Navigating barriers to TPA in public and professional life in Ghana

Think piece by Nana Y. Amoah

Nana is an independent Ghanaian consultant with extensive experience evaluating donor-funded projects in Ghana.

A few months ago, turning at a traffic light close to my home, I was pulled over by two police officers who said they had caught me in a driving infringement and would take me to the police station where I could watch it, as captured by the traffic light camera. They ordered me to park together with a number of other drivers they had lined up at the side of the road. I was fairly sure I had done nothing wrong and I knew there was no camera on that traffic light. But arguing only made them more aggressive. So, I called their bluff and said I was ready to go to the station. They kept me waiting for about twenty minutes, during which they came back a few times in between stopping more cars. I held fast to my position. Finally, they released me in disgust, frustrated that I was wasting their time instead of producing a bribe.

Choosing between time, aggravation and money is a familiar choice to Ghanaian citizens when dealing with the security agencies and the civil service. Attempting to avail oneself of rights as basic as renewing a passport without giving behind-the-scenes handouts to relevant officials or ‘agents’ (who split the money with the officials), can turn the process into an obstacle course impossible to navigate if one has other demands on one’s time.

The factors that nurture this endemic power abuse take root early in the lives of most citizens. A rigid hierarchy of deference by age and/or seniority that is found across all ethnic groups plays its part. Those at the bottom of the hierarchy have no right to question the behaviour of the higher-ups. This makes them vulnerable and subject to harsh punishments for misdemeanours, real or perceived. The fear of this harshness inculcates a tendency to avoid challenging authority and to opt for dishonesty as an escape route rather than face up to punishment. Seniority in the hierarchy typically derives from age, position and gender (males over females), and is additionally conferred by wealth and social or professional status.

In this piece, I examine the tricky business of navigating barriers to transparency, participation and accountability (TPA) in Ghana, both from the perspective of a lay citizen, and from the vantage point of several decades of professional experience in social development.

I begin by looking, from a historical perspective, at some of the socio-cultural factors that keep these barriers in place, with particular focus on the education system that shapes the leadership of the country, and then touch briefly on governance systems. I then outline strategies I believe to be effective in dismantling these barriers, giving examples from my work experience. Strategies discussed include addressing educational disempowerment through rights- and needs-based approaches, particularly in terms of enhancing capacity for advocacy and increasing awareness of existing accountability mechanisms. Points of emphasis are:

• Improving resource management rather than releasing further resources into porous systems.,
• Building, from the bottom up, on existing structures rather than creating new ones.
• Approaching collaboration strategically, with an understanding of the pitfalls of loyalty and commitment.
• Fine-tuning approaches to the local context.

I conclude with recommendations for successful partnerships.

Role of the education system

The boarding school tradition inherited through British colonisation has meshed with traditionally rigid hierarchies of seniority to produce an institutionalised culture of bullying that virtually legitimises the exploitation of the weak by the strong.[1] With boarding being virtually synonymous with senior high school in Ghana, this affects the majority of high school graduates. Junior students are routinely bullied and have their money, food items and personal possessions forcibly appropriated by their seniors, who also make them do their chores. The juniors replicate this behaviour when they, in turn, become seniors.

The tertiary education system further entrenches this culture according to Patrick Awuah, principal of Ashesi University: ‘Universities have abandoned the idea that they should teach ethics or build character. Their ethical principle is, don’t get caught … Only five per cent of the population of this country goes to college. Eventually they hold important offices and many then make highly immoral decisions. It is simply a scandal that the elite behaves in this way.’ [2]

Patrick intends to help nurture a new generation of leaders capable of setting Ghana back on the developmental path on which it floundered post-independence. He made this decision after a period of self-questioning about Ghana — Why did so many things not work? Why was the media so poor? Why spend money educating doctors and then not pay them well enough for them to stay in Ghana? What kind of analysis lay behind that? ‘Every time I arrived at the same answer. It all turns on the governing elite …Why are so many of them corrupt? Why are they so concerned with their own advancement and why do they care so little for their society? My answer is, it lies in the education system.’[3]

The majority of people ending up in positions of leadership and governance in Ghana are thus products, not only of rigidly hierarchical family and community structures, but also of education systems that have internalised in them the normalisation of power abuse and resource appropriation. This widespread culture not only influences leadership practices, but increases the tolerance of the general public for such behaviour and perpetuates the notion that it is a right of leadership. This is one of the reasons why corruption within the civil service runs rife regardless which political party is in power.

The governance system

Despite all this, Ghana enjoys a favourable track record in democracy on the subcontinent. Ghana’s governance system is complex because it combines parliamentary democracy with traditional leadership. While chiefs enjoy much less political power than they used to, they are still considered the primary rulers in remoter areas, where local government functions poorly. While women are represented in traditional leadership, their power tends to be secondary to that of males. Within government, on the other hand, although women enjoy equal power, they are woefully under-represented.

It should be noted that the heads of local government are still politically appointed rather than elected.[4] Successive rounds of decentralisation have been termed ‘de-concentration’ or ‘devolution’ by political analysts because they appear more focused on the manipulation of administrative spaces for political gain than on streamlining the delivery of services to the people.[5] As new districts continue to be created, infrastructure and services struggle to keep up and local government structures do not become any more effective at reaching remote communities.

Re-empowering through rights- and needs-based approaches

Based on both private and professional experience, I believe that the next most important obstacle to civil participation in Ghana is inadequate education. Low rates of functional literacy and functional education overall are devastatingly disempowering and represent a critical lack of basic tools needed for the dismantling of barriers to transparency and accountability. Inadequate education undermines people’s confidence, keeps them ignorant of their rights and stops them discovering the very mechanisms through which they can participate. Indeed, many do not realise that channels already exist through which they, as citizens, educated or not, can participate in local governance procedures, access budgetary information and play a part in holding government accountable.

For this reason, I favour a bottom-up, rights-based and needs-based approach that targets two principal, related strategies: empowering people for self-advocacy and finding ways to plug the porousness of resource flows maintained by the barriers to transparency and accountability. This excerpt from an annual report by Action Aid, Ghana, neatly summarises the rationale of this approach:

‘Our focus on power was based on our belief that, too often, poverty is not experienced as a lack of access to resources, but rather as powerlessness caused by unequal power relationships. Thus … we more consciously began to facilitate communities to develop alternative sources of power … through training, access to information and support with immediate needs. Recognising that power is also derived from working with others, we strengthened “power with” through support to networks and coalitions. Finally, in appreciating that low confidence in self, coupled with self-deprecating beliefs … are often an unconscious and invisible barrier to climbing out of poverty, we strengthened the “power within” of groups … by exposing them to positive role models and facilitating them to adopt more positive belief systems about themselves.’[6]

This dual strategy of developing ‘power within’ and tapping into ‘power with’, is, I believe, the crux of the matter. It is the means through which an enabling environment can be created for the equitable participation of all citizens in civil processes. Like Action Aid, other development partners including bi-laterals like USAID and GIZ have adopted such approaches in cross-cutting development projects and particularly in democracy and governance projects, empowering people for self-advocacy through a variety of strategies including adult literacy,[7] civic education and community theatre/drama.

Building on existing foundations, from the bottom up

Founding projects on existing initiatives is a good way to ensure that they are needs-based. It also minimises duplication of efforts and heightens their potential for sustainability. Project design should be based on a thorough knowledge of beneficiary communities and should incorporate local culture. Client communities should be involved in design processes and local resources should be utilised in activities. Such measures will help ensure high client ownership; an important step towards financial transparency. Another is to strengthen clients’ involvement in the management of projects. In this context, I quote from a project plan for a quality education project I was involved in designing:

‘The programme favours the rationale that it is more sustainable to address the problems leading to the mismanagement of resources than to release further resources into an obstructed and porous system. Thus, interventions will be applied at multiple levels of the education system … At the same time, activities will begin to empower the levels that need to hold the system accountable …’

Project objectives thus included educating community members including parent/teacher associations and school management committees[8] on Ghana Education Service policies, and raising their awareness on civic rights that would enable them to hold duty-bearers responsible, e.g. by attending town hall and other meetings at the District Assembly (DA), inspecting information on budgets that DAs and District Education Offices are mandated to share with the public, and requesting such information when it was not made publicly available.

In an evaluation report on a public–private partnership between a European/Ghanaian NGO and a foreign company, I wrote:

‘Evaluators saw how much positive change had been brought about simply by telling people what their roles were supposed to be … It should also be noted that the strengthening of civil society to understand their rights and take up their role in the transparent flow of resources to their designated channels is the most efficient and sustainable way to increase resources.’

Working as part of an evaluation team for a bilateral democracy and governance project, I was impressed with the impact of training provided by the project to civil society organisations (CSOs) and civic unions. An account I was given during fieldwork by a community facilitator about a particular beneficiary community never made it into the final report but merits a mention here:

‘This community had a creek and was generating revenue through the sale of fish. The chief sold the fishing rights to a private investor, depriving the community members of that revenue. After the project started, the community tried to reclaim the creek. For their community drama, they acted out a play in which a chief impoverished his community by selling their property. Two teachers became implicated in this advocacy and the District Education Officer (DEO) transferred them to avoid them getting hurt. The community protested against their transfer, so the District Chief Executive (DCE) set up a commission of enquiry to look into the matter and the verdict went against the chief. The chief took the DCE to court and lost the case. The creek was given back to the community.’

This account demonstrates the impact not only of advocacy training, but also of the collaboration between different members of the community that made this chain of events possible. Indeed, collaborative networks are critical to the success of rights-based approaches.

Collaboration and the pitfalls of loyalty and commitment

Naturally, collaboration also has its pitfalls, as I learned by working on the evaluation of a girls’ education project by a foreign NGO (‘Org. A’), that had formed a partnership with a local NGO (‘Org. B’). Not being physically on the ground, Org. A relied heavily on Org. B, as well as on local committees that were formed, initially on a voluntary basis, to run the project. The project ran into problems and the partnership eventually disintegrated. The analysis in the evaluation included the following:

• Serious differences were exposed between the two organisations’ approaches to women’s empowerment. The commitment of Org. B seemed ambiguous when it came to elevating young women beyond their traditional status. [9]
• Org. A became concerned about familial relationships within Org. B undermining project administration and compromising financial transparency.
• District-level project management committees posed challenges. Working on a voluntary basis could not be sustained, and committee members eventually had to be paid. Allegations surfaced that particular individuals were demanding sexual favours from project beneficiaries in return for releasing project resources over which they had been given control.
• Some of the actual project beneficiaries were also involved in the management of the project, and certain individuals embezzled project funds.

Org. A’s objective to involve stakeholders in implementation was commendable and had proved successful in their projects outside of Ghana, but it was recommended that they reconceptualise the role of supportive community structures from implementational to advisory. Several of the project stakeholders also recommended that Org. A use existing structures instead of creating new ones.

There are lessons to be drawn from this example. One is that financial transparency can be compromised by multiple loyalties. In Ghana, loyalties to family, community and ethnic group often supersede loyalties to nation, professionalism or ideology. Nationhood is a relatively young concept and, broadly speaking, many people identify more with members of their ethnic groups across national borders than with members of their country from different ethnic groups.

Loyalty can thus become an issue in the transparency of resource allocation as well as in expectations regarding the spirit of voluntarism and/or charity. Because the extended family system obliges wealthier members to provide support for the more vulnerable, many Ghanaians already ‘give to the poor’, as it were, but not in a random way. Although the burden they shoulder may well exceed the kinds of volunteering obligations freely selected by people in the western world, the family focus makes it quite distinct from the ‘anonymous’ volunteering/charitable culture and this can lead to problems with project designs that rely heavily on voluntary input.

Another lesson from this case study regards the danger of applying strategies learned from projects in other countries. Assuming that successful approaches from one part of Africa will work in another (even within the same sub-region), can critically undermine a project.

Recommendations for successful partnerships

On the basis of the cited examples, recommendations for forging successful partnerships are as follows:

• It is better to have proper local representation than to be a long-distance partner. Otherwise, partner at the executive level with a well-established organisation that preferably also has a track record or reputable partners internationally. This does not exclude collaboration with smaller local organisations, but they should not have exclusive executive/administrative power. Partnership agreements, legal frameworks, operational strategies and reporting mechanisms should all be clearly spelled out.
• For rights- and needs-based approaches, it is important to work with grassroots CSOs and community-based organisations, preferably pre-existing ones. Many have already been set up through various development projects. This will build on pre-existing capacity and networks, and avoid project fatigue in the communities.
• Throwing together government officials on development project committees does not necessarily mean that they will communicate properly about such projects to their ministries. Such communication needs to be formally factored into project planning.
• Never put people who are more powerful in cultural hierarchies in charge of resources due to benefit people weaker than them, esp. men over women.
• Training project beneficiaries in advocacy and lobbying can potentially be done through partnerships with other organisations.

[1] Some senior high schools still maintain a tradition called ‘nino’s night’ an event consisting of the humorous (for the audience) ritual humiliation of the new students (the ‘ninos’), essentially designed to show them their place and to reinforce the hierarchy.

[2]‘Patrick Awuah: In Defence of a New Ethics’ by Mamle Kabu, Chapter 19 in African Visionaries. Sub-Saharan publishers, Legon-Accra, 2019. p. 131.

[3] Ibid, pp.130–131.

[4] Article 243 (1) of the 1992 Constitution states: ‘There shall be a District Chief Executive for every district who shall be appointed by the President with the prior approval of not less than two-thirds majority of members of the Assembly present and voting at the meeting.’

[5] Democracy, decentralization, and district proliferation: The case of Ghana by Danielle Resnick. Development Strategies and Governance Division, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

[6] Action Aid Ghana Annual report 2005 p. 3.

[7] An adult literacy of particular note is Action Aid’s Regenerated Freirean Literacy through Empowering Community Techniques (REFLECT), an innovative, empowering, rights-based approach to adult learning and social change which fuses the theories of Paulo Freire with Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA). It was pioneered in Ghana by Action Aid in 1993 based on research in other countries on past failures in literacy campaigns throughout the world. The method believes that literacy can be at the heart of development. PRA tools are constructed on the ground by participants with locally available materials such as stones, leaves, sticks and sand, initiating a process of labelling and discussion that forms the basis of reading and writing. Discussions also lead to analysis and suggestions for action on development issues in the community. Storytelling, drama and songs are used in the process of these discussions. In 2003 REFLECT was awarded the United Nations International Literary Prize in recognition of ‘exceptional work in the fight against illiteracy’, and it is now used by 350 organisations in 60 countries worldwide. In Ghana over 400 REFLECT groups (known as ‘circles’) were created and the methodology has proved very effective.

[8] SMCs were originally mandated through the work of the Quality Improvement in the Primary Schools Project (QUIPs), a USAID-funded national education programme that ran from 1997 to 2003.

[9] Something that never made it into the evaluation report was that, during evaluation interviews with the executive of Org. B at their office, they served me coffee in a mug bearing a picture of a woman posing provocatively in scanty lingerie. To me, it was a demonstration of the gap between the theory and practice of their work that they did not even realise the irony of presenting a female evaluator interviewing them on their management of a girls’ education project with such a mug.

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