It’s bright and early, and we are bumping along a busy road on the outskirts of Accra on our way to the village of of Big Ado where we will meet Zuta, a good friend of Jim McDonald. The roads running along the coast seem surprisingly good, and I’m especially struck by the fact that traffic signals seem more mandatory than optional here. We’ve been invited to a church service to celebrate the Harvest. It’s been a good year for many farmers in Ghana, and they are rejoicing.
We pass through the city of Tema, a major port city in Ghana and I am also struck by the amount of industrial business taking place in the city. Tema is busy, and seems to be a good place to do business. I wonder how much of this business minded focus is reflected across the rest of the country.
This question is answered in part in our meeting with Katerina N’Tep, the Country Director with the Millennium Challenge Corporation in Ghana.
The $547 million compact is halfway through implementation, and some of the results are starting to come in. As Katerina explained, so far MCC has supported the training of 46,000 farmers with an ultimate goal or reaching 60,000 farmers by the time the compact is complete. Farmer’s receive 9 weeks of training with the overall theme of agriculture as a business. In addition to basic business practices, they are also taught about techniques to improve crop production.
A little more than halfway through compact implementation, an interesting issue has emerged. Katerina N’Tep, MCC Country Director, spoke very highly of the local government counterpart responsible for implementation of the compact. Despite its large size, there are surprisingly few US government staff implementing the compact. The much larger staff is actually Ghanaian. This group of highly qualified individuals works in MIDA, the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA), an arm of the Government of Ghana. The question is given MCC has helped to nurture a group of skilled government officials in a functional administrative setting, what happens after the compact ends? Will MiDA cease to exist? Will the government officials in charge of MCC implementation continue to work together informally as they are re-integrated into other government ministries. It’s not clear yet, but one possibility is Ghana applies for and gets a second MCC Compact, which would give reason for MiDA to continue to operate.
The sense I got is that MCC has set up a strong program of work in Ghana. I wish I could say the same thing of all the agencies (US and otherwise) we visited with while in Ghana. While there is a sense of purpose, the urgency of addressing hunger and poverty sometimes seems to be missing.
Comments