University of North Florida UNF Digital Commons All Volumes (2001-2008) The sprO ey Journal of Ideas and Inquiry 2004 The Ghana Small Business Development Project Jeremiah R. Jones University of North Florida Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unf.edu/ojii_volumes Part of the Business Commons Suggested Citation Jones, Jeremiah R., "The Ghana Small Business Development Project" (2004). All Volumes (2001-2008). 90. http://digitalcommons.unf.edu/ojii_volumes/90 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the The sprO ey Journal of Ideas and Inquiry at UNF Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Volumes (2001-2008) by an authorized administrator of UNF Digital Commons. For more information, please contact Digital Projects. © 2004 All Rights Reserved The Ghana Small Business such a complex situation surfaces, along with new Development Project alternative resolutions. The vicious cycle of poverty is a synthesis Jeremiah R. Jones of the cause-and-effect relationship. Its existence cannot be traced to one single source, but rather to a Faculty Sponsor: Elizabeth J. Porter, myriad of economic, social, and political barriers Honors Program Instructor that are either the cause or the consequence of the poverty that the poor endure with little hope of The Honors Program at the University of escape. It is not a linear ladder to be climbed but an North Florida has established a bi-annual study ever-repeating cyclical process of discouragement abroad trip to Ghana, West Africa. The trip offers and hopelessness. This reality results in the students the opportunity to gain an integrated downward spiral of social, economic, and political perspective of the world outside the United States institutions, and in this way perpetuates poverty. and other Western cultures. As a part of the May Absolute poverty is commonly defined by 2003 trip, several development projects were the multilateral institutions like the World Bank and undertaken in cities throughout Ghana. The aim of United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as the projects was both to contribute to the having an income of less than $1 per day. participating communities and to offer UNF Currently, more than 1.2 billion people, or 20 students an opportunity in which they could apply percent of the world’s population, live in absolute the knowledge and skills learned in the classroom to poverty. It is at this point that the vicious cycle of real life experiences. In addition to community poverty is hardest to break. This is the reason why health and civil society projects, one student created many individuals and organizations around the and implemented the Ghana Small Business globe are fighting a constant battle against time: the Development Project, a one-day workshop which longer development takes, the longer destitution, focused on empowering two groups of women to disease, and death have to claim their victims. become entrepreneurs. The idea of development began in 1947 with This paper is a brief review of the project’s the Marshall Plan in post World War II Europe specifications, after a discussion of the changing (Buckley, 2002). The reconstruction of the nature of development policy and practice over the devastated, war torn continent is considered the first last half of the twentieth century. The Ghana Small real development project to have formally, Business Development Project was designed to officially, and successfully been executed. Today, utilize a new perspective of development, often Western Europe is grouped with the United States, called bottom-up or participatory development, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand as the which has emerged in the aftermath of the failure of industrialized countries of the world. Over the many development projects implemented during the course of the Marshall Plan, the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. The supplied $11 trillion dollars in aid to sixteen business development project aimed at using European countries over a period of four years. An modern development theories to surmount past additional $1.5 trillion dollars was made to the war developmental shortcomings, thereby generating a torn countries in loans. The Marshall Plan was means of income, creating employment, and raising aimed at (1) increasing production (2) expending the overall standard of living for a group of European foreign trade (3) facilitating European Ghanaian women. economic cooperation and integration and (4) controlling inflation (“The Marshall Plan”). What is Development? Although successful in physically and economically reconstructing post-war Europe, the success of the Development is a field extending in many Marshall Plan marked the beginning of an era in directions, yet its aim is to eradicate a single which ‘top-down’ development was practiced humanitarian dilemma: absolute poverty. In blindly and without regard to the amount of money defining development as a united cause to resolve a being spent or how that money was going to be global socio-economic problem, the reasoning spent. As the United States Agency for International behind the failure of many previous efforts to solve Aid (USAID) highlights, “The goals and philosophy of Secretary of State George C. Marshall as stated in 1947 continue to guide America’s foreign aid Top-Down Development program”. Jill Buckley from USAID states that the Marshall Plan “set a precedent for helping countries The essence of development policies and combat poverty, disease and malnutrition.” programs that were designed and implemented throughout the Cold War focused on government The Creation of the ‘Third World’ ownership and control of the development process. Wealthy governments donated and loaned poor Poverty has never been a unique problem to governments money to build the infrastructure that any given geographic area. It exists at some level in would, in theory, create jobs and spur economic every corner of the world, because every society no growth, thereby decreasing unemployment and matter how developed contains social solving the problem of poverty in developing marginalization and poverty. However, there are countries. Unfortunately, neither donor certain areas of the world where the problem of governments nor the multilateral institutions were poverty is embedded both socially and concerned with the transparency and accountability economically. The many countries in Latin of the states that were receiving the money. Since American, Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and the the beginning of international aid programs in the Middle East which contain high rates of social and 1950s, the developing world has received billions of economic poverty are referred to today as the dollars of aid with most of that aid never reaching developing world. Even though traditionally these its intended destination (Deen, 2003). countries have been labeled as the ‘Third World’, USAID has stated that it relied and still the contemporary connotation of the term Third relies on the Marshall Plan as its foreign aid World to the average American is not what it once template. Why is this wrong? Why did top-down meant. Its original meaning stems back to the end of development work in post World War II Europe, World War II, the end of European colonization, but practically nowhere else since? It is mainly and the beginning of the Cold War era. because the institutions that accounted for cash The ‘Third World’ is where the highest flows within Europe existed before the war. levels of absolute poverty are found, but just where European governments already had a sense of is the Third World? The term ‘Third World’ financial transparency and accountability. Europe originates back to the Cold War era of the early had a past, a present, and a future. In comparison, 1960s. After World War II, the European colonial the newly industrialized countries lacked a non- powers were economically and politically colonial past to reflect on. They lacked the national exhausted. By the end of the implementation of the experience necessary to responsibly allocate current Marshall Plan in the early 1950s, many of the cash flows in order to create long-term gains. Post- colonies of Southeast Asia and Africa began their World War II Europe was in need of an economic struggle for independence from the colonial powers. aid package to provide the money to fund the By the mid 1960s, there was such a large number of investment capital necessary to create the monetary former colonies that had gained their independence capital needed to the purchase goods and services to that they were given a category all their own: the invest in more capital, etc. The economic aid newly independent countries (NICs). These newly delivered during the Marshall Plan had a positive independent countries were creating new systems of impact on Europe’s gross domestic product and governance, and creating the political and physical therefore spurred the economy into growth. In short, infrastructures necessary to manage their fragile Europe knew what needed to get done. However, economies. It was at this time that the term ‘Third during the Cold War the new leadership of the World’ emerged. The ‘Third World’ encompassed newly independent countries were given their all of the countries that chose not to align economic aid packages without regard to themselves with either the United States and its transparency or accountably. allies, or the so-called ‘First World’ capitalist From the end of World War II to the fall of countries, or with the USSR and its allies, or the the Berlin Wall, the First and Second Worlds fought ‘Second World’ communist countries. for the political loyalty of the Third World countries through international aid stipends. Both the United States and the USSR wanted the countries of the Third World to give their political loyalties to the capitalist or communist sides. Yet, it is for this very financial institutions can be blamed for attempting reason that top-down development’s trickle down to cookie-cutter Marshall Plan type aid onto theory has failed.