Advertisement
Published: November 20th 2008
Edit Blog Post
This is today my last day working on the project, as I will be travelling to Ivory coast, Burkina Faso and Niger before flying back to France (and then go to India and Indonesia for my Birthday and Christmas)
This has definitely been a very interesting project and I hope I have managed to add value to it. In the past weeks, I have worked on finalising the Business and Financial Plan, which ultimately will help us with the fundraising. We have already identified potential donors or lenders to contribute to the project.
We have also spent a very large amount of time networking with the key stakeholders in the area: government representatives (the big success was to be granted for free premises in the state offices of the region’s capital), community chief and groups, church representative, school/vocational training institutions, etc. The main objective is to initiate a network that works by itself and contribute to the success of the project. Identifying key stakeholders and convince them of the project help launching the incredible “word of mouth” advertising campaign, so effective in this part of the world.
I could of course talk hours about it (the business plan
alone is about 20 pages long) but I will just tell you 2 experiences that were the most significant to me:
The community tour:
Hayford, Simon (he is one of the person responsible for the school where I used to teach) and myself went to visit some of the communities that we target for the project. Mainly relying on agriculture, they seem to miss the benefits of Ghana economic growth. In order to talk to the women’s representative, it is necessary to first request permission of the village’s chief. To be honest, I didn’t understand much of this very formal meeting (n plastic chairs) as it was in Ga (one of the main languages in Ghana). But we managed to discuss with one of the representative of the women’s group. These groups are very key in villages and women, even if they are not always formally recognised as so, seem to have great influence in these communities. We have spent the whole day this way sitting on chairs in front of group of women mainly and touring in the villages to communicate about the project (I felt like being in a presidential campaign).
Presentation to the women’s
group meeting:
Each zone/village seems to have groups of women who held meeting regularly. I wanted to attend them in order to see their reactions on the project and start recruiting potential beneficiaries. This is how I ended up presenting the project (in English and then translated in Twi and Ga) in front of 30ish women which was maybe one of the hardest presentation of life ;-). Between the chicken, the kids and the Fufu preparation, I had to try to get the attention of the group about… financial stuff… But I can tell you, most of them have strong personalities and are not afraid to voice them (working in Germany, trust me that you can feel the difference in communication). I found the whole experience amazing though, as I was trying to understand the hierarchy in the group. A group of leaders were sitting in circle in the middle of a larger circle composed by the rest of the group. They were animating the discussions, giving voice to other women, disciplining others for being too noisy… In brackets: I find it always amazing to see 40 years old large women in local dress taking their mobile (often much
better than mine…) or texting. Mobile phones have revolutionised the whole communication tools in Africa as it is very easy to implement (a receptor/emitter and electricity is enough) and the cost is limited.
Development activities:
It is amazing the economy created by development organisations in Ghana. They are flourishing everywhere and it is sometimes (or maybe often) difficult not to be sceptical about the needs and effects of these organisations on the communities. Having volunteers everywhere can indeed bring a dynamic of change in certain ways, but change for what? Not so many development workers are experienced (including me) in dealing appropriately with such projects in such a different culture. Of course, there is a gap between a 18 year-old I-like-to-party-in-Africa-because-it-s-cool, the want-to-save-the-world and the 40-year-old-I-have-seen-too-much development workers. However, is it not better to do something than to do nothing? Again this is relative. Examples of donations/help that created more dependence than sustainable development are numerous. However, leaving things the way they are is maybe not a very responsible way of dealing with poverty and other development topics.
What is the aim? Do people leaving in huts and having difficulties to earn enough money to feed their
families are very different than the poor families that we find back in Europe? While discussing with a Ghanaian, he was telling me that Ghana and Nigeria were the happiest population on earth according to statistics (to be confirmed though). It is difficult not to interpret things with our western eyes and without taking in consideration that a less poor within a poor community would feel richer than a less rich in a rich community. Hence, I am unsure about the positive influence of all development activities. Volunteers constitute a whole economy as everybody wants to have his/her own “I contributed to the development of poor countries” experience. Limited companies (profit based) or NGO are flourishing and selling packages including accommodation/food/transport and development project for a more or less expensive (some are very expensive though). Some NGO starts non profit in order to avoid tax and before mutating into a profit based one. But is it bad? Responsible tourism and economy help creating a whole economy and is booming in the world. Is it just a fashion or a sustainable growth? I don’t know.
Are the western investments the right ones? History of involvement of the west in Africa is often contested. I have often read criticism about the impact of development programs and more generally the influence of western government in developing countries. China for example, winning number of projects thanks to their low costs and having a very economic driven approach, seems to use a different route. However, by investing so massively in Africa, some seems to think that their influence is more positive than decades of development organisations’ work in Africa. But I suppose we then put aside the ethical side of it, as we saw during the Darfur crisis. However, purely economic investment avoids falling in the trap of creating a dependant relationship where on party receives and the other gives. It seems that most organisations realised that to achieve sustainable help, the projects should seek to help people help themselves. But why not concentrating the funds on helping the private sector to invest in Africa and train locals in new areas of the economy?
Mmm, I realise that I could talk a long time about this and I should maybe stop here. This experience however confirmed some of the questions I had before. It also opened my eyes on some aspects and I was impressed by the creativity and efficiency of some of the projects here. But, again, this is a very short experience and without willing to sound modest, I know practically nothing about this sector, which is definitely an interesting one to study.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.084s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 8; qc: 56; dbt: 0.0612s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb