Shyam’s Ghanaian Summer…and More

Today I fly out of Ghana. It’s been an exciting time. In the past posts I have described the project and my work, my embarrassing (but hopefully entertaining) dance moves, and some insights I have had on development.

I’d like to conclude this blog though, with a story of an inspirational person that I met. Check it out, and I’ll see you mighty soon.

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From Mr. Noah’s eCARE business centre you can see the beautiful Lake Volta in the backdrop. In front of this is the Kpong tro-tro station – a hub of activity. Whether you are going to Akosombo to see Ghana’s largest dam or you’re going to Agromanya to see its famous bead makers and sellers, in this very little station, Mr. Noah has found a niche – another opportunity that he has capitalized on.

About 15 years ago, after having driven a taxi for a few years and after having worked many jobs, Mr. Noah started a small shop selling automotive grease, engine oil, and other tro-tro essentials. Today, the business is twice as big and makes profits multiple times larger. He has expanded his services to include more automotive supplies, stationeries, provisions (such as cleaning products), pure (sachet) water, and even plastic bags for street sellers. He is also wholesaling cell phone units (catering to the needs of all of the retailers in the area).

This man met me at the station when I arrived and introduced me to his wife (Happy), daughters (Rita, 16 and Sara-fina, 6), and son (Richard, 13). It’s incredible how this family works together. Mr. Noah and Happy spend most of their day, 6 days a week, at the station shop. And they are rarely idle. Rita is off at a residential secondary school and when she is back with her parents on the weekend is often charged with running the whole shop. Richard, meanwhile, helps after school at the business centre. He does the photocopying and plays with MS Publisher and Corel Draw (In fact he’s gotten better at it than Mr. Noah’s two employees). Sara-fina cheerfully both does her homework and plays at the station shop because that’s where she has to spend her time after school.

It was really too bad I didn’t get to stay with Mr. Noah. He didn’t think I would be comfortable enough on his couch so he put me up at a guest house. My attempts at persuading him otherwise prompted him to pull out and show me the plans for the four bedroom, four bathroom house he is building. When he was finished, he pointed at one particular room and told me that the next time I came that’s where I would stay.

I was there for 5 days, gathering information from his business centre, supporting his employees when I could, and talking to people in the community about the services at the centre. Mr. Noah wasn’t able to give me too much of his time (understandably) but when I did talk to him I found that he had some amazing ideas for marketing his businesses, and he had great feedback for the eCARE project. I also found that he was not without challenges: for example, when I asked him why he was stretching himself thin, he described that it was difficult to find reliable employees for either of his businesses. He also explained that his lack of knowledge of computers was preventing him from doing more at his business centre.

In the month following my visit though he had attempted to install internet at his business centre. It didn’t work but as I write this I know that he’s not finished trying.

What struck me most about this man his pursuit of more and better knowledge about everything – he reads about business, about people, about meditation, and anything else he can find time for.

As I leave Ghana, my only hope is that I can keep in touch with this man for who knows what he’ll be doing in 10 years time.

As you can see from my last few posts, I’ve been spending a lot of time reflecting on what I did this summer and what impacts they are actually having in Ghana and on the project I worked on. I was trying to organize everything in words but that wasn’t quite working so here it is visually….what did it take to do things during this placement, what came out of it in the short term, and what will hopefully come out of it in the long term.  

And as I mentioned in my last post, what’s uncertain is the sustainability of these changes. At this point, with my final reports handed in, and my last day at work completed I feel that I have given it my all. Now all I can do is wait and see.

With eCARE though, the strategy is different because the number of businesses is greater, the number of partners involved is greater, and the level of “hand-holding” that can be done is smaller. It’s more of an entreprenuer-driven approach - give entrepeneurs a viable business strategy, the appropriate tools needed, and adequate support to make it possible for entreprenuers to reach Dorothy by way of ICT training or internet access to enhance Income Generating Activities or the provision of social services.

So the Dorothy is there - and it is now a priority for me to take my interactions with her in each community I am in and put that into my report and weave it into the recommendations on where the project needs to go. And for the most part, I am optimistic that Dorothy will be better off - even if it is through 200 entrepreneurs that are now better equipped to run ICT and Renewable Energy business either through eCARE or on their own.

Thoughts? Questions?

The timing of this placement with the eCARE project is excellent simply because the challenges (and therefore opportunities) are enormous!

In my previous posts, I explained the project as one that supports entrepreneurs in running a successful rural business centre. To expand further, the services that each entrepreneur can choose to provide include fixed-line telephone services, sales of pre-paid cell phone credits, photocopying, scanning, desktop publishing / graphic design, sales of renewable energy products, internet, training in basic computer and software skills, and various social services. The possibilities for social services include acting as a government health insurance access point, getting farmers access to the daily prices of various crops in nearby markets (towns or cities), administering a government ICT training program, and some others. As well, each centre is provided with a set of two or three solar panels and batteries to provide them with a source of energy during what Ghanains call “light off.”

Now, having visited 5 centres personally, and 13 with the team that I am working with, it is safe to say that things are not yet going as planned for eCARE. With 69 centres in operation and an up-scaling to 200 planned for next year, the work done at this stage could be quite useful.

Here’s a brief description of the five centres I have been to:

The first centre had once provided phone services, but is now being used as an ICT classroom at a school (see post called Mr. John). The second centre was expanding to become an internet cafe. The third was selling phone credits only. The fourth was selling phone credits and food only. And the fifth was photocopying, providing graphic design services, and selling phone credits.

It’s easy to see that each centre is completely unique. At all of these locations, there is enormous untapped potential for business. At all of these locations, the entrepreneur choice has been stellar, but the success of these centres somehow seems to be limited. The challenges seem to have been with the way the program has been implemented. And with my limited knowledge of this project, it seems that changing a bunch of little things can make all the difference.

The obstacles to changing little things however, when the changes would add up to consuming a lot of time, are rather large. And what’s my role in the project anyway? They just want me to collect information, research which social services might work best, and provide recommendations on how to improve existing centres as well as new centres.

Easy enough? It could be. If I wanted to submit a report with my team at the end of the summer with all of that information, it wouldn’t be so bad. And KITE’s a great organization that will definately read and value the report.

But having thought about that a little more, I’m unable to answer the questions “how is this the most effective use of my time?” and “how is it sustainable?” And we will only reach 27 to 30 centres. Who will continue the support activities that we are providing? Who will collect data from the 40 centres we will not be able to reach? I’m not travelling with a Ghanaian or with a counterpart from KITE, so how can I know that I am interpreting and recording the information that I see on the field in the most accurate manner? And if there aren’t resources to support and monitor 69 centres (even with an additional 4 volunteers), what kind of systems change is needed to be able to bridge the gap and then allow room for the expansion to 200 centres? And how am I contributing to the systems change? Finally, how will we make these recommendations useful to the program? How do we make sure that it is within the scope of the project when we’re on the road so much, and cannot keep in constant informal communication with the office to bounce ideas from?

It’s been a battle of all of this against the fact that what I’m currently doing - collecting hard facts - is actually a KEY role in the project. It seems like the eCARE team already knows of the some of the challenges in the project and already has ideas - they just need hard facts to back it up because a monitoring system was not initially put in place. And we’re sort of testing their first draft of a monitoring system. So no doubt the team will take lessons learned and come up with a better monitoring system for the 200 centres. The data collected will also help solicit support from donors for funding to fix any bumps and flatten things out. And besides, this is what the organization sees us doing - not helping answer the questions in the last paragraph. They want us to have fun while we’re in Ghana - they know that we’re not here for too long and they want our experience to be smooth and well rounded.

But with this battle having raged (in my head and with my co-volunteers) for the last 5 weeks of field work, it has been clear to us that our approach may need to change. Step 1: KITE has to want us to switch roles. They have to want us to do more for what we end up doing to be useful. And the biggest opportunity for the doing is in the area of providing the tools to make our recommendations implementable.

But a strategy of sorts is needed. Timeline: 7 weeks to go. What do you think?

Friday, May 23

Accra, Ghana

Having spent two weeks in the office in Accra, I’m itching to get out to the field! So far, we (the team of interns at KITE pictured below) have had a chance to learn more about KITE and the e-CARE program. And the findings are…

We visited two Rural Business Centres, came up with an extensive survey to begin Monitoring and Evaluation activities, interacted with Ghana Telecom’s team on the eCARE project, and did some research on the ITC scene in Ghana.

Now, I’m off to the field to find out what this development project actually looks like on the ground. My job as I see it is summarized as follows:

Finally, here’s where I’m working:

Let’s start with pre-departure, departure, arrival and a bit –> a week in Canada, a half day on planes, a half day on a bus, and a weekend in Tamale, Ghana.

Canada:

For 6 days (April 30 to May 7) we discussed culture shock, nutrition, safety, approaches to development, and frameworks and models for analyzing rural livelihoods, and addressed the group’s hopes and fears. We challenged ourselves to think hard and think critically, and the National Office team put us to the test. But the real test was yet to come. The best part of the experience –> the people I’d gotten to know – other JFs and National Office staff.

Arrival:

After an uneventful (thankfully) set of flights, we arrived in Kotoko International Airport (Accra) , and the “real test” was starting to hit me in the face. 37 degrees Celsius with pretty high humidity, drinking water only from sachets (that will make for an interesting future post), the different languages, the exciting new culture, and the delicious food (that, however, needs to be selected with some care) were all hitting me in the face. I was excited to be diving in….

More travel:

From Accra, we grabbed a bus to Tamale (12 hrs to the north). On the way…

“Oh look – mangoes - they’re everywhere!” (the digestive juices were flowing)

At the first stop, “How much for those mangoes?”

“5 000”

I was excited to get started bargaining but needed to understand what “5000” meant first. “100 000 is 1 Ghana cedi”, another lady that noticed my state of confusion told me – ahhhh. Turns out the market lady was talking in old currency. On a side note, 1 Ghana cedi is about 1 Canadian dollar. I was ready to perform my first transaction.

“I’ll take two” and I pulled out a 10 cedi bill.

The women smiled, “no change for that.”

As a street vendor, she didn’t have that much change kicking around. Right - she may be one of the people we talk about as living on less than 2 dollars (about 2 cedi) a day.

I got my mangoes having learnt a thing or two, and we were quickly on the bus again moving at the fastest pace manageable for the roads we were on. Ghana, by the way, has a great set of roads.

Tamale:

When we got to Tamale, we spent two days with some long term volunteers and eased ourselves into Ghanaian culture.

What: Development Work with Engineers Without Borders Canada (EWB)

Where: Based in Accra, Ghana and travelling for extended periods of time to rural Ghana

When: May 8, 2008 to August 22, 2008

Having been involved with EWB for three years, and thought about and worked towards international development in Canada, I felt like I needed to see the realities first hand. See them and communicate them back to everyone in Canada and in India – my family, friends, the chapter, and anyone else that is interested. Thus, I applied to the Junior Fellowship Program and having been given the opportunity to volunteer in Ghana, and having spent 4 months preparing, I am now here to do just that. I seek to understand how Dorothy lives. In EWB lingo, Dorothy is every person I meet that lacks opportunity to get herself out of poverty: she is also whom I am ultimately accountable to.

My project partner:

KITE (The Kumasi Institute of Technology, Energy and Environment) is a leading NGO in Ghana in their field and EWB has many years of partnership with them through the Multi-functional Platform (MFP) project. (http://kiteonline.net/)

My project as I know it so far:

eCARE (e-Commerce and aims to reduce poverty, accelerating the extension of clean energy and modern telecommunication services to rural and peri-urban users. eCARE does this by providing loans to rural entrepreneurs for the purchase and operation of Rural Business Centres (RBCs) equipped with computers, printers, telephones and solar photovoltaic systems. eCARE is public-private partnership between Ghana Telecom, the UN foundation, UNEP and KITE. (www.ecareghana.org.gh and http://ecareghana.blogspot.com)

My role:

The eCARE project is about to scale up from 69 centres to 200 centres by the end of 2009. In short, my role is to help KITE create a survey, and gather and analyze data on how existing centres are performing. Once that is complete, I am to work on strategies for ensuring that the new centres are better positioned for success.