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Cultural anthropologists are concerned with context. While my research will take place in particular communities in the Wa West district, I am equally concerned with the broader Ghanaian context. At the core of my research, I’m questioning how inequality is generated at a local level and how that is tied to the larger national and international context. Because I suspect that inequality in Ghana is growing, I’m doing a lot of thinking about how to investigate and interpret Ghana’s economy in order to position my research findings in this larger context. There’s a strong rhetoric in Ghana right now about “The New Ghana.” This, I suppose, is a way to distinguish that the contemporary moment in Ghana is leaving “The Old Ghana” behind. The Upper West Region is definitely Old Ghana. Nowhere does this become more apparent than in traveling to the Upper West from the south.
Geographically, the journey between Accra, the national capital located on the coast, and Wa, the regional capital of the Upper West represents a distance of approximately 500 miles. This is a journey that must be taken by bus or private car. This is a journey that takes 12 hours. If you go by bus, the journey begins in a non-tarred corridor of a very busy transit hub in Accra. It’s dusty, it’s dirty, it’s crowded and loud. If it’s the rainy season, mud can be added into the mix. Here, people wait, alongside food and other goods, to be delivered from the south to the north. Though I know Ghanaians have other things occupying their minds, if you’re me, when you’re not stealthily eyeing the roaming goats to make sure they are not eating or pooing on your luggage, you are crafting complicated calculations involving thirst, water, and bladder capabilities. These are circumstances that I would consider very Old Ghana. This service costs approximately 55GHC (about $27)—no chump change in Old Ghana, especially for those most likely to be taking this bus journey. Meanwhile, there are now daily flights between Accra and the other major Ghanaian cities including Kumasi (in the heart of gold and cocoa country) and Takoradi (aka Oil City). These flights cover significantly less than 500 miles and the time between take off and landing is just enough to eat the complimentary sandwich you are served on board. So while The New Ghana offers fast and convenient options to travel to all of the important economic hubs, the way to get to the parts of Ghana that are retaining the title of Old Ghana is through the Old Ghana way.
Physical discomfort aside, by transporting through these miles and not flying over them, the discrepancies between the north and the south are more in-my-face, forcing me to think about why existing dichotomies are they way they are and how they make New Ghana look not so new. In these 500 miles, you travel from the humid forests of the south to the dry grasslands of the north. These ecological differences translate into economic differences. These economic differences are tied to how colonial economic policy unfolded and is, in some respects, upheld today. The south is rich in mineral resources and oil is the newest sector to drive the economy. Ghana’s colonial name was The Gold Coast and gold continues to be a major economic driver. The climate of the south also supports the growth of cocoa, a key export commodity, and one that the country eagerly prioritizes because people like me love chocolate.
The north is a savanna that supports small scale farmers growing cereals. Since the days of colonial authority, the products that the north produces (i.e. millet, aka the little yellow pellets found in the seed mix we Westerners feed to our yard birds) have been deemed not appealing to external economic interests or are products (i.e. rice) that cannot compete with cheaper imports from abroad. The available income earning opportunity is found in farming a few hectares and hoping to grow enough to feed your family for a year with a little extra to sell at local markets. The public and private sector jobs that are available in the Upper West require a university degree and most people in the Upper West have not completed high school. Schools are sparse in this region, teachers are underpaid and don't want to be in this region, and even though primary education is subsidized, education beyond primary school is not subsidized and very costly. Thus the majority of the people moving up and down the country via bus are people from the north hopeful to eke out a living in the south where they might make more money hustling goods in the streets than by fighting agricultural constraints in their home territory.
The majority of the people flying from Accra to Oil City are, well, people involved in financing, extracting, and developing the infrastructure for the oil and natural gas industry. It’s hard not to surmise, then, that an underlying aspect of The New Ghana, the part that is fueling the newness, is the part of Ghana’s economy that is rapidly growing and pushing the country into what the World Bank classifies as a lower-middle income country. Thus the people who get to ride the New Ghana wave are the movers and shakers who can access and benefit from this new growth. The Ghanaians that cannot access this growth (due to educational and long-standing class barriers) are falling even further behind. If I think about the Old and New Ghanas in terms of historical and lingering economic dichotomies, this just seems a more fashionable way to acknowledge existing processes of marginalization and exclusion--just another derivative of the 99% and 1%. Perversely, though, it is the 1% that has established the moniker.
Whether new or old, This Be Ghana.
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