Growing ‘Okada’ business; Time to act is now

Growing ‘Okada’ business; Time to act is now: Commercial motorcycle riders, popularly known as ‘okada’ riders, are having a field day in the national capital, Accra where heavy vehicular traffic is common. The traffic starts right from the morning, normally referred to as the ‘rush hour’ when most commuters leave home to transact their businesses. It is the same from 5 p.m. when most commuters are returning home after a hard day’s work.

Bush meat bounces back - Four years after Ebola

 

The once vibrant and lucrative bush meat market collapsed during the outbreak of the deadly ebola virus that hit some neighbouring countries four years ago.

Although Ghana did not record any case, stories that the disease was caused by bush meat scared many lovers of the Ghanaian delicacy from patronising the meat, rendering the market a completely dead one.

Bush meat is incontrovertibly a delicacy in the Ghanaian society enjoyed by all and sundry yet, news of the virus ruined livelihoods of Ghanaians in the game business, popularly known as ‘bush meat’ (grasscutter, deer and antelope).
Traders across the bush meat value chain, including hunters, retailers, wholesalers, bar operators and bush meat/ kebab retailers along some of the major roads across the country had their businesses run down.
Traders recount / narrate
A visit to Mankesim, through Winneba, both in the Central Region and major commercial centres for bush meat revealed that most traders totally had their businesses crashed and are now trying to pick themselves up.

The usual bustle of hawking of grasscutter (akrantee) kebab by traders was missing. Most of the women traders have diverted to selling bread, boiled egg, ‘abolo’and sea food such as fried octopus to be able to earn a living.

Most chop bar operators at Mankesim, told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS that hitherto, their bush meats were highly patronised such that latest by 1pm, one could not get some of the bush meat to buy.

However, the announcement that bush meat caused ebola changed customers taste from bush meat to dried fish and goat meat.

A chop bar operator at the Esuhye Lorry Station, Maame Efua Essilfua, said she had been in the business for over 20 years after inheriting it from her mother, and that she used to prepare meals with about five large-sized akrantee a day but during the ebola scare, she struggled to sell just one.

“Sales reduced drastically during the crisis. When people come to buy food and they realise it was akrantee they left. But now I can say akrantee sales has picked up. There is a change,” she said.

Another chop bar operator, who uses only fresh akrantee to prepare meals lamented that during the outbreak, he struggled to sell even two pieces of the meat.

“It really affected us. I personally found it difficult to believe it was the cause of the outbreak because it basically feeds on green leaves,”

“If you visit my bar around 12 noon, it will be difficult for you to get some of the bush meat to buy. However, since the announcement that bush meat causes ebola, not even a single customer has been here to ask of bush meat”,

“Customers’ preferences have changed from bush meat to goat meat and dried fish so we did not have any choice than to stop selling it,” he added.


Raw bush meat traders
The numerous spots along the Winneba -Mankesim road, usually inundated with bush meat, are being gradually reoccupied, unlike the empty sheds that characterised them during the period of ebola.

At Ekumfi Dunkwa, Mr Paul Cobbina, a trader of fresh and broiled bush meat of various kinds, said they could provide basic necessaries of life for their wives and children before the ebola crisis.

On weekends alone (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) he realised GH2,000 from the sale of bush meat not to talk of the week.

He said most of them had taken loans from banks and resorted to selling their vehicles to repay because their businesses totally collapsed.

At times, they were left to either consume the meat themselves or allow them to rot and throw them away.

“It happened that a whole month I couldn’t sell even one bush meat because all my retailers in our local market and other areas such as Accra, Cape Coast and Takoradi stopped buying from me as they also lost business,” he recalled.

He continued, “We really suffered. Commuters resorted to teasing us by shouting ebola oh, ebola oh. In fact, I decided to stop the trade.”

However, Mr Cobbina and his colleagues made some sales, especially during the Christmas festivities when bush meat was not in season.

Mr Kofi Nyarko, who has been  in the bush meat trading since 1979, also said  he was hit severely by the ebola problem.

“From a sale of about 10 bush meats daily I sold nothing during the outbreak. Thank God that now I can sell about six daily,” he recounted.

Price range
Big size of bush meat now sells at a maximum of GH₵200 and medium size from GH₵80 to GH₵150, while broiled one goes for a maximum of GH₵150 for large size and GH₵100 for medium size.

“The price rise indicates that but for the ebola crisis, the price of bush would have soared  by now and we will be making good business,” Mr Cobbina said.

The Ebola Virus Disease
The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines the Ebola virus disease (EVD), formerly known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever, as a severe, often fatal illness in humans.

The virus is transmitted to people from wild animals and spreads in the human population through human-to-human transmission.

The 2014–2016 outbreak in West Africa was the largest and most complex Ebola outbreak since the virus was first discovered in 1976. There were more cases and deaths in this outbreak than all others combined. It also spread between countries, starting in Guinea then moving across land borders to Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Early supportive care with rehydration, symptomatic treatment improves survival. There is as yet no licensed treatment proven to neutralise the virus but a range of blood, immunological and drug therapies are under development.

Artisanal miners want public educated on operations

Participants in a forum on sustainable practices in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in the country have called for more education on their operations to help clear the negative perception about the sector.

They said it was unfortunate that often, ASM was associated with illegal small-scale mining popularly known as galamsey, therefore, it was important to correct the notion because they were a vital part of the economy.

In an interview, the General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Small-Scale Miners, Mr Godwin Armah, disabused the minds of the gathering that small scale miners were all galamsey operators.
“We have been stigmatised for far too long. The fact that there are miscreants doesn’t mean we all are. The media has never been interested in the ASM sector until Operation Vanguard began so it is about time to follow through,” he stated.

Mr Armah added that the media should apprise itself with the differences between the ASM and galamsey and understand the mining methods employed by the licensed ASM operators.

Effective regulation
The Coordinator of the Third World Network (TWN-Africa), Dr Yao Graham, in an interview said because of the numbers of the ASM, it would require a much bigger decentralised state machinery to manage it on a large scale???

He deduced that the institutional mechanisms for managing the mining sector was devised primarily for large scale mining and that there was no institutional machinery to support the small-scale sector.

“The institutional machinery has not caught up with that. How do we accelerate it to take account of the small-scale sector not only in mining and gold but all business sectors?” he said.
He noted that there was a national uproar around ASM, looking at its perverse situation due to issues of galamsey operations in there, and which required a strong multi-dimensional approach.

Operation vanguard 
Some participants expressed concern that the government’s resolve to end illegal mining / galamsey through a ban on ASM generally, had brought real challenges with subsequent effects on the economy.

The Chairman of the Federation of Gold Jewelers Association, Mr Shallovern Srodah, told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS that gold was their major raw material and that currently, they had none to work with.

 “Our source isn’t from the multinationals but from ASMs. Most of us have closed our workshops. The ban has also affected the value chain and not only ASM operators,” he said.

Mr Srodah argued that for some Ghanaians to take steps to obtain license to operate legally in the presence of illegal mining should rather encourage the nation to support them instead of banning their activities as well.

“I cannot imagine the minister for transport announcing that because of the increase in accidents, all vehicles should come to a stop. We must find a suitable way to deal with the issue or else, there will be chaos,” he added.

Angloga fishermen cry for government’s support

“Only two people in our community here own canoes.

We are forced to hire a canoe at GH₵10 daily to fish because we cannot afford to buy a canoe at the cost of GH₵1,200 in addition to the fishing nets,” Nana Kojo Mmoyin, a fisherman with over 40 years experience at Angloga, (aka Akosua Village), a fishing community in Winneba, sums up the daily plight of fisherfolks.
 According to the fisherman, whose main source of income has been fishing, they have survived all these years through ingenious means and that continues to impact negatively on their businesses, hence it was time for government to come to their aid.

Sharing insights into the fishing trade with the GRAPHIC BUSINESS team in Winneba, he said assistance to get their own canoes and other inputs such as net to work with at a subsidised fee would ensure regular supply of fishing inputs which will have a positive impact on their businesses.

Nana Mmoyin said the lack of support for them as fishermen has been the case all these years and thus appealed to the member of parliament, the government, individuals and organisations to help their business by assisting them with the tools they use.

Fishing at Akosua village

There is a perception that living by the seashore may pose a danger during storms but that aside, the benefits outweigh the risks.

According to Nana Mmoyin, living by the sea gives one access to its numerous resources.

“With fish, crabs and other seafoods in our backyard, making a living isn’t that hard. If you are not lazy you can make a good livelihood out of what we have here,” he said.
  Nana Mmoyin explained that he feeds his family out of what his daily catch and sells the rest for cash.

“At least I have been able to live a productive life for the past 40 years through fishing. At least I can cater for my seven children, so I will say it is lucrative,” he stated.

Thirty-four-year-old Mr David Nimoh was originally a carpenter  has for the past four years resorted to fishing to earn a living because he no longer finds carpentry lucrative due.

He can sell between GH₵40 to GH₵60 worth of fish a day.

“If you remain focused you can make it in life through fishing,” he said.
Tales of a fishmonger
 

Madam Rebecca Tetteh preparing fish for a client

Madam Rebecca Tetteh started her trade around 1979 but said she has been unable to expand due to lack of access to capital.
As a result, she buys most of her inputs on credit to be able to sell her clients in Accra and surrounding towns.
“I buy everything I need to work on credit, so all the profit goes to my suppliers. If oil cost GH140 they give to me at GH₵170, firewood at GH₵150 is  to me at GH₵220, so not much comes to me,” she narrated.
Her son, Emmanuel Addy, corroborated that her mother, like other fishmongers, mostly women, needs financial help.
“I completed senior high school in 2011 and I have plans to become an engineer but there is no help from anywhere I have been forced to learn driving as trade,” he lamented.

ChallengeAnother problem fishermen face at the community is the cost of fishing net at GH₵500. They were appalled that help has never reached them, despite the numerous promises to assist them especially during electioneering campaigns.

Life at Akosua village

It is a community of about 500 inhabitants with access to social amenities such as electricity and water, though not all can afford.
The main economic activity is fishing. It has a school now, unlike formerly when pupils walked about three miles to attend school.
The months of August and September are their main fishing season and they do not fish on Wednesdays.

History has it that they migrated from the Volta Region about 100 years ago in search of fishing.

An opinion leader, Efo Kofi Ahiadzor, appealed to the authorities to fix the road network in the village.

Food security

Fish is the most important source of animal protein and is consumed in all regions of Ghana, providing Ghanaians with up to 60 per cent of their animal protein requirements, states the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

For local consumption, fish is available in many forms, including fresh, smoke-salted, dried, salted and dried, canned and fried.

The FAO says the fisheries sector contributes significantly to Ghana’s economy in terms of food security, employment, poverty alleviation and foreign exchange revenues, with 4.5 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 12 per cent of the agricultural GDP, 10 per cent of the labour force, and supports the livelihoods of 10 per cent of Ghana’s population. —

writer’s email: ama.baafi@graphic.com.gh

GAWU galvanises support for women in agric

The General Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU) of the Ghana Trades Union Congress (TUC), has called for pragmatic means to alleviate the challenges facing women in the agricultural sector.

 

 Women make essential contribution to the agriculture sector in Ghana

Its General Secretary, Mr Edward Kareweh, said women in the sector faced enormous challenges, which when targeted, would eventually alleviate the challenges facing men and all others involved in agric.

In an interview in Accra on the International Women’s Day on March 8, 2018, Mr Kareweh indicated the contribution of women to the sector have been enormous and constituted the bedrock of agric.
He said rural agric was key to the sustainability of the sector generally in the country and that, women were highly represented and played a key role from production to distribution and to marketing.
“They normally do distribution. They carry the foodstuffs from the farm gate to the house whether for family use or for other purposes. Also, transporting to the market to sell is generally done by women,” he stated.
Challenges

Women lack access to credit to improve their agric activities, some largely due to social and cultural underpinnings.

They face the vagaries of transporting products to the market as they sit on the products in the buckets of trucks so presents a risk.
Again, the environment at the markets within which they sell the products are so poor.
The effect, according to Mr Kareweh, is that they are not as successful in agric as their male counterparts.

“One would expect that any form of relief or support will go to them but rather opposite.
It’s a paradoxical situation such that despite their predominant role they lack basic things,” he said.
  Realising their full potential
He noted that the agribusiness side was not well developed but left to the survival of the fittest and which often put women at a disadvantage.
However, if the system is regularised, structured and have rules that people can play by, the women could also become more effective.
“If the system provides some protection for anybody who wants play by the rules, that again will allow those women who want to go into agric do it just like the normal work place where the rules are clear and recognises everybody as equal,” he stated.
All these remedies, Mr Kareweh said even provide some level of protection and help women to explore their potential but did not seem to be the case of agric.

He emphasised the need to address these challenges, make it much formal and predictable so that women will know their boundaries, responsibilities and rights.
“We can’t seek to grow agric when we do not address the fundamentals of operating in that sector and if we don’t also focus on addressing the needs of women as major stakeholders.
We simply have to address their needs in terms of distributing at the marketing level and we will do a great service to them than mere rhetoric,” he said.

He added that the farmers awards programme should consider special prizes for women in various aspects of agric to take cognisance of the gender inequalities and different levels of access to opportunities within the sector.
International Women’s Day
This year day was marked on the theme: “Press for Progress”. It is marked yearly to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.
It also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity across the globe.

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Group proposes measures to manage fall army worm

The Ghana National Learning Alliance (GH-NLA), a stakeholder learning platform to discuss research findings and share knowledge and information to improve agricultural productivity, has said a multi-stakeholder action is key to check the entry and spread of fall armyworm (FAW) which attacks crops.

The FAW, known to have been in the country since 2016, became very visible in 2017 when large hectares of cropped fields particularly, maize, was attacked.

The facilitator of GH-NLA, Dr Naaminong Karbo, in an interview said about six types of pathways of entry were known.

These include contaminant of a commodity, stowaway on a vector and unaided wind dispersal. Generally, introduction takes the form of eggs, caterpillar, pupae or adults and or a combination of any of these.

 

The fall armyworm attacks maize and feeds on a range of other crops, including millet, sorghum, rice, wheat, sugar cane and vegetables. 

 

The spread of FAW
Dr Karbo said the adult moths fly actively and were known to move over long distances with air currents before depositing mass of eggs. This forms part of the wind–assisted method of spread.

“Transfer as a contaminant of a commodity, for example, fresh plant produce such as pepper, potato, tomato, fruits, cut flowers, seeds and other plant parts are mechanisms of transfer and spread within and between countries,” he stated.

Prevention 
The West Africa Regional Coordinator of the Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International (CABI), Dr Victor Attuquaye Clottey, said the FAW prevention called for a combination of strong phyto-sanitary precautions with thorough quarantine checks when trading in fresh produce between the countries.

He said farm and off-farm-hygiene within country will contribute to keeping FAW below acceptable thresholds and that transport systems such as aircrafts, haulage trucks and buses, plying between countries will require regular checks and sanitisation because the egg masses can be laid on inorganic materials and transported across borders.

“Pheromones as repellants and attractant traps may also be employed in the prevention of spread of FAW. Check excessive use of chemicals that may destroy the natural enemy of the FAW. Promote good agronomic practices, maintain crop diversity or intercropping, effective on farm monitoring (at least scout once a week) agro-ecological farming among farmers,” he stated.

Also, once there is the occurrence of FAW, using a combination of control methods– Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is ideal.

The GH-NLA
As a pillar of the Sustainable Agricultural Intensification Research and Learning in Africa (SAIRLA), a five-year programme funded by the Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom (UK), the Alliance, seeks to generate new evidence and design tools and enable policy makers, researchers and private sector actors to engage regularly.

It is being facilitated by CABI with support from the Science and Technology Policy Research Institute of the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-STEPRI), under the auspices of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture.

The FAW invasion    
As at November last year, the government announced that it had expended about GH¢10 million on insecticides to combat the FAW outbreak.

More than 112,000 hectares of farm fields were invaded by the pests across the country.

ACP seeks a win-win trade relation with EU

https://www.graphicbusinessonline.com/govt-business/acp-seeks-a-win-win-trade-relation-with-eu



 The Africa Trade Network (ATN) has rejected attempts to transform and extend the failed paradigm and agenda of the current Cotonou Partnership Agreement (CPA) into a future relationship between the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and the European Union (EU).

 The ATN said any future relationship between the ACP and the EU must be one that creates space and support for strategic initiatives in the ACP countries individually and collectively, to transform their primary commodity economies, industrialise, and adopt strategies for development based on the needs and priorities of the people.

A communique issued by the ATN after a two-day consultative seminar in Accra on the Africa-EU relations after the expiration of the Cotonou Partnership Agreement (CPA) called on the ACP countries to rise above their obsession with aid from the EU, which was already diminished in value and has been transformed by the EU into a means of promoting European corporate interest.

“Instead, they must concentrate on delivering on their long-standing obligation to the citizenry of a vision and agenda for the inclusive, equitable and gender-sensitive transformation of their economies, driven by their own self-determined national and regional imperatives built primarily on their human and natural resources, and in a manner that best equips their societies to meet the challenges of our times,” the communique stated.

Some participants at the seminar. Picture: Maxwell Ocloo 

 

The consultative seminar
It was hosted by the TWN-Africa with support from OXFAM.

The CPA succeeded the Lomé Convention, first signed in 1975 and renewed for four successive times until 1999, and for which a quarter of a century defined the trade and economic ties between the ACP countries and the EU.

 It is almost two decades since the CPA came into being. Its promise was that European aid, in the context of comprehensive reciprocal trade liberalisation and economic deregulation, and managed by politics of mutual respect, would contribute to modernise the ACP economies and deliver the proclaimed benefits of globalisation. 

The EPA processes
According to the ATN, attempts to conclude the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), a key element of the CPA, got stranded over the EU's agenda that sought to open the ACP economies for the free entry of European goods and free operation of European investors, while undermining the capacity of the ACP governments to give preferential support to domestic products, producers and investors.

The Executive Director of the TWN-Africa, Dr Yao Graham, said the contestations around the EPAs and the CPA, as well as the broader development in the global political economy over the past 20 years, raises issues of equitable development that must be addressed as part of any possible post-Cotonou framework.

He said that for the 79 countries in the ACP, Europe remains a very important part of the political-economic regime within which the countries operate.

“The EPA threatened to pull us off in different regional directions, but we survived. The Post-Cotonou offers a chance for us, in terms of geography and political pattern, a return to a much bigger unity in terms of how the ATN works,” he said.

The Head of Political Economy Unit at the TWN, Mr Gyekye Tanoh, said if developing countries continued to deepen their integration with the powerful northern economies, as rapacious as they are, under conditions of simultaneously increasing trade and financial liberalisation, they may be piling up a mess.

“You are undermining the possibility of building and transforming productivity in your own economy. You are undermining the possibility of using all these tools to enhance competitiveness or to safeguard against global volatility,” he said. 

“In fact, the only way of keeping up is through devaluation, impoverishing people and deflating domestic values assets,” he added.

Future relationship
The ATN has demanded that in the future the EU-ACP trade and investment framework should protect ACP producers and domestic and regional markets; respect the principles of non-reciprocity and special and differential rights; exclude the pressure for trade and investment liberalisation; and support the space of the ACP countries to formulate and pursue their own development strategies, and choose their own allies and formulate their own positions in international fora even at the World Trade Organisation.

“As free trade agreements, the discredited EPAs have no place in any future relationship with Europe. Thus, further planned or intended negotiations aimed at broadening or deepening the EPAs must cease,” it stated.

It added that the EPAs that have so far been adopted must not be implemented, while the ATN expressed solidarity with the countries that have so far refused to sign any form of the EPAs.

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