Following on from last week's wider-scale introduction to the politics of water and development in West Africa, this week's blog will centre specifically around Ghana's water resources and the challenges faced by contamination, a key component of inadequate water supply (Adelana et al, 2008, Fayiga et al, 2017), observed here as chiefly arising due to insufficient governance.
In terms of surface water resources, Ghana is well endowed, with Lake Volta being the largest artificial reservoir in the world based on surface area (Gansah et al, 2016). The nation’s geology however, dominated by crystalline rocks, means groundwater flow is heavily restricted to joints and fractures within crystalline rock formations (BGS), resulting in surface water being the central source of drinking-water for five million people in the Northern regions (Mintz et al., 2001).
Moreover, as posited by Buckley & Achilles, 2016, in excess of 70% of urban sanitation facilities in Ghana are shared, with such access having an increased associated risk of diarrhoeal disease (Heijnen et al. 2015). This exhibits the dangers of relying too heavily on shared and surface waters, with Ghana epitomising a prime example of how freshwater availability does not necessarily relate to the proportion of the population with access to safe water (Damkjaer and Taylor, 2017).
Access to safe water is instead linked to alternative factors such as increased pollution, as addressed by Nsubuga et al., decreasing the quantity of operational water markedly (2004). One such primary source of surface water contamination in Ghana is Illegal gold mining or “Galamsey”, with gold accounting for around 9.1% of the nation’s GDP (Duncan, 2020). Use of chemicals in mining and agriculture, combined with resultant rock weathering (Taylor, 2016; Bugenyi and Lutalo-Bosa, 1982), has led to Ghana’s water resources, being described as, "Ungovernable" (Yeleliere et al., 2018), with an estimated 60% of water bodies polluted (BHRC, 2017). Furthermore, these issues are not solely limited to surface water resources such as the Volta Lake, but have also dramatically increased levels of arsenic in groundwater (BGS), having severe health implications and damaging food production.
Paul Mensah, A 'Galamsey' outlines how a lack of demand for his agricultural produce led him to mine. SciDevNet.
It is shocking to learn of the harm to the kidneys, nervous system and heart (CSIR, 2016) due to contamination, in conjunction with the devastation to Ghana's chief export, cocoa. The cocoa beans that constitute many products consumed across the globe originate in Ghana, providing the livelihoods for over 700,000 farmers (Kolavalli and Vigneri, 2020). Gold mining is thus observed as having a plethora of knock-on implications, resulting in the highly politicised contestation of land, polluting groundwater and soils and leading to the loss of crops.
Illegal gold mining occurs on a cocoa farm. Source.
The failures of the Ghanaian government to adequately protect land and water resources prevails as the primary cause of inadequate water supply, highlighted in the recent $2 billion deal with China, which looks to mine forests of the Upper Guinean Forest (ForeignPolicy, 2018). Moreover, existence of weak integrity mechanisms mean issues of water insecurity are exacerbated by corruption (Bellaubi and Pahl-Wostl, 2017), with a third of the population paying bribes in 2017, and water services being one of the key corrupt sectors (Rahman, 2018). Likewise, a series of high-profile murders in recent months including the director of the Ghana water company (ModernGhana, 2020), has only proved to worsen trust and insecurity.
On reflection however, I have noticed that, in European media especially, there has been a clear oversight of the efforts made by the Ghanaian Government in recent years, with the poverty and corruption in Africa pilot project which aims to empower communities to demand transparency and accountability in the provision of water (Rahman, 2018). It is clear that further government alterations are immediately required to ensure a cut-back of illegal mining and corruption, whilst outside actors must also acknowledge Ghana's successes, such as the recent free water directive in the face of COVID-19 (Smiley et al., 2020).
Artwork by Nigerian-born artist Temi Coker . The past several weeks of writing this blog have been enlightening to say the least. As we enter a Tier4 lockdown here in the UK, I have been reminded that as a male living in Britain, this pandemic has had a minuscule impact on my daily routine when compared to the intensification of existing inequalities examined throughout the African continent. This blog originated as an attempt to learn more about hydropolitics in West Africa, covering the shortfalls of inadequate governance in Ghana , the complexities of reaching an agreement in relation to transboundary watercourse in the LCB and NBA , whilst addressing mixed use private and community-based approac hes when recovering after conflict. After pausing in the fourth week to consider the need to elevate missing voices of African scholarship, with this experience illuminating the dominance of the field by predominantly white scholars, I learnt to adopt an intersectional appr...
As addressed in previous blogs, water in West African nations such as Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire is facing severe challenges in the form of misallocation and pollution, with climate change heightening pressures further ( Kundzewicz et al., 2007 ). These issues are compounded by the transboundary nature of water in the region, with my next two blogs investigating such shared water resources in West Africa and the cooperative strategies employed to alleviate tensions and negotiate more equitable utilisation of water ( Tawfik, 2016 ). It can be noted that 90% of all of Africa’s surface freshwater is in the form of river basins and lakes that are shared by two or more nations ( Goulden et al, 2010 ), with transboundary aquifers (TBAs) representing an estimated 42% of the continental area ( Altchenko and Villholth, 2013 ). I was astonished at the true extent of such transboundary water resources in West Africa specifically, with all countries in this regio...
The Lake Chad Basin seen from Apollo 7, October 1968. Source . Building on from last week’s discussions of transboundary water resources in N RB , this week I will be exploring the Lake Chad Basin (LCB), which is shared by eight riparian countries and consists of a staggering 47 million people, covering 8% of the African continent ( Galeazzi et al ). It is revealed that whilst the LCB faces a plethora of challenges in the form of environmental issues, the lingering effects of colonial legacies and contemporary terrorist activity, unlike the NBA, no effectual transboundary agreement exists. A common trend in much of my reading, the effects of colonialism remain, proving detrimental in the case of the LCB, heightening access inequalities ( Marthur and Mulwafu ), with a need to decolonise water rights being addressed as vital to much of Africa’s future development ( Van Koppen, 2018 ). The Maga Dam on the Logone-chari River for example, built in Cameroon during th...
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