Is urban poverty neglected?
This has long been the case. When I came to Nima for the first time in 1968 I was struck by the poverty I found within Accra, the capital of our country. Although people were aware that things were not alright, official policy ignored the problem. People regarded poverty in Nima, a migrant quarter, as a problem of aliens. On the other hand, Ga Mashie, the old port area in Accra, has always been there and only deteriorated into another distressed area after the port and the fishing activities had been removed to Tema 30 km east of Accra in the 1960s. Here the official attitude was that Ga Mashi residents were indigenous people and fishermen who don t belong to the Ghanaian mainstream. Has this attitude significantly changed? Yes, to some extent. Today official policy acknowledges, for example in the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy, that urban poverty exists. But how to tackle it remains a problem. And urban poverty is still increasing in Ghana. What are the main reasons? First, the dif
