Last October, I was privileged to be asked to visit Ghana to carry out an evaluation of the peacebuilding work of a West African organisation, SEND, working in the NE of the country.
Meeting with elders
Having never travelled in West Africa before it was not with a little excitement that I stepped off the plane and travelled into the bush. Facilitated by SEND, I spent time meeting local chiefs, elders, youth, entrepeneurs, farmers and many local people who told me about their daily lives and the challenges they face.
I was well aware of the irony of a British person being invited to engage with peace activities in a country in which many of the conflicts were strongly exacerbated by certain poorly conceived policies implemented under British colonial rule. This being the case, I was all the more humbled by the welcome and hospitality I received, and loved the vibrancy and colour of Ghanaian culture. The food was very interesting, in particular the pounded yam called foo-foo which local people eat in mounds, and the chilli fish caught fresh from Lake Volta was truly delicious. On one occasion while having an audience with an important chiefly contender I was initially feeling slightly unsure of how to proceed, only to discover he was an engineering graduate from Birmingham – that broke the ice nicely!
In recent decades there have been a series of inter-ethnic conflicts in northern Ghana, most notably the so called ‘Guinea fowl war’ in 1994 in which 15,000 people died and hundreds of thousands were displaced. There have also been frequent conflicts within ethnic groups, normally about chieftaincy succession arrangements, which often flare up violently. Added to this, the region is very poor, with high levels of food insecurity and malnourishment, despite the north being the ‘breadbasket’ of the more prosperous south. Ethnic tension and widespread poverty is a volatile mix and I found that SEND were doing some excellent work in training up local people as ‘peace animators’ to give them the skills to understand and mediate local level conflicts and train their communities in non-violent conflict resolution. However, the remaining challenges for those who aim to build a sustainable and lasting peace are still very great.
A copy of the evaluation I carried out for SEND is available here and contains a more detailed background on the history of conflict in NE Ghana.
From my findings, the CHIPS approach of working at grassroots on a practical level makes it very relevant in Northern Ghana. The need for both peace and development is there. Furthermore, all the local people were very positive about the relevance of a CHIPS project, and the benefits of ‘outsiders’ and ‘insiders’ working together for peace. As a result of the clear need, and through the long term relationships which have developed with people in the area, CHIPS plans to respond by sending one or two people to initiate a project later this year.
In order to make this a reality, we are now actively looking for people to lead the project and also raising the funds required - we hope to share more specifics in due course as things develop. For now we estimate that we will need to raise at least £15,000 for the start-up costs to get things going in the first year.
Please consider how you could support this new project through prayer and financial support.