CHARACTERISTICS AND MIGRATION EXPERIENCE OF AFRICANS IN CANADA WITH SPECIFIC REFERENCE TO GHANAIANS IN GREATER TORONTO

While the migration of Africans is an age-old phenomenon, the most documented aspect has been rural-urban migration. Better life chances in the urban areas, compared with the rural areas compel the young and energetic rural people to migrate to the cities even if their chances of finding decent jobs are slim. In recent times, however, deteriorating national socio-economic and political conditions have made living conditions in African towns and cities as precarious as is in the countryside, and consequently the migrants' dream of better lives in the cities most often proves to be a mirage. These conditions and the increasing desire to make better lives for themselves have precipitated international migration among Africans. This paper argues that the unprecedented international migration among Africans should be seen as an extension of the rural-urban migration in quest for better opportunities. A sample of 149 Ghanaian immigrants in the Greater Toronto area was surveyed through a questionnaire. It appears that for most of them, their arrival in Canada has completed a series of step-wise moves which may have started from their home towns via the regional cities to the national capital and across the borders to a number of countries before arriving in Canada. The paper demonstrates, among other things, that stepwise migration characterizes the Ghanaian migration experience at both local and international levels. Bien que la migration des Africains soit un phénomène ancien, l'aspect le plus documenté a été la migration rurale-urbaine. Les meilleures chances de vie dans les régions urbaines, comparées avec régions rurales incitent les jeunes personnes énergiques des milieux ruraux à migrer aux villes, même s'il y a peu de chances que ces personnes trouvent des emplois de qualité. Ces dernières années, cependant, la dégradation des conditions socio-économiques et politiques nationales ont rendu les conditions de vie de villages et des grandes villes africaines aussi précaires qu'à la campagne, et par conséquent, le rêve d'une meilleure vie s'avére, la plupart du temps, un mirage. Ces condiitions et le désir grandissant d'une vie meilleure ont accéléré la migration internationale chez les Africains. Cet article soutient que la migration internationale sans précédent chez les Africains devrait être vue comme un prolongement de la migration rurale-urbaine en quête des meilleures chances. On a fait une enquête d'un échantillon de 149 immigrés Ghanéens dans la région de Toronto par questionnaire. II semble que, pour la plupart d'entre eux, leur arrivée au Canada ait terminé une série de mouvements graduels: de leurs villes natales via les villes régionales à la capitale nationale et, à travers les frontières, à beaucoup d'autres pays avant d'arriver au Canada. L'article démontre, entre autres choses, que la migration graduelle caractérise l'expérience au niveaux local et international.     

The Archaeology of Global Encounters Viewed from Banda, Ghana

West African societies have long been enmeshed in interregional, subcontinental, and intercontinental relations. Documents tell us little about how local life was shaped by its intersection with global processes, especially in coastal hinterlands. In this paper I report on archaeological investigations into the changing contours of local life in the Banda area of west central Ghana over the past seven centuries. Excavations at three temporally distinct occupations on two sites—Makala Kataa and Kuulo Kataa—document changes in settlement, craft production, subsistence, and exchange, providing insights into the dynamics of local life during a period of expanding global networks. A concluding section addresses why this type of research is important for our understanding of ancient African societies. Les sociétés Ouest Africaines sont depuis longtemps parties prenantes dans les relations inter-régionales, sous-continentales et inter-continentales. Les documents ne nous disent pas grand chose sur la manière dont la vie locale a été façonnée par cette interaction avec les processus mondiaux, particulièrement dans les arrières pays côtiers. Dans cet article, je rends compte des recherches archéologiques concernant les changements dans la vie locale intervenus dans la région de Banda au centre ouest du Ghana au cours des sept derniers siècles. Les fouilles dans trois occupations temporellement distincts sur deux sites—Makala Kataa et Kuulo Kataa—mettent en évidence les changements dans l'occupation, la production artisanale, les modes de subsistances et les échanges, donnant un aperçu des dynamiques de la vie locale durant une période d'expansion des réseaux mondiaux d'échange. La conclusion aborde les raisons pour lesquelles ce type de recherche est important pour notre compréhension des anciennes sociétés africaines.     

The dynamics and livelihood implications of illegal mining in Ghana: A critical assessment

Discourses on “illegal” or informal small-scale mining (galamsey) have presented it largely as a menace. Using Ghana as the focus of our study, we present a counter-narrative to the predominant discourse. Employing qualitative in-depth interviews with 193 local galamsey operators, the study found that economic factors coupled with the combative posture of state regulatory agencies explain the persistence of illegal activity. Although galamsey is not problem-free, the study revealed it is the livelihood support base of such communities, providing jobs and incomes to many households. Since mineral-rich local communities, at least, in part, depend on galamsey, the state and its regulatory agencies could collaboratively work with local agencies and mineral-rich communities to fully exploit the hidden treasures in galamsey while reducing the proximate negative effects.     

‘Not a Position for a Gentleman’: Sir Matthew Nathan as Colonial Administrator: From Cape Coast Castle to Dublin Castle via Natal

This article examines the role of Sir Matthew Nathan, British permanent under secretary for Ireland at the time of the Easter Rising in April 1916, and how critical events in his career as soldier, colonial governor and civil servant shaped his conduct and reaction to events in Ireland as the Rising unfolded around him. The article raises issues of identities: namely Nathan's own identity as an English gentleman, when, given his Jewish background, he was an outsider to that caste. Nathan's brief military career and lengthier career as a colonial governor earned him high praise as a model bureaucrat. In this paper Nathan's track from the War Office through government houses situated in West Africa, Hong Kong and Natal to Dublin Castle is traced to illustrate the changes in his character from decisiveness to indecision. While Nathan clearly misread the volatile situation in Ireland over the 1916 Easter weekend, his actions demonstrated both indecision and bureaucratic delaying tactics. It is argued that his experiences with obdurate settler ministers in Natal played a role in shaping his hesitancy at the time of crisis in Dublin and that this hesitancy provided an opportunity for the direct action of the Irish Volunteers. The conclusion is that, at the time of the Irish crisis, Nathan failed to exercise the ‘power of the personal influence’ expected of an experienced governor.     

Out of the dark but not out of the cage: women's empowerment and gender relations in the Dangme West district of Ghana

In Ghana, strategies to address poverty among rural women have often been linked to women's empowerment programmes with credit as a core component of these. Yet, many programmes focus on the economic benefit to women without necessarily looking at the impact on gender relations at the household level and its implications on women. Using quantitative and qualitative data from the Dangme West district of Ghana, this article shows how poverty reduction programmes with credit components can reduce women's vulnerability to poverty and empower them. But much more needs to be done to complement these efforts. The study shows that women beneficiaries as against women non-beneficiaries have significantly improved their socio-economic status through access to financial and non-financial resources. This has in certain instances improved gender relations at the household level, with women being recognized as earners of income and contributors to household budget. However, some women still regard their spouses as ‘heads’ and require their consent in decisions even in issues that have to do with their own personal lives. Moreover, the improved economic status of women has resulted in a ‘power conflict’, creating confrontation between spouses. The article recommends that, as part of their programmes, assisting organizations and institutions must address ‘power relations’, the basis of gender subordination at the household level, otherwise socio-cultural norms and practices, underpinned by patriarchal structures, will remain ‘cages’ for rural women.     

Privileging prevention,gendering responsibility: an analysis of the Ghanaian campaign against HIV/AIDS

This article focuses on the discourses around HIV/AIDS in the national Ghanaian ‘Stop AIDS Love Life!’ public health campaign, within non-governmental HIV/AIDS publications, and the Ghanaian national print media. I have used critical discourse analysis to interpret and deconstruct a range of these social texts collected between June and September of 2001 and 2003 in and around Greater Accra, Ghana. I argue, firstly, that these discourses are shaped by an international politics of funding for HIV/AIDS that privileges prevention through behaviour change over treatment action under the premise that prevention is a more cost-effective option for the Global South. I critique this stance, highlighting the emerging possibilities for integrated prevention–treatment efforts in resource-poor settings such as Ghana. Secondly, I argue that the discourses around HIV/AIDS presented in prevention campaign materials powerfully construct normative and gendered subjectivities with assigned roles and responsibilities. The fight against HIV/AIDS is constructed as a national project in which an idealized, and often very young, female citizen is positioned as educator, volunteer, carer and protector of herself and society. This discursive coding of responsibility places the many burdens of HIV upon some of the most vulnerable in society, ignoring the structural constraints of gender, generational and economic inequality. I conclude my paper by arguing that efforts to reduce transmission rates, stigma, and the burden of care for those living with HIV/AIDS in Ghana must integrate both preventative efforts and treatment action. Where prevention campaigns are utilized I suggest that these must recognize the limitations of behaviour change initiatives that primarily target women and acknowledge the gendered constraints faced by those very subjects identified as responsible for the protection and education of the nation.     

Stigma,stereotypes and Brazilian soap operas: road-blocks to ending human trafficking in Vietnam,Ghana and Ukraine

During the last 15 years, we have witnessed a significant and increasing focus on human trafficking in the work and research of international organisations, local and international non-governmental organisations, governments, researchers and academics from a range of disciplines. However, the focus remains on presumed structural causes of trafficking, including assumptions regarding victims' levels of education and sex. Other socio-cultural factors are frequently ignored in trafficking discourse. Based on fieldwork carried out in Vietnam, Ghana and Ukraine from July 2009 to November 2010, including 50 interviews with key informants, this article directs attention to some of these oft-ignored factors that continue to act as a barrier to ending human trafficking. Attention is paid to three socio-cultural factors that act as road-blocks to efforts to counter trafficking in all three countries: first, the stigmatisation of both sex work and trafficking; second, a narrow understanding of who constitutes a victim of trafficking and third, lack of attention by researchers and activists to the role of images of successful migration abroad as an influential pull factor. These research findings indicate the importance of understanding the intersections between race, culture, gender, sexuality and class to relation to women's and men's involvement in unsafe and/or exploitative migration abroad.     

History and Ideology of an Akan Centre: The Cosmological Topography of Wiawso

This article documents in a specific setting, the Sefwi variant of the Akan civilization of West Africa, the complex interplay between history and ideology in the establishment of settlements’ hegemony. The text scrutinizes sources on specific historical circumstances concerning the transformation of Wiawso, the town chosen for this exercise of cosmological topography, over the last three centuries. The demographic, social, ritual and urban dynamics are discussed with reference to the semantics of the spatial dimension of Akan settlements’ hegemonic ambitions. The focus on the interplay between history and ideology elucidates two issues. First, the importance of strategic and historically‐specific evocation and display of objects, sites and narratives claiming reference to the past, in generating and mobilizing structures of signification sustaining Wiawso’s recognized prominence. Second, the persistence over time of certain Akan ideological features concerning principally what the past entails and the standards for evaluating settlements’ success in centralization.     

Civitatis Ghaniensis Conditor: Kwame Nkrumah,symbolic nationalism and the iconography of Ghanaian money 1957 – the Golden Jubilee

ABSTRACT. During his tenure as premier from independence in 1957 until he was ousted by a military and police coup in 1966, Kwame Nkrumah was the living personification of the Ghanaian nation‐state. As the self‐proclaimed Civitatis Ghaniensis Conditor– Founder of the State of Ghana – his image was minted on the new national money and printed on postage stamps. He erected a monument of himself in Accra, changed the national anthem to make references to himself, customised the national flag to match the colors of his CPP party, made his birthday a national day of celebration (National Founder's Day), named streets and universities after himself, and amended the constitution whereby he became Life President. Since the coup, many of the symbols of nationhood that Nkrumah constructed have been debated, demolished, reconsidered and reengineered by successive governments to rewrite the Ghanaian historical narrative. This article analyses the contentions of one of Nkrumah's first expressions of symbolic nationalism – that of the national coinage.     

‘When the Bull Elephants Fight’: Kwame Nkrumah,Non-Alignment,and Pan-Africanism as an Interventionist Ideology in the Global Cold War (1957–66)

From independence onwards, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana pursued a position of positive neutrality and non-alignment. Historians claim that the Congo crisis and the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 led Nkrumah to question the viability of strict non-alignment. Newly declassified Ghanaian sources and an analysis of the components that make up the pan-African ideology, however, suggest that these events validated Nkrumah's pan-African worldview. Only a combination of continental unification and non-alignment was considered to be an effective strategy to avoid a repetition of the Congo debacle. Ghana's public diplomacy tactics switched from targeting political activists to convincing people through a vociferously anti-colonial propaganda campaign, a modification that cast doubt on the sincerity of Ghanaian neutrality at a moment when non-alignment actually began to affect Ghanaian diplomacy on all levels.