The Africology Spark Newsletter

Volume 2, Issue 1 -- Fall 2000/Winter 2001

Inside this issue:

Remarks from the Chair
Ghana's Market Women
The Ghana Initiative
Important Dates in History
Pan-African Notes
Africology Faculty's Specializations
Faculty and Staff List

Remarks from the Chair
Class Struggle in the Twenty-First Century

— by Doreatha D. Mbalia

In 1957, Ghana gained its independence from Great Britain. For the next thirteen years, Africans globally would cast off the colonial yoke and seize political independence. In Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and the U.S., struggles were waged for liberation from oppression. According to Kwame Nkrumah in Class Struggle in Africa, "Class divisions in modern African society became blurred to some extent during the pre-independence period when it seemed there was national unity and all classes joined forces to eject the colonial power." Today, however, these 3 class divisions are no longer blurred; they are clear.

Students/youths were the spark of the independence movements. In the U.S., in 1965, the cry for "Black Power" was shouted in the Delta region of Mississippi by Willie Ricks, an organizer for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Afterwards, Stokely Carmichael (later, Kwame Ture), SNCC chairperson, stated the following: "We had to work for power, because this country (the U.S.) does not function by morality, love, and nonviolence but by power. . .With power, the masses could make or participate in making the decisions. . ." Globally, African youths began raising their fists and shouting "Black Power," using strikes, protests, and demonstrations to spark a break from the colonial master.

However, with the coming of the newly won independence in Africa and the Caribbean and the birth of so-called "integration" in the U.S., "national unity" disappeared. The African privileged classes-politicians, professionals, intellectuals, military, police leadership, and chiefs-began replacing the colonial master. But instead of changing the system of exploitation and oppression, many of them maintained it. Working in collaboration with the capitalists who had only relinquished political responsibility (not economic control), many within this new African ruling class emerged as the new (neo) colonial masters-presidents, governors, mayors, CEO's and managers- who plague African people today. They are people who look like you and me, but who don't act in our best interest.

In the 21 st century, we want true Black Power: power that is Ih the hands of the masses of African people; power that is used to better conditions for all of our people, not just a small segment of the people. That is the struggle that must be waged in this century. It is called class struggle. back to top

Market Women and Credit in the Informal Sector of Ghana's Economy: "Melting" the Mighty Dollar to Sustain a Helping Tradition

— by Dr. Osei-Mensa Aborampah

Participants in the Ghanaian informal sector have traditionally included women, families, as well as rural migrants, both young and old. Since colonial times, Ghanaian women's occupational choices at anytime have been determined by opportunities and constraints within the economy. Because the base of Ghana's industrial sector is so narrow, the commercial sector has remained the most practical avenue for self-employment. Hardworking women and families invest their entire labor power in petty trading around various commodities including raw and prepared foods, imported goods and cloth. Their industry pays off and some have become successful businesswomen.

However, many women and,their families have been perennially plagued by shortage of financial credit. The shortage of finance has been an obstacle to growth of many of their businesses. At the same time, the imposition of the Economic Recovery Program/Structural Adjustment Program (ERP/SAP) by the government since 1983 has created untold hardships for the majority of Ghanaians. As of 1999, three of the four growing economies in the world were African nations: Botswana, Ethiopia and Ghana, a according to a 1999 World Bank Report. An earlier report by the Bank (i.e., March 1994) indicated that Ghana recorded a solid 5% real growth rate since 1986. The growth rates were 4.6%, 4.2%, and 4.7% in 1996, 97 and 98 respectively. Over the past decade and a half, structural reforms have progressed broadly in line with IMF prescribed Structural Adjustment Program. a Ghana now enjoys a special treatment as the World Bank's Most Favored Adjusting Nation in Africa. Concrete structures like roads, water supply and rural electrification for sustainable development are visible in Ghana today. Indeed, some progress has been made by the present government.

In spite of the fast growing economy, the majority of Ghanaians continue to experience deterioration in their standards of living. The overall policy direction leaves much to be desired. Ghanaians have had to put up with frequent price increases of petroleum oil products. The local currency continues to suffer rapid depreciation. Within the four months of September - December 1999 that I was in Ghana, the value of the Cedi declined from $1.00 = C2, 600.00 to $1.00 =C4,000.00, and appreciated somewhat to $1.00 = C3,500.00 at the time of my departure. Now the value has fallen again and stands at about $1.00 = C6,500.00. Debt service as a percent of Ghana's exports was 22% in 1998. The government has had to engage in huge external borrowing as a result of declining world prices for cocoa and gold, the mainprimary products upon which Ghana's economy depends.

A major consequence of the imposition of the structural adjustment program along with the plummeting world prices for Ghana's primary t products is the impoverishment of the majority of Ghanaians. While labor retrenchment, taxation in the form of value added tax (VAT) and income reduction have constituted key areas of the adjustment program, Ghanaians have witnessed continued increases in the overall cost of living. The current structural imbalances in the economy have resulted in the necessity of more and more Ghanaians, particularly women, to establish their own means of generating income. Any observer of the Ghanaian scene can testify to the increasing numbers of street vendors (men and women, both young and old) doing whatever it takes to survive. The implication here is that the current motivation to establish a s small business is largely based in survival needs that cannot be satisfied 3 through formal employment. There are no jobs for the teaming youth to earn a decent living. Trade appears to offer the only practical opportunities for many.

In response to the credit needs of small business operators, including market women, informal credit have traditionally been offered by various entities. First, there are the regular moneylenders, especially pawn` brokers, whose goals are to make money by charging high interest rates. Credit from this source is expensive, and therefore, often a last resort. The second category is tied credit. This form of credit tends to exist between individuals that have -a continuing involvement in some other market. For example, producers and wholesalers may extend a credit to purchasers, suppliers or retailers. In such cases, the continuing business relationship acts as collateral. Timely payments are essential for the business relationship to last through time. The third category is group finance. In this category are the rotating savings and credit associations known as "susu" in Ghana. Individuals group together voluntarily to pool their savings on a regular basis to generate loanable funds for r the membership.

The fourth category is what I call the helping tradition of relatives and friends. In an environment where institutional credit for individual needs is virtually unobtainable, friends and relatives have become important sources of funds. Many very highly educated Ghanaians, especially those in the cities and abroad participate very actively in their lineage or extended family affairs. It is common for them to not only educate their relatives' children but also to part with considerable amounts of their salaries and wages in order to support members' businesses.

Ghanaian extended families are interdependent multi-generational t social systems that extend across community and national boundaries to y connect other kin groups and which posses built-in mutual aid systems. Members recognize some responsibility and it is this recognition along with the attendant instrumental aid that sustains the helping tradition. The helping tradition serves as an instrument of collective lineage/extended family welfare and provides a guarantee for the i onward movement of life for many individuals within the lineage through such noble acts of giving as the remittances from around the globe.

Currently, the fourth category of reciprocal assistance appears to be the most widely employed means of generating informal credit, although Ghanaian families and market women have traditionally participated in all four categories of the informal financial markets. Nonetheless, con; tinued lack of trading capital and institutional obstacles are among the major problems encountered by many of these families and individual women. This became apparent in the course of group discussions that I held with a number of market women during the time I was in Ghana. Most of them needed bank loans to expand their businesses. However, many had no collateral or were simply afraid to receive loans from state banking institutions. The conditions attached to loans are often unsatisfactory to potential borrowers. Often times, prospective borrowers are required to come up with 25% of the cost of the project to be financed and interest rates remain astronomical. In addition, most of the traders are illiterate. Education in Ghana, as elsewhere in Africa, has historically r been biased against women. Majority of the women I observed looked upon education as the principal means of becoming self-sufficient. In reality, however, most of them found trade to be the most practical means available to them.

Credit could be a vital tool for empowering the rural poor, who are largely women and children, to cope with the debilitating impact of the structural adjustment program. What women earn in establishing small businesses is used to provision their families, educate their children, and supply an entire area with goods and services. Members of the extended family can and should continue to provide resources for members in need, especially the young ones in school as well as the adults trying to eke out a living through trade. They can do so on a collective basis to involve those doing well in the cities and abroad. Together, they can set the standards of business expectation and enhance the screens of opportunity for the needy members.

A theoretical consideration is whether kin support networks promote or limit upward mobility, especially of the educated members. Some stress the draining aspect of such mutual aid in the absence of support from other community or societal institutions. Others have stressed the positive feature of extending the entrepreneurial acumen of business-oriented family members in addition to the individuals' own hard work and other fortunate circumstances.

In either case, we cannot discount the crucial role of the kin support networks provided especially by those living abroad. The government has acknowledged the critical role such remittances play in the Ghanaian economy. It is estimated that about six hundred million dollars enter s Ghana's economy annually through kin support networks. The mighty dollar is converted ("melted," as Ghanaians are fond of saying ) into the local currency, the Cedi, to sustain the helping tradition known within family circles and about which the upwardly mobile members are con; stantly reminded.

In the end, one may stress the need for policy redirection. Ghana 3 needs to shift away from a mono-crop economy to a diversified one. E While resource flows have been directed to the export-oriented mining, timber and cocoa industries, drastic cutbacks have occurred in the socalled nonproductive social welfare sector including health care and educational services. It must be emphasized, again, that what women earn in establishing micro-enterprises is largely used to support their households. Thus, access to credit could, indeed, be a vital tool for empowering many not only to cope with the current crisis, but also to adopt growth-oriented strategies, i.e., diversification and specialization, in order to transform existing enterprises into more productive and profitable businesses. back to top

The Ghana Initiative

The formal relationship between Ghana and the State of Wisconsin goes back to June 1992 when, as a result of the coordinating efforts of the Department of Africology, representatives from the University of Cape Coast in Ghana (UCC) and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) signed an agreement on educational and scientific cooperation "that will make possible academic and cultural exchanges between the African and American universities." Since that time there have been ongoing contact, productive meetings, and mutually beneficial exchanges between the two academies of higher learning in an effort to consolidate the institutional relationship. Some of them include the following:

1985-Present
Ghana Book Drive organized by Dr. Osei-Mensa Aborampah, Africology

1997-98
Dr. Bernard K. Hayford (UCC) served as Fullbright Scholar at UWM

1999
Dr. Hayford served as Research Consultant at UWM

1999-2000
UWinteriM Study Abroad Program at the University of Cape Coast

Spring 20000
85 Boxes of Books sent to UCC (thanks to the Department of Africology, UWM's Chancellor and the Director of Golda Meir Library)

In December 1999, Dr. Doreatha D. Mbalia, Chair, Department of Africology and Dr. Bernard K. Hayford, Professor of Education, UCC sought to bring all of UWM's interests in Ghana under one umbrella called The Ghana Initiative. They collaboratively wrote a proposal of that name which was very enthusiastically embraced by the UWM Administration, the Dean of the College of Letters and Science, the Director of UWM's library, and the Director of UWM's Water Institute. Also, it was just as enthusiastically embraced by various Ghanaian politicians, academicians at both the University of Ghana-Legon and UCC, and private businessmen. Ghana letters of support began arriving in early Spring 2000 and continued throughout that semester.

With the Dean of the College of Letters and Science's approval, the chair of the Department of Africology called a meeting of all interested constituencies. The above-mentioned individuals were present as were the Deans of the School of Information and Library Science and the School of Education. At that meeting, a site visit was proposed to assess the needs of our Ghana counterparts and our ability, if any, to help meet those needs as well as to identify projects/research that may be mutually beneficial.

Because of the steadfast work of Dr. Osei-Mensa Aborampah and Dr. Bernard K. Hayford, a very impressive and dynamic itinerary was established. While in Ghana, the site team met with various academicians from the University of Ghana-Legon and the University of Cape Coast, policy makers from the Institute of Economic Affairs, public works officials from the Ghana Water Company and the Volta Dam Research Project, and Ghana's Minister of Education, the Honorable Ekow Spio-Garbrah, and his entire cabinet.

Overall, the Ghana site visit was a success, and the next stage of The Ghana Initiative has begun. back to top

Important Dates in History to Remember

NOVEMBER
5th — African History Week was started by Carter G. Woodson in 1926.
7th — Africans revolted successfully on the slave ship Creole in 1841.
9th — Benjamin Banneker, inventor, architect and mathematician, was born in 1731.
11th — Nat Turner, African Freedom Fighter, was hanged in 1831.
17th — African General Henrique Diaz won major battle in Brazil against the Dutch in 1636.
19th — Progressive leader Modibo Keita was overthrown in Mali in 1968.
25th — Pan-African Revolutionary Socialist Party was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1983.
26th — Death of Sojourner Truth, African Freedom Fighter, in 1883.

DECEMBER
1st — Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to follow segregated seating law on busses in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955.
4th — Clark and Hampton, Black Panther Party leaders, were assassinated by Chicago police in 1968.
5th — First All-African People's Conference held in Accra,Ghana in 1958.
12th — Kenya gains independence in 1963.
14th — U.N. Declaration on the granting of independence issued to colonial countries and peoples in 1960.
16th — ANC formed Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of Nation) for armed struggle against apartheid in 1961.
18th — Steve Biko, leader of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa, was born in 1946.
22nd — Dr. Chancellor Williams, author of The Destruction of African Civilization, born in 1898.
24th — Amy Jacques Garvey, UNIA organizer and wife of Marcus Garvey, was born in 1895.
26th — First Day of Kwanzaa: UMOJA (Unity)
27th — Second Day of Kwanzaa: KUJICHAGULIA (Self Determination)
28th — Third Day of Kwanzaa: UJIMA (Collective Work and Responsibility)
29th — Fourth Day of Kwanzaa: UJAMAA (Cooperative Economics)
30th — Fifth Day of Kwanzaa: NIA (Purpose)
31st — Sixth Day of Kwanzaa: KUUMBA (Creativity)

JANUARY
1st — 7th Day of Kwanzaa: IMANI (Faith)
7th — W.B. Purvis, African inventor patented the fountain pen in 1890.
9th — President Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea, born in 1922.
10th — George Washington Carver, born in 1864.
15th — Dr. Martin Luther King, African Freedom Fighter, born in 1929.
17th — Patrice Lumumba murdered by CIA-backed Congolese forces in 1961.
18th — Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, heart surgery pioneer, born in 1858.
23rd — Paul Robeson, actor, activist, athlete, lawyer, died in 1976.
24th — Jackie Robinson, baseball player born in Georgia in 1919.
25th — Sojourner Truth spoke at 1st black Women's Rights Convention in Ohio in 1851.
28th — Jose Marti, hero of Cuban struggle, born in 1853.

FEBRUARY
1st — African student Sit-in Movement begun in Greensboro, NC, 1960.
2nd — Ernest Just awarded Spingarn Medal for research in cell biology in 1915.
4th — First Africans leave U.S. slavery to settle in Liberia in 1822.
6th — Bob Marley, Pan-African reggae musician, born in 1945.
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Pan-African Notes
"Africa Must Unite Or Perish!"

In calling for a united states of Africa, Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972)first president of Ghana and foremost proponent of Pan-Africanismargued that "the forces that unite us are intrinsic, and greater than the superimposed influences that keep us apart" (Africa Must Unite). It was his view that independent countries, some no bigger than the state of Vermont, could not hope to survive as sovereign nations:

If we do not formulate plans for unity and take active steps to form political union, we will soon be fighting and warring among ourselves with imperialists and colonialists standing behind the screen and pulling vicious wires, to make us cut each other's throats for the sake of their diabolical purposes in Africa. I can see no security for African states unless African leaders like ourselves have realized beyond all doubt that salvation for Africa lies in unity. (Casablanca, January 7, 1961)

A united states of Africa would not only aid Africans in Africa, but also people of African descent throughout the world because, as Nkrumah saw it, "all people of African descent, whether they live in North or South America, the Caribbean or in any other part of the world are African and belong to the African nation."

Recent statistics on Africa, published May 2000, in a World Bank report called, "Can Africa Claim the Twenty-first Century?", offer stark proof of the accuracy of the prediction made~by Nkrumah over forty years ago: "Africa must unite or perish!" Some of the report's findings are as follows:

• Even just to maintain current levels of poverty, African economies will have to grow by 5 percent because of rapidly growing populations.
• In the last 40 years, average incomes per person in Africa have stagnated while they have grown in most of the rest of the world.
• Africa now accounts for only 1 % of the total world economic output and 2% of world trade.
• On average, African countries have economies smaller than a town of 60,000 people in a rich country.
• With only 10 million telephone lines, half of them in South Africa, there is little chance of most Africans gaining access to the Internet.
• Africa has fewer roads than Poland, only 16% of which are paved, and only one in five households has access to electricity.
• Two-thirds of rural Africans lack adequate water supplies, while three quarters lack adequate sanitation.
• The average schooling for African women has increased by only 1.2 years in the last 40 years, the lowest gain anywhere in the world.
• Instead, women typically work longer hours than men, collecting water and firewood, and lack access to credit, land, or educational resources.
• Africa's human resources are also being decimated by disease, with AIDs infection rates reaching 25% in Zimbabwe and Botswana.
• Decades of civil war and conflict, which have affected at least 20 of sub-Saharan Africa's 48 countries, have increased poverty and violence.
• Africa is the world's most indebted and aid-dependent region.

Clearly, Africa must unite. back to top

Africology Faculty's Specializations

0sei-Mensa Aborampah – The Black Family
Bartholomew Armah – Problems and Prospects of U.S./Africa Economic Relations
Cecil Austin – Psychological Effects of Racism
Patrick Bellegarde-Smith – African Religions Thought and Social Organization
Fredrick Gordon – Black Politics and City Government
Elizabeth Harris-Hodge – Black Reality: Survey of African?American Society
Joyce Kirk – Rites of Passage in Black Societies
Walter Lanier – Blacks and the United States Constitution
Ahmed Mbalia – Philosophy and Thought in the Afroworld
Doreatha Mbalia – The Black Woman in America, Africa, and the Caribbean
Carolyn Ritacca – The African?American Novel
William Rogers – The Church in African?American Life
Carol Smith – Psychological Effects of Racism
Virginia Stamper – Survey of African? American Literature
Pauli Taylor-Boyd – Black Women and White Women in the Contemporary United States
Gary Williams – Black Reality: Survey of African American Society
Winston Van Horne – Urban Violence
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Africology Faculty and Staff

Mbalia, Doreatha D., Chair
Armah, Bartholomew
Austin, Cecil
Bellegarde-Smith, Patrick
Brown, Valerie
Gordon, Fredrick
Harris-Hodge, Elizabeth
Howe, Danielle
Kirk, Joyce
Lanier, Walter
Maier Brienna
Mbalia, Ahmed
Ritacca, Carolyn
Rogers, William
Smith, Carol
Stamper, Virginia
Stricklin, Ronnie
Taylor-Boyd, Pauli
Van Home, Winston
Williams, Gary
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