Ghana guide
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| © New Internationalist |
In a region marked by conflict and instability, Ghana's consolidated democracy is widely admired, never more so than in the acceptance of the wafer thin victory for John Atta Mills in the 2008 presidential election. However, peaceful democratic institutions have yet to satisfy economic expectations, especially those of the rural northern districts of the country which strain to match the growth of the urban south. Ghana's 50th year of independence in 2007 was marked by a major oil find, adding a mix of optimism and apprehension to prospects for human development.
updated February 2009
Poverty in Ghana
Ghana claims to be one of the first countries in Africa to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving extreme poverty. The benchmark adopted by the government has fallen from 36% in 1991 to 18% in 2005. A similar result applies to the broader definition of poverty (which includes the cost of general necessities as well as food) which has dropped from 52% to 28% over the same period.
These statistics are drawn from a periodic census known as the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS) and reported in the Ghana Human Development Report (HDR) published in 2008. It is however difficult to ascertain either the amount or the basis for calculating these “upper” and “lower” poverty lines. Even the 177-page Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy 2006-2009 (GPRS II) fails to provide an explanation of how poverty is calculated in Ghana.
A less flattering conclusion emerges from the international $1 per day guideline for extreme poverty which is assessed by the 2007 UNDP Human Development Report to capture 44.8% of Ghana's population, effectively unchanged from the 45.5% recorded in the baseline year of 1990. And the proportion of underweight children has reduced only to 22% from the baseline 27.4%.
With far greater certainty, it can be said that human development indicators for the north of Ghana are significantly less favourable than those in the south. The economy in the north was ignored in the colonial period, revived in the early years of independence, but then suffered as Ghana’s embrace of liberal market economics permitted the polarisation of investment to southern cities within reach of the coast. A census in 2000 recorded that 80% of women in the northern provinces were illiterate.
Poverty in these regions drives migration to the south which, together with Ghana’s high population growth rate of 2.7% pa, creates enormous pressure on the provision of adequate livelihoods for young people. The extent of the regional divide is illustrated by the difficulty in sending children to school in the north, despite the introduction of free schooling in 2005. The government has responded with Capitation grants to offset peripheral costs of transport and clothing. A programme of school- feeding has since 2006 proved an effective inducement for those areas in which it is provided. Net enrolment at national level has edged above 80%, still short of the 100% MDG target for 2015.
Health and HIV/AIDS in Ghana
Progress towards the MDGs for poverty reduction and universal education is not matched in the health sector. Child mortality has increased in recent years, due to a combination of poverty, malnutrition, malaria and HIV/AIDS. The statistics for maternal mortality are uncertain. A new survey was promised for 2007 but it seems likely that there has been no improvement since the 1993 baseline of 214 deaths for every 100,000 births. Recognising that fewer than 50% of all births take place without the presence of a qualified health worker, the Health Minister in 2008 declared the maternal health situation to be a national emergency.
In 2004 the government tried to put the finances of health provision on to a sustainable footing by introducing the National Health Insurance Scheme. All adults are expected to pay a modest monthly subscription in return for equal and universal access to health care. However, cost and administrative bureaucracy combine to deter registration and only about one third of the population is covered. The government is also acting to slow the exodus of health staff through a system of fines for those who leave within a short period of their training. Two thirds of doctors and nurses trained in Ghana may have left the country for better economic prospects overseas.
The Ghana AIDS Commission has made good progress in establishing the institutional capacity to fight HIV/AIDS. However, as at September 2007, access to essential anti-retroviral treatment was limited to 11,500 out of 74,000 who needed it. It is far from certain that Ghana is achieving the MDG to “reverse the spread” of the disease. National HIV prevalence was assessed at 2.2% in 2006. Amongst pregnant women the figure has since 2003 varied between 2.7% and 3.6%. The task is made difficult by a young, increasingly mobile population, known to be reluctant to use condoms. Worryingly, the January 2008 country report submitted to UNAIDS warns that stigma remains as much an obstacle as medical treatment, referring to the “waning support of the political leadership to HIV and AIDS in Ghana.”
Provision of safe water and sanitation is another area where statistical progress towards the MDG target is not matched by household experience. An unusual feature reported in the Ghana HDR is the rise in poverty in the capital city, Accra. A contributory factor could be the collapse of the water supply, forcing households to purchase water from expensive vendors. The part-privatisation of the system in 2006, imposed by the World Bank as a condition for its $100m loan, has been controversial. The services of the South African contractor, Aqua Vitens Rand Ltd, have so far proved unequal to the task. The World Bank has estimated that Ghana needs to invest $1 billion dollars in water supplies, half of this amount being required in Accra.
Food Security in Ghana
Lured into the business of exporting exotic fresh foods to Europe, Ghana has neglected its own food security. The lack of investment in storage, irrigation and credit results in low yields for the small-scale subsistence farms on which a large proportion of the population depends. Land tenure is weak and there has been insufficient protection against imports from countries with generous subsidy regimes such as the US. The consequence is that Ghana has to import a significant proportion of its staple rice and grains, leaving the country exposed to the spiral in world prices during 2008.
This came as a bitter blow to households already spending much of their income on food and the government was forced to abandon its non-interventionist strategy in agriculture. The sector is now stimulated with subsidised seeds and fertilizer, along with free tractors for some farmers.
Climate Change in Ghana
Nature also plays a part in Ghana’s food insecurity and regional inequality. Many areas of the south enjoy two crops each year whilst the North, Upper East and Upper West provinces are mostly savannah where the dry season invariably brings food shortages. In all regions, farm yields are extremely sensitive to the vagaries of rainfall. Although rainfall in Ghana has decreased by 2.4% per decade since 1960, climate change predictions for the region admit to uncertainty as to the future trend. Temperatures have been rising and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a government body, has suggested that, by 2080, cocoa beans will fail to grow. Ghana is currently the world’s second largest exporter of cocoa. The EPA has put a figure of $1.4 billion on the cost of adaptation to climate change in Ghana.
Coastal populations are at risk from rising sea levels and the country also lives with a worrying link between its primary energy supply and climate, as vividly illustrated in 2007. A long period of drought reduced the level of the Volta Lake below the point at which the hydro-electric turbine could function, effectively switching off 60% of Ghana's power supply with fundamental economic consequences. Then exceptional rainfall dramatically reversed the situation but caused catastrophic flooding in the northern region, affecting 400,000 people and creating serious short term food shortages.
Ghana also engages with the other side of the climate change equation, the control of carbon dioxide emissions arising from deforestation. About 80% of the forests have already been lost, partly to illegal logging which supplies markets in Europe, and partly due to the dependence on wood for fuel of 75% of all households. The European Union is supporting efforts to improve the tracking of illegal timber.
Politics in Ghana
Since independence from British colonial rule in 1957, Ghana has experienced its share of political violence and military rule but now democracy is thriving. Political parties have been permitted since 1992 and the presidential election of 2000 saw a peaceful handover of power to John Kufuor from the former dictator, Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings.
The constitution strives to address the risks of ethnic division. Political parties cannot be overtly aligned to ethnic or religious identities and must demonstrate a "national character" to qualify for registration. Public appointments are expected to balance regional and ethnic interests.
Kufuor respected the two-term limit for the presidency and his party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), refrained from interfering with media or opposition criticism. Ghanaians debate political issues amongst numerous political parties in a climate free of intimidation and coercion across the county. Academics at Ghana's universities publish on a range of topics and unions represent many of Ghana's workers. Civil society has also flourished. One of the most respected institutions in Africa, the Electoral Commission of Ghana, has remained under the same Chair, Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, since its formation in 1993.
Without the presence of these solid planks of democracy, bolstered by dynamic monitoring of polling stations by civil society groups, it is possible that the outcome of the December 2008 presidential election would have destabilised the country. After weeks of intense but non-violent campaigning and two rounds of voting, just 40,000 votes out of 9 million separated the two candidates. John Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), loser of the two elections won by Kufuor, was this time successful in defeating Nana Akufo-Addo of the NPP. In the parliamentary vote, the NDC fell short of an absolute majority, winning 114 out of 240 seats.
Whilst Ghana's ranking in the Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International is more favourable than most African countries, low rates of pay in the police, health service and government departments do create problems in everyday transactions. Pressure at higher levels of government may become more acute as Ghana becomes an oil economy and as the region continues to be exploited as a hub for the transit of illegal drugs from South America to Europe.
Human Rights in Ghana
The new president has promised that 40% of his cabinet appointments will be women, a bold initiative in such a patriarchal society. Strong local traditions of rule by tribal chiefs and elders continue to influence attitudes towards women. Despite the establishment of a Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs, its miniscule budget has impeded effective implementation of new legislation. Laws against child labour, human trafficking, domestic violence and genital mutilation have had limited impact.
Although there has been no progress to lift the ban on homosexuality, in other respects the former president was progressive. On leaving office, Kufuor commuted all remaining death sentences and encouraged his successor to abolish the death penalty. A National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) was established to review alleged human rights abuses during the Rawlings era and Kufuor accepted its radical recommendations to make public apologies and pay compensation to about 2,000 victims of the abuse of previous governments.
The Economy in Ghana
Ghana's adherence to IMF and World Bank development policies over more than two decades has not altered the structural injustice that undermines African economies. Ghana's dominant export product, cocoa, remains heavily dependent on commodity prices and currency fluctuations. Unfair rules for trade with rich countries have hindered development, illustrated most painfully by the collapse of the previously thriving chicken industry. The shortfall in power generation – only about 43% of the population has access to electricity – has been identified by the World Bank as the principal obstacle to economic growth and poverty reduction.
Ghana was however rewarded by substantial debt cancellation announced at the 2005 G8 summit, amounting to $4.2 billion out of the then total external debt of $6 billion. The country benefits from about $1 billion in aid each year whilst overseas remittances rocketed to $4.3 billion in 2007, about 15% of GDP. Prospects for the economy have been potentially transformed by the dramatic discovery during 2007 of extensive offshore oilfields which may generate over $1 billion pa from 2010. Ghana is preparing carefully to ensure that the mixed blessings of a potentially oil-rich economy do not undermine its ambition to become a middle income country by 2015.
The OneWorld Ghana Guide was first published in this format in November 2004 with a text written by Volunteer Editor Bernard Haven
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| GCAP concert; Ghana, September 2005 © Millennium Campaign |
These statistics are drawn from a periodic census known as the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS) and reported in the Ghana Human Development Report (HDR) published in 2008. It is however difficult to ascertain either the amount or the basis for calculating these “upper” and “lower” poverty lines. Even the 177-page Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy 2006-2009 (GPRS II) fails to provide an explanation of how poverty is calculated in Ghana.
A less flattering conclusion emerges from the international $1 per day guideline for extreme poverty which is assessed by the 2007 UNDP Human Development Report to capture 44.8% of Ghana's population, effectively unchanged from the 45.5% recorded in the baseline year of 1990. And the proportion of underweight children has reduced only to 22% from the baseline 27.4%.
With far greater certainty, it can be said that human development indicators for the north of Ghana are significantly less favourable than those in the south. The economy in the north was ignored in the colonial period, revived in the early years of independence, but then suffered as Ghana’s embrace of liberal market economics permitted the polarisation of investment to southern cities within reach of the coast. A census in 2000 recorded that 80% of women in the northern provinces were illiterate.
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| Education in Ghana © Richard Lord / Academy for Educational Development |
Health and HIV/AIDS in Ghana
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| Young children, Ghana © Nancy Durrell McKenna / People & the Planet |
In 2004 the government tried to put the finances of health provision on to a sustainable footing by introducing the National Health Insurance Scheme. All adults are expected to pay a modest monthly subscription in return for equal and universal access to health care. However, cost and administrative bureaucracy combine to deter registration and only about one third of the population is covered. The government is also acting to slow the exodus of health staff through a system of fines for those who leave within a short period of their training. Two thirds of doctors and nurses trained in Ghana may have left the country for better economic prospects overseas.
The Ghana AIDS Commission has made good progress in establishing the institutional capacity to fight HIV/AIDS. However, as at September 2007, access to essential anti-retroviral treatment was limited to 11,500 out of 74,000 who needed it. It is far from certain that Ghana is achieving the MDG to “reverse the spread” of the disease. National HIV prevalence was assessed at 2.2% in 2006. Amongst pregnant women the figure has since 2003 varied between 2.7% and 3.6%. The task is made difficult by a young, increasingly mobile population, known to be reluctant to use condoms. Worryingly, the January 2008 country report submitted to UNAIDS warns that stigma remains as much an obstacle as medical treatment, referring to the “waning support of the political leadership to HIV and AIDS in Ghana.”
Provision of safe water and sanitation is another area where statistical progress towards the MDG target is not matched by household experience. An unusual feature reported in the Ghana HDR is the rise in poverty in the capital city, Accra. A contributory factor could be the collapse of the water supply, forcing households to purchase water from expensive vendors. The part-privatisation of the system in 2006, imposed by the World Bank as a condition for its $100m loan, has been controversial. The services of the South African contractor, Aqua Vitens Rand Ltd, have so far proved unequal to the task. The World Bank has estimated that Ghana needs to invest $1 billion dollars in water supplies, half of this amount being required in Accra.
Food Security in Ghana
Lured into the business of exporting exotic fresh foods to Europe, Ghana has neglected its own food security. The lack of investment in storage, irrigation and credit results in low yields for the small-scale subsistence farms on which a large proportion of the population depends. Land tenure is weak and there has been insufficient protection against imports from countries with generous subsidy regimes such as the US. The consequence is that Ghana has to import a significant proportion of its staple rice and grains, leaving the country exposed to the spiral in world prices during 2008.
This came as a bitter blow to households already spending much of their income on food and the government was forced to abandon its non-interventionist strategy in agriculture. The sector is now stimulated with subsidised seeds and fertilizer, along with free tractors for some farmers.
Climate Change in Ghana
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| Ghana © Bernard Haven |
Coastal populations are at risk from rising sea levels and the country also lives with a worrying link between its primary energy supply and climate, as vividly illustrated in 2007. A long period of drought reduced the level of the Volta Lake below the point at which the hydro-electric turbine could function, effectively switching off 60% of Ghana's power supply with fundamental economic consequences. Then exceptional rainfall dramatically reversed the situation but caused catastrophic flooding in the northern region, affecting 400,000 people and creating serious short term food shortages.
Ghana also engages with the other side of the climate change equation, the control of carbon dioxide emissions arising from deforestation. About 80% of the forests have already been lost, partly to illegal logging which supplies markets in Europe, and partly due to the dependence on wood for fuel of 75% of all households. The European Union is supporting efforts to improve the tracking of illegal timber.
Politics in Ghana
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| Independence Arch, Accra © Bernard Haven |
The constitution strives to address the risks of ethnic division. Political parties cannot be overtly aligned to ethnic or religious identities and must demonstrate a "national character" to qualify for registration. Public appointments are expected to balance regional and ethnic interests.
Kufuor respected the two-term limit for the presidency and his party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), refrained from interfering with media or opposition criticism. Ghanaians debate political issues amongst numerous political parties in a climate free of intimidation and coercion across the county. Academics at Ghana's universities publish on a range of topics and unions represent many of Ghana's workers. Civil society has also flourished. One of the most respected institutions in Africa, the Electoral Commission of Ghana, has remained under the same Chair, Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, since its formation in 1993.
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| John Atta Mills © Evans Mensah / IRIN News |
Whilst Ghana's ranking in the Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International is more favourable than most African countries, low rates of pay in the police, health service and government departments do create problems in everyday transactions. Pressure at higher levels of government may become more acute as Ghana becomes an oil economy and as the region continues to be exploited as a hub for the transit of illegal drugs from South America to Europe.
Human Rights in Ghana
|
| Street children, Ghana © ActionAid UK |
Although there has been no progress to lift the ban on homosexuality, in other respects the former president was progressive. On leaving office, Kufuor commuted all remaining death sentences and encouraged his successor to abolish the death penalty. A National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) was established to review alleged human rights abuses during the Rawlings era and Kufuor accepted its radical recommendations to make public apologies and pay compensation to about 2,000 victims of the abuse of previous governments.
The Economy in Ghana
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| Akropong Akuapem, Ghana © Bernard Haven |
Ghana was however rewarded by substantial debt cancellation announced at the 2005 G8 summit, amounting to $4.2 billion out of the then total external debt of $6 billion. The country benefits from about $1 billion in aid each year whilst overseas remittances rocketed to $4.3 billion in 2007, about 15% of GDP. Prospects for the economy have been potentially transformed by the dramatic discovery during 2007 of extensive offshore oilfields which may generate over $1 billion pa from 2010. Ghana is preparing carefully to ensure that the mixed blessings of a potentially oil-rich economy do not undermine its ambition to become a middle income country by 2015.
The OneWorld Ghana Guide was first published in this format in November 2004 with a text written by Volunteer Editor Bernard Haven
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