Dr Binu Parthan from Sustainable Energy Associates writes on his recent visit to Pediatorkope in Ghana.
The man was old and frail but had a commanding presence and a strong voice despite needing a walking stick to move around. I suspect that he was in his late 80s or early 90s but looked a lot younger, was strategic and spoke intelligently. His name was Chief Nene Pediatorkope IV – the supreme chief of the island of Pediatorkope in Ghana whom I met last week.
Pediatorkope is an island in the Volta River inhabited by agricultural and riparian fishing communities. After the Akosombo dam was built in 1966, water levels downstream decreased significantly and with it the fish catch also dropped just like the water level. Many of the men left the village moving upstream to continue fishing or migrated to nearby cities to find other jobs. There is still limited amounts of agriculture and fishing in the Island but more at a subsistence level. The island now has a government supported school and a health centre but the houses do not have electricity or water supply. Once darkness sets in, the village life literally comes to an end. Some of the wealthier households have either a solar home system or a battery power pack, primarily for lighting, phone charging and for powering radios or televisions. Those with the battery power pack recharge their batteries periodically at the village solar kiosk operated by an NGO – Empower Playgrounds. Income from agriculture and fishing has also dwindled over time due lack of irrigation and absence of a cold storage.
The situation in Pediatorkope where absence of energy constrains social and economic development is very similar to the situation in remote communities I have seen. Availability of modern energy allows such villages to irrigate fields which are not cultivated, have cold rooms and freezers to store poultry, milk and fish and also find other productive uses for energy. This also allows children to read and study in the evenings and have shops and markets open into late evening. The Chief was very sure that the Pediatorkope island community will grow from strength to strength once there was energy supply.
The village also had some feedback on the way rural energy programmes should be implemented. Rather than government institutions installing solar home systems or street lights which fail in a matter of time, their preference was for the energy to be delivered as a service to them for which they will pay. What the villagers were willing to pay was the avoided cost of what they were already paying for dry cell batteries for torches. They also did not want the community themselves to manage the energy systems as they thought the social compulsions would result in inadequate revenue generation and eventual failure. They wanted the systems to be managed by professional enterprises and that people in Pediatorkope were available to be employed by such companies.
For me it was interesting to hear people preferring paid energy service over hardware donations, like I have heard in the Sunderbans villages in India few years ago. It was also interesting to hear that they also wanted an external enterprise to manage the service arrangements like I have found out in Mokhotlong in Lesotho last year. I can see an increasing desire in remote rural village communities to received energy services than products and pay for these. This will be one of the issues that the STEPs project will seek to understand better and provide new approaches and solutions.
Once back in Accra, I spoke to my friend Wisdom who is the Director at the Ministry of Energy about the island and its electricity needs. Wisdom thought that it should be possible to get grid electricity to the village through overhead cables or a mini-grid system to meet the household and productive needs in the village. Either way, I do hope that Pediatorkope will be electrified soon as part of the government’s rural electrification efforts. Next time someone visits Pediatorkope, I hope they will be able to see a more prosperous island, where men stay on in the village, children doing better academically and agriculture and commerce prospering.
– Binu Parthan, SEA
Chief Nene Pediatorkope IV on Pediatorkope Island – Image: Sustainable Energy Associates
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