Setting the Stage II

The last half of the document was a clearly defined plan and implementation strategy for what the Saboba/Chereponi District Assembly (SCDA) will do over the next four years (2006-2009). It's very exciting to be reading exactly what the district I'll be working in is planning to do. Indirectly, it shows me what I will be working on as well.

The goals laid out for district are as follows:

• Livable environment with enhanced opportunities
  
• Equal distribution of development benefits, and more consistent living for everyone
• Double economic growth rate, and maximize agricultural gross output
• Halving the growth rate and doubling income levels
• Science and technology at the forefront

I will only highlight a few of the projects that stand out because after all, we're talking about the development of a district.

Agriculture
They are looking to expand the crop production and area farmed by 4% each year. To keep up with that growth SCDA plans to increase extension services, improve farming practices with and without appropriate technology, and diversify crops to include non-traditional export crops. The challenge with this plan is the isolation factor. Gas prices increasing causing transport costs to rise only exacerbates the lack of extension services available to rural farmers.

Education
Right now school participatory rates are 28% for primary schools. One of Ghana's goals is to provide free basic education to everyone. SCDA plans to increase this number by 11% by the year 2009. To get this done, they need to build an additional 17 schools and train 418 more teachers by 2009 (remember these numbers are taken from a report written in 2005). To attract those teachers to rural posts, the government plans to get energy and roads reaching out to those communities. What occurred to me was that to increase the school participatory rate, you have to keep up with the population increase, which is quite high in the district.

Facilities
The national average is 400:1 people to borehole (water well). To catch up to where they should be and to keep up with the population increase the district needs to drill on average 30 boreholes per year. Electricity and roads are also a top priority for the government.


I'm astonished by the need of this district and its apparent that there will never be a shortage of work to be done. As I said in my first post, donor funded projects have come in to fill the gap because the entire plan is too large for the district to complete without any resources. Hopefully this will give more meaning to what is meant by providing services to the rural citizens. My job as stated before, is to work with the SCDA to find ways to improve providing services, and more importantly address the constraints that are strangling the government and preventing it from doing its job.