My research on Ghana's socioeconomics

I decided to do this research, because, 

- I wanted to know and understand the current living and economic conditions in Ghana and also find out whether there have been changes in Ghana since I left Ghana 15 years ago. Because I am a social worker & in order for a social worker to sucessfully work with the people of a society, he or she must know about the living and economic conditions and possibilities of the society = socioeconomics. My aim is to work in Ghana as a social worker soon, therefore I had to know the living and economic conditions and possibilities of Ghana.

My Ghana research project took me 60 days, but I spent 76 days in Ghana. I arrived in Accra, Ghana by plane on the 30th of December, at evening time. I was picked up by a close family friend.

The next day, I went by bus to spent 5 days with my family in Techiman, the city I was born and raised till the age of 9 (with 9 years I left Ghana for Germany to join my mum).

After the 5 days of rest and getting use to being back in Ghana, I started implementing my plan of investigating the socioeconomics of Ghana by visiting all 10 regions of Ghana and interviewing & observing local people. 
I started with the region I was currently located in, which was Brong-Ahafo region. 

My plan was to spend not more than 6 days on a region's socioeconomics and to focus in those 6 days on a village and a city in the region. 

These are the 10 regions of Ghana. I started with the Brong-Ahafo region, the region I was born in and from there I went to the Northern Region, then the Upper East region, then the Upper West region, then Ashanti region and so on and ended in Accra, where I took my flight back to Germany. The city I investigated on in the Brong-Ahafo region was my hometown Techiman. The village was Koase. Koase is a village very close to Techiman, as it was my plan to always visit a city and a village, which are close to eachother, to avoid (high) travel & accomodation cost and change of accomodation. Because my finances were very short. I only planned 22 euro a day for expenses (which was by that time 100 GHS, with a currency exchange rate of 1 euro = 4,4 GHc).

To my surprise, the king of the village Koase was a good family friend, who in addition have contacts all over Ghana. After explaining him my goals and finances for this research project, he volunteered to connect me in each region of Ghana with someone he knows, so that I can save accomodation cost and get a more authentic view & experience of the region by having a local person as a guide and counsellor. 

Without him, I would have just ask my family and friends in some parts of Ghana, to find me someone to stay with and be guided by in the different regions of Ghana. Which would have required a lot of organisational work. So I am very glad I met him. 

The king of Koase is the man on the left, with the red shirt 

PS: In Ghana we still have kingship (like for example Great Britain). But in Ghana each city and village has it king, there is not just one king for the whole Ghana.

Due to the kingship in Ghana, it was very easy for me to get in touch with many local people, especially in villages. Because nowadays kingship has a more influential role in villages than in cities. In cities it influence has weakened, due to higher influence of politicians and probably due to the huge amount of people living in cities.

With the help of the people the king of Koase brought me in contact with in each region and at whom I could stay for the 6 days and with the help of the kings in the villages I visited, I could interview a lot of local people about their socioeconomic conditions and possibilities. 

I interviewed

• families
• students
• pupils
• apprentices
• workers
• old people
• social workers (NGOs, government)
• rural people
• city people
• unemployed people 
• religious people 
• rich people
• poor people
• middle income people 

I took the number of every person I interviewed, so that one day I can get back to them in case I have something they can benefit from or can be of help. 

I asked the people questions 
- about their and the communities financial situation,
- problems and challenges, 
- current activity status and how they find it and why they have that status and also 
- about their goals, wishes and plans for the future in order to understand the current living and economic conditions and possibilities in Ghana. 

Here are some pictures of the people I talked to.

Through the interviews and my observations I understood that I am more interested in working with a certain kind of people in Ghana and  in general as a social worker. 

This is the kind of people I want to work with: 

I also got to know that there has come to huge changes in the living and economic conditions and possibilities of Ghana since I left it 15 years ago. Changes to be mentioned are: 

- urbanization of villages (housing, lifestyle & infrastructure)

- modernization (internet, mobile money, electricity, water supply, health and pension insurance system, single households instead of family households, wage labour instead of self-sufficient labour, foreign food and products, new way of building houses). Example people prefer soft drinks over natural drinks like coconut water. 

- employment prefrered (government or companies/NGOs) over self-employment, cause it is more save financially > people seek financial safety, as they have become financially dependent due to the regular payments to make (electricity bills, health insurance, water supply bill....)
- formal education seen as a breakthrough from poverty: the higher, the better as payment according to educational level
- traditional and technical work like crop and animal faming, fishing, clothes weaving, beads making, carpentry and other crafts work and trading are now seeing as unqualified and economically not profitable work. They are seeing as stupid or lazy people work. People, especially people under 30 now prefer non-technical and high formal education requiring jobs like banker, nurse, teacher, counsellor, accountant and so on.

- increased governmental social protection (Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP), statutory health insurance, free education till college/university (before only free till junior high school, senior high school was charged), Ghana School Feeding programme, Student Loan Trust and workers Loan Trust).

I am not quite sure if I like those changes, or let say all of those changes, because urbanization destroy villages; formal education, especially high education takes time and also money, which many badly have to suffer in order to have it; modern stuff like electricity, internet, water supply, health and pension insurance cost money and need to be paid regularly, which force people to find jobs with save income; employment may take away the entrepreneurship skills of Ghanaians, non-technical work may replace technical work and so will make Ghana become independent on import and at last the increased governmental social protection is mostly realized by the help of foreign donors. Furthermore Ghanaians may get dependent on the Government when it comes to improving their living and economic conditions just as Western people do. Which I think is very bad, as dependency on the state makes one lazy and less innovative and flexible. 

I am very grateful to God, to Stube Ost, to my family, to all the people I met and to life that I could do this project and that I managed it well, eventhough I haven't been to Ghana for 15 years before starting the project. The only difficulty I had is me being recognized as someone who has lived abroad or who is living abroad and therefore being charged higher prices for goods and services and also being treated as someone who has money.