On distribution day in the village of Louga, women and children sat patiently, waiting for their names to be called as workers carefully measured each family’s allotment. Here, every grain is precious. Though Oxfam has selected the most vulnerable villagers to receive the food—widows, divorcees, and people caring for orphans—in reality the sorely needed calories will be shared widely among many. It’s one of the survival strategies common in Louga, where the homes sit close together along dusty paths and the temperature soars to 104 degrees.
“Solidarity here in this community is very strong,” says Khadidja Idriss, a mother of six children. She shared with 10 other families some of the food she received on distribution day, which included 75 pounds of corn, 9 to 11 pounds of beans, a little more than two quarts of oil, and close to a pound of salt.
“My neighbors have virtually nothing either, but they will even feed my children if I’m out. We help each other, regardless of how little we have,” Idriss says. “This is how we survive.”
Before the distribution, Idriss , who suffers from increasing pain in her legs, had been struggling to find enough food for her family. Meals consisted of corn flour mixed with water, and a sauce made from leaves gathered by her children.
“The children often don’t manage to sleep and they cry because they are hungry,” said Idriss. “Sometimes I have no words of comfort for my children. I boil water with a bit of salt for them to drink, which will fill them up.”
But there is no comfort like food, and when Idriss learned that her family had been selected for the distribution, she could hardly wait to convey the news.
“I told my children straight away and they were so happy and joyful and haven’t talked about anything else since,” she said.
The day before the distribution, a neighborhood child, propped near the doorway of Adoaga Ousmane’s home, chewed on a pit from a piece of fruit . The fruit was long gone, but the chewing helped stave off hunger. For Ousmane, caring for a house full of children and grandchildren, hunger has been no stranger. Her family, too, was among those selected to receive the monthly rations. And like Idriss, her share went far beyond her own threshold.
“I shared the food I received with three other families,” said Ousmane. “I can’t eat my food while other people go hungry. We always share if we can. There is a strong feeling of solidarity in the village. I have to help others who are in need as they would help me if I asked.”
]]>On the edge of the Taffoga cooperative, in a clearing among the huge mango trees that populate the community, we are welcomed by about 30 women, who describe the horticultural work they are able to carry out with the support of Oxfam, through its local partner ATAD. In the vegetable plot they have planted cabbages, aubergines, gombo (a local vegetable), onions, and garlic. These will enable the women to improve the variety of their diet and they will be able to sell any surplus.
Ramata Zore stops for a few minutes to talk to us while her colleagues water and weed the plot. She is 25 and has 4 children to look after. And at the moment she is on her own, as her husband has gone to the Ivory Coast to look for work.
“The vegetable plot is a help to me, because what I get from it goes somewhere towards feeding my family,” she says. “If I sell some of the vegetables, I can buy millet, which is the staple part of our diet. Also, in these difficult times, we make a recipe based on millet with a few cabbage leaves, which the children love.”
But gardeners here face a daily struggle: Water.
“There isn’t enough water and the wells are drying up,” says Zore. “We’ve had to organize ourselves into two groups: one group does the watering one day and the other does it the following day. In fact…after a few hours of watering, the well is dry and we have to wait a while before we can fill up the buckets again”.
After we have been talking to her for a few minutes, we notice that the coming and going of the women up and down the rows is starting to slow. The four wells on the perimeter of the garden have dried up and the women are congregating around them with their buckets and watering cans, waiting for the water levels to rise again.
“I live in Taffogo and in spite of our having large fields for growing crops, we’ve only harvested four sacks of millet this year, compared with the 20 we can get in a normal year,” says Zore. “But it’s a long time since we had a normal year. Last year, the floods destroyed much of the harvest. We go from one catastrophe to another, either because of too much water or too little.”
“Before, when rain wasn’t in short supply, we had 15 small sheep and cattle,” Zore says. “But we’ve had to sell them all and have now only got one small goat left. As I’ve got nothing else, I’ll have to sell her to buy seeds for next season.”
How to feed her children is always on Zore’s mind.
“Often they tell me they’re hungry and all I can offer them is comfort,” she says. “If there’s something to eat, I give it to them, and if not, I ask the neighbors.”
“My dreams?” Zore asks, surprised at my question about her wishes for the future. “To have enough food to feed my family and a house built of bricks, instead of a shack like the one I live in now. I’d also like to keep up the vegetable plot for five years. Then, if I manage to find something else to do which will enable me to supplement my income, I’ll be able to start a small business. I want to carry on with the vegetable plot and earn money to help my children.”
Oxfam is aiming to help 1.2 million people across seven countries with programs that include cash transfers and cash-for-work initiatives, veterinary care for the livestock on which many families depend, and access to clean water and sanitation. We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can support our efforts.
]]>The singer and his band, The Orchestre Daande Lenol (“voice of the people” in the Fulani language), held an all-night concert in Wodobere village to raise funds for affected communities.
Maal paused during the concert attended by 1,000 people in the remote village to speak about the food crisis in Senegal and other parts of West Africa. “There is a need to act fast to avoid the situation getting worse. We saw children who don’t even have water to drink. Everywhere it is dry, wells have dried up, and dead animals are littered everywhere.”
The morning after the concert, Maal visited the village of Mbelone located two and a half miles from Wodobere. “We face serious problems here. Our livestock are dying before our eyes,” said Ely Hamady Diallo, the chief of Mbelone, to Maal and a group of journalists. “If we humans do not have food to eat how can we feed our animals? Every other day we lose an animal -- the livestock are our livelihood.”
“I am here with Oxfam to call on governments and the international community to come and help,” Baaba Maal said to journalists after listening to the villagers. “We are demonstrating that artists are not just there to perform and make money. We can be agents of development.”
More than 18 million people are affected by the food crisis in the Sahel region of West Africa owing to irregular rainfall last year, a lack of animal fodder, poor harvests, and lingering vulnerability from the 2010 food crisis. Rising food prices across the region and political conflict in Mali compound the situation. In Senegal, 850,000 people are affected. Oxfam’s response to the crisis will include: cash transfers so families can purchase food and agricultural inputs like seeds, as well as assistance to ensure people have clean water, sanitation, and hygiene assistance. With sufficient food and seeds, families stand a much better chance of a successful harvest this year.
Oxfam is aiming to help 1.2 million people across seven countries with programs that include cash transfers and cash-for-work initiatives, veterinary care for the livestock on which many families depend, and access to clean water and sanitation. We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can support our efforts.
]]>“I harvested practically nothing,” Founé Danfakha says of her 2011 yield. She grows groundnuts, maize, and rice in Bembou, a small village about 50 kilometers east of Kedougou, near the border with Mali. The 60-year-old mother of five children and grandmother of four says, “If the rain comes normally, I can get 20 sacks of groundnuts. Last year I got only five.”
Danfakha has about five acres of land. She says her last harvest was dismal: She got three bags of rice, which is about 30 percent of the normal harvest. She planted about an acre of maize, but harvested none at all.
No seed, no harvest
Danfakha is sitting in front of her home, with her four-year-old grandson on her lap. The boy is quiet, and seems to have little energy. Danfakha says she is feeding everyone in the household regularly, despite the fact that the food she grew last year lasted only two months after the harvest in November. Usually she grows enough to last four months. She says she is meeting her family needs with money sent from her daughter, who is digging for gold in a nearby mining area.
When the rains start, Danfakha’s daughter will come back to help her prepare her fields and plant. “I think we will have to cover our needs growing groundnuts,” she says. “I don’t have enough rice seed, but I think I have enough groundnut seed.” When her daughter comes back they will have no income from mining while she works in the fields, so it is a calculated risk.
“The situation is difficult here. There’s a problem of rain,” Danfakha says. “It’s been irregular. If there’s not enough rain, there won’t be a harvest. And if there is no seed, there’ll be no harvest.”
Oxfam is collaborating with local organizations in Kedougou to help farmers there and in other areas of West Africa with crucial agricultural support, so they can plant this spring. Oxfam is also planning work that will help keep drinking water clean and safe, and provide food or short-term employment for cash wages, so farmers can meet their food needs over the summer while they work their fields.
Oxfam is aiming to help 1.2 million people across seven countries with programs that include cash transfers and cash-for-work initiatives, veterinary care for the livestock on which many families depend, and access to clean water and sanitation. We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can support our efforts.
]]>She planted a maize field and hoped to grow a ton, but only got one 50-kg bag. She says the poor result was due to “lack of rain, lack of good equipment for cultivation, and lack of money to pay for labor.”
Her situation is rather typical in the small village of Bandafassy, about 15 kilometers from the town of Kedougou in eastern Senegal, where erratic rain last year hit farmers hard. The resulting high demand for food grown in other parts of the country is pushing up prices, and forcing farmers who were already struggling to feed their families to find creative ways of coping.
Camara is the one in the family responsible for agriculture, but her husband Nicolas Keita helps prepare fields for planting and the harvest – when he is not away mining for gold to earn cash.
Keita says they planted in early June, but by the end of the month it had stopped raining, and what they were growing dried out in July. They replanted in August, and invested in some fertilizer. The rains were intermittent in September and stopped altogether in the beginning of October. "The rain gap in June and July prevented any decent harvest," he says.
"Things are going to go badly," Camara says she realized after the harvest. "But we will make every effort." She turned to gathering wild fruits in the forest, such as the seed pods of the baobab tree and jujube berries to feed her family.
To earn money, her mother-in-law began making clay pots for storing water; Camara walks 15 kilometers to Kedougou (carrying a 10-pound pot on her head) where she sells the pots for about $5 each. If she can make a sale, she buys food and returns. In a good week, she can sell two or three pots.
Camara reports that after a good harvest she can feed her family for about six months, but this past year the food only lasted about four. She says she is down to her last two bags of rice, one of which she wants to save for seed. “We will always find a way to get by,” she says with a certain resignation. The threat to farmers like Camara is that of another year of diminished harvests: Successive bad years can lead to a downward spiral that even the most resourceful farmer can’t avoid.
Oxfam is designing programs to help farmers like Camara get the resources they need to plant crops this year, so that when the rains come people will have an opportunity to grow what they need for food. Cherif Sow, who works for the Kedougou Association for Action and Development, an Oxfam partner, says the need for support in the area is crucial. “We have to help the communities as quickly as possible to help them survive the lean time, otherwise it will have an impact on their agricultural production.”
Oxfam is aiming to help 1.2 million people across seven countries with programs that include cash transfers and cash-for-work initiatives, veterinary care for the livestock on which many families depend, and access to clean water and sanitation. We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can support our efforts.
]]>The conflict in northern Mali, one of the driving factors of last week’s coup d’état and the temporary closure of borders, had already posed a major risk to vulnerable communities in Mali and the region. Now there are signs that the escalation in the country’s instability is further affecting the already serious food insecurity across West Africa, meaning a rapid increase in humanitarian assistance to the region is urgently needed.
While Oxfam and other agencies continue to operate and provide assistance to vulnerable populations in zones affected by conflict, a further degradation of security may risk hampering humanitarian access and provision of basic services to areas of greatest need.
In Northern Nigeria, an increase in conflict over recent months has also affected communities who are struggling with the food crisis. Some border posts in Borno and Yobe states have been closed due to growing violence, while at other borders exports have been dramatically reduced, having a major impact on the ability of hard hit countries such as Niger and Chad – where 9.7 million risk going hungry this year – to import food. There has also been a sharp downturn in the migration of workers – an important way that families cope in hard times – due to fears of violence.
“The Sahel was already facing a serious and complex food crisis this year, and the growing security concerns in the region risk aggravating the situation further,” said Al Hassan Cissé, Oxfam Regional Food Security Policy Manager. “Regional food markets are not able to function properly in such conditions, meaning greater assistance is rapidly needed to protect millions of people who risk going hungry across the Sahel.”
Responding to the increased humanitarian needs of displaced people, Oxfam is already providing food, water and sanitation to refugees and host communities at three sites in the Tillabery region of Niger, as well as the Fassala transit camp in the Nema region of Mauritania. Preparations are also being made to provide assistance to 19,000 refugees in Burkina Faso. Overall, Oxfam plans to reach 350,000 people in Mali and 1.2 million people across the Sahel with humanitarian assistance.
“The insecurity in Mali must not prevent the urgent efforts needed to deal with the other crisis in this country: the lack of affordable food that threatens the lives and livelihoods of 3.5 million Malians,” said Eric Mamboué, Oxfam Country Director in Mali. “While Oxfam continues to work alongside others to tackle this crisis, dealing with the urgent nutritional needs of the Malian population must remain a top priority for all actors in the country, and access to desperately needed humanitarian assistance must be ensured”.
Some 13 million people in the Sahel are facing a major food crisis in 2012 as poor rains and locust attacks led to a drop in cereal production of 25%, while in some regions such as Gao in northern Mali prices of food remain over 70% higher than the five year average.
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What has the erratic weather—drought, flooding—meant for the people of Kolda in southern Senegal? It’s made them among the most food-insecure in the entire country, said Greg Matthews, a humanitarian livelihoods officer with Oxfam America, who recently returned from a field visit.
“In the village of Karcia bordering the region of Sedhiou, the overall production has dropped by 80 percent compared to last year,” added Isaac Massaga, an Oxfam America humanitarian program officer in Senegal. “A woman we talked to said she harvested 400 kilograms of rice last year and only 80 this year—on the same size of land.”
Massaga said lack of rain has also hurt the production of vegetables, an activity that usually provides a substantial source of income for women and their households.
Peanuts, the cash crop that many farmers in the Kolda area depend on to support their families, have taken a severe hit as well. During the last harvest in October, production plummeted by 60 percent, said Matthews, leaving families with less money to buy food. And at a time when they need to purchase even more of it to make up for what their fields couldn’t produce, the shortages are beginning to take a toll.
When there is a lack of food—or money to buy it—families resort to other ways of coping. They may borrow food or cut down on the number of meals they eat each day. Often, they turn to searching for wild foods, such as roots, fruits, or grasses
“In the south, families showed us the clover-type grasses they were collecting for their households,” said Matthews. “People told us how they had borrowed rice from family or friends, or money so they could buy a kilo to feed their children.”
Normally January and February are times of plenty around Kolda. Farmers have cash from their harvests. They have stocks of food. Their families can eat three times a day, every day. But not this year.
“Now, they’re saying they’ll eat, definitely once, usually twice, and maybe three times—if they have enough money, or if they happen to sell a goat,” Matthews said.
To get cash, more people are resorting to a hard—and environmentally destructive—solution: They are fanning out into protected forests and cutting trees, which they then turn into charcoal. Senegal’s capital, Dakar, has an enormous appetite for charcoal, said Matthews, as it is the main cooking fuel used there. Neighboring Gambia is also a big market.
“You see huge trucks filled way higher than they should be—filled with thousands of sacks of charcoal—going into Gambia,” Matthews said.
“In our conversations with Abdou Seydi, the regional director of rural development for Kolda, he expressed deep concern about this phenomenon,” said Massaga. “It’s not only accelerating deforestation in an already fragile ecosystem, but it also heavily affects the soil fertility, and thus impacts the medium-to-long-term agricultural productivity in Kolda.”
But without alternatives for feeding their families, people are not likely to stop cutting trees added Seydou Wane, the executive secretary of FODDE, a local organization Oxfam works with.
What complicates the food situation in Senegal is that while one community may be struggling to ensure there is enough to eat, just a few short miles away another community may be faring fine—a disparity that makes generalizations impossible. Poor rainfall was not universal.
“We went into one village, Balkamissa, and the first thing I saw were these stacks—chest high—of millet that had been harvested, dried, and stored under a tent,” said Matthews.
As bountiful as the harvest may have been in Balkamissa, it’s clear from the assessment missions Oxfam has undertaken that many families are struggling and need help to make it through to the next harvest. In a three-phased response, Oxfam plans to help tens of thousands of Senegalese meet their immediate needs, recover some of their losses, and better prepare for the next time trouble strikes. And among the initiatives around Kolda will be income=generating activities so families won’t have to rely on dwindling forests for their survival.
“When my kids are having fun, when they’re not hungry, when they jump left, right, and center, that’s the most pleasure I get,” she said.
But with rain in short supply, Senussi is worried about what the future will hold. Across the Sahel region of West Africa, a number of conditions are converging that could trigger a new food crisis. Low rainfall and water levels, poor harvests, lack of pasture, and high food prices are all causing serious problems, even as people are still trying to recover from the last food crisis in 2010 which affected 10 million of them.
“If the rain does not fall, it will be a disaster for us,” said Senussi. “The animals and the people need the rainy season. Pastures grow during the rainy season. Without rain there is no life. We’ll have to migrate but now we don’t know what will become of us.”
For many families, hunger is a hardship they have long endured.
“Usually, a family should eat three times a day, but now that is not the case,” said Koubra Hamid, a 40-year-old mother of eight children who lives in Sallal, Chad. She has only enough food to prepare one meal a day for her family—a ball made of rice or flour and served with a sauce.
That single meal a day is all Hamid’s family has had for several years. They don’t have the resources for more. To buy grain in the market, families may first have to sell one of their animals to get cash.
“If we had animals, we could feed our children more often,” she said, but as the pastureland has shrunk, so has the size of their herd. And in the harsh calculus herders know well, the 13 camels Hamid’s family has held onto don’t add up to full stomachs for her children.
“To prepare two meals a day in one household like ours, the head of the family should own at least 30 animals,” said Hamid. “Our only source of income comes from the rain. Rain falls, grass grows, animals graze this grass, then we sell the animals to provide for us. If the rain doesn’t fall, we cannot talk of life here.”
Nor is it easy to speak of hunger and its devastating consequences.
“The truth is, we don’t have the right to say that someone has died because of hunger,” said Ashta Hamid, Senussi’s older sister. “We cover this and say they died because they were sick, but really, lack of food kills.”
In Chad, where crop production from a recent harvest was down 50 percent, reports have indicated that 13 out of 22 regions could be affected by food insecurity.
Oxfam is gearing up to address the needs of the most vulnerable people in the region and in some places across the Sahel the organization has already been working with communities to increase their resilience.
In the village of Kouzi Wahid in northern Chad, Fatna Bakhit is growing tomatoes, watermelons, turnips, and onions with seeds and gardening tools she received from Oxfam. She’s counting on the produce to help tide her family over: The last harvest was poor and they lost most of their crops. And her husband has now gone off to look for work.
“When this effort bears fruit, I will be able to take care of my small family whilst awaiting support from my husband,” said Bakhit.
Across West Africa a new food crisis is looming over a population that has already endured three of them since 2005. The last—in 2010—affected 10 million people.
But with early action, the hardship and loss so many have suffered through in the past seven years could be softened and that’s what Oxfam America’s humanitarian workers Isaac Massaga, Julie Savane, and Greg Matthews are taking the first steps to put in place. They are just back from Boulal, a collection of villages in the north, where they were working to identify the greatest needs and the responses that would best fill them—now, and longer-term.
“We’re in a good position now to mitigate the serious consequences of an acute food crisis and to help people not resort to selling assets and cattle to meet their basic needs,” said Matthews, speaking from the Oxfam office in Dakar, Senegal’s capital.
Selling valuables—livestock, farm tools—is one of the strategies poor families without cash employ as a last resort when faced with no other way to get food: They’ll use the money to buy it in the market. But in selling these important assets, they are also limiting their ability to make a living, and that drags them deeper into poverty. Halting that cycle is key to averting a crisis.
During the last growing season, rainfall in Louga was erratic, said Matthews, sometimes coming in great gushes and sometimes not at all. For the crops—millet, cowpeas, and peanuts—the result was dismal. The yields are off dramatically.
One farmer Matthews spoke with said he and his family had just consumed the last of the millet they had harvested in the end of October—300 kilograms worth. That was five times less than he would get in a good year. And the next planting season is still four months away.
How will people manage? Some, like the millet-grower, will pursue petty commerce, such as hunting for wood that they can sell as fuel in the market. But for many herders facing lean times, their strategy is to migrate with their livestock in the hope of finding pasture elsewhere.
In Boulal this year, that migration has started much earlier than usual, said Matthews.
“The hardest months for pastoralists are April, May, and June—right before the rains begin,” he said. “But they’re starting to experience that now, in the beginning of February, so most of their productive animals have already started to migrate.” That means families must take their kids out of school prematurely and abandon other livelihood efforts, like gardens and small shops, that could help support them.
Poor harvests are also adding to the stress herders are feeling. With fewer crops pulled in from the fields that means fewer leftovers of leaves and stalks to feed to the livestock. And as the health of their animals declines, so does the value of sheep, goats and cattle.
Coupled with all of this, said Matthews, are climbing prices in the markets. A 50-kilogram sack of rice that once could be had in a trade of one sheep now costs a herder two or three.
“Because of all this, people are starting to employ early coping strategies,” Mathews said. “They are starting to change the way they eat and manage their finances to prepare for a long, hungry season.”
But even as they take these steps, the future hangs heavily.
“People are really worried about what will happen a month from now,” Mathews said. “Most of the food reserves are already exhausted.”
Among the responses Oxfam is weighing are cash transfers—a tool that would allow hard-hit families to carry on as they would normally. With cash, they could buy the essentials they need during this critical period but not have to sell vital assets to do it, said Matthews. A second approach might be to help herders get access to fodder for their livestock, which provides both food and income for families.
But longer-term, the goal is to help communities become more resilient.
“The bottom line is working with communities to take charge of the issues and find solutions themselves,” said Matthews, pointing to a milking cooperative that had worked successfully in the area for a while. “It’s not about money. It’s about having, at the base community level, the desire to work together and the capacity to manage working collectively.”
“By early 2009, about 452,000 hectares of land had been allocated in Ghana, including a single allocation of 400 hectares for the cultivation of jatropha and related plants for bio-fuels” said Kingsley Offei-Nkansah, the secretary of Ghana Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU) and Chairman of Food Security Policy Advocacy Network (FOODSPAN), the lead speaker at the press conference. “Even though the country is yearning for foreign investments, this new wave of land deals is not the new investment in agriculture that millions of Ghanaians have been waiting for.”
At 2.47 acres per hectare, this puts more than a million acres of land under cultivation of biofuel crops instead of food in Ghana, where experts are concerned that more than a million people in the country of nearly 25 million are facing shortages of food.
Continued Offei-Nkansah; “the government must put in place effective national regulations and enforcements to ensure that land owners provide secure access to land for small scale farmers, especially women.” He went on to say that women constitute the largest part of the agricultural labor force in Ghana accounting for more than 50 percent of farmers and producing more than 70 percent of the total food consumed.
Oxfam’s country director in Ghana, Sebastian Tiah, noted that the only way out of the dire food insecurity threatening more than 1.2 million people in the country is support to rural women farmers. “Supporting women is equal to reducing poverty and underdevelopment,” he said.
The press conference was part of Oxfam’s GROW campaign to urge policy makers to do more to support small-scale farmers and improve the access to food for the poorest people in the world.
]]>“I’m using this mandate,” Addo announces, like a seasoned politician, and starts ticking off her issues. Most of them are related to problems with water, funding for education, jobs for young people, and compensation for the damage and loss of land from a large gold mine established near Akatekyeso.
It’s a village of dirt paths, and cracked, crumbling, concrete structures. There is one well near the main road with a large group of women and children pumping water, filling buckets, and carrying them off.
“We had a hill over there,” Addo motions behind her home. “That was our water shed, but they blasted it and destroyed it. We had streams flowing out of it and there was no water scarcity. But it was all destroyed and now there is no water.” The mining company, AngloGold Ashanti, drilled two wells for the community, only one of which is currently functioning and now serves hundreds of people in the area.
To some, Addo may seem an unlikely leader: she’s a woman with little formal education. But she has the training and knowledge she needs to be effective, thanks to her work with the local human rights and environmental organization Wacam.
“Formerly, nobody consulted us,” Addo says of the mining company. “After we got training from Wacam, we understood our rights. Now they know if they want to work here they need to come and ask for our consent. Now they recognize we know our rights, and that is why they are respecting us.”
Addo is part of a growing group of village advocates in rural Ghana trained by Wacam that is bringing their concerns to companies and government bodies, and pushing for changes. Wacam has been building this network for 16 years, and it is now gathering momentum.
Addo is aware of her responsibilities to effect change, and knows she has to do it honestly. “I am always very concerned about the truth,” Addo says, walking down a path near her home. “Whatever I say, I investigate it, and double check to make sure I come out with the truth.”
Addo believes blasting rocks with explosives in nearby mine pits caused the cracks visible on so many of the buildings in Akatakyeso. She says the blasting near her home was quite violent: She was actually in her kitchen (a wood-frame shelter next to her home where she did all the cooking on an open fire) when it nearly collapsed on top of her and her family after one particularly large explosion. They just made it out from under its metal roof before the entire structure came down.
Even the best trained community representatives negotiating compensation from a mining company for blasting damage require hard, indisputable information and facts. Several hours to the north of Akatakyeso is a community called Dormaah Bypass, which worked with Wacam to close the information gap and get a commitment from another mining company, Newmont, which runs the Ahafo mine, to repair the community’s buildings.
Dormaah Bypass is just on the other side of the bypass road built for the excavation of Ahafo, less than a mile from the pit. Emmanuel Kuduah, 62, lives just off the bypass road, where he farms citrus fruit and leads a small evangelical church. “The main problem here is blasting,” he says, sitting in the shade of a tree outside his house. “The pit is so close, it is cracking our buildings, and in one case a building collapsed on someone and he died.”
A brief walk around Kuduah’s house, where he lives with his wife and eight children, showed more than a dozen cracked areas, many of which had been repaired. But some of the repairs were opening up again, and Kuduah says the continued blasting makes it look like some areas were never repaired.
Wacam’s trainers helped people from this community to hold meetings with Newmont to discuss the building damage but the company was reluctant to accept responsibility in all cases. The company did however offer to pay for an engineer to survey the buildings and make a recommendation.
Kuduah says Wacam warned villagers that an engineer hired and paid by Newmont might not be independent enough to make a fair analysis. Wacam recommended that the community members press Newmont to pay for the study, but to allow community members to pick the expert engineer. “Wacam helped us find an engineer. We held a meeting at the assembly hall to present the expert’s report, and that was when the company accepted responsibility for the cracks in the buildings and said they would repair them.”
Kuduah says this engineering study is just one of the ways Wacam has been able to help his community negotiate with Newmont. “They have consistently provided us with knowledge and ways to organize and lead our struggle, so we have the strategies and leadership we need. Whenever we have asked for ideas and knowledge, Wacam has helped us.”
]]>The main training is in Ghana’s Minerals and Mining Act, which accords citizen’s rights to fair, adequate, and prompt compensation for land lost to mines. Activists also learn how to monitor the negative environmental effects of mining, particularly pollution to water bodies by cyanide (used to separate gold from rocks), which is shockingly frequent in Ghana. “Wacam has carried out investigations in water bodies in mining communities,” says Hannah Owusu-Koranteng, while riding in a van from Ghana’s second city Kumasi to the capital Accra, just one of the scores of trips she makes every year to train local activists. “Out of the 400 water bodies we tested, 250 were polluted. We presented the report to the Environmental Protection Agency and they are doing an investigation. It also helped inform a recent assessment in which the EPA rated the mining companies, and all the mining companies in Ghana were scored poor or unsatisfactory.
“This has all emerged from the communities, where activists identify pollution sources, and we contract researchers to analyze the water bodies and come out with findings we present to the government.”
Informed communities now know what to do if they find dead fish in rivers and streams: collect and preserve samples to verify the presence of cyanide contamination, contact the Environmental Protection Agency, and negotiate compensation from the company responsible for the spill. Local activists are also trained how to communicate with the media, in cases where government and company responses to such accidents are slow or non-existent.
Oxfam also supports the legal aid organization the Center for Public Interest Law, (CEPIL), which assists communities pressing their grievances through the courts. CEPIL’s work has helped several communities get compensation for cyanide spills, including a $250,000 development fund from mining company Goldfields Ghana, agreed in an out-of-court settlement for the community of Abekoase in 2007. CEPIL is also helping plaintiffs in Dumasi press for compensation from Bogoso goldmines for a cyanide spill. This case has been in and out of court since 2004, and further delaying tactics by the defendant are trying the patience of community members.
It was in Dumasi where one of Wacam’s most energetic local activists emerged: Joanna Manu. Manu was one of the local farmers who learned about the cyanide spill in the nearby Aprepre Rriver in 2004, and went there immediately to collect dead fish and warn people not to touch or drink the water. She and her fellow activist Nii Anyetei pressed the case for compensation with the EPA and mining company.
Manu had also previously suffered the indignation of being arrested for farming her own lands, but successfully stood up in court and invoked the Minerals and Mining Act, pointing out to the judge that as she had received no compensation, the land did not belong to Bogoso . “I am farming that land still,” she told this writer in 2007.
In the meantime, Manu has pursued her studies, finishing high school in her mid-30s. She is now pursuing her ambition to become a member of Ghana’s parliament. She recently achieved a significant milestone on that road: she was elected to the District Assembly of the Western Region.
There’s a saying in the local Twi language in western Ghana, Adwem anu balofo tirmuI: knowledge is not only in the head of one person. “Wacam has taught me about the basic rights of people, their rights to own property, to information, to live as a human being. And that a leader has to listen to people, be humble before them, understand their issues, and that I have to have the courage, commitment, and confidence to represent them,” Manu says during a brief networking visit with other activists in the small city of Prestea, a gritty mining town near Dumasi.
For a community leader, especially a woman, to speak truth to power in Ghana, like many parts of Africa, is a challenge. Criticizing or challenging elders, or those in power, is risky – not only is it considered rude by many, it can lead to isolation. However in Ghana, there is a polite way to do this: one must seek permission to raise something publicly that might not be pleasant. This permission, called sebi, is a crucial way of working. “Wacam taught me how to do that,” Manu says.
In between villagers in her voting districts, Manu says she is setting her priorities for her work in the District Assembly. Chief among them is to ensure communities understand their rights in the face of industrial mining. “I know from my experience that when your land is taken from you, you will be jobless,” Manu says. “You will not get money to feed your family. I want the assembly to know about this so they will help people negotiate well, so they can get something for themselves.”
]]>Anwiam means “in the sand” in the local Twi language. Residents enter the village by passing over a set of railroad tracks separating it from a housing development built for the AngloGold Ashanti mining company staff, behind chain link and barbed wire fences. Anwiam has no electricity and little clean water. “If you compare the company residences with Anwiam, it is like apartheid,” says Hannah Owuso-Koranteng, who works at the human rights and environmental organization Wacam. “The rail line divides them.”
AngloGold Ashanti was blasting in nearby mine pit, and draining water, without any advance warning to the community. Amo says they used to blow a whistle just before blasting, signaling a sudden evacuation. Then, two years ago she and others from Anwiam started attending training sessions with Wacam. These problems, Amo says, were “a violation of our rights to live in a clean environment.” She says they learned that the company should consult them about a blasting schedule, and warn them about water outflows—and pay fair compensation for damages.
The training with Wacam was a real eye opener for Amo, who at first appears to be a very shy woman, concerned that she does not speak English well. But when she starts talking about the injustices she sees in her community, her face changes and she speaks rapidly and without much hesitation. “Now I can sit at the negotiation table and look the company representatives in the eye and tell them we think they should redress some of these issues, and that we should be compensated,” Amo says. “What they are doing is violating our rights, so they have to look at other ways of engaging us, so we can solve these things amicably.”
Stories of injustices like these, and local efforts to redress them, are becoming better known in Ghana thanks to a proliferation of grassroots activists trained by Wacam. Stories in the media abound: cyanide spills, homes damaged and destroyed by blasting, inadequate compensation, loss of farmlands and jobs and income, and involuntary relocation. “People are now questioning whether mining is a good development option for the country,” says Hannah Owusu-Koranteng. “And if we have to engage in mining, what are the methods we have to use?” She says questioning the role of mining in the economy used to be akin to treason, or a threat to national security. This started to change as Ghanaians have become more and more aware of the severe costs imposed by mining on local communities.
This has caused many to consider what mining is bringing to the country: Daniel Owusu-Koranteng points out that with such high prices for commodities like gold these days, mining is now bringing in about 40 percent of Ghana’s foreign exchange, more than exporting cocoa. However mining only contributes about six percent of Ghana’s GDP. “What accounts for this is high capital flight in the sector,” he says. The Minerals and Mining Act requires companies to pay between three and five percent of mineral revenue values, most pay three percent, a rate negotiated by some larger companies. Advocacy campaigns by Wacam and others are pushing this up to at least five percent.
The local activists trained by WACAM have played an important role in the national level debate about mining in Ghana. Each of them has had to take on new responsibilities and learn things about themselves in the process, as they work to improve their community and their country.
Philomena Addo, the subsistence farmer from Akatakyieso and recently elected village representative, is struggling to survive as she is taking on new leadership responsibilities. “We lost almost all our land to the mine. Now we have to go to other communities with land, and we are now share croppers,” she says outside her home. “There is just no land to cultivate here, the areas were all either destroyed or taken up by AngloGold for grazing cattle.”
Nevertheless, Addo says she has truth on her side, and is using her own personal transformation to seek a political solution to the problems in her community. “I used to be very timid,” she says “I would not discuss anything in public. Now I am more confident and I can speak at any level in public, at the community or national level.” She plans to push her agenda and serve her constituents: “It’s a privilege to win this confidence,” she says of her recent landslide victory at the polls.
]]>Unfortunately, that’s just what happened in September and October 2010. Abdoulaye N’Dao, a gregarious retired electrician with grey dread locks says the flooding in 2010 “was the most difficult compared to earlier ones… there was a lot more water.” He says his house had water up to his ankles in some of the rooms; he and his extended family of 25 people were bailing water out of the house and its courtyard for days. “Maybe crocodiles and frogs can live like that,” he says months later sitting in his now drier courtyard, “but not people.”
The heavy rains of 2010 triggered the fifth year in a row of serious flooding in Pikine, and capped off one of the rainiest years for Senegal since 1971. Dakar got a total of 20 inches, more than twice the normal amount of annual rainfall. Oxfam already was working with an organization in Pikine called Eau-Vie-Environnement (Water-Life-Environment, or EVE for short), and deployed $295,000 from Oxfam’s “Saving Lives 24/7 Fund” to help EVE respond.
The needs were urgent in Pikine: Oxfam and EVE estimated that 150,000 people in 3,600 families were badly affected, either completely displaced or living in flooded homes. With help from Oxfam, EVE planned an aggressive response, which included:
A fast survey of the worst-affected areas of Pikine, to identify families in the most need: EVE and Oxfam decided to focus its assistance on 2,812 families (roughly 30,000 people) primarily in seven of Pikine’s 16 districts.
Supporting 116 pumps, to remove water from 643 homes, 7 schools, and 18 mosques: EVE supplied fuel for pumps that moved more than a million cubic meters of water, which is something like 264 million gallons, enough to fill more than 400 Olympic swimming pools. This took 15,000 liters (about 4,000 gallons) of fuel. EVE worked with local authorities to help remove water from 228 roads in Pikine.
Removing waste: household garbage and other waste pose a severe health threat, so EVE supported the removal of 3,000 cubic meters (roughly 105,000 cubic feet) of garbage.
Delivering sand: to build up low-lying areas and shore up buildings at risk of being submerged, EVE delivered 10 truckloads of sand to each of seven districts in the city.
Promoting good hygiene: EVE distributed 2,806 hygiene kits with soap, bleach, clean buckets for storing water, mosquito nets, and water purification tablets. In follow-up visits, EVE estimated that 93.8 percent of the households it visited were using adequate methods to treat water, and that these and other measures likely helped reduce diarrhea cases from 3.12 percent of the households to 1.48 percent.
Direct financial support: With funds from Oxfam, EVE allocated 40, 000 CFA francs (about US$80) to more than 1,500 of the most severely affected households, so they could buy food, medicine, and clothing.
Abdou Diouf, the executive secretary of EVE, says Oxfam did not just provide some assistance during the crisis and then withdraw along with the flood water. “This is the first time since Pikine has experienced these floods, that an [international] organization has intervened during the flooding and has decided to continue intervening after the flooding,” he says during an interview in his office in Pikine in April. Diouf says EVE was able to use a small amount of money left over from a grant from Oxfam to deal with floods in 2009 to prepare for the 2010 rainy season. When the heavy rains hit in 2010, volunteer assessment teams were already in place and trained to take action.
Oxfam also is supporting EVE’s work in 2010 to help local governments to lobby for funding they can use to improve drainage systems, and keep the pumps running in chronically flooded areas of the city.
Diouf also says the cash transfers represented “… a revolution in our intervention this year. People really appreciated this; I had people coming to the office here to specifically thank EVE and Oxfam for the money.”
Each recipient got about 40,000 CFA francs, which is about US$85. It’s unusual for an aid organization to provide money instead of food, clothing, water, and other assistance. But it allows those affected by the flood to spend the money on what they need the most, rather than what an aid organization decides is best for them.
When Assiatou Niang got her cash, she immediately thought about food. “We had no food, so I bought a bag of rice,” she says. With 30 people living in the household, including most of her nine children as well as those of her injured sister, food was a priority. “I also needed cement to repair the house, and I needed money for daily expenses around the household.” Niang is 58, and recently widowed. The cash helped her feed her family and cover other expenses for about a month over the winter.
Distributing cash is also economically efficient, according to Isaac Massaga, Oxfam’s program officer based in Dakar. “If you distribute rice in a community, you are preventing the local dealers from selling their own stock,” he says. “By helping people access food in the local market, we also help suppliers, and at the same time it helps maintain the market.”
EVE and Oxfam found a credit union that supervised the distribution of the funds to only those with vouchers provided by EVE according to the results of its household surveys. EVE transferred more than US$130,000 to families in Pikine.
]]>Oxfam has rushed aid to Liberia, airlifting 50 tons of relief supplies—such as water tanks, drilling equipment, and sanitation facilities—to assist 70,000 people.
"The border areas are dangerous, and living conditions there are desperately poor," says Chals Wontewe, Oxfam's country directory in Liberia. "There is an urgent need for transportation to help refugees move to camps further inside Liberia, where food and shelter can be safely provided. This needs to happen before the rainy season and further refugee flows make the challenge even harder."
Most refugees are staying with host families near the border, but conditions are dangerously inadequate, with most lacking adequate shelter, clean water, and basic sanitation. Oxfam will provide seeds and agricultural support to host families who by aiding refugees have jeopardized their own food security.
Donate now to Oxfam's Ivory Coast/Liberia Refugee Crisis Fund.
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