Internship Report

Internship May July 2010

Internship Providing Organization: Centre for International Cooperation, VU University Amsterdam Supervisors: Anna Bon and Wendelien Tuyp

Nienke Akkermans S1575619

Email: Nienke.Akkermans@gmail.com
Master International Relations / International Organizations Faculty of Arts, University of Groningen, the Netherlands

Contents
1. Introduction 2. Preparations 3. The Project and the Assignment 4. The Internship 4.1 Cape Coast 4.2 Tamale 4.3 Upper West Region and Upper East Region 4.4 Accra 5. Evaluation Reference List Appendix I: Internship Description Appendix II: Map of Ghana Appendix III: Flyer of the W4RA Project Appendix IV: Research Report for CIS: The Role of ICTs in Knowledge Sharing within Rural Communities in Ghana 2 4 6 8 8 11 12 13 15

1. Introduction
Structure of the report. The internship is a compulsory part of the Master International Relations / International Organizations (IRIO) at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. In this report I will give an overview of my internship for the Centre for International Cooperation (CIS) at VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands and the research I conducted in Ghana for this internship. The structure of this report will be as follows: Section 1, below, is a short introduction on the search for an internship. How did I find CIS as an internship providing organization? Section 2 describes the preparations for the internship, from applying for the internship to developing an internship assignment. Section 3 elaborates on the internship assignment and the project within which the internship falls. Section 4 is a detailed account of my stay in Ghana for the internship. It is divided in the four subsections, corresponding to the regional zones in which I conducted research; Cape Coast, Tamale, Upper West and Upper East Region, and Accra. Section 5 is the evaluation of the internship. The appendices include the following: I. The internship assignment II. A map of Ghana III. A flyer of the W4RA Project IV. The research report for CIS: The Role of ICTs in Knowledge Sharing within Rural Communities in Ghana Motivation. As a first orientation, I looked at the vacancies for internships at the website of the Faculty of Arts in the third year of my Bachelor. My aim then was to get an idea of the different possibilities for internships and the organizations providing internships. Since I did not have the chance to study abroad during my Bachelor IRIO and the international component was one of the reasons I choose this particular course, I preferred an internship abroad. In addition, I preferred to do research during my internship. On the one hand this was because I perhaps would like to be a professional researcher in the future and I wanted to get a better view on the work a researcher does on a daily basis, on the other hand in my current work as general manager of a restaurant I already have a lot of practical experience and organizational and managerial skills and I wanted to do something completely different. Initial Context. On October 20th, 2009, I attended a symposium at VU University Amsterdam on Regreening the Sahel Initiatives that my father was organizing that day as a part of the Dies Natalis of the university. At this symposium I got excited about the work done by one of the participating organizations at the symposium: the Centre for International Cooperation (CIS) of VU University Amsterdam. The symposium on the World Wide Web and social development told the story of Yacouba Sawadogo (see picture 1), an innovative farmer from Burkina Faso.1 In the 1970s and 1980s the Sahel region in West-Africa experienced extreme droughts and famines, and many people left the region to find a better place to live elsewhere. Yacouba Sawadogo was one of the farmers that stayed behind and worked on the land. He improved the traditional zai technique of digging pits in the ground and adding manure to improve the soil and he taught other farmers about this technique. This turned out to be
1

More information on the symposium and on Yacouba Sawadogo can be found on http://www.vu.nl/nl/nieuwsagenda/agenda/2009/okt-dec/yacouba_sawadogo.asp.

successful in rehabilitating large areas of degraded land and in achieving significantly higher yields for the farmers. As a result, many of the people that had left returned to their villages and are able to provide for themselves now. Link with CIS. The initiative of Yacouba Sawadogo and the farmers in Burkina Faso has been taken up by national and international NGOs, including the Centre for International Cooperation (CIS) in order to contribute to the development of the Sahel region by means of the African Regreening Initiatives. The mission of CIS is to make knowledge, experience and expertise accessible to institutions and individuals in developing countries.2 The way CIS wants to achieve its goals is to work with the people and develop programs together with partners in developing countries. I was impressed by the way of working with people instead of for institutions on social development that CIS follows and I decided I wanted to try if I could get an internship at CIS within the framework of projects on Regreening the Sahel. After passing the exam for the Research Seminar Power Configurations in World Politics I wrote an email to Ms. Anna Bon of CIS in December, 2009. In response to this email, Ms. Anna Bon invited me for a meeting on the possibility of an internship and we set an appointment at CIS in Amsterdam for the beginning of January, 2010.

Picture 1: The man who stopped the desert Yacouba Sawadogo on his farm in Burkina Faso

See the website on CIS VU on http://www.cis.vu.nl/en/about-cis/general-info/index.asp.

2. Preparations
Interview at CIS. In January, 2010, I visited the Centre for International Cooperation of VU University Amsterdam for the first time. Ms. Anna Bon and her colleague Ms. Wendelien Tuyp asked me about my CV, my studies at the University of Groningen, my work experience, my interests, my goals for the future, and my motivations for doing the internship at CIS. We talked for quite a long time and later we started discussing the possible internship in more detail. Ms. Bon and Ms. Tuyp told me that they had interns before and what kind of projects these interns had worked on. We discussed my ideas and preferences for an internship and a couple of projects CIS is working on. When preparing for the meeting I had thought of some things that I could be doing for the Regreening the Sahel Initiatives, since I wanted to be of assistance to one of the projects CIS is working on. We talked about some of the possibilities and at the end of the meeting they told me they would look for a project I could do useful work for. Developing the Assignment. We agreed to start my internship at CIS at the first of May, 2010, which gave the three of us time to think about a specific assignment. To get a better idea of the scope of projects CIS is working on, Ms. Tuyp gave me the annual report of 2009 to look through. Apart from the projects in Africa, CIS is operational in developing countries all over the world, such as Suriname in Latin-America and Indonesia in Asia. In the next weeks we kept in contact via email. I send some more information on the objectives and rules of the internship and gave a list of the internships of other Master IRIO students to give them a good view on what the internship might look like. Ms. Bon on her part asked me some additional questions to get a better idea of what exactly I could and would like to do or not during the internship. For example, since the Regreening the Sahel Initiatives are projects running in Africa, one of the constraints was that my knowledge of the French language is not sufficient to work in a French-speaking country. Another question was if I was willing to work alone in a country where the political situation might be tense. Field Research in Ghana. After my affirmative answer to the last question in April, Ms. Bon drafted an internship assignment for me to go to Ghana and do research on the role of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) on knowledge sharing within rural communities in Ghana (see Appendix I). Although I do not know much about ICTs and applications for mobile telephones and the World Wide Web, the assignment sounded very interesting. Especially because the assignment entailed to do field research in Ghana, I accepted the assignment. Meanwhile, I started to read about Ghana in general and traveling through Ghana. The more I read about Ghana, the more enthusiastic I got. Ghana is a relatively politically stable country in West-Africa and the Ghanaians are known for their friendliness towards foreigners, so I figured it would be safe for me to travel Ghana alone. During the next weeks Ms. Anna Bon and Ms. Wendelien Tuyp contacted a number of people they work with in Ghana to try to make some appointments for me to interview some of these people. Unfortunately, the arrangements took longer than expected and my trip was postponed to later in May. One mishap was that one of the major contacts of CIS in Ghana at the Technical University in Kumasi was not to keen on receiving me for my research and we had to find other contacts as starting point for the internship. Preliminary Research. In May, I started doing preliminary research on Ghana in general and on rural development in Ghana more specifically. I went to the library of the university and searched the internet for books, articles, and newspaper articles on the history of Ghana, the political situation in Ghana, social and rural development in Ghana, foreign aid and financial

assistance for Ghana, etcetera (see Reference List). In addition, I gathered data for example on the use of ICTs in Ghana, such as mobile phone usage. I had decided to bring my laptop with me and I stored all the information on my laptop, so I could access it easily during my trip to Ghana. I used this information as background for my research in Ghana and as references in the research report I wrote for CIS. Also, I tried to get in contact with organizations that work in Ghana to see if they wanted to help me with my research. For example, I contacted a fellow student that I was introduced by earlier by Dr. Zwitter in Groningen, because she was also supposed to go to Ghana for her internship. Another example is the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD) in The Hague I contacted, because this organization was working on different projects in Ghana, also on ICT and rural development. Preparing for the trip. Apart from the preparations for the research in Ghana, I started preparing for the travel to Ghana. I made sure I had all the vaccinations needed in rural Ghana, I thought about what cloths to take with me, I borrowed a backpack, looked at airplane tickets and hotels, and I made arrangements for my visa. However, I could not book a ticket to Ghana yet and therefore I could not get the visa, because it still was not clear when I was supposed to go to Ghana. I needed to have a copy of my plane ticket in order to get a visa and I needed to know from what date to what date I was supposed to be in Ghana in order to book a ticket. On the other hand, I did not want to rush things and go to Ghana with at least an idea of where I would be at what time. The delay made me somewhat unsure about the internship; what if things would not work out and my internship for CIS was cancelled? Ms. Bon assured me it would work out in the end and I continued my literature research and the preparations for traveling. Finally, at the end of May, together with Ms. Bon and Ms. Tuyp, I decided it would be best for me to fly to Ghana together with Ms. Tuyp who had business to do at the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Cape Coast. This way Ms. Tuyp could introduce me and I could start my research there. Initial Itinerary. After this decision I had to finish the preparations. I booked my ticket and got my visa. Also, I designed a schedule for my travel through Ghana. On June 7th, 2010, I would fly Schiphol Airport to the International Airport in Accra, Ghana, to begin my adventure in Ghana. Together with Ms. Tuyp I would then travel to Cape Coast. After a stay in Cape Coast, I had scheduled to leave for Tamale where I was expected by Professor Dittoh of the University of Development Studies on Saturday June 19th. Then, from Sunday June 27th until Saturday July 3rd I was invited to join Stephane Boyera and his team of the World Wide Web Foundation one of the partners of CIS in different projects on their meetings in Accra. Since Accra is the capital of Ghana and most national and international governmental and non-governmental organizations are based there, I planned to stay in the capital to finish my research until I had to fly back to the Netherlands on July 17th.

3. The Project and the Assignment

The project: W4RA. My internship at CIS and the research I was going to conduct in Ghana was aligned to the project Web Alliance for Regreening Africa, abbreviated as W4RA (see Appendix III for a flyer on the project). This project is a collaboration of VU University Amsterdam and the World Wide Web Foundation. Within VU University, the Centre of International Cooperation and the Network Institute are involved in the project.3 The World Wide Web Foundation is established by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor the World Wide Web, to enhance access to the Web throughout the world. Today, a fifth of the world population is using the web as resource for communication and sharing information, but the other 80 percent of the world has not had the opportunity to meet the benefits of the web yet. The alliance with VU University Amsterdam has the aim to stimulate the development of ICT services to help regreening activities in the West-African sub-Saharan Sahel countries, where CIS has been active already for a long time. Background and Context of W4RA. In the 1970s and 1980s periods of drought deteriorated the living conditions in rural areas in West-Africa severely. Today, the soil conditions and vegetation have improved due to the work of innovative farmers as Yacouba Sawadogo in small rural communities using simple yet effective farming techniques. An area of over 5 million hectares has been restored and converted into fertile land. One of the factors in the success of these regreening activities can be found in the exchange and spread of knowledge of the local knowledge amongst large numbers of farmers. Knowledge on how to effectively and sustainably manage the lands, how to preserve trees, how to enhance soil fertility, and how to improve crops and herds is crucial for the people in these rural communities, whose livelihoods depend on agriculture and livestock. One great source of information for farmers is the radio, since radio stations broadcast programs for farmers in local languages. Another source of information is the mobile telephone. In Burkina Faso, where the project has started with a target community, mobile phones are used by farmers for example to check market prices in town, and to negotiate with potential customers about prices of commodities. In the target village up to 98 percent of the households own a radio and have a mobile phone. The benefits of the radio and the mobile phone are worth the costs, because they provide essential information for the live and business of people in the village. Objectives of W4RA. Combining existing radio content with new ways for voice-based access to the Web and other mobile ICT services makes it possible to increase the speed and amount of information and knowledge sharing between rural communities. The objective of the project is to improve and facilitate the local exchange of knowledge through the use of ICTs. This is to be done through, first, the development of new innovative ICT tools and services which are adapted to local content, and, second, capacity building of local software developers and entrepreneurs on how to create sustainable ICT services. The project has officially started in 2010 and in the first week of February, 2010, a first Web Foundation Workshop on Mobile Web and Social Development took place in Burkina Faso. It is projected to have a similar Workshop in Ghana at the end of 2010. The Assignment. I was given the assignment to do a first research in Ghana on the use of ICTs within rural communities and make first contact with stakeholders that might play a role in the project in the future. The assignment CIS gave me was to do research in Ghana on the
3

See the websites of these organizations for further information: www.cis.vu.nl, www.thenetworkinstitute.eu, and www.webfoundation.org.

role of ICTs in rural communities. The internship assignment can be found as Appendix I to this report. The increasing use of ICT over the world is influencing the ways people are communicating with each other. Even in the most remote rural communities in Sub-Saharan Africa mobile telephony is used as a communication tool. The Regreening Initiatives aim at stimulating the development of ICT tools for the dissemination of knowledge amongst farmers in rural communities in Sub-Saharan Africa. For my internship and research in Ghana we formulated the following research question: What is the role of ICTs in communication and knowledge sharing within rural communities in Ghana?

4. The Internship 4.1 Cape Coast

I started my research in Cape Coast which is situated at the Gulf of Guinea, some 165 kilometers west of the capital Accra (for a map of Ghana see Appendix II). At the north of the city lies the campus of the University of Cape Coast (UCC). From the international airport at Accra, Wendelien Tuyp, her associate Mike Roberts and I were driven to the UCC campus where Ms. Tuyp and Mr. Roberts were to visit the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) for a project they have been working on together. The idea was that Ms. Tuyp would introduce me to some Ghanaian PHD-students who are employed by VU University to do research in Ghana and who are writing their dissertation at the moment. Ms. Tuyp and Mr. Roberts would stay in Cape Coast for three days and after that I was supposed to find my way around myself. Accommodation. One of the PhD students, Joseph, helped with finding accommodation for me to stay during my visit in Cape Coast. Since CIS was not able to assist me financially during my internship, I had to keep the costs as low as possible. Joseph and I looked at the possibilities and I decided to stay in a student hostel for 5 Ghana Cedi a night.4 Because of the summer holiday most students had gone home to visit their families and the hostel was rather quiet. The students remaining at the hostel for the summer were national service students: graduates that have to work as national service for one year after their Bachelors. I stayed alone in a room at the ladies floor (see picture 2). The hostel was new, one part was still under construction even, and a cleaning crew came to clean the bathrooms and hallways every morning. I went out and got some cleaning materials and cleaned the room before I moved in the room. I was rather pleased with the price of my residence and the space and cleanliness of my room and the bathrooms, but when I went to sleep that first night, I got anxious since I realized that I was starting an adventure I did not know where it would lead to.

Picture 2: My room in the SRC Hostel at the campus of the University of Cape Coast

The national currency of Ghana is the Cedi (GHS or ) which is divided into one hundred pesewas. One Cedi equals approximately 0.50 Euro or 0.70 US Dollar.

Getting to Know Ghana. The next couple of days I had to take my time to adjust to Ghana and the Ghanaians. Before leaving the Netherlands I had searched the internet for Ghana and Ghanaian customs, but in reality it was very different from anything I had done before. In the past I have traveled through foreign countries, for example I traveled Central-America for a month, and I have traveled through Egypt, but my stay in Ghana was very different: now I was living in Ghana for six weeks. I took my hostel and the Institute for Development Studies as starting point and walked around to get somewhat familiar with the surroundings. Soon I had found a couple of places where I could by drinks, food, and other groceries, I figured out how the system of shared taxis in Ghana works, and I met some people to talk to. Joseph had sent one of the followers of his church, Albert whose nickname was Kwabena born on Tuesday in Akan to check up on me every once in a while because he was residing in the same hostel as I was. Kwabena was friendly enough to lend me his bucket so I was able to fetch water for bathing and washing cloths. At the inner courtyard of the hostel there were three large water reservoirs where I would get water to take upstairs to one of the washrooms to bath. After a day or two I felt more comfortable in my new living environment. Every morning I walked to IDS to start my day from there. I visited Joseph briefly every day and made some contacts for my research. Elmina. The third day in Cape Coast Ms. Tuyp and Mr. Roberts had the afternoon off before leaving for Accra and invited me to come to visit the town of Elmina nearby (see picture 3). Elmina is famous for the Castle built by the Portuguese in 1482 as a trade settlement on the Gold Coast as Ghana used to be named. So Jorge da Mina, as the castle was called by the Portuguese, later became one of the most important stops in the trade of slaves from WestAfrica to the Americas, especially when the Dutch took over the Castle from the Portuguese in 1637. This castle is one of the most popular places to visit in Ghana and both foreigners and Africans came to visit the castle to learn about the horrifying history of the slave trade.

Picture 3: Fishing boots at the coast of Elmina.

Mingling with locals. After this valuable trip to Elmina Ms. Tuyp and Mr. Roberts left Cape Coast and left me by myself. I had already realized that the low-budget way of staying in Ghana would help me in doing my research. The majority of foreigners that come to Ghana reside in hotels that are very expensive and, in addition, closed off from locals. By mingling with local people as much as possible I would be able to get a good idea of the way of living of Ghanaians and I figured this would be an advantage for the research report I had to write for CIS. I noticed that just by talking to Ghanaians I already learned a lot about Ghana and Ghanaians and I made it an effort to talk to as much people as possible. This was not that difficult, since I was the only white person around and people would just come up to me to talk to me. The majority of these conversations were rather superficial, but still they gave me a better impression about the country and its people. Some conversations developed more in depth and in these conversations I could easily bring up the project I was working for and talk about ICTs for rural development in Ghana. Ghanaian pace. Another thing I learned is that the pace of living in Ghana is very different from what I was used to in the Netherlands. During the preparations I had already noticed that Ghanaians are not that strict in making appointments. One of the reasons it took some time to figure out a travel plan for Ghana, was that the Ghanaian contacts said it was fine for me to come and told me or Ms. Bon to let me get in contact once I was in Ghana. At UCC it was hard to make an appointment with a professor, because most professors preferred you just come walking in and see if the professor was in. And if you had made an appointment, it could take hours of waiting, sometimes even days, before you could meet the professor. On the other hand, even the professors that were very busy made time to talk to me. Some of the interviews lasted for fifteen minutes, others stretched out to over an hour. I concluded that Ghanaians like to talk and especially when I told them I wanted to interview them for my research, the people were very perceptive and talkative. Interviews. Because of my lack of experience in field research, I wrote down a number of topics I wanted to know more about for the project and I thought of questions I could ask to get the right answers. In total I spend half of my time in Cape Coast. I interviewed a number of people there; experts on ICT, on development in Ghana, on agriculture, on extension workers, on government policy, on Ghanaian languages. In the interviews and during the conversations with some of the people I had met, we discussed the level of development in Ghana, the challenges for Ghana in further development, the role of the government, universities, and NGOs on rural development. I used what I learnt from the interviews in the report for CIS (see Appendix IV). Also, I used the interviews as starting point for further research. For example, when I learned in a conversation that there are many different languages spoken in Ghana, I visited the Department of Ghanaian Languages to get further information on the different languages and dialects spoken in Ghana and the problems this could bring for development. I tried to speak to as many people as possible to get their views and to see if there where commonalities. A selection of the interviews at UCC was with: - Dr. Festus Annor-Frempong, director of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension - Mr. Joseph Boateng-Agyenim, progress made in developing Ghana - Prof. Stephen B. Kendie, the main issues for rural development in Ghana - Dr. John Victor Mensah, director of the Institute for Development Studies - Prof. Dr. Nii Quaynor, ICTs and the World Wide Web for development - Dr. Moses Setiga, ICT coordinator of the University of Cape Coast - Mr. K. A. Tuffuor, Ghanaian political structure and its influence on development - Dr. Ishmael bin Yahya, the role of agricultural extension officers in rural development

10

From Cape Coast to Tamale. After spending some time in Cape Coast, I emailed my contact in Tamale, the capital city of the Northern Region, prof. Saa Dittoh of the University of Development Studies. Ms. Bon from CIS had asked him to receive me in Tamale for the research and we had agreed I would travel to Tamale on the 19th of June. Via email professor Dittoh told me I could join him on a field trip he was undertaking for another project if I would be able to come sooner. Since the field trip sounded very interesting, I left for Tamale the next day. Early the next morning I took the bus from Cape Coast to Kumasi and from Kumasi to Tamale. Because I felt I had not finished my work I Cape Coast yet, I made arrangements to come back to the campus at the end of my stay. I took one bag with me and left the other with Joseph and made sure I could return to my room with the manager of the hostel.

4.2 Tamale
Accommodation. Since I would arrive in the evening, professor Dittoh had booked a room in a guest house for me to stay in for the first night. We would see if we could find accommodation for the rest of my stay later. I was a bit insecure about where I was supposed to stay and when I met a student representative of the University of Development Studies (UDS) on the bus, I discussed with him the possibilities. I told him about the hostel I had stayed in at UCC and asked him if he could help me with finding similar accommodation in Tamale if necessary. He told me that would not be a problem and we exchanged telephone numbers to get in contact later. After the first night in Tamale the professor took me along on a field trip he was undertaking together with two fellow researchers of UDS; Margaret Akuriba and Conrad Weobong. When returning from the field trip we discussed accommodation for me in Tamale. I told them I was trying to arrange a hostel at the campus, but Margaret was kind enough to invite me to stay with her. She lived alone and had an extra room in her house in a compound with three other houses. From South to North. While traveling by bus from Cape Coast to Tamale I noticed the big differences in Ghana between the North and the South. In Tamale, a city of approximately 300,000 citizens, the situation was completely different than in Cape Coast. Tamale lies 600 kilometers North of Cape Coast and the climate is significantly dryer than in the South. In Ghana the rainy season starts in April, but while in the South I had experienced rainfall already, in the North it had not rained yet until I arrived in half June. The three regions in the North of Ghana the Northern Region, the Upper West Region, and the Upper East Region are not only the driest but also the poorest regions of the country. The farmers in these regions are struggling to survive. As the largest city in the North of Ghana, Tamale was a good place to start my field research on ICTs in rural Ghana. Professor Dittoh sent his son Francis to help me with my research. Data Gathering. In Tamale I wanted to get insight on the use of ICTs at the moment and the possibilities to use ICTs for rural development in the future. Together with Francis, I visited the radio stations, cyber cafs, NGOs working in rural communities, software companies, and ICT training centers in the city. We interviewed a lot of people of these organizations, or made appointments to come back later for an interview. Here I gathered a lot of usable information for my research and learnt that there are many challenges for developing ICT tools for rural development. For example, the speed and stability of the internet in Tamale is a serious issue. In Europe we are used to incredibly fast internet connections. In Cape Coast I had already learnt that the internet is very slow in Ghana. In Tamale the situation again was totally different; the internet is very slow and instable, often connections are down for days.

11

The findings of my research in Tamale are discussed extensively in the report I wrote for CIS (see Appendix IV).

4.3 Upper West and Upper East Region

From city to rural area. Not only the differences between North and South were striking; I also started to notice the differences between the cities and the rural areas. During the field trip we traveled to the Upper West Region and the Upper East Region where the climate clearly was even more severe and poverty was extremely high. For the field trip we visited four rural communities: Kaleo near Wa, Goziiri and Tankara in the facinity of Nando and the border with Burkina Faso, and Kandiga near Bolgatanga. Since it is not appreciated to come unannounced, the visits were carefully prepared by Conrad and contact persons of the communities. The primary purpose of the field trip was to look at community initiatives in the framework for sustainable land development. For example, the Goziiri (see picture 4) had taken up the initiative not to burn the bush near the village and not to burn debris on their land. The non-burning rule has contributed to the growth of the forest which brings shade and shelter for people and animals in the neighborhood. Burning debris on an appointed place instead of on the land where you grow crops, improves the soil and benefits the farmers.

Picture 4: Meeting the Chief and his Elderly in Goziiri.

The Meetings. The meetings were very formal and started with introductions. First the professor would introduce us and tell a bit about the reason of our visit. Then, the chief and the Elderly were introduced by a spokesperson of the community. There were interpreters present, because in Ghana many different languages are spoken and especially in the North there is a lot of variety of languages and dialects. At the end of the meeting, the professor would introduce me and asked if it was possible that I asked a couple of questions for my research. I started with my questions on mobile telephony. I asked, for instance, if the Chief and Elderly possessed a mobile phone and what they used mobile phones for. The popularity of mobile phones in Ghana combined with the fact that a white girl was asking the questions, made the people of the community very receptive in answering my questions. During the field trip, I gathered a lot of useful information for the research and I used the communities as 12

examples to illustrate my research report (see for example page 8 of the research report in Appendix IV on the Goziiri and access to the World Wide Web). Between Times. For the field trip, we used the professors four wheel drive as means of transportation. He had hired a driver to drive us to all the communities. At night we searched for a guest house to stay in. Guest houses are small hotels that are subsidized by the government. The professor and his crew told me they wanted to take care of my expenses for the trip and would net let me pay for one meal or drink the whole trip. It was very educational for me to see how they conducted field research and I enjoyed being a part of the team. While traveling and after meetings, we talked about Ghana and about the differences with the Netherlands. Also, the FIFA World Cup 2010 was organized in Africa for the first time and both Ghana and the Netherlands were performing well in it. Almost all Ghanaians wanted to watch the matches of their Black Stars and Ghana came furthest of all African countries. So, football was also a very important topic to discuss during my stay in Ghana. Another topic to discuss was Ghanaian food. I took the effort to try as much of the Ghanaian kitchen as possible and quickly started to have favorites. However, I allowed the opportunity to eat dog meat, a specialty in some Northern parts of Ghana, to pass.

4.4 Accra
From Tamale to Accra. From Tamale I traveled to Accra, the capital of the country. In Accra I would join the team of the World Wide Web Foundation who were for a first visit in Ghana on a different project on Mobile Entrepreneurship in Africa.5 In Accra I had arranged to stay in a student hostel in the city centre with the help of a friend I made in Cape Coast. When the bus from Tamale approached Accra, it was already dark. So I got out off the bus earlier than planned to be picked up by Priscilla, the girlfriend of my friend in Cape Coast. I stayed with her and her sister in their uncles house in a village on the outskirt of Accra. The next day Priscilla and I traveled further to the city to search for the hostel. Unfortunately, we could not find the hostel and the girl that was my contact did not answer her phone. The Web Foundation team was staying in the Novotel in the center of the city and for logistical purposes I wanted to stay close by. Walking around with Priscilla, I found a small hotel with rooms available for 23 Ghana Cedi and I decided to stay there for the night. The room was very small and there was no running water, but the hotel was clean and at least I had a place to stay. Accommodation. On Monday the meetings with the Web Foundation started early. From my hotel I walked to the Novotel for breakfast and we all left together from there to the first meeting. After a full day of meetings I finally got in contact with the girl of the hostel and she gave me directions to the hostel. This hostel was only a couple hundred meters across the street from the Novotel, so I could walk back and forth easily. However, this student hostel was by far not as nice and clean as the hostel in Cape Coast. To be frank, I did not dare to touch anything in the room and in the bathrooms, even after we cleaned the room together. After going out for diner that night, I was almost afraid to go to sleep because I felt very uncomfortable in the room and the building. Of course there was no scary monster that ate me during the night, but I knew I did not want to stay there longer than necessary. On the other hand, I did not want to be rude to all the people that had helped me to get the room, so I decided I would stay there until the end of the week.

See http://www.webfoundation.org/projects/mobile-entrepreneurs/ for this project and a detailed description of our fact finding mission in Accra.

13

Project: Mobile Entrepreneurship. During this week I got to know the capital Accra better. As member of the Web Foundation team I participated in all the meetings they had scheduled. We talked with potential stakeholders: ICT companies (e.g. SoftTribe, BusyLab, Cisco), business sector (e.g. NCS, GASSCOM), telecom operators (Vodafone), universities (e.g. GTUC, Ashesi University, AAU), professional training institutions (Kofi Anan ICT Center), mobile entrepreneurs (e.g. BSystems, Rancard), students, and NGOs (e.g. IFPRI, Keycredit MicroFinance, Constant Capital). Even though I have no degree in mobile technology or entrepreneurship, I learned a lot from the meetings. The differences between South and North and between city and rural area became extremely apparent in Accra, for example in the level of ICT development in the capital compared to the rest of Ghana (see page 17 of the research report in Appendix IV on software developing companies in Ghana). At the same time, I could teach the other members of the team some things about Ghana and Ghanaians in general since I had been traveling the country for a while now. Our program started early in the morning and most days ended late in the evening. One of the sponsors of the project, Vodafone, had provided a car with driver to guide us through the city. This was no luxury in a city with more than three million people trying to make their way through. Accra was very crowded and the atmosphere and the environment were not as friendly as in Cape Coast, let alone the North of Ghana. When two members of the team wanted to take a care to have a tourist day off in Cape Coast before returning to Europe, I gladly joined them. Last days in Ghana. After my second stay in Cape Coast, where I was able to finish my background research, I went back to Accra. I dreaded to go back to Accra, but my flight back to the Netherlands left from there, so I had no choice. In addition, there were a couple of people that I wanted to meet before I left. Already in the Netherlands I had been in contact with a very important organization for the W4RA Project and I really wanted to meet with him before I left Ghana. I scheduled a meeting with him and with two other contacts in the two days before my flight to Amsterdam. This way I still could meet them, but did not have to stay for more than two nights in Accra. I went back to the hotel I had stayed before; I was happy to pay the 23 Ghana Cedi instead of the 9 Cedi for the hostel in exchange for a clean and proper place to stay.

14

5. Evaluation
Preparations. The first two days I was in Ghana I was afraid that I had not done enough preparations to conduct the research properly. I had done literature research on ICTs and rural development in Ghana and other African countries, but I had not prepared questionnaires for the interviews. I had read about certain customs in Ghana, but I had not made a complete plan on where I was staying exactly at what dates. However, soon I discovered that my preparations where sufficient and it was a good thing I had not planned everything in details. Because the assignment was to do qualitative research, a questionnaire would not have helped me that much and I made list of the questions I wanted to answer per topic of the research. I used this list as a reference point in the interviews. I noticed that most interviews went better if I did not have to stick to strict questions and could more or less have a conversation with the interviewee on the topic of his or her expertise. And the end of every day I made an overview of the notes I had made during the interviews on my laptop, so I could have a neat and proper filing system of everything I had learned. These documents were extremely helpful when writing the final report for CIS on my research. Living in Ghana. The life and living in Ghana is very different from what one is used to in the Netherlands. In fact, it is so different that one gets used to it rather quickly. Especially since I was not staying in luxury hotels as most foreigners do, I had to adjust to Ghanaian life and familiarize myself with Ghanaian customs and habits. My research benefited from this in twofold. First, I experienced the way Ghanaians lived better what improved my understanding of the challenges for ICT for rural development in Ghana. Second, my simple way of staying in Ghana was appreciated by a lot of Ghanaians and it felt like this made them thrust me. Ghanaians perceive white people as being extremely rich. The relations between Ghanaians and white people are even though the colonial times seem long ago not seen as fair and equal. Business people and people working for NGOs, for example, are seen as having their own interests at heart first, way before the interests of Ghana or Ghanaians. Because I was mingling with the Ghanaians, they seemed to accept me quite easily as being part of daily life. So, during my stay I spoke with many Ghanaians and I learnt a lot from this. Supervision by CIS. Already in the Netherlands before leaving for Ghana my supervisors Anna Bon and Wendelien Tuyp told me not to worry myself too much. In the past they had an intern that could not handle the African mentality and returned to the Netherlands after two weeks. When selecting an internship assignment for me, they thought my personality was suitable to independently do field research in an African country. During my internship, I learned that that was correct and that I could handle myself well in an unknown environment. Their confidence in my skills to handle the research in Ghana successfully was very helpful during the internship. It made me worry less for all things that possibly could go wrong, whether by me doing or externally. At the same time, I knew that if I needed assistance, they would help me immediately. When returning to the Netherlands I discussed my findings with different people of CIS. One of the people I discussed my findings with was a Ghanaian PhD student working on the W4RA Project, Nana Baah Gyan, who was impressed with how much I have found out about Ghana and the Ghanaians. The talks and discussions with people at CIS have helped me to reflect on my findings and write the research report. A. Substantive and Personal Learning. The internship has been very valuable; both to me personally and to the internship providing organization and the W4RA Project. During my stay in Ghana, I learnt what it is like to use the theoretical knowledge of the university in practice. This gave me a better insight in the daily work of an academic. Also, the experience

15

gave me more insight on myself as a person. The research in Ghana made me realize that I can connect easily with other people if I am open to it and need not be afraid to tackle unfamiliar situations. On a more substantive level, the internship gave me great insight in the international relations between African countries and the Western world. Especially since I have experienced the effects from foreign aid and assistance from the point of view of an African country, the research has been very valuable for my view on world politics, international economics, and development aid. These insights are valuable for the W4RA project and other projects in African countries as well. The research report I have written for CIS (Appendix IV) has been sent to partners of CIS in W4RA and in other projects in different countries over the world, from Ghana to France to the US. Via email I received a number of very positive responses on the research I had done. For example, Max Froumentin of the World Wide Web Foundation wrote: Thanks a lot Anna for forwarding this to the list, and thanks to Nienke for writing a very interesting report that offers good insight for W4RA, but also for the Web Foundation's Mobile Entrepreneurship in Africa project, currently starting in Ghana. B. Expectations. When starting the search for an internship, I was hoping that the internship providing institution would offer me a job after my internship, since the internship is a very good opportunity to show an organization how valuable you can be to them. But in a later stage, I realized that it was more important to me to use the experience as a tool for selfdevelopment. For this reason, I preferred doing research in an unfamiliar environment. Already at the first interview at CIS I realized that already due to the financial situation, the chance of being offered a job at CIS was negligible. When entering the process of developing the internship assignment I purposely tried not to have too high expectations of the internship itself. The assignment turned out to be very interesting. When leaving for Ghana, I had not made detailed plans. I thought it would be best to go to Ghana with an open mind and I knew I would have to work hard to get a good result. I liked my independence, since the result of the internship was depending on my efforts. Therefore I did not want the obstacles I faced during the internship, such as the uncertainty and delay of the date of departure, to lead to disappointment too much. That would not help me get a better result in the end. C. The Internship IRIO. The internship as a compulsory part of the Master IRIO can be an asset to the course. It is an asset for your CV if you have been able to use the scientific knowledge of the course in a more practical manner. In my case, I have noticed that the extensive knowledge of multiple topics of the world history, international economics, law, politics have helped me a lot in the internship. In the Master I chose not to specialize myself in a specific field, since I appreciate the multidisciplinary character of the course. For me personally, the internship has been an asset to the Master IRIO. However, I think there are cases where the internship is not as beneficial as it could be. If a student is not able to find an interesting internship providing organization, the value of the internship diminishes. The student might be discouraged because s/he has to find an organization without as least help from the university as possible. For me this objection did not apply. I liked the autonomy and need for self-reliance during the internship. Also, the fact that it is not allowed to incorporate the internship with the Master thesis might not be in the advantage of students. For me it would have been possible to extend what I had learnt during the internship and write my Master thesis on the same topic. But to avoid overlap, I will write my thesis on a different subject. D. Job Market. The internship is a great asset for a students place in the job market, especially if the internship was abroad. In job interviews often experience outside the

16

university is asked and with an interesting internship you can distinct yourself from other applicants. In addition, the internship is a very good way to orientate oneself on the job market. For the internship a student needs to think about what job he or she would or would not like to do in the future. In what field would you like to work? What kind of organizations would fit you? Apart from orientation on the job market, the searching and applying for an internship place helps to practice for job interviews in the future.

Picture 5: Scene from the city of Cape Coast.

17

Reference List
[1] African Regreening Initiative: http://www.cis.vu.nl/en/news-events/newsarchive/2010/the-man-who-stopped-the-desert.asp. [2] Annor-Frempong, Festus, Joseph Kwarteng, Robert Agunga, and Moses M. Zinnah. Challenges of Infusing Information and Communication Technologies in Extension for Agricultural and Rural Development in Ghana. Journal of Extension Systems 22, no. 2 (2006): 69-82. [3] Boadi, Raymond A., Richard Boateng, Robert Hinson, and Robert A. Opoku. Preliminary Insights into M-Commerce Adoption in Ghana. Information Development 23 (2007): 253265. [4] Bodomo, Adams B.. On Language and Development in Africa: The Case of Ghana. Nordic Journal of African Studies 5, no. 2 (1996): 31-51. [5] Centre for International Cooperation: http://www.cis.vu.nl. [6] Economist. Mobile Marvels: A Special Report on Telecoms in Emerging Markets. Printed Edition, September 26th, 2009. [7] Film trailer of The Man Who Stopped the Desert: http://www.1080films.co.uk/latestprojects.htm (downloadable) [8] Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA). Inventory of Innovative Farmer Advisory Services using ICTs.: http://www.faraafrica.org/media/uploads/File/NSF2/RAILS/Innovative_Farmer_Advisory_Systems.pdf. [7] Network Institute: http://thenetworkinstitute.eu. [8] Owu-Ewie, Charles. The Language Policy of Education in Ghana: A Critical Look at the English-Only Language Policy of Education. In: Selected Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference on African Linguistics. Edited by John Mugane et al.. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, 2006: 76-85. [9] Resource Center for Energy Economics and Regulation. Guide to Electric Power in Ghana.: http://www.beg.utexas.edu/energyecon/IDA/USAID/RC/Guide_to_Electric%20Powerin_Gha na.pdf. [10] VU University Amsterdam: http://www.vu.nl. [11] World Wide Web Foundation: http://www.webfoundation.org. [12] W4RA project: http://www.w4ra.org.

18

19

Appendix I: Internship Description

The role of ICTs in knowledge sharing within rural communities in Ghana Internship MA International Relations Supervising organization: VU Amsterdam / Centre for International Cooperation (CIS) Region: Ghana Period: May-July 2010 Contact persons at VU: Wendelien Tuyp and Anna Bon (CIS) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Assignment The assignment is to investigate how the increasing use of ICTs is influencing communication and knowledge sharing within rural communities in Ghana. The role of local and international NGOs, ICT service providers, community radio stations, and community cyber-cafs in supporting the process of ICT service delivery to the target groups will also be explored. Backgrounds and African context In the 1980s several periods of drought severely deteriorated living conditions in rural areas in WestAfrica, including the north of Ghana. Now, 25 years later, soil conditions and vegetation have improved. This is attributed to the work of innovative farmers of the small rural communities using simple but effective farming techniques. An area of over 5 million hectares, previously degraded land, has been restored and converted into fertile land. (Reij et al. 2009). One of the main success factors of these re-greening activities lies in the exchange and spread of local knowledge amongst large numbers of farmers. Knowledge about how to effectively and sustainably manage the lands, how to preserve trees and enhance soil fertility and how to improve crops and herds is crucial for the people in these rural communities, whose livelihoods depend entirely on agriculture and livestock. Community radio stations and mobile telephony in the Sahel already play an important role in the spreading of this knowledge (e.g. Quarmyne 2001, Aker 2008, Chabossou et al. 2009). Mobile web services have the potential to speed up and improve this even more. In small rural villages in Ghana up to 98% of the households today have mobile phones and own a radio. Phones are used for business, family matters, to check market prices in town, to negotiate with potential customers about prices of commodities and crops. The community radio is the other main source of information, broadcasted in dedicated programmes for farmers in local languages. The benefits of the mobile phone and the radio are worth the costs, because they provide essential information for live and business. Methodology The research will be mainly qualitative, based on field work. Data collection will be done by interviewing relevant stakeholders and observation of the local situation. Literature review will be used to support the outcomes, or to make comparisons with other field studies in similar contexts. The student will present a paper and make a presentation about the outcomes, results and conclusions of the study. Activities For the internship, a four week visit to Ghana will take place. 1. The student will visit two or three rural communities in Ghana and take interviews with community chiefs, farmers, women, youngsters. Main questions will be the availability and use of mobile telephony and the Internet, the monthly family income and expenditures on mobile telephony, the use of phones; the literacy rate, use of SMS, how do people charge their phone batteries? Do some people have computers or know how to work with them? How is internet connectivity in the region? Is mobile banking already available in Ghana? Do people transfer airtime for payments, as a currency? etc.

20

2. Academic senior staff members at the University of Development Studies will be interviewed about the role of this university, and its vision on the development of the agricultural sector in Ghana, especially the subsistence farming sector. The influence on re-greening activities, knowledge sharing amongst farmers, innovative farming for the very poor, indigenous knowledge sharing and transfer, etc. 3. University of Cape Coast, Institute for Development Studies, senior academic staff will be interviewed on the same subjects. 4. Visits will be made to local cyber cafs, to describe the functionality, the user base and the funding structure of these facilities. How much do internet cafs charge? 5. A visit to a community radio will be made. Interview with staff about the type of programming, listeners base, information broadcasted, availability of internet facilities, funding structure of the radio, training of staff, use of local languages etc. 6. The role of agriculture extension workers will be explored. NGOs will be visited. Interviews with other stakeholders such as NGOs working for rural communities, e.g. rural women organizations, development organizations, etc. will be taken. 7. Local ICT service providers, web developers and or national telecoms will be visited and interviewed about service provisioning to the target group of rural communities. 8. Literature review on the subject of ICTs for rural development in the Ghanaian context is also part of the assignment. This will answer the question which information services are already available on the Web, aimed at rural communities, e.g. trading information, sms alert services for health etc. Are there special web-services for Ghana, other countries? Contact persons in Ghana In Ghana several key contact persons will supervise the MA student and bring her in contact with the relevant stakeholders, who will be then be interviewed by her. Prof. Saa Dittoh, University of Development Studies, Tamale Prof. John Victor Mensah, Institute for Development Studies, University of Cape Coast Dr. Moses Setiga, ICT coordinator, University of Cape Coast

21

Appendix II: Map of Ghana

Source: United Nations (http://www.un.org/Depts/Cartographic/map/profile/ghana.pdf).

22

Appendix III: Flyer of the W4RA Project

23

Appendix IV: Research Report for CIS: The Role of ICTs in Knowledge Sharing within Rural Communities in Ghana

24