Ghana Now, Able to Solve Its Problems

Contributing Ghana memories to The Afro News since June has been a personally rewarding trip into my past and a stimulus to bring myself up-to-date on the country’s current reality.

Ghanaians deserve to be proud of the progress toward democracy and effective governance which led President Obama to choose their country for his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa in July but more is needed.  One of the major problems the country now faces is intertribal violence on its northern grasslands.  Rooted in tribal relationships dating to the 15^th Century or earlier and abetted by British indirect rule policies introduced in 1932, ethnic conflict in the north smouldered for centuries before erupting thirty years ago.  The best historical overview, analysis of causes and consequences of recent violence and recommendations for positive change that I have encountered are in “Conflicts in Northern Ghana,” a paper by John Kusimi and others, Ghanaians all.

Kusimi and his colleagues trace the death and destruction caused by at least six explosive ethnic wars and numerous lesser clashes over the past thirty years to government decisions made to benefit ethnic groups well represented in the corridors of power at the expense of tribes with less influence.  “Certain actions and in-actions of governments have led to the marginalization, deprivation, exploitation and the exclusion of ‘minority groups’ in many decision-making processes and governance issues that affect them.”  In these circumstances ethnic tension simmers just below the surface.  A brawl over the price of a Guinea fowl at a village market in 1994 sparked the bloody Guinea Fowl War.

The resulting interruption of economic activity, loss of life and property, destruction of infrastructure, breakdown in civil order, and  displacement of masses of people have exacerbated the endemic poverty of the region.  People live in fear.  Casualties are concentrated among people in the prime of life leaving the elderly and the very young to try to carry on with family farms or businesses.   Education deteriorates with each conflict as teachers refuse to report to teaching assignments in the north and parents of minor tribes refuse to send their children to major centres where schools are dominated by their enemies.  Immense funds spent on relief after a war sap the government’s ability to develop effective national policies and programs to establish stability and some measure of prosperity.    Rural-urban migration has had a devastating impact on the whole country.  The capital city, Accra, 640 km to the south, is home to some ten thousand unemployed young women from northern conflict regions, many of whom live on the streets.  The residents of the Sodom and Gomorra slum in Accra have lived there since fleeing the Guinea Fowl war in the north.  It is difficult to imagine better conditions for the growth of prostitution, drug addiction, armed robbery and disease.

On his departure from Ghana President Obama told the crowd, “The future of Africa is in the hands of Africans.”  Ghana’s President John Atta Mills need look no further than The University of Ghana, where Kusimi and most of his co-authors are on staff, for the best advice available on resolving northern ethnic conflict.

jacktoronto@telus.net