Meet the Queen Mothers of Ghana: taking back their power and driving change in Africa

  Dogkudome Tegzuylle I, Pognaa (Queen Mother) of Lyssah /Credit:Nyani Quarmyne

This summer, we spent a couple of weeks with some truly amazing women in Ghana. They are the Queen Mothers – women who recently reclaimed their ancestral power and are now taking leadership roles in their communities. There are some 10,000 Queen Mothers in villages and towns across the country. They form a remarkable, but little known, network, bringing tangible social and economic development to the country and the continent.

Thanks to a grant from the European Journalism Centre, we (a filmmaker, photographer, TV producer and myself) were able to spend time with Queen Mothers in Lawra Traditional Area, a vast, rural territory in the upper western corner of the country, and in Ho, a town in the Volta region. We wanted to see how Queen Mothers worked at grassroots level. We found strong, warm, charismatic women who managed to accomplish so much with so little.  I often think of them…

Here an article on the Queen Mothers, which I wrote for the Telegraph Magazine, along with beautiful pictures by Nyani Quarmyne.

And for a more immersive experience, watch our multimedia "The Formidable Queen Mothers of Ghana".

Virgin Wives of the Fetish Gods - Slavey in Ghana

Enyonam and Forgive, both former trokosi slaves, at home in their village. They bonded due to the stigma they face from the community and say "we have become family to each other". Photo by Fjona Hill (Aletheia Collective)

 
I love Ghana, so when Magnum ice cream asked me to conduct interviews for a film on sustainable cocoa in the Ashanti region, I jumped at the chance.  It would also allow me and photographer Fjona Hill to report on a story we have wanted to do for a long time, but didn’t have the means to, as editors rarely pay for travel expenses these days.

So after the film, we stayed behind and headed north to the Volta - a beautiful region rich in history and culture, dominated by the vast Lake Volta and the River Volta. We wanted to look at the terrible trokosi tradition and try to understand why it still endures today.  Ghana is widely seen as a model for political and economic reform in Africa and lauded for its rapid development.


But away from bustling Accra, in remote countryside villages, some deep-seated traditions prevail. The trokosi practice calls for virgin girls to be sent to the shrines of fetish gods to pay for crimes committed by one of their relatives. They become living sacrifices, protecting their families from the gods’ wrath. Some stay at the shrines for a few years; others for life.

The tradition, also practised in neighbooring Benin and Togo, is deeply rooted in the beliefs and identity of the Ewe (ay-vay) people. It serves rural communities’ need for justice and meets the material and sexual needs of the fetish priests. But it's also considered a spiritual act and as such it is, along with female genital mutilation, one of the most difficult human rights violations to eradicate.

With the help of International Needs Ghana (ING), the main NGO campaigning to stop the practive, we visited isolated rural villages, speaking with women who had spent many years in fetish shrines, fetish priests, ING director and government officials.  We were aware of being Western journalists looking at a tradition we couldn’t understand and didn’t want to present another story on “dark, exotic, dangerous Africa”.

But we felt this was not a story about Western against African values – rather it was one one about modern Ghana vs. traditional Ghana. The Government outlawed the custom in 1998 and many Ghanaians are deeply embarrassed it is still enduring today. But there are powerful religious and political lobbying groups who argue the tradition is part of their cultural and religious heritage, and is misunderstood.

Here is our story for the Thomson Reuters Foundation and here is the same story on the Chime for Change site, a global campaign to convene, unite and strengthen the voices speaking out for girls and women around the world. 

The priest, Torgbi Ahiaeu at the Avevi shrine. He complains that he now has to do the farmwork himself now the women have gone. His wife, behind him, is the one remaining trokosi in the village. All the other 23 trokosi have left the village after liberation. Photo by Fjona Hill (Aletheia Collective)

Ghana's climate-smart cocoa

Cocoa drying in the Juabeso district, Ghana/Credit: Veronique Mistiaen

I recently went to Ghana to look at how cocoa farmers were adapting to and fighting the impacts of climate change.

I loved that assignment because Ghana is one of my favourite countries. I am also crazy about chocolate and worry about not being able to get my daily fix. I had read a report by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), which predicted that increasing temperatures will lead to massive declines in cocoa production by 2030 in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, which produce more than half of the world’s cocoa. With China and India developing an appetite for chocolate, the demand for cocoa might then outweigh the supply.

I have looked at commoditie across Africa and Asia in the past and reported on efforts to improve production while giving good wages and living conditions to  farmers and protect the environment. But the project I visited in Western Ghana was different because it focused not only on the farms, but on the whole landscape, the fallow lands and the forests.

Once, lush forests covered most of the country - the green of the Ghanaian flag represents them - but over the past decades, they have been cut to make space for more cocoa. Ghana is now the country with the fastest deforestation rate in the world.

The loss of forests compromises the region’s biodiversity, but also exacerbates the impact of climate change.  The country’s temperatures are slowly rising - and cocoa trees are now under threat.  

In the Juabeso/Bia district, international environmental organization Rainforest Alliance (RA) and Olam International Ltd have teamed up to help farmers produce what they believe is the first “climate-smart" cocoa in the world.  The $1 million three-year pilot project provides farmers in 36 communities with a combination of proven tools and innovative practices for land management and conservation, so that they can help reduce deforestation and climate change and at the same time earn a sustainable livelihood.

Cocoa farmers at a RA training session in Eteso, Ghana/Credit: Veronique Mistiaen

“In order to insure there is a future for cocoa production, you need an environment that supports cocoa, otherwise cocoa is dead,” says Atsu Titiati, RA project director in Ghana.
 

Read my piece for New Agriculturist here and Economist’s Baobab blog here.

Savings revolution - a new form of microfinance for the very poor is spreading like wildfire

Microcredit - providing credit to the poor (who can usually offer little or no collateral in return) -   was introduced and popularised by Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus in the 1970s as a way to lift poor people in the developing world out of poverty and help them start small businesses.  It has been very successful in Bangladesh, for example. 

But recently the practice has attracted mounting criticism. Behind success stories are disturbing reports of debts dependency and microcredit institutions hounding their debtors.

When I was in Ghana recently, Plan International took me to see a very exciting new model of microfinance in action in a poor suburb of Accra.  The system, called Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLA), is based on savings rather than debts and is managed in the community by the people themselves rather than by professionals. 

Freedom savings group in Accra/Fjona Hill

It is a very simple, flexible and transparent system that is particularly attractive to poor women because it emphasizes small, regular savings, social insurance, participatory management, lack of pressure to borrow frequently or in large amounts and access to lump sums to meet household obligations and emergencies.

 

The scheme was initiated in 1991 in Niger by Care International, and since then was further developed by various NGOs. It is now attracting a lot of attention and rapidly spreading across the developing world, changing lives in the process. Savings groups now have 4.6 million members in 54 countries. 

 

I have written a story for the Economist about it. Here it is: 

Helping the poor to save

Small Wonder

A new model of microfinance for the very poor is spreading

Dec 10th 2011 | ACCRA | from the print edition

“MY GROUP has rescued me and my children from poverty,” says Faustina Kwei, rearranging baskets piled high with cassavas and plantains around her market stall in a poor suburb of Accra, Ghana’s capital. She used a combination of savings, dividends and loans from a savings group to rent her stall and buy stock. For the first time, she can feed her two children well and send them to school.

Ms Kwei (pictured) is one of millions of poor people to have benefited from the hottest trend in microfinance: village savings and loans associations. Millions of people like her survive on meagre and erratic earnings. Access to the simplest financial services can help stabilise their incomes, which in turn makes them less vulnerable to diseases and natural disasters. An unexpected flood or fever can push a poor family into utter destitution, or the muscular arms of loan sharks.

To read the full story, click here.

Slavery past and present - different name, same exploitation

Elmina slave castle in Ghana

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Former BBC war reporter Rageh Omaar has spent a year making a documentary series about 21^st century slavery for Al Jazeera English.

He said he wanted to do the programme after a friend mentioned that there are 27 million people in slavery worldwide. “Most people think slavery is a thing of the past, but it’s a crime that is happening in plain sight, not just in poor developing countries but also here and in the US, in many different guises,” he told The Observer.

Omaar said he was shocked to see how common and everyday the practice was. “Modern slavery is now a fundamental part of the globalized economy….Every country on Earth has a law banning slavery, but enforcing that law, especially in today’s deregulated economic system, is very difficult."

Forced labour, bonded labour, human trafficking… millions of men, women and children around the world are forced to lead lives as slaves. It is often not called slavery, but the conditions are the same. People are sold like objects, forced to work for little or no pay and are at the mercy of their 'employers'.

According to research accepted by the US government, it is cheaper to purchase a slave today than is was at the height of the Transatlantic slave trade.

I recently visited the infamous Elmina Castle on the west coast of Ghana (or Gold Coast as the country was called at the time). It is one of the most important stops on the route of the Transatlantic slave trade and the horror of this terrible place still sticks to my skin.  It is hard to believe that slavery is still going strong today.  For, when seeing a place like Elmina which reeks of terror and violence, one has to  scream:  “How could we?” and “Never again.”   But when do we learn?

Built by Portugal in 1482, Elmina was the first trading post built on the Gulf of Guinea, so is the oldest European building in existence below the Sahara.

First established as a trade settlement, the castle later became one of the biggest slave fortresses in Africa.  In 1637, it served the Dutch slave trade with Brazil and the Caribbean, then in 1800s, become property of the British Empire. Today, it is a popular historical site, recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

The Door of No Return in Elmina Castle/ Dominique Chadwick

 Elmina, like other West African slave fortresses, housed luxury suites for the Europeans in the upper levels. The slave dungeons below were cramped and filthy, each cell often housing as many as 150 to 500 people at a time, without enough space to even lie down. Men and women routinely stayed there for three months until a ship was ready to take them away. The floor of the dungeons, as result of centuries of impacted filth and human excrement, is now several inches higher than when the place was built.

A special staircase with a trap door led directly from the women’s dungeon to the governor’s bedroom.

One of the castle’s two churches stands just above the women’s dungeon. I wonder if the European soldiers, administrators and priests who were posted there found it incongruous to be  praying while hundreds of chained, frightened and desperate women wailed underneath their feet…But then, we are all so good at justifying our actions, at not questioning things that are part of our culture, practices or environment. Would we have been different?

The most poignant sight at Elmina is the Door of No Return, the infamous portal through which slaves boarded the ships that would take them on the treacherous journey across the Atlantic known as the Middle Passage.  Our guide estimated that, over the castle’s 300 years as a slave fortress, some 12 to 15 million captives must have passed through the Door of No Return.

Omaar’s Slavery: A 21^st Century Evil is on Al Jazeera English on Monday nights.

Behind Magnum Ghana ice cream

Cocoa pods harvest/Fjona Hill

 

Apparently last week was National Chocolate Week, so I am a bit late with this post, but hey!

I went to Ghana a few weeks ago to look at Rainforest Alliance Certified™ cocoa farms where Magnum sources the cocoa beans for its new Magnum Ghana ice cream. 

We were an all-woman team: a filmmaker, a photographer, a representative from Magnum and myself. Our brief was to make a film, write an article and shoot pictures describing the cocoa cycle from “beans to bite” and looking at the impact of the certification process on the farmers and their families, the environment and the quality of the cocoa beans.  A fascinating assignment for a chocolate-lover like me!   

The knowledgeable Rainforest Alliance’s representative Christian Mensah facilitated our three-day stay at Gold Coast and Agave camps, two of several farming communities in the Assin Fosu district of Ghana’s central region, producing cocoa beans for Magnum ice cream.  

Road leading to Gold Coast camp in Assin Fosu/Fjona Hill

 

 

The farming villages are nested in dense, lush vegetation, off a red-dirt road, some 4 hours north-west of Accra, the capital.

When we arrived, we were greeted with drums and dancing women as it is often custom in Africa. The chiefs and elders from all the neighbouring farming communities made us the honour of welcoming us into their communities.  The head chief usually speaks publicly only through an intermediary - his linguist in traditional robes and golden staff - but he made an exception as we were foreigners.  He said the Rainforest Alliance certification process has transformed the lives of villagers here.  In fact, everyone we spoke with – men, women and children - said that.  I wondered whether people had been briefed to be so positive. Apparently no – their enthusiasm was genuine.

The chiefs of neighbouring villages came to greet us/Fjona Hill

 

 

Farming communities in the region have grown cocoa beans for generations. Ghana is the second largest cocoa producer in the world after Ivory Coast and cocoa is Ghana’s largest cash crop.  In 2011, Unilever’s Magnum ice cream joined forces with global conservation NGO Rainforest Alliance to bring sustainable agriculture practices to cocoa farmers in the region, promote nature conservation and increase the quality of life of farming communities. 

 

After just one year, 450 farmers in the Assin Fosu region have already achieved Rainforest Alliance (RA) Certification - a rigorous process that covers social, economic and environmental factors, including soil management and biodiversity protection.  It also means better conditions and higher income for workers.  Magnum’s goal is to source the entirety of its global cocoa supply from Rainforest Alliance Certified™ farms by 2015.

 

One of the most important things farmers said they have learned through the programme is how to identify and deal with pests and diseases, which attack cocoa pods and trees. If untreated, these fungus and bugs can spread to the whole tree and even contaminate the entire cocoa farm.  In the past, they all have lost harvests and trees to these pests. The training also covers preservation of wildlife and the eco-system around their farms, health and safety issues and the importance of sending their children to school, among other topics.

Bi-monthly training session during which farmers learn best farming practices/Fjona Hill

In addition, the programme has enhanced the status of women, says Fatima Ali, the chief of a neighbouring village.  “As a woman, I feel empowered by this programme.   I’ve applied the skills I’ve learned through the training and my farm’s yield has increased significantly. I am now training other farmers in the community. Traditionally, farming decisions were taken by men, but now I am training them.”

Farmer Rabiatu Abubakar says her family has “benefited enormously” from the programme.  “Our production has increased and we have now more money. This has strengthened my relationship with my husband. We are now able to send our children to school and feed them well. We are all happier.”  

Find out more about the cocoa process and RA certification programme in Assin Fosu by reading my guest post on RA’s Frog Blog here.