Overseas Help: Teaching People to Fish
The British government has restricted its foreign aid budget at a time when most other areas of public spending are being cut. With the government admitting that around a quarter of overseas development projects fail to meet their targets, people are wondering if the country is getting value for money. Criticisms focus on two main factors: corruption and the tendency to provide disaster relief instead of promoting long-term development, which is often called teaching people to fish. This article reflects on the ways in which teaching people to fish was able to bring lasting benefits to Ghana and help the country become more self-sufficient.
Disasters, both natural and man-made, that cause large numbers of people to face famine, epidemic disease, and exile, are newsworthy, generate publicity, and inspire charitable giving. It’s no wonder, therefore, that governments like to be seen to be answering the call for help, and the general population wants to see their taxes and charitable donations go to clearly visible good causes. Aid projects that promote the slow but steady evolution of industries, markets and institutions in developing countries cannot compete with publicity disaster relief and attract far less public interest. For those dedicated to teaching fish, it seems that the sequence of disasters is continuous and endless, endlessly depleting the funds available for projects that could increase self-sufficiency, economic independence and long-term stability.
In a situation where funds are limited, it is essential that projects focus on key sectors of the economy that support secondary sectors where essential inputs can generate massive effects, improving the lives of large numbers of people. One of those key sectors is the grassroots engineering industry.
The power of this sector should be apparent to anyone visiting a country like Ghana. The entire population is on the move in an antiquated fleet of decrepit vehicles that continue to operate year after year with the constant attention of roadside mechanics, or adjusters, who are available everywhere. Congregating in major cities in informal industrial areas called kokompes and magazines, they combine their resources to produce new bodies and trailers for everything from cocoa trucks to articulated lorries, from trotters to lumber trucks, and from market carts to yard trailers. bikes.
Without the expertise of the installers, the only traffic on the roads would be the ‘Benzes’ of the wealthy and the 4x4s of government officials. With their experience, the broad mass of the population can attend their places of work during the week and travel to the chosen funerals on Saturdays. With his expertise, thousands of people are employed as drivers, mates, and loaders, and thousands of small and medium-sized businesses are able to move their raw materials and finished goods.
The largest kokompe in Ghana is Suame Magazine in Kumasi. Beginning in 1971, at the behest of Prime Minister Kofi Busia, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, undertook a program of technology transfer to artisans to equip them to support the development of all sectors of manufacturing and production. the way they already supported the road transport sector. An essential part of this work was updating technology to improve the quality of operations. Through this program, the base engineers of Suame Magazine have made locally manufactured equipment available to improve the activities of farmers, food processing and post-harvest industries, rural textile and handicraft industries, soap making and the manufacture of domestic utensils.
Under the FREE Project of the Ministry of Industries, Science and Technology (MIST), KNUST’s pioneering work has spread to all ten regions of Ghana. The effect has been the creation of hundreds of new small and medium-sized businesses and thousands of jobs. For example, the manufacture of rotary metal lathes by Kofi Asiamah’s Redeemer Workshop in Tema has supported an aluminum spinning industry encompassing more than a hundred companies employing some five thousand workers. A similar impact was made in Kumasi by Edward Opare, Chief Technician of ITTU Suame, who established numerous iron foundries in Suame, making the iron foundry one of the largest employers of the magazine, which now has a hundred thousand master craftsmen and apprentices.
Support to the wood industry by SIS Engineering Ltd of Solomon Adjorlolo in Kumasi, through the supply of bench saws and lathes for turning wood, has enabled carpenters to introduce many new products to improve rural industries such as spinning cotton, weaving and beekeeping. The introduction of beekeeping by KNUST in the late 1970s, with the support of engineers and carpenters in Kumasi and Tamale, has promoted a nationwide rural industry encompassing large commercial hives exporting to neighboring countries, agricultural hives that supply local markets and hobby beehives, often owned by women. providing nutritious honey for home and family.
Most of the grassroots industrial development effort briefly discussed here was funded by NGOs on small projects costing between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars. One of the largest and most effective grants, £20,000 ($46,500), came in 1978 from a fund administered by the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG). The first phase of the Suame ITTU in the early 1980s was financed by CIDA in the amount of Cdn$250,000. In total, the entire KNUST technology transfer program from 1971 to 1987, when the ITTU program was taken over by the government, employed total foreign funding of less than $1 million (historical value). With much of this work still turning a profit in 2011, it must be recognized that the program was profitable. Teaching people to fish does not have to involve great expense and should not be neglected, even in the midst of recurring disasters.