HIPC dustbins, toilets and wells may appear trifling but they are much needed. Don’t they make a difference to the real lives of Ghana’s poor?
Dustbins, latrines and hand-dug wells are cheap and easily constructed. As Kwesi Pratt retorts, Ghanaians have been building them for generations. In the absence of investment in industrial and public infrastructure to increase employment, housing and productivity, such rudimentary projects serve only to patronise the poor. Development must not be demoted to mean spending only on basic public services like water, health, basic literacy and waste management. Worse still, many basic health and education programmes run by NGOs as part of the Poverty Reduction Strategy focus on issues such as HIV/AIDS awareness, family planning, child trafficking and child abuse. These projects assume people in developing countries are stupid and that poverty is a result of ignorance. They are Western-imposed behavioural change programmes and have nothing to do with development at all.
