African pride

Spend a month in Ghana, and you'll see optimism beaming from even its youngest citizens, contrary to western stereotypes.

The London Free Press, Saturday, March 25, 2006
by Luke Brown, Engineers Without Borders Canada volunteer

Eight months after graduating from the engineering faculty at the University of Western Ontario, I found myself leaving a country beset by rashes of criminal violence on its city streets, where charges of corruption were running to the highest levels of government, and worries about the outbreaks of killer diseases were weighing on the minds of many.

CHILDREN OF PROMISE: Joseph, right, stands with two friends as they extol the virtues of their homeland: It's a place of industry, enormous wealth, properity and peace.

That country was Canada. However, I was leaving for another continent—for Africa.

I've been in Ghana, West Africa, for more than a month now, having been sent by the Canadian organization, Engineers Without Borders, to work on a water and sanitation project. Although I've barely begun to scratch the surface in terms of understanding the challenges and opportunities this country faces, I have learned a great deal in my first month in Ghana.

Perhaps the greatest lesson learned thus far is the destructive and misleading power of generalizations.

Just as my opening paragraph presented only negative imagery about the Canadian political and social landscape, painting a rough picture of a land that is plagued by innumerable problems, so do, I believe, the western media present a portrait of African countries as being without opportunity, without potential and, most saddening, without hope. We frequently see articles on corruption, war, human displacement and death. We see television ads begging us for our financial support to help end hunger in Africa. We hear of the deepening cycle of despair here.

Of course, it would be foolish to claim that the African continent, by and large, does not face massive challenges. I will not argue that the opportunities available to the average Canadian citizen are of the same quality or quantity as those available to the average Ghanaian. However, to focus entirely on the negative is to do a great disservice to the millions of Africans who are working towards a better and brighter future. This negative focus paints an image that is vastly distorting and encourages inaction on our parts.

March 6 was Ghana's Independence Day, marking the 49th anniversary of their secession from the British Empire—the first sub-Saharan African nation to break away. To celebrate, I went to a large park in Tamale, northern Ghana, where huge crowds gathered to watch students march and reaffirm their faith in their country. I spoke to some of these children and was struck by how similar their outlook on life is to that of Canadian youth.

I asked one boy, Joseph, what is good about Ghana.

"Ghana produces a lot of things," he said, "like gold, silver, cocoa, cotton. The gold and the silver, we use them to make money, and then the cotton to make T-shirts," he said.

Joseph is only about 12 years old, but has learned a lot about his country from school and the radio. I pressed further to find out what else he likes about Ghana.

"There is peace in Ghana," Joseph responded. "We don't like fighting in Ghana."

Then a large group of children gathered around to examine the strange "saliminga" (white person). I asked them what songs they sing in school. One small girl began singing, "God bless our homeland Ghana," and almost immediately the entire group chimed in, singing in unison. After the song, they then launched into their pledge of allegiance.

This, I realized, is the same patriotism I've seen back home. It's the same sentiment I experience when a Canadian hockey team takes gold and every patron in a bar explodes in feverish pride.

I spoke to another young man, Sadik Yakubu Osman, who is studying agricultural technology at the University for Development Studies in northern Ghana. After graduating, he hopes to work with farmers in Ghanaagriculture employs almost two thirds of the Ghanaian work force—to help increase their crop yields.

BRIGHTER FUTURE: Sadik Yakubu Osman hopes his university studies in agruicultural technology can help increase crop yields.

"I'm fascinated by the challenges of agriculture," Sadik tells me. Many of these challenges are clearly defineddegrading soil quality, a short rainy season in the north, lack of access to markets (an underdeveloped infrastructure being a big culprit).

"For example," Sadik says, "micro-irrigation projects are needed." These projects help farmers bring water to their farms when the rains fail, and Sadik is learning how best to apply such technology. People such as Sadik are training themselves to be able to effectively address some of the factors that lead to poverty. These people are beacons of light, and deserve our attention, support, and respect.

After visiting the Independence Day celebrations, I knew that people here are proud of their home. They're proud of its exports and its peace, and the children have hopes for future careers as pilots and soldiers and nurses. This is not the same land I've seen on television commercials back in Canada—one in which a child without hope for any sort of future stares plaintively out of the screen. To be sure, those people are just as real; the extreme poor should never fall off our radar screen. However, this is not a representative cross-section of Africa. Ghana has a diversity of people who play a diversity of roles. To create an archetypal African out of stereotypes of poverty is to misrepresent millions of people.

Furthermore, focusing only on negatives encourages a culture of defeatism in the West, a culture unprepared to support those working themselves out of poverty.

While the greatest strides towards development will be initiated and carried out by the citizens of the developing world themselves, the West still has a role to play. This is a role we should play with optimism, not with dubious hesitancy.

For instance, up until the late '90s, Ghana spent more on external debt repayment than on health care.

Thankfully, this debt should be extensively reduced this year under the International Monetary Fund's multilateral debt relief initiative.

Actions such as debt cancellation should be approached by the western nations as necessary steps forward, and not as futile attempts at improving the world.

Another example is in restructuring our own farming system; for instance, in eliminating agricultural subsidies that lead to "dumping" of western products on the international market, which can suffocate the farmers of developing countries.

Western nations continue to drag their feet on the international stage, most recently in the Doha World Trade Organization talks. I'm sure that if the citizens of Canada had faith in the developing world's ability to work their way out of poverty, to empathize with their common human goal of moving forward, then we would put more pressure on our government to act in their favour.

As it stands, it's easy for Canadians to shrug off responsibility, since the situation can seem so hopeless, and the people so distant and different.

I have found here a more subtle understanding of a country that I knew very little about before arriving. I hope that the decision-makers in the West will always strive toward a subtle understanding of the world's poorest countries—toward empathy and compassion, and away from the trap of destructive generalizations.

The Canadian public can also do its part, by insisting our government act on the international stage in a manner that can most benefit poorer nations. By playing our part to the best of our abilities, and recognizing and encouraging the efforts of the citizens of developing nations, we will help them bring about the complicated solutions needed to end the complicated problems of development.

Canada has its problems, to be sureworries about gun violence and corruption and Avian flu are perfectly valid. But we don't define ourselves by our problems—we're proud of our strengths.

Here's hoping that we'll export this mindset to the world stage, and use our privileged position to help minimize the world's problems, and—more importantly—amplify its strengths.

Luke Brown is a London-based freelance writer.