Ben in Ghana

Some Thoughts and Learnings

Just thought I’d write down a couple of my current thoughts on development and my experience here in order to get some comments/discussion happening.

I’ve had a couple of interesting discussions about the West’s role in development in Africa and whether or not Westerners should even be coming to Africa at all. My thoughts on this are still pretty scattered, but hopefully writing them down will articulate them a little bit better.

The first thing that I have come to realize is that (nearly) all of the best development work is being done by Ghanaians for Ghanaians. Almost all of the NGOs that EWB works with are indigenous to the country for that very reason. The work that these NGOs do never makes the news in the West, and I wonder if it ever will. News about Africa generally consists of war, conflict, new democracies (with focus on how fragile these new democracies are) and finally successes of Western led NGOs or multilaterals. The real work, the real successes and the real strength that this country has doesn’t make the news.

Another huge misconception that I’ve found is that all Africans want to get an education so they can move to the West. I (and other volunteers that I’ve talked to about this) was very surprised to learn that this is not at all true. I’m sure the view is so widespread because most people that one might meet in Canada from a developing nation has gotten an education and moved away. Even talking to several youth about getting educations in the West, none of them expressed much desire to stay after they had completed. One of my favourite answers was, “Why would I get an education and then use it in some place that is already developed?” I met another young man who actually did his masters in geography at Waterloo. He said his wife eventually convinced him to fly her to Canada and after a week she was ready to go home. “You think I’m enjoying Canada, but now you see how I have been suffering these past years,” was his reply to her. Just the other night I met a man who had spent seven years in the US, and is now back in Ghana because he likes it here better. I’m sure another huge reason for this horribly misplaced belief is that we in the West believe that we’re better, so why wouldn’t someone move here if they had the chance? I’ll take this chance to make this blog a little more controversial and ask you to think about your views on African migration to the West and what assumptions you might be making that are completely unjustified.

Next up, I’ve seen some of the problems caused by charity, which often has its origins in the West. The commitment level of one of the communities involved in the agro forestry project that I am working on in Kukpehi is a perfect example of this. We are now in the planting stage, and each community was to collect their allotment of seedlings from the nursery at Kukpehi before the date they had given for us to start their planting. While most of the communities had collected their seedlings, brought them to the planting site and had a large number of people helping, from children to some of the older adults, this community was nowhere near that level. We arrived at the community and we were told that they were having a meeting, and should return in about an hour. We did an errand that was planned for after the planting, and returned to about four people with only about half of the seedlings collected from Kukpehi. To give you a bit of a reference point, one of the communities we had visited the previous day had about 20 adults and at least 10 children helping us. Another community had already started planting before we arrived. The numbers slowly increased as the work went on, but not to the same level as anywhere else.

After returning to the office, we were talking about this commitment problem, and Adisa gave her explanation. She said that someone dug a large dam for their community without their involvement, and now they’ve come to expect that things should come to them instead of them working towards development in their community. This was emphasized by one of my co-workers comments that they were even asking for us to bring food next time we came! They said the government had come to help them plant their teak woodlot and had brought them food for doing the work. This is why Adisa refuses to work with programs such as the World Food Program and Food for Work. Programs like this make people believe that handouts will continue and they expect to be compensated for doing work to better their own community! This type of attitude is destructive in terms of community-driven development and completely contradicts Africa 2000’s and IPRP’s approaches.

So, where am I actually going with these points? I swear there’s some sort of coherence between them in my head, which I’ll try to get out here. For me, they’re all huge contributors to one of the questions I’ve been asking myself a lot lately: “Sure, what I’ve learned here is going to be beneficial for me and my community back in Canada, but is my placement actually good for Ghana?” This might seem like a ridiculous question at first, the obvious answer is of course it’s good, and judging by the amount of comments I get back from people about the great and amazing work I’m doing here that would be the widespread answer from all of you. I’m sorry if I’m sounding a little bit cynical here, I’m not trying to directly offend or accuse anyone with that last statement, I just feel like none of my blogs have really expressed some of the frustrations, difficulties and tough questions that come along with development.

Three topics I discussed above all have direct bearing on whether or not I am contributing, useful, or maybe harmful to the people of Ghana. My first two points were to illustrate that capacity needed to do good development work is already here. The NGOs that do great work are doing great work, and are staffed by excellent, educated Ghanaians. There are also Ghanaians who graduate every year from Ghanaian universities with development-related degrees who can’t find work. For example, we have a staff member right now doing what is called National Service. Every graduate must do a year’s work towards developing the country before finding their own job in the field of their choice. My director has commented a couple of times that she wishes she could hire him once his national service is up, but doesn’t have the budget for it. Meanwhile, she’s just received two United Nation’s Volunteers and will most likely get at least one National Service person in the fall.

In light of the previous discussion of the problems with giving things away and the expectations created in the future, I have some questions about the effect that I’m having here as a free volunteer for Africa 2000 and IPRP. If at the end of my placement it is decided that I’ve added value to A2N/IPRP and had some impact, will my director begin to expect that she can use EWB volunteers, and stop looking for Ghanaians, who might have to be paid, to play that role in the future?

I recently talked to Louis about these questions and got his answer as to why EWB is not taking Ghanaian jobs. Louis had value-added points that EWB volunteers bring the average NGO staff member in Ghana doesn’t bring.

Pro-poor approach: This might seem like something that anyone working for an NGO here would have, but it is certainly not the case. Development is an industry here, and to many people, working at an NGO is just a job. I feel like my office does not have this problem so much, but hearing the frustrations of other volunteers certainly confirms this. EWB volunteers’ livelihoods do not depend on meeting donors’ needs in order to keep funding or receive new funding. Sadly, these donor requirements don’t always make the poor the number one priority. EWB volunteers can push for pro-poor practices and policies whenever possible, and hopefully have impact in this way. Of course building the trust to make suggestions that don’t always seem to be in the NGO’s best interest takes time and hard work. I’ve been working directly with IPRP for three months now, and I am just starting to become comfortable making suggestions about how the office is run, but I have been getting a fairly positive response. To be sure that new practices turn into habits would take me another few months however, and I question the sustainability of the change that my work at the office has started.

Technical Skills: EWB volunteers certainly bring a lot of what some might call ‘Western’ skills to their placements. These range from computer skills to facilitation and management skills. I agree that some of the skills I have are not present in the office, especially in the way of computer skills. My facilitation and management skills have certainly been useful while I’ve been here and I feel like I’ve used them to add value. It is easy to see that all of the volunteers excel in these areas as well, but when you look at how and where these people were selected it’s not difficult to see why. Everyone is an EWB chapter leader from one the country’s best universities who has been trained with 22 equally great leaders. I think if the same process was applied to Ghanaian universities then leaders with the same quality would easily be found. This may not be happening now (or maybe is), but having a free source of Western volunteers certainly doesn’t help to promote the growth of young development leaders in Ghana. I just believe that the capacity to have the same skills as an EWB volunteer exists in Ghana’s youth, it just hasn’t been harnessed to its full potential yet. For example, another one of the volunteers who was excited about applying his facilitation and management skills showed up at his placement only to find out that his NGO’s staff far outshined him in this area. If there were more paid jobs looking for these types of skills at the NGO level would there be more motivation for youth to develop them? Say a large amount of the local youth do gain these skills, what NGO would hire them if they could get Western volunteers for free? How then does a country develop to the point where Western volunteers aren’t needed anymore? These are some of the questions I still have.

Flexibility: This is one of the places where I feel EWB does have a significant value added that is tougher to find locally. An EWB volunteer doesn’t have a family to worry about, and can live for weeks or months at a time in a village far away from any town or city. I have seen this problem especially at the government level, where staff of remote districts don’t even live or have offices in the districts where they are employed due to lack of accommodation and infrastructure for their families. EWB volunteers can also sidestep around some of the hierarchy that exists within organisations here. This can be extremely useful, especially when it comes to communication between various parts of an organisation.

Talking about these reasons with definitely made me feel a little bit better about what I am doing here, and I certainly wish I would’ve thought about it more earlier and asked more questions about my actual value added. I would encourage anyone who is doing any international development work to think about the impacts (positive and negative) that might result from your placement, and what value added you would have. Although it is sometimes difficult to do this beforehand and things always change, I believe asking these questions and doing some thinking is extremely helpful, and I wish I would have done it more right from the start.

I believe the most important reason is to ensure that you are not feeling discouraged and disappointed about development by the end of your placement. Based on past discussions, a lot of people go into a placement with high expectations about what they will be able to accomplish, and when they discover that impact is slow and difficult to measure they become frustrated and discouraged with development. Avoiding this is essential in my opinion, because my second reason for going through this impact/value added assessment would be to realise that the experience alone won’t have the impact you might wish, but you can use the experience to continue to have impact back in Canada. This is tough to do with a negative attitude towards development upon returning. EWB certainly realises this and the JF program certainly focuses a lot on learning and less on actually expecting and measuring the impact of a JF placement in terms of overseas work. I would recommend having a plan with goals for how you’ll use your experience back in Canada. That way you’ve always got long-term goals in mind and you’re not confined to thinking that you have to get your dollar’s worth of impact before you get on the plane home. The third reason is to be aware of your strengths as a volunteer and to take advantage of them as much as possible while overseas, while avoiding as much as possible the areas of negative impact. This contributes to your overall effectiveness and will hopefully reduce the number of days you feel like crap because you’re (more or less) completely useless in that moment of that day.

As an illustration, I feel like there are two areas where my work here is on its way to having EWB value-added impact sometime in the future. The first is simply working with A2N/IPRP and paving the way for what might become a future partnership with EWB. Despite what I’ve just said, which may have sounded a little negative, I do believe sending volunteers is a good thing, especially when the potential for impact in Canada is factored in, so a future partnership with an NGO that I believe is doing great work and offers excellent learning opportunities for volunteers will lead to positive impact in the future. The second area where I feel I’ve had value-added impact is in Kukpehi. I was lucky enough to have an opportunity to hear from everyone in the community what they felt I’d brought to their community when Louis visited with a guest named Sakiko (hopefully I’ll write about that day sometime soon). Their general response was that their attitude towards whites has changed in that they don’t see them as being so different anymore and wouldn’t be scared to ask them for help. They also said that me living and appreciating their lifestyle has given them confidence and hope for their own development. I’m really glad that I got to hear their changes of perspective, and hopefully they will last.

What really made me happy was that no one mentioned my work with the nursery project or attributed the benefits that the nursery will bring to my work there. The nursery project would have certainly happened without me and I’m very glad that they see themselves as the owners of the project, and I am simply someone who came to live and work with them. It has become obvious to me after spending time in rural Ghana (and a more urban setting for that matter) that there is certainly not a shortage of labour here. This makes me question very much the value of projects that bring Westerners to do labour work of any type in Africa. This brings me back to the point that charity and give-aways are much more destructive than the short term benefits they bring. People come to expect a certain level of charity and the motivation to remove that dependence decreases with every new building constructed by outsiders. Communities that have ownership over their own development tend to be much better off than any community that receives without any contribution. The ABCD approach stresses this and I've seen many examples of it since I've been here.

This small impact list of two is dwarfed by my plans for having impact once I return to Canada. Some of my plans for having impact in Canada have already started, for example this blog and my chapter phone call. My experience here has built my capacity to do effective education in Canada, and hopefully will be able to share my experience in order to educate and motivate Waterloo chapter members, encourage new people to join, and to inspire the next set of JFs from Waterloo.

Hopefully that was an ok balance of optimism/pessimism, but I think it’s important for me to share some of my frustrations and questions and get some feedback!

Less than three weeks and I’ll be back in Canada! I’ll be spending just less than two weeks here in Tamale and then I’ll be in Accra before heading back on the 22nd. I certainly have mixed feelings and I’m a little bit apprehensive about getting back into the Western life style, but for now I’ll just enjoy where I’m at and what I’m doing. Have a good end to your summer, and I’ll try to post again before I leave, but no promises based on my current schedule!