DEVELOPMENT-GHANA: Farmers Expect Abundant Rainfall, Bumper Crop

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Edward Ameyibor

ACCRA, May 12 1998 (IPS) - The first rains in Ghana have been received with joy and relief as consumers look forward to reduced food prices and a possible end to an energy crisis described as the worst in the country’s history.

The El-Nino phenomenon, which has caused widespread drought in West Africa, is weakening, and meterologists now predict that the country will receive about 70 percent of normal and above normal rainfalls between May and June.

For a country which is going through its worst energy crisis due to low water levels in the Volta dam which supplies about 10,000 megawatts of hydroelectricity to Ghana, Togo and Benin, the news of good rainfall in the northern catchment areas is most welcomed.

In neighbouring Burkina Faso, the two dams built on tributaries of the River Volta have dried up and Ouagadougou, the capital, is being supplied by 150 water tankers from a distance of 100 kilometres.

The water shortage heightened after the rivers and dams in Ghana dried up as a result of a two-year erratic rainfall caused by drought.

However, the drought has also brought some good news. It has brought together Ghana and Burkina Faso to address the problems facing the Volta River. And, apart from seeking urgent ways to tap their common energy resources, Togo, Benin and Cote D’Ivoire are also vigorously pushing for the implementation of the West African gas pipeline project that link them with Nigeria and Ghana.

This rosy picture is, however, contrary to the situation in the Central Region of Ghana where schools have remained closed as a result of the low water level in a dam that supplies the Cape Coast.

The drought has also showed its comic side. At the height of the crisis, a Regional Minister in charge of energy, Kojo Yankah, received anonymous letters threatening his life if he continued to refuse to give the chief of a neighbouring town a cow to slaughter to appease the rain gods. The letter warned that if he refused to co-operate, he would be murdered and offered to the rain gods.

At the same time, a man alleging to be possessed with a medium spirit also went to the press demanding two million cedis (about 800 US Dollars) to fill the Volta dam with water by blowing a trumpet.

In Benin, a man who claimed to be the head of a voodoo clan of rain makers, also called for negotiations with government ostensibly to induce rains.

Yankah said if he had given in, the quack rain makers would have claimed the credit for inducing the current downpour.

Before the rains erupted last week, more than 80 percent of industries and homes in Benin and Togo were reportedly affected by the power shortage.

The coming of the rains should be good news to the farmers in Ghana’s three northern regions who have been clashing every year with nomadic communities from Burkina Faso, northern Togo and Benin over grazing lands and water.

The farmers, backed by government officials, appear to enjoy the support of local legislators and chiefs. Unconfirmed reports say they have been showered with gifts by the nomads in a bid to acquire the right of abode.

Overwhelmed by complaints from the farmers, Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings warned here last week that his government was running out of patience.

The northern regional authorities have demanded that the herdsmen be sent back to their countries. If deported, it will be a major snub to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) protocol on free movement of persons and goods in the region.

In 1990, the government deported a group of herdsmen back to Cote d’Ivoire, Togo and Burkina Faso.

It did not work. The following year, the nomads were back at the start of the dry season and they have since been crossing into Ghana in search of grazing land for their cattle.

Baba Brimah, a legislator, has urged the chiefs not to harbour and not to accept gifts from the herdsmen.

Similar advise has been offered by Nii Otu Akwetey, an Israeli trained farmer, who is the chief of Kantamanso here. He urged his people to report all herdsmen destroying farms to the police. “Do not listen to excuses or get scared of big names in the Castle (president’s office), big names in the military or in the police,” he said.

Ghanaian Vice-President, John Atta Mills, has also met with heads of water-related departments, agencies and the Ministry of Works and Housing and directed that all faulty dams be renovated to assure the country does not suffer from a nationwide water shortage.

Various methods are also being devised to harvest rain water, 70 percent of which presently flows into the Atlantic Ocean without being used. One idea is to build underground tanks to store rain water for homes and for the community.