CULTURAL HERITAGE AND CONTEMPORARY CHANGE SERIES II, AFRICA, VOLUME 5 GHANA: CHANGING VALUES/ CHANGING TECHNOLOGIES Ghanian Philosophical Studies, II Edited by Helen Lauer The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Copyright © 2000 by The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Gibbons Hall B-20 620 Michigan Avenue, NE Washington, D.C. 20064 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Ghana: changing values/changing technology: Ghanaian philosophical studies / edited by Helen Lauer. p.cm. – (Cultural heritage and contemporary change. Series II, Africa; vol. 5) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Technology—Ghana. 2. Technology—Philosophy. I. Lauer, Helen. II. Title: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies, II. III. Title: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies, two. IV. Title: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies, 2. V. Series. T28.G4C37 1999 99-37506 338.966706—dc21 CIP ISBN 1-56518-144-1 (pbk.) TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements iii Preface George F. McLean xiii Introduction Helen Lauer 1 PART I. CULTURE AND CHANGE Chapter I. Culture: the Human Factor in African Development Kofi Anyidoho 19 Chapter II. Modern Technology, Traditional Mysticism and Ethics in Akan Culture George P. Hagan 31 Chapter III. Traditional Ga and Dangme Attitudes towards Change and Modernization Joshua N. Kudadjie 53 PART II. SOCIETY AND CHANGES OF VALUES Chapter IV. Counterproductive Socioeconomic Management in Ghana A.O. Abudu 79 Chapter V. Informalization and Ghanaian Politics Kwame A. Ninsin 113 Chapter VI. Manipulation of the Mass Media in Ghana’s Recent Political Experience Joseph Osei 139 PART III. TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN CHANGE Chapter VII. Plant Biodiversity, Herbal Medicine, Intellectual Property Rights and Industrially Developing Countries: Socio-economic, Ethical and Legal Implications Ivan Addae-Mensah 165 Chapter VIII. High-technology, Individual Copyrights and Ghanaian Music John Collins 183 Chapter IX. The Impact of New Medical Technology upon Attitudes towards Euthanasia among Akans Kwasi Agyeman 203 Chapter X. Population Growth and Ecological Degradation in Northern Ghana: the Complex Reality Jacob Songsore 211 PART IV. TECHNOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE Chapter XI. Participatory Integrated Pest Management: IPM Training Methodology in Ghana Kwame Afreh-Nuamah 233 Chapter XII. Gold: the Link between Ancient and Modern Ghana William A. Asomaning 255 Chapter XIII. The Effect of the Volta Dam on Sociocultural Changes for the People Living in the Mangrove Economy of the Lower Volta Basin Kwadwo Tutu 269 Chapter XIV. The Nuclear Option for Ghana Josef K.A. Amuzu 281 EPILOGUE Some Thoughts on the Future of Ghanaian Universities J.S. Djangmah 293 Notes on Contributors 303 Index 309 PREFACE George F. McLean Cooperation between peoples is a notoriously difficult affair. This can be seen in the continuing struggles to maintain a wholesome neighborhood with appropriate healthcare and progressive education, even in the homogeneous neighborhoods of wealthy nations. It is reflected even more where these common problems must be faced by communities made up of different ethnic groups as occurs increasingly in the case of economic or political immigrants, for example, the "guest workers" in Western Europe or the African refugees in Southern Europe. This challenge, over long periods of time, can remain potentially explosive and be detonated with ferocious effect, as can be seen in a Kosovo or a Chechyna. Perhaps nowhere is this difficulty of cooperation and collaboration greater than in Africa where it has been complicated by successive waves of slaving both internal and external, colonial empire building, local ideologies, foreign commercial exploitation and manipulation by international financial institutions. The present volume describes this in great detail with regard to Ghana. Where the other volumes in this series have focused in the philosophical issues of social and cultural life, the present volume provides a special addition to them, namely, rendering these issues most concrete in terms of the primary physical resources of the country, the potentiality for cultural change, the efforts of the national government and interaction with external financial institution. The introduction identifies each chapter in detail and draws out some of its salient points. Here I would underline some crucial lessons which emerge from the work as a whole. The first is the importance of the culture of the people. Both by positive and negative examples, the first three chapters lay out the indispensable importance of building upon the culture of the people. This is not merely a pragmatic matter but the sole way to engage the people in any continuing project. It is then a matter not merely of efficiency, but of the very viability of development efforts. But beneath this and more radically it is a matter of working in a humane manner with the people, its proper dignity and its concerns. This is the point of real importance and the reason why any approach which ignores this is not only inefficient, but damaging to the people and hence doomed ultimately to failure. In this light there appears an interesting contrast between the first two chapters. Chapter II, "Modern Technology, Traditional Mysticism and Ethics in Akan Culture," by George Hagan proceeds on the Western rationalist and materialist act of faith that all is in principle physical and if only it could be adequately known all would be able to be stated in physical terms. In this reductionist view the mystical is but mystification and respect for African thought lies in showing how, despite its mode, it is capable of being materialistic with the best of the West, or at least not incompatible therewith. Chapter I, "Culture: the Human Factor in African Development," by Kofi Anyidoho, on the contrary, does not share that compulsion to be like the West, especially in its materialistic reductionisms, but seeks rather to take seriously what the culture of the people affirms. He sees their greatness in not having compromised with the abstractness of technological reason. He lets them say what they mean and, above all, mean what they say. This is not merely a request that a relic from the past be protected and preserved. The chapters show also how these cultural elements not only are not against progress, but provide the social grease which can enable newly imported developments to work. Moreover, as Kwame Gyeke shows in his chapter, "Traditional Political Ideas, Their Relevance to Development in Contemporary Africa," in Person and Community, Ghanaian Philosophical Studies, I (Washington, D.C.: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1992), pp. 243-255, the culture contains elements needed, but sorely lacking, in the modern democratic structures of the North. The second is the immense difficulties faced by a country such as Ghana in its effort to protect and promote its people. Each effort taken by private citizens and government to employ technology or convert ancient forms into modern commodities bears great costs whether of health in processing minerals (gold), or of agriculture and fishing in generating power or irrigation (the Volta Dam), or of culture in seeking to draw revenue from folk music or medicinal herbs. Rich resources are not readily convertible into cash for a money economy; indeed they are very likely to be destroyed or to destroy people in the process. The third is the vulnerability of the people in these circumstances to exploitation by forces from within the country which possess the power, or from outside the country which either operate world commerce or control the monetary system. Most countries complain of the ruinous effect of policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund in favor of the lending nations, but seldom have the effects been more effectively or expertly analyzed from the point of view of a debtor nation than here in Chapters 4 "Counter-productive Socioeconomic Management in Ghana" and 5 "Informalization and Ghanaian Politics," and even in the Epilogue "Some Thoughts on the Future of Ghanaian Universities" where the concrete effects on the system of higher education are detailed. Chapter 5 analyses exhaustively the attempt to put a good face in this by considering it to be a liberative attempt to develop an informal economy where, in fact, it is no economy at all, but the desperation of impoverishment. Last is the importance of learning again how to live with, rather than against, the physical, social and cultural environment. While Chapter 1 describes a negative experience in this regard, Chapter 11 "Participatory Integrated Pest Management: IPM Training Methodology in Ghana" details at length the way in which this can be done in agriculture in ways that largely eliminate the dangerous use of pesticides and at the same time build human capacity and cooperation. It is a lesson emerging from the aids conference held in Natal in 2000 that Uganda and Senegal by intensive use of social means reduced the rate of infection by 50 percent and without access to the expensive and complex medicines which can be effective only with the health infrastructure of the first world. In view of the above, this second volume in the RVP series: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies reinforces the content of Volume I, Person and Community. That volume richly analyzed the nature and structure of Ghanaian culture as regards its identity and epistemology, anthropology and metaphysics, ethics, politics and religion. It richly identified what the wisdom of this culture had discovered regarding what was worth living for, and the quality of life. The present volume turns more toward how to live and carries this investigation into the concrete details of the travails of all dimensions of Ghanaian life. In so doing it illustrates the dangerous and dehumanizing delusion of attempting to substitute one’s own identity by another imported from without. Conversely, it implies that progress lies rather in adapting life carefully to the physical and social environment and that the needed resources are to be found first of all in the heritage of the people.