Beyond technical details: The stalled Kwabenya Engineered Sanitary Landfill Project in Accra,Ghana

Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography 111(2):169–179, 2011

The development of a modern, sustainable system of waste management in developing countries is frequently delayed (and in some cases stalled) by causes that cannot be directly attributed to technical or economic reasons. One such project is the Kwabenya Engineered Sanitary Landfill Project which was conceived in 1991. This paper examines why the project was not actualized though the technical details and financial component were duly secured. Using mainly a qualitative research method, the study revealed that the authority's poor governance practices spelt the doom of the project. Neither were the direct occupants of the land consulted during the project formulation stage nor were the host community's fear of environmental reprisals addressed. This paper maintains that successful implementation of projects like a landfill demands the collective participation and acceptability of all stakeholders.     

Farmers and fallowing: agricultural change in Kigezi District, Uganda

Focusing on the area of Kigezi, in south-western Uganda, this article examines land use change over a 50-year period. It shows that Kigezi, an area long considered to be suffering the effects of overpopulation, has never suffered the environmental catastrophes that have long been predicted. Instead, research suggests that farmers have successfully managed their land and maintained productivity.     

Mapping Systems and GIS: A Case Study using the Ghana National Grid

The problem of incompatible projections and conversion between mapping systems is of general concern to those involved in the collection of natural resources data. The Ghana National Grid (GNG) is an example of a mapping system that is not defined in image processing and GIS software and for which the transformation parameters are not readily available in the literature. Consequently, integrating GNG topographic map data within a GIS with data derived from other sources can be problematic. In this paper a practical solution for deriving the required transformation parameters to convert from the World Geodetic System of 1984 (WGS84) to the GNG system is demonstrated. The method uses a single geodetic control point, available 1:50 000 topographic maps and a SPOT satellite panchromatic image geo-referenced to GNG. The resultant parameters are applied to road survey data in Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) format for overlay with the SPOT image. Despite the approximations made in applying the method, when compared against official estimates of the datum transformation parameters, this relatively simple procedure resulted in estimates that appear acceptable in regard to combining data sets at a nominal scale of 1:50000.     

Heavy burdens: Gendered livelihood strategies of porters in Accra,Ghana

Urban poverty is invariably linked to sociospatial dimensions of livelihood strategies. Gendered social relations, for example, have been seen to impact the ability of females to access resources, to gain assets, and to engage in viable income‐generating activities. Focussing on the livelihood strategies of the urban poor as they intersect with neoliberal economic reforms in contemporary Ghana, this paper draws on a field‐based survey of porters in Accra, mostly migrants from rural agricultural northern Ghana, whose primary livelihoods derive from transporting goods for clients in congested market areas of the urban industrial south. The paper highlights the gendered aspects of porters' livelihood experiences such as differences in migration patterns, reliance on physical labour and living conditions, which relatively few analyses have examined, especially as these relate to wider socioeconomic processes. The study illustrates how this perspective is important to understand the intersection of livelihood strategies, gender and national economic reforms in promoting both rural and urban development.     

Subaltern strategies and development practice: urban water privatization in Ghana

This paper is concerned with subaltern actions providing alternatives to development practice. I use Ghana's attempt at urban water privatization to illustrate that Ghana's development practice is characterized by a dependence on foreign sources of capital and expertise that illustrates a psyche and mindset of Eurocentrism associated with the elite and decisionmakers of the country. The rationale for water privatization, the how of privatization, and the anti-development opposition to privatization not only demonstrate this dependency but also the extent to which decisionmakers are willing to sacrifice sovereignty and culturally sensitive ways of doing things, to global capital, in exchange for development funds. In the state's zeal for Western or Occidental development, subalterns in Ghana have devised hybridities that are post-traditional and Oriental in nature to solve their water problems. These development solutions are couched within structures provided to human agency and suggest that development practice should therefore listen to subalterns in terms of how they imagine and solve their problems. The concern with subaltern voices shows the relationship between postcolonial studies and development practice.     

The Best of Times and the Worst of Times: Structural Adjustment Programs and Uneven Development in Africa: The Case Of Ghana

Since 1983, Ghana has been undergoing World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) sponsored Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). The implementation of the SAPs, it is claimed, has arrested Ghana's economy from complete collapse, resulted in consistent growth in GDP averaging 6% over the past decade, reduced inflation levels, created budget surplus, and increased export earnings. Compared to the 1970s, these are the best of times indeed. But while these SAPs‐derived improvements in the national economy have been recorded at the macro level, the benefits at the micro level are a matter of considerable debate. This study revisits the issue of socioeconomic and spatial disparities that have characterized Ghana since colonial times, emphasizing the period from 1983 when Ghana's SAPs began. It examines current patterns of socioeconomic disparities with emphasis on the distribution of, and access to, health, education, basic services, and the like. The study focuses on urban‐rural as well as interregional disparities in the country.     

The Best of Times and the Worst of Times: Structural Adjustment Programs and Uneven Development in Africa: The Case Of Ghana

Since 1983, Ghana has been undergoing World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) sponsored Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). The implementation of the SAPs, it is claimed, has arrested Ghana's economy from complete collapse, resulted in consistent growth in GDP averaging 6% over the past decade, reduced inflation levels, created budget surplus, and increased export earnings. Compared to the 1970s, these are the best of times indeed. But while these SAPs-derived improvements in the national economy have been recorded at the macro level, the benefits at the micro level are a matter of considerable debate. This study revisits the issue of socioeconomic and spatial disparities that have characterized Ghana since colonial times, emphasizing the period from 1983 when Ghana's SAPs began. It examines current patterns of socioeconomic disparities with emphasis on the distribution of, and access to, health, education, basic services, and the like. The study focuses on urban-rural as well as interregional disparities in the country.     

Changing urban governance in Ghana: the role of resistance practices and activism in Kumasi

ABSTRACT

This article examines traders’ resistance practices in Kumasi, Ghana and their significance for changing urban governance in Africa. Conceptually, we introduce “activism” as a new variable into the present concept of urban governance as decentralization, entrepreneurialism and democratization (DED). From an empirical study in Kumasi, Ghana, findings reveal that activism by non-state actors does not only occur at the crucial earlier phases of the urban regeneration process, but extends into the subsequent phases, because urban governance is a continuous process. We demonstrate that activism and a multiplicity of resistance practices are embedded and significant dimensions of everyday urban governance in Africa. This paper argues that the additional dimension – activism – is necessary in rethinking urban governance in Ghana and Africa. This conceptualization views non-state actors not as resisters of urban governance but as activists whose resistance practices and innovations produce tangible and far-reaching changes in city governance. We learn that non-state actors do not rely on the state to control all aspects of urban governance but invent new practices to secure their socio-economic interests and provide them with leverage where they have to negotiate with or stand up to authorities. The study shows that successful change in urban governance is a function of the complementary and strategic adoption of contention, subversion and co-production. When the state perceives that the intervention of other key stakeholders legitimizes the grievances of non-state actors, it responds positively.     

Making a living in the cocoa frontier,Western Ghana: Diversifying incomes in a cocoa economy

Geografisk Tidsskrift, Danish Journal of Geography 107(2):29–44, 2007

The literature on livelihoods in rural Africa has for the past decade documented and discussed the growing importance of non-farm income for rural livelihoods and often linked this to an increasing divorce of rural livelihoods from farming and land. This paper challenges the view that the increasing importance of income earned on non-farm activities is a direct expression of processes of deagrari-anisation. Drawing on empirical evidence from recent research in the Ghanaian cocoa frontier, the paper shows that a growing importance of income from non-farm activities is evident, but that incomefrom cocoa is still the determining factor for most households' income and thereby for the demand for non-farm goods and investment in the non-farm sector. By identifying two overall factors explaining the level of income diversification, the paper questions how generally applicable processes of deagrarianisation are in the Ghanaian case. Firstly, the actual crop cultivated and its price and marketing possibilities are of great importance for a farmer's choice to engage and stay in the agricultural sector or to diversify into non-farm activities. Secondly, different dynamics are evident between settlements dominated by either migrant or indigenous households, mainly due to unequal access to land. The paper argues that what on a general scale may look like processes of deagrarianisation during the last decade to a large extent can be explained by migrants without access to land who engage full-time in the nonfarm sector and by cocoa farmers diversifying their incomes, but not leaving a deteriorated agriculture.     

The making and unmaking of gendered crops in northern Ghana

In rural West Africa, the gendered division of labour extends to labelling certain crops as 'male' or 'female'. With the introduction of new varieties of crops and technologies, these constructions of gendered plants undergo a process of renegotiation at social intrafaces. This process of attaching meaning to new features in cultivation results in the remaking of gendered crops. These negotiations, in turn, have an effect on the construction of gender in specific ethnic and environmental settings, unlinking labour from its gendered connotations and, thus, unmaking the social meaning and creating room for manoeuvre. Based on fieldwork among the Dagomba and Kusasi people in northern Ghana, this study examines how gendered responsibilities and access to the cultivation of crops are linked and expressed in obligations related to the cultural ideal of a proper meal, in this case consisting of the food categories (male) staple and (female) soup, which serve as the blueprint for assigning crops to a specific gender.     

Spatial and social transformations in a secondary city: the role of mobility in Sekondi-Takoradi,Ghana

Abstract

Existing research on urban Ghana mainly focuses on processes occurring within the country’s major cities, thereby reproducing a trend within the social sciences to overlook the role of intermediate and secondary cities. This paper aims to address this shortcoming by exploring spatial and social transformations in Sekondi–Takoradi, one of Ghana’s secondary cities and the metropolitan area serving the region’s emerging rubber industries as well as the country’s oil and gas economy. Using qualitative interviews conducted with residents in five of the city’s neighbourhoods, and a modified version of Kaufmann’s typology of mobility, we examine migration into Sekondi–Takoradi, residential mobility within the city and the daily mobility of the city’s residents. The paper highlights how these diverse forms of mobility interact with processes taking place both within and outside Sekondi–Takoradi, most notably influencing and being influenced by livelihood strategies. It is argued that the city and its hinterlands can best be envisaged as a mobile networked whole, rather than consisting of disconnected and compartmentalized locales. The paper thus contributes to broader debates on how mobility shapes urbanization by providing new empirical data on events unfolding in Africa’s secondary cities, and extends existing research by providing a counter-narrative to literature that examines the city and its surrounding rural areas separately.     

The environmental impact of small-scale gold mining in Ghana: identifying problems and possible solutions

This paper examines the environmental impacts of small-scale gold mining in Ghana, and prescribes a series of recommendations for improving environmental performance in the industry. Since the enactment of the Small Scale Gold Mining Law in 1989, which effectively legalized small-scale gold mining in the country, industrial operations, collectively, have made important contributions to national gold output, foreign exchange earnings and employment. Accompanying this pattern of socio-economic growth, however, have been increased environmental complications – namely, mercury pollution and land degradation. The Ghanaian Minerals Commission has been burdened with most of the jurisdictional responsibilities related to small-scale mining, but with a staff of only 35–40 people working with a pool of highly obsolete research resources, it is clearly incapable of facilitating sufficient environmental improvement on its own. It is concluded that marked environmental improvements can only be achieved if: (1) assistance is provided to the Minerals Commission from local governmental bodies and academic units; (2) industry-specific environmental management tools and strategies are designed and implemented; (3) concerted effort is made to prospect for deposits suitable for small-scale gold mining, a key to preventing unnecessary exploration; and (4) a nation-wide industrial mercury study is commissioned, and a mercury retorting programme is implemented.     

The Changing Geography of Export Trade in Ghana under Structural Adjustment Programs: Some Socioeconomic and Spatial Implications

Abstract

Like many other countries in Africa, Ghana has traditionally depended on a few export products—namely, cocoa, timber, and mineral resources—as the mainstays of its economy. The often-volatile nature of the world market price of these products made the economy very vulnerable to fluctuations in the prices of export commodities. Moreover, the geographical distribution of these resources meant that only a few regions could participate in their production and export. This resulted in wide spatial and socioeconomic disparities between the producing and nonproducing regions. Within the past eighteen years, however, a shift seems to have taken place. Under the auspices of the ongoing structural adjustment programs, emphasis is being placed on nontraditional export goods. This is not only helping to reduce the vulnerability of the economy by diversifying the sources of export earnings, but also engendering participation in the export trade by regions that have been traditionally left behind. This study analyses the changing geography of the export trade of Ghana using data from the International Monetary Fund/World Bank, the Ghanaian government, the World Trade Organization, and field observation. The study argues that while these new trends and efforts are laudable, they cannot bridge the gap between the export producing and nonproducing areas and cushion the economy against the vagaries of the export market unless deliberate attempts are made to improve transportation and other basic infrastructure in the less-endowed areas.     

The Changing Geography of Export Trade in Ghana under Structural Adjustment Programs: Some Socioeconomic and Spatial Implications

Like many other countries in Africa, Ghana has traditionally depended on a few export products—namely, cocoa, timber, and mineral resources—as the mainstays of its economy. The often‐volatile nature of the world market price of these products made the economy very vulnerable to fluctuations in the prices of export commodities. Moreover, the geographical distribution of these resources meant that only a few regions could participate in their production and export. This resulted in wide spatial and socioeconomic disparities between the producing and nonproducing regions. Within the past eighteen years, however, a shift seems to have taken place. Under the auspices of the ongoing structural adjustment programs, emphasis is being placed on nontraditional export goods. This is not only helping to reduce the vulnerability of the economy by diversifying the sources of export earnings, but also engendering participation in the export trade by regions that have been traditionally left behind. This study analyses the changing geography of the export trade of Ghana using data from the International Monetary Fund/World Bank, the Ghanaian government, the World Trade Organization, and field observation. The study argues that while these new trends and efforts are laudable, they cannot bridge the gap between the export producing and nonproducing areas and cushion the economy against the vagaries of the export market unless deliberate attempts are made to improve transportation and other basic infrastructure in the less‐endowed areas.     

Culture,Markets, and Agricultural Production: A Comparative Study of the Investment Patterns of Migrant and Citizen Cocoa Farmers in the Western Region of Ghana

Current agrarian reforms in Ghana, sponsored by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, are based on the notion that pricing incentives from markets are the key to agricultural investments. The turnaround in the production of the principal agricultural export, cocoa, seems to vindicate this view. However, this perspective is silent on the question of why many farmers continued to produce cocoa in the period preceding the reforms when prices were at their lowest in the country's history. Based on research on the comparative investment patterns of migrant and citizen cocoa farmers in two districts in the Western region of Ghana, this article suggests a holistic approach to comprehending investments. It indicates that the economic behaviour of cocoa farmers is complexly linked to the politics of land tenure, and cultural expectations and obligations.     

Culture,Markets, and Agricultural Production: A Comparative Study of the Investment Patterns of Migrant and Citizen Cocoa Farmers in the Western Region of Ghana

Current agrarian reforms in Ghana, sponsored by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, are based on the notion that pricing incentives from markets are the key to agricultural investments. The turnaround in the production of the principal agricultural export, cocoa, seems to vindicate this view. However, this perspective is silent on the question of why many farmers continued to produce cocoa in the period preceding the reforms when prices were at their lowest in the country's history. Based on research on the comparative investment patterns of migrant and citizen cocoa farmers in two districts in the Western region of Ghana, this article suggests a holistic approach to comprehending investments. It indicates that the economic behaviour of cocoa farmers is complexly linked to the politics of land tenure, and cultural expectations and obligations.     

Post-Palaeozoic evolution of weathered landsurfaces in Uganda by tectonically controlled deep weathering and stripping

A model for the evolution of weathered landsurfaces in Uganda is developed using available geotectonic, climatic, sedimentological and chronological data. The model demonstrates the pivotal role of tectonic uplift in inducing cycles of stripping, and tectonic quiescence for cycles of deep weathering. It is able to account for the development of key landforms, such as inselbergs and duricrust-capped plateaux, which previous hypotheses of landscape evolution that are based on climatic or eustatic controls are unable to explain. Development of the Ugandan landscape is traced back to the Permian. Following late Palaeozoic glaciation, a trend towards warmer and more humid climates through the Mesozoic enabled deep weathering of the Jurassic/mid-Cretaceous surface in Uganda during a period of prolonged tectonic quiescence. Uplift associated with the opening South Atlantic Ocean terminated this cycle and instigated a cycle of stripping between the mid-Cretaceous and early Miocene. Deep weathering on the succeeding Miocene to recent (African) surface has occurred from Miocene to present but has been interrupted in the areas adjacent to the western rift where development of a new drainage base level has prompted cycles of stripping in the Miocene and Pleistocene.     

Access to reeds and mat making in the lower Volta basin of Ghana

This paper explores the origins of pressures on reeds and sedges used for mat making in the lower Volta basin of Ghana, and their impact on the socially embedded system which dictates access to reed fields. Data for the study were collected through field work employing participatory rural appraisal methods in 18 communities, involving 152 mat weavers. The findings showed that the mat‐weaving industry has contributed immensely in providing poor women a means of livelihood but reed marshes in the basin have reduced in recent years due to hydrological changes in the area caused by the damming of the Volta upstream. The decline in the availability of reed is exerting immense pressure on this once freely available resource, thus inducing landlords to impose a price on the rights of entry into marshlands by reed collectors. The imposition of these charges affected the very people that the mat‐weaving industry is targeted to help. The study recommends the local and central government to play a more active role and civil society groups to broaden the livelihood base of women living in this region.     

Factors for the presence of avian scavengers in Accra and Kumasi, Ghana

Avian scavengers are common and active in the social life of southern Ghana, yet few studies consider both the ecological factors for avian presence and the avian–human interactions from human gender and age perspectives, and compare avian behaviour in both human-dominated and natural landscapes. This paper examines interactions between people, hooded vultures and pied crows in Accra and Kumasi, Ghana using both ecological and social research methods. Land use was classified for species presence into meat and waste production, vegetable marketing, non-food production, residential and central business areas, green spaces and rural areas. One hundred and eighty-four people were interviewed, classified according to age and gender. Hooded vultures and pied crows were more common in urban than rural areas, and their presence was positively correlated with human numbers. Birds were most common in meat and waste production areas, but also foraged for street discards in non-food production and residential areas, and were most rare in rural areas. Bird consumption of waste was viewed positively, while eating of other foods, close proximity and unusual behaviours were viewed negatively. Both species, especially the larger vultures, were feared as spiritual agents, this measured by odd behaviours. Women and older people had stronger beliefs, due to cultural conditioning. These human perspectives and reactions influenced avian presence. This study contributes to urban avian ecology, socio-cultural studies and urban planning.     

Water Materialities and Citizen Engagement: Testing the Implications of Water Access and Quality for Community Engagement in Ghana and South Africa

We analyze the relationship between perceptions of domestic water access, and quality, in relation community engagement. While others have suggested linkages between material conditions of water access and engagement (e.g., that poor water access might spur engagement), to date there have been no studies those test these relationships using statistical methods. Based on a quantitative analysis of survey data from underserved sites in Accra, Ghana, and Cape Town, South Africa, our results show that water access and quality are both predictive of community engagement. The analysis also makes a strong case that there are different dimensions when considering the material conditions of water—in this case, water access and quality each condition engagement in opposite directions. Furthermore, consistent with other studies, our study also shows different demographics (notably gender) mediate these relationships in important ways.