The Road to Janga Town: Mobility Technology Connects Ghana to New Opportunities

15 january 2013

Yesterday we traveled in a 16-seat bus on a sometimes paved and sometimes not so paved road in Northern Ghana, from Tamale to Janga Town. Along the way we encountered several check points, where angry looking men with machine guns curiously peered through the windows at our white faces, a rare sight in this very rural region. Our driver explained that the road is the main thoroughfare leading to Burkina Faso, and that smugglings and robberies were not uncommon. I wasn’t sure whether to be comforted or assured.

Our traveling pack of 16 people, consisting of nine international journalists from Germany, the UK and South Africa; four people from SAP and three people from NGOs; came together 60 hours earlier from four corners of the world, to see how technology is making an economic impact in the lives of thousands of rural farmers in some of the most remote regions of Ghana.

The road to Janga Town was not without its obstacles and challenges. After a long day of project briefings in Accra, a car tour through the city (worthy of an article itself) and an outside dinner by the Atlantic (the restaurant, “Next Door,” – to what wasn’t exactly clear, didn’t have any running water; evidently it was shut off weeks ago and the manager wasn’t sure why or when it was going to restored), we arose before 4 a.m. on Wednesday to catch the 6 a.m. flight to Tamale, supposedly the more reliable of the few daily flights upcountry. As we were about to board we were instructed to take a seat in the waiting area. The speedometer was broken. It would only take 10 to 15 minutes to repair. An hour and half later we were on our way.

While in the western world spend a good part of our days and nights inside in our work or family clusters it appears, to my inexperienced eyes, that much of Ghanaian life takes place outside. Women are in constant motion, walking along the roads, gracefully balancing all sorts of goods on their heads, including bananas and other fruit, wood for the fires that one can see and smell everywhere, clothing, etc.  I even saw someone carrying a Singer sewing machine.

At long last we reached our destination of Janga Town, a village of roughly 3,000 people, consisting of mud and straw huts, hundreds of goats and chickens, more children than adults, a mosque, a huge cell phone tower and a shea nut collection warehouse. Our visit was anticipated, and as our bus of white faces stopped along a bumpy dirt near a cluster of huts, we were greeted with smiling faces. Within minutes there were 50 children surrounding us. Immediately transformed to tourists we starting taking photos. The kids’ joy in seeing their images on the screens of our digital cameras was indescribable.

As is custom before we could wander through the village, talk to the women shea nut farmers and witness the barcode scanning of the sacks of the 85-kilo shea nut bags – SAP technology in action and the reason for our visit, we needed to pay a visit to the village chief. After much discussion in the language on whether we could take photos, we were told we could but the chief wanted a can of Coke, short of that he would accept monetary donations.

We next met with about 40 women shea nut collectors, who through a translator explained how SAP and the microfinance organization, PlaNet Finance, have made a positive difference in their lives. They have been outfitted with protective clothing to wear in the field and have been trained on business skills and quality shea nut collection. We have helped them form collectives so that they can sell their nuts in bulk (there are now six collectives, which are really clusters of huts, in Janga Town and many more throughout the region).

However, most promising for their future economic sustainability is their use of mobile technology. As soon as their nuts are collected in the 85-kilo sacks, which the men balance on their heads, the sacks are scanned with a smart phone, the collection recorded and the women can be paid for their efforts. The technology not only provides an important record of the transaction, but it also allows buyers to trace the nuts back to the source.

Finally, SAP and PlaNet have secured bulk buyers, who can now expect a reliable and quality product, for which they are willing to pay. A recent case study from Stanford University case study, titled “The Shea Value Chain Reinforcement Initiative, by SAP, PlaNet Finance, Grameen Ghana and Maata-N-Tudu” found that the increase of the women’s income through their shea nut activities increased between 59 percent and 82 percent.

We left Janga Town tired, full of thoughts that need to be processed and with a sense that technology really is improving the lives of many people in one of the most remote places in which I’ve ever set foot. Today we will be traveling on the road to Wenchi in western Ghana.