falls alone. I hiked them with Alfonso.
Alfonso, our guide, was born in Wli, schooled in Kpando and Accra, and now tours (in English, French, and Arabic no less) and farms his family lands. I learned from him that there are two growing seasons in the region. The first, major harvest comes in June and July. Fields are mixed cropped with corn, cashe minor growing season which harvests in December is just corn. Alfonso converts a portion of each season’s harvest into seed for the next planting. He can afford fertilizer, herbicides (which are relatively new to the community), and some hired labor. He clears and tills his fields by hand. His fields are fragmented, i.e. not contiguous. Land becomes fragmented because it is passed down to all sons, not just one (so not primogeniture). I don’t know if this inheritance scheme is generalizable beyond Wli, or even beyond Alfonso’s family. In Wli, surplus yields are usually sold in Wli, Hohoe, or Ho to middle men who take the crops to larger markets. Alfonso says they pay fair prices, but he also said that when farmers have money, farmers transport their crops to Accra themselves.
60% of Ghanaians are involved in agriculture. Here, agricultural economics is development economics. On a concluding note, two of the books I’m reading for theories of development, The Stages of Economic Growth by W.W. Rostow and The Theory of Economic Growth by Arthur Lewis, both call for a Green Revolution in Africa. Those books were written about fifty years ago. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, chaired by Kofi Annan, was founded within the past two years.
The next morning my travelling companions and I made our way to Agmusta (Wli) Falls. There, we were guided across swollen streams and through dense rainforest to the upper falls. Up – past fields of cassava and yam. Up – under the shade of palm, banana, and mahogany trees. Up – with butterflies at our knees, mist on our lips, and bats in the cliffs shrieking on the cliffs overhead. After two hours, the muffled roar of the falls gave way to a constant thunder. The path ended, and there, from a stream scarcely fifteen feet across, the whole might of the rainy season poured forth (Agmusta in Ewe means “let it pour forth), nearly on top of us.
It would have been a pleasant day if I had just taken a stroll around the tallest waterfall in West Africa and supported a community ecotourism project (60% of the 8 Ghana cedis I paid to go to the upper falls went to support community projects in Wli). But I didn’t hike the falls alone. I hiked them with Alfonso.
Alfonso, our guide, was born in Wli, schooled in Kpando and Accra, and now tours (in English, French, and Arabic no less) and farms his family lands. I learned from him that there are two growing seasons in the region. The first, major harvest comes in June and July. Fields are mixed cropped with corn, cashe minor growing season which harvests in December is just corn. Alfonso converts a portion of each season’s harvest into seed for the next planting. He can afford fertilizer, herbicides (which are relatively new to the community), and some hired labor. He clears and tills his fields by hand. His fields are fragmented, i.e. not contiguous. Land becomes fragmented because it is passed down to all sons, not just one (so not primogeniture). I don’t know if this inheritance scheme is generalizable beyond Wli, or even beyond Alfonso’s family. In Wli, surplus yields are usually sold in Wli, Hohoe, or Ho to middle men who take the crops to larger markets. Alfonso says they pay fair prices, but he also said that when farmers have money, farmers transport their crops to Accra themselves.
60% of Ghanaians are involved in agriculture. Here, agricultural economics is development economics. On a concluding note, two of the books I’m reading for theories of development, The Stages of Economic Growth by W.W. Rostow and The Theory of Economic Growth by Arthur Lewis, both call for a Green Revolution in Africa. Those books were written about fifty years ago. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, chaired by Kofi Annan, was founded within the past two years.
31 August, 2008
Development Dialoguing With the Big Guns
The rich and famous continue to march through my fair city. Friday evening, I attended an on-campus panel featuring Justin Lin, the World Bank’s newly installed Chief Economist. Dr. Lin is the first native of a developing country (China) to occupy this post. He has pledged to make African development the priority of his tenure, and Ghana, “the gateway to Africa,” was his first stop on the continent since being appointed Chief Economist. Dr. Lin was joined on the panel by, among others, J.H. Mensah, the Chairperson of Ghana’s National Development Planning Commission.
Dr. Lin’s address was titled, “Inclusive Growth and the Role of Knowledge: Lessons from China and East Asia.” Dr. Lin began by reviewing the four elements of competitive advantage identified by Harvard professor Michael Porter. They are (1) abundant, low cost factors of production (i.e. comparative advantage), (2) a large domestic market, (3) an industrial cluster (He didn’t define this. I’m assuming it means locating the various facilities needed for a good’s production close to each other, but that could be wrong), and (4) competitive markets.
A nation’s development depends on its willingness to pursue its competitive advantage. And so the historical argument: In the wake of World War II, East Asian nations pursued labor and resource intensive industries which played to their competitive advantages. The rest of the developing world did not. South Korea may be producing robots and cloning puppies today, but it only moved into those high-technology industries after it built up a comparative advantage in those fields. Similarly, the whimsical example of Chinese production women’s underwear for sale in Europe was held up as paradigmatic. China identified a labor-intensive industry, imported the machinery, acquired expertise, and then began to produce and export both panties and the panty making machines. Dr. Lin’s example, not mine.
According to Dr. Lin, Latin America, Africa, and South Asian adopted competitive advantage defying (CAD) policies by attempting to engage in capital intensive industries like auto manufacturing. They could not compete with more developed nations. Their problems were compounded by interventionist national governments whose economic policies such as subsidies and price setting, led to crony capitalism, rent seeking, and low efficiency. Dr. Lin advocated for the emergence of “facilitating states,” or those governments which collect and disseminate information, provide education and infrastructure, and institute reasonable bankruptcy laws so that entrepreneurs are not unduly punished if their ventures fail. He ended by asserting that if Ghana followed its comparative advantage, perhaps in cocoa or shea butter, then it could join the ranks of medium-income countries within a generation.
Dr. Lin has his PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago. He is one of the most influential minds in development economics. My economic credentials include the successful completion of Introduction to Economics at Furman. Nevertheless, how can we identify youth unless it goes arm and arm with brashness? So I’ll say it: I was underwhelmed by the Chief Economist’s argument. Telling a developing nation to grow by following its competitive advantage is roughly equivalent to telling an unemployed person to get a job by going to work. I’m not the only one who noticed that not-so-subtle nuance. One of the other speakers and an audience member made reference to it.
I was vaguely aware that the evidence for complicating Dr. Lin’s presentation was readily available, so, for the benefit of myself and my reader(s), I did some research. When considering the theme of Dr. Lin’s speech, lessons for the developing world from the rise of China and East Asia, I think it’s also important to consider (1) the IMF’s and World Bank’s prior activities in Ghana, and (2) the actual policies that China and East Asia followed.
Point number one is that starting in 1983 when it received its first IMF structural adjustment loan, Ghana was considered a darling of the Bretton Woods institutions. From 1983-2000, it received 26 such loans. Over that period Ghana did register moderate growth (1.2%), but the country bordered on economic collapse due to high inflation (averaging 32% over that same period) [William Easterly, White Man’s Burden, 67]. I’m not asserting causation between the structural adjustment program and Ghana’s economic woes. Maybe the case could be made that Ghana did not properly curtail government spending or corruption over that same period. I’ll do more digging, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who considered structural adjustment a success anywhere in the developing world.
Two of the speakers referred to the fact that at independence in 1957, Ghana and Korea had the same GDP per capita. South Korea’s GDP per capita is now 10 times higher than Ghana’s. Dr. Lin pointed to Ghana’s failure to follow its competitive advantage to account for the economic divergence between the two nations. He might also have acknowledged the formidable health challenges facing Ghana’s work force. The World Health Organization estimates that it would cost about US$40 per person per year to meet the essential health needs of a Ghanaian worker [Michael Weinstein, “The Economic Paradox of Ghana’s Poverty,” Financial Times 10 Nov. 2003]. Structural adjustment programs required developing nations to cut their social welfare spending.
Finally, China’s rise was not driven by marching in lock-step with neoliberal economic prescriptions. In Easterly’s words, “[China’s economy] combines lack of property rights with free markets, Communist Party dictatorship with feedback on local public services, and municipal state enterprises with private ones. ” [Easterly 354] Korean growth is also partly attributable to state owned enterprises. The story is more complicated than the discovery and pursuit of competitive advantage.
And you thought I was just going to be talking about what I had for lunch. This is just the first round on this set of fascinating and important issues. Especially since I’m taking Theories of Development this semester, I’ll be thinking and writing a lot on this over the next few months.
Dr. Lin’s address was titled, “Inclusive Growth and the Role of Knowledge: Lessons from China and East Asia.” Dr. Lin began by reviewing the four elements of competitive advantage identified by Harvard professor Michael Porter. They are (1) abundant, low cost factors of production (i.e. comparative advantage), (2) a large domestic market, (3) an industrial cluster (He didn’t define this. I’m assuming it means locating the various facilities needed for a good’s production close to each other, but that could be wrong), and (4) competitive markets.
A nation’s development depends on its willingness to pursue its competitive advantage. And so the historical argument: In the wake of World War II, East Asian nations pursued labor and resource intensive industries which played to their competitive advantages. The rest of the developing world did not. South Korea may be producing robots and cloning puppies today, but it only moved into those high-technology industries after it built up a comparative advantage in those fields. Similarly, the whimsical example of Chinese production women’s underwear for sale in Europe was held up as paradigmatic. China identified a labor-intensive industry, imported the machinery, acquired expertise, and then began to produce and export both panties and the panty making machines. Dr. Lin’s example, not mine.
According to Dr. Lin, Latin America, Africa, and South Asian adopted competitive advantage defying (CAD) policies by attempting to engage in capital intensive industries like auto manufacturing. They could not compete with more developed nations. Their problems were compounded by interventionist national governments whose economic policies such as subsidies and price setting, led to crony capitalism, rent seeking, and low efficiency. Dr. Lin advocated for the emergence of “facilitating states,” or those governments which collect and disseminate information, provide education and infrastructure, and institute reasonable bankruptcy laws so that entrepreneurs are not unduly punished if their ventures fail. He ended by asserting that if Ghana followed its comparative advantage, perhaps in cocoa or shea butter, then it could join the ranks of medium-income countries within a generation.
Dr. Lin has his PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago. He is one of the most influential minds in development economics. My economic credentials include the successful completion of Introduction to Economics at Furman. Nevertheless, how can we identify youth unless it goes arm and arm with brashness? So I’ll say it: I was underwhelmed by the Chief Economist’s argument. Telling a developing nation to grow by following its competitive advantage is roughly equivalent to telling an unemployed person to get a job by going to work. I’m not the only one who noticed that not-so-subtle nuance. One of the other speakers and an audience member made reference to it.
I was vaguely aware that the evidence for complicating Dr. Lin’s presentation was readily available, so, for the benefit of myself and my reader(s), I did some research. When considering the theme of Dr. Lin’s speech, lessons for the developing world from the rise of China and East Asia, I think it’s also important to consider (1) the IMF’s and World Bank’s prior activities in Ghana, and (2) the actual policies that China and East Asia followed.
Point number one is that starting in 1983 when it received its first IMF structural adjustment loan, Ghana was considered a darling of the Bretton Woods institutions. From 1983-2000, it received 26 such loans. Over that period Ghana did register moderate growth (1.2%), but the country bordered on economic collapse due to high inflation (averaging 32% over that same period) [William Easterly, White Man’s Burden, 67]. I’m not asserting causation between the structural adjustment program and Ghana’s economic woes. Maybe the case could be made that Ghana did not properly curtail government spending or corruption over that same period. I’ll do more digging, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who considered structural adjustment a success anywhere in the developing world.
Two of the speakers referred to the fact that at independence in 1957, Ghana and Korea had the same GDP per capita. South Korea’s GDP per capita is now 10 times higher than Ghana’s. Dr. Lin pointed to Ghana’s failure to follow its competitive advantage to account for the economic divergence between the two nations. He might also have acknowledged the formidable health challenges facing Ghana’s work force. The World Health Organization estimates that it would cost about US$40 per person per year to meet the essential health needs of a Ghanaian worker [Michael Weinstein, “The Economic Paradox of Ghana’s Poverty,” Financial Times 10 Nov. 2003]. Structural adjustment programs required developing nations to cut their social welfare spending.
Finally, China’s rise was not driven by marching in lock-step with neoliberal economic prescriptions. In Easterly’s words, “[China’s economy] combines lack of property rights with free markets, Communist Party dictatorship with feedback on local public services, and municipal state enterprises with private ones. ” [Easterly 354] Korean growth is also partly attributable to state owned enterprises. The story is more complicated than the discovery and pursuit of competitive advantage.
And you thought I was just going to be talking about what I had for lunch. This is just the first round on this set of fascinating and important issues. Especially since I’m taking Theories of Development this semester, I’ll be thinking and writing a lot on this over the next few months.
27 August, 2008
My First Rotary Meeting in Ghana
Two events in the past week have given me an introduction to the Rotary in Ghana. On Saturday, I received a call from my host counselor, Dr. Gyabaa, inviting me to his home near Accra. An hour later, I was drinking a Guiness Malta and being plied with heaps of jollof rice in the Gyabaa home. I met Dr. Gyabaa’s wife and two of his five children. By rather unbelievable coincidence, one of Dr. Gyabaa’s sons had applied to Furman, though he ultimately decided to attend college in Ghana. Dr. Gyabaa’s hospitality was very much appreciated.
On Monday, I joined Dr. Gyabaa at the Labaadi Beach Hotel for my first Rotary club meeting in Ghana. Unfortunately, due to the aforementioned traffic, I only arrived for the last twenty minutes of the meeting, so a more comprehensive account of the praxis and practice of the Ghanaian Rotary will have to wait until next time. Dr. Gyabaa has shared with me a few details about his club, however. It is the first and largest club in Ghana. Chartered in 1958 just a year after independence, the club still boasts an active and involved membership fifty years later. I was deeply disappointed to have missed the speaker at this Monday’s meeting. The gentleman was associated with an organization involved in supervising the upcoming presidential elections. I suppose they’ll just have to bring me back to Labaadi Beach for another lunch and another speaker. I never said that being a Rotary scholar was challenging all of the time.
On Monday, I joined Dr. Gyabaa at the Labaadi Beach Hotel for my first Rotary club meeting in Ghana. Unfortunately, due to the aforementioned traffic, I only arrived for the last twenty minutes of the meeting, so a more comprehensive account of the praxis and practice of the Ghanaian Rotary will have to wait until next time. Dr. Gyabaa has shared with me a few details about his club, however. It is the first and largest club in Ghana. Chartered in 1958 just a year after independence, the club still boasts an active and involved membership fifty years later. I was deeply disappointed to have missed the speaker at this Monday’s meeting. The gentleman was associated with an organization involved in supervising the upcoming presidential elections. I suppose they’ll just have to bring me back to Labaadi Beach for another lunch and another speaker. I never said that being a Rotary scholar was challenging all of the time.
18 August, 2008
The Swing of Things
The adjustment process continues. My movements have been confined mostly to the campus. I have visited three suburbs of Accra (Medina, Osu, and Achimota) for shopping but am yet to make it into Accra proper. I have logged one successful run on a tro-tro. Tro-tros are the nearly ubiquitous vans that offer cozy (or cramped depending on your mood) and cost effective (though taxis are not terribly expensive either) transportation to pretty much anywhere you want to go. A twenty minute ride the other day cost me 35 pesawas, or about 35 US cents.Regardless of how you travel, the traffic is pretty slow around Accra. There’s a great deal of construction. I think at least some of it consists of projects funded in part by the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation, which is supporting infrastructure upgrades, particularly between Accra and the port of Tema.
Personally, I feel that I’m adjusting well. I’ve already had several engrossing conversations, many started spontaneously by strangers eating at the same food stand or sitting on the same bench. I was told that Ghanaians would be extremely friendly, and my experiences on the campus have certainly born that out. The most recent Pew Global Attitudes Survey notes that about 70% of Ghanaians have favorable views of Americans. For the most part, it seems that any anger with US foreign policy is directed at the government and not confused obrunis (Twi for white people).
I’ve been eating well. For breakfast, I usually have fruit (bananas or a mango) or a bread and egg sandwich. Lunch and dinner are usually organized around a starch, either jollof rice or pounded cassava or maize. The pounded cassava or maize comes in doughy balls called fufu and banku. You use your right hand to break off a piece (the left hand is considered unclean and therefore not appropriate for eating, shaking hands, etc.) and dip it in a soup which may be based on groundnuts (peanuts) or palm oil. I’ve also had beans with plantains and gari, which is a powder made from dried cassava. I’m sure I’ll become more food savvy in the coming weeks, but for now I’m happy that I’ve found good tasting meals that agree with my stomach.
Projects for the week include straightening out my academic program, searching out internship/volunteer opportunities, and continuing to explore the library.
Personally, I feel that I’m adjusting well. I’ve already had several engrossing conversations, many started spontaneously by strangers eating at the same food stand or sitting on the same bench. I was told that Ghanaians would be extremely friendly, and my experiences on the campus have certainly born that out. The most recent Pew Global Attitudes Survey notes that about 70% of Ghanaians have favorable views of Americans. For the most part, it seems that any anger with US foreign policy is directed at the government and not confused obrunis (Twi for white people).
I’ve been eating well. For breakfast, I usually have fruit (bananas or a mango) or a bread and egg sandwich. Lunch and dinner are usually organized around a starch, either jollof rice or pounded cassava or maize. The pounded cassava or maize comes in doughy balls called fufu and banku. You use your right hand to break off a piece (the left hand is considered unclean and therefore not appropriate for eating, shaking hands, etc.) and dip it in a soup which may be based on groundnuts (peanuts) or palm oil. I’ve also had beans with plantains and gari, which is a powder made from dried cassava. I’m sure I’ll become more food savvy in the coming weeks, but for now I’m happy that I’ve found good tasting meals that agree with my stomach.
Projects for the week include straightening out my academic program, searching out internship/volunteer opportunities, and continuing to explore the library.
13 August, 2008
Kofi Annan Was Here
Ghana's hopes for an Olympic medal were dashed the other day as its last Cuban-trained boxer was defeated. The nation and this very university had another shot at the international news cycle this week as none other than former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, was installed as the University Chancellor. The ceremony was attended by the President of Ghana, John Kuofor. Although I did not get the chance to give Chancellor Annan my new cell phone number or invite him back to my room for some water and reading, another Ambassadorial Scholar and I did make our way up to the Great Hall where the ceremony was taking place (picture included). There we saw the new chancellor and assembled dignitaries from a tv screen outside the building.
Secretary Annan adds to the University of Ghana's already growing profile. I don't have enough information to comment authoritatively on the state of tertiary education in West Africa, but I think I'm safe in saying that the options and access of residents are limited. Nevertheless, I said Legon (another name for the university after the wealthy suburb of Accra in which it's located) is on the rise. I received some insight into this fact when I was unexpectedly roped into an orientation session for freshmen. The University of Ghana's enrollment as of the 92/93 school year was about 2,000 students. By 97/98 enrollment had jumped to about 9,000. Incredibly, over the next decade, that figure tripled to the current student population of over 27,000. This at least in part accounts for the flurry of construction taking place all over the campus.
12 August, 2008
I have arrived safely and am (almost) completely settled in, thanks in large part to the very generous help of all sorts of people at the University. Assurances that people here would be extremely friendly have been more than born out by my few days worth of experience.
For those of you not familiar, let me quickly explain what I am doing at the University of Ghana at Legon. I was awarded a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship by District 7750 of Upstate South Carolina. Rotary, an international service-oriented organization for professionals, offers scholarships to students around the world. The Ambassadorial Scholarship empowers young people to be ambassadors of goodwill, sharing and absorbing a foreign culture. I selected the University of Ghana for its reputation as one of the finest colleges in West Africa. I am drawn to West Africa intellectually becaus of its connection to a range of important issues including global poverty, socio-economic development, democratization, the politics of oil, and the historic and current impact of U.S. foreign policy. I will be writing about all of these issues in this blog.
At the University, I will pursue an MA in African Studies, which will take approximately 12 months to complete. My Rotary Scholarship is covering my tuition, room, board, and travel expenses. It is only thanks to Rotary's generous financial support that this amazing opportunity is possible. My sponsor counselor, Dr. Gyabaa, even came to meet me at the airport.
I'll post again later this week with pictures, more details about the University, and my initial impressions of my new home. In the mean time, if you have comments or questions, please feel free to contact me at petedemarco@gmail.com. Thanks for checking in.
For those of you not familiar, let me quickly explain what I am doing at the University of Ghana at Legon. I was awarded a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship by District 7750 of Upstate South Carolina. Rotary, an international service-oriented organization for professionals, offers scholarships to students around the world. The Ambassadorial Scholarship empowers young people to be ambassadors of goodwill, sharing and absorbing a foreign culture. I selected the University of Ghana for its reputation as one of the finest colleges in West Africa. I am drawn to West Africa intellectually becaus of its connection to a range of important issues including global poverty, socio-economic development, democratization, the politics of oil, and the historic and current impact of U.S. foreign policy. I will be writing about all of these issues in this blog.
At the University, I will pursue an MA in African Studies, which will take approximately 12 months to complete. My Rotary Scholarship is covering my tuition, room, board, and travel expenses. It is only thanks to Rotary's generous financial support that this amazing opportunity is possible. My sponsor counselor, Dr. Gyabaa, even came to meet me at the airport.
I'll post again later this week with pictures, more details about the University, and my initial impressions of my new home. In the mean time, if you have comments or questions, please feel free to contact me at petedemarco@gmail.com. Thanks for checking in.
06 August, 2008
Almost gone
Thank you for checking out my blog. I plan on using this as a platform to record some thoughts while I study at the University of Ghana on a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship.
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