Accra is being gentrified
Bali, Hawaii, Accra, though at very different parts of the world, all have one thing in common; gentrification. Indigenes and poor people have been priced out of basic amenities. It is a clever strategy when you look at it. You are not actually being forced to leave, you just can’t afford anything and so you decide all on your own that maybe you should move farther away from the capital or city to other places that might align more with your standard of living. As if a decision made under duress ever counts. It is a great technique but also a dehumanising one. Intentionally pushing poor people out because they do not fit the image you want to promote about the place they inhabit is unjust. What we often overlook is that for some people these are their only homes. You cannot push Ga’s out of Accra. Accra originally belongs to them. This is theirs and they rightfully belong here. So do the millions of other people who live here. They all belong. They might not fit what you want to create but they don’t have to. You need to adjust, not them.
If I had to pinpoint the exact time things started to completely fail, it’ll be in 2019 when the current NPP government together with the US based Adinkra Group launched the Year of Return. And for a very short while it worked. Small and big businesses alike thrived. There was a uniform cheer in the air. What we didn’t anticipate or maybe we didn’t read the fine lines, was the government making it it’s mission to get the diaspora to stay and invest. They were offered litigation free lands to influence their decision. The government had the power to do this very simple thing for Ghanaians for decades and didn’t do it. People have lost their lives in clashes with land guards. It is that serious. Some have had land litigation cases pending in court for years with no end and solution in sight and yet, the government decided to actually work, not to help regular Ghanaians but the diaspora who will always be able to go back when things are no longer working for them. We are stuck and they aren’t and therein lies the issue. Options. Options everyone else does not have and so we are forced to make this work no matter what it looks like. I’ve lived in Accra all my life. We know that there are not that many free lands just laying around. They belong to people some of whom lived on these lands that were offered. Violently displacing families, carrying out demolition exercises to force people out so you can give away or sell those parcels of land is cruel and unconstitutional.
We also need to establish that before the Diaspora community were encouraged to visit and to stay, Accra was already in the mid stages of gentrification. Huge businesses such as Orca, Koala, China Mall and even Melcom are owned by expats. It is important to note that some of the long standing businesses in this country are not Ghanaian owned. Ghanaians are resilient, hard working and innovative. They also almost always are the ones least likely to receive support from the government. This is a development and policy issue. The government touts entrepreneurship as the way forward for the youth and in that same breath do absolutely nothing to support them. If you are a small business owner, you’d need to sink your entire savings in the quest of getting FDA approval. Company registration process is overly complicated for something that was set up to be straightforward. You need to know someone who knows someone or have enough money to spend. I’m making these points because each day we see new foreign owned companies spring up. Most times they are fully registered and might even have FDA approval. Why do foreign owned businesses get to thrive while small Ghanaian owned business get squashed and overburdened with a tax system that barely has any benefits? Why can’t we both coexist in a conducive and fair environment?
The NPP government has heavily invested in tourism. It has become their balm to soothe the gaping hole that decades of corruption, mismanagement, bad policies, sheer negligence, wickedness, and greed has left inside this country. This is not unique to just Accra. Almost all of the other African countries are experiencing this same issue. You can’t fix decades of corruption and mismanagement with tourism. It’s like showing a starving person pretty pictures of food. What does that do for them? How does that fix their issue? Quick fixes that never work and are never seen through to the end are African politicians favorite way of solving big problems that require critical thinking. Cutting down trees, displacing people, building more homes that most can’t afford to live in. How does this fix anything?
Accra has always had a housing crisis. A pointless one I might add. It is a low hanging fruit and any and every government could have decided to fix it but they have refused to do that. The Year of Return worsened that issue. We watched as poor to middle class Ghanaians were priced out of everything. It was a gradual change that had significant impacts on our standard of living. When you price services, healthcare, products, and food around people who have more money and therefore more purchasing power, what you are essentially doing is alienating the poor people who also already live there. You are showing them they do not matter and their needs are not important to you. If you intentionally price someone out of being able to afford housing, food, basic amenities, you are are just proving to them that you do not want them there. You want them out and that is unfair and cruel. You do not need to lose your dignity because you are poor.
This year alone, fuel has been increased not less than 6 times. This means that fares have also been increased the same number of times. Any time fuel prices go up, trotro fare follows and then everything else goes up as well. Salaries however still remain the same. Except for government officials, they are far too important to experience the lack everyone else lives with daily. They are the ones doing the job after all. Trotros used to be the cheapest form of transport but that’s no longer the case. Fares are as high as 20ghs to move within Accra. Some individuals live on 5ghs daily while some families live on 10ghs a day. A sachet of water is 50p and on any given day you might drink not less than 5 sachets. It’s very hot here. A cup of rice is 10ghs right now. I am a Physicist and quite good at maths (don’t take me up on this) but how is a person who survives on 5 - 10ghs daily supposed to eat, go to work, pay rent, pay utilities, save, and just thrive? How is that supposed to work when even before the money gets to you it is already gone? Poor people are literally being priced out of Accra. They already cannot afford most things and it almost feels intentional. There’s this image that Ghana’s PR machines aka the government and tourism authority have been promoting and it only works if poor people stay hidden and quiet. Ghana is working it’s way to being a new home to the diaspora community, wealthy expats, as well wealthy Ghanaians and Accra is the epicentre. We are in the middle of gentrification and as we know, poor people and marginalised people are always the first to suffer the brunt of it. They’re the low hanging fruit that everyone can touch but no one cares about.
Most people have had to relocate to the outskirts of Accra. They now have to travel very long distances to get to work, school, to even get into town. They spend hours in traffic daily. They are overworked, underpaid, overwhelmed, not paid, depressed, angry, and tired. Some don’t even have jobs. How is that right? Politicians and their kids live in excess. They drive the fanciest cars and vacation in exotic locations. They have access to high quality healthcare, usually a big factor in whether you live or die on the cold floor, unattended to because doctors are on strike due to wages not being paid for months or the absence of beds. Yes, people die because they are no beds to put them on. Doctors work from a place of lack and always have to be innovative in the quest to save lives. Politicians are untouched by everything happening. They do not hang out with regular Ghanaians. They are also unaffected by the rising utility, food, and housing costs because they do not have to pay for any of these or even if they have to, it is subsidized. It is not enough they they are underworked and overpaid, the people need to fund their lifestyle. How are they supposed to be the voice of the people when they are so far removed from the every day issues that affect our quality of life? Their only interaction with poor people are when they too are stuck in traffic in their air conditioned government bought V8s. When the hawkers hawk by their cars advertising their wares. One may wonder if they have been so corrupted that they can no longer even see what is happening. Or maybe we are giving them too much credit, they just don’t care. There is a special kind of wickedness and callousness that African politicians excel at that make them a direct danger to our lives. They would crush any and everything in their way to accumulate wealth. People hawk all day under an unforgiving sun and barely make any money. Some make 10ghs profit daily. As if it’s not enough that you are fighting to live each day, now you have to pay even more taxes on money that is already not enough. How is breaking the spirit and the minds of people a better option than making Accra habitable for all. Whenever these conversations come up, there’s always that one person that tells you to go back to your village. There are no jobs in the villages as well and not everyone is a farmer. Majority of lands and water bodies have been destroyed due to Galamsey. The options are bleak there as well. Farmers can no longer afford fertilizer. Fertilizer is now 5x the original price it was in 2019. We are facing food scarcity because yield is low and the water is polluted. Farmers can’t afford to buy water each time to water crops because water bodies they relied on have been polluted. I already said earlier that majority of businesses, industries, and development is concentrated in Accra. It makes sense that this where everyone would come to find better lives. Everyone loves Accra. For many people their lives began to change for the better when they got here. There are so many success stories that feature Accra but is Accra still capable of that?
Original thread on Twitter: https://twitter.com/blendnwhip/status/1597204776349229056?s=46&t=n53fpGgrR1eyRtwx19ZBbA
This talk about Who belongs in a city by by OluTimehin Adegbeye offers further insight into some of what I’ve spoken about;