Money and Girls Gone Wild, May 2004

It’s Memorial Day weekend in Ghana and I’m at home alone. My husband has to spend the entire weekend chaperoning a high-level official from the Bush Administration who is visiting. Someone from the White House must be getting my Ghana updates. But seriously, Washington visitors have the worst reputation for ruining holidays and weekends for Embassy employees. For all of you who may go into public service one day: when you travel overseas with the U.S. government, go during the week, and avoid holidays. Please.

Before the weekend arrives I have to make sure I have enough cash to get me through it, as Ghana remains a cash-based economy. Almost all normal financial transactions here (groceries, market, paying staff, etc.) are cash only. Once the Embassy bank closes on Friday afternoon, there is no safe way to cash a check here from my U.S. bank account. There are cash machines located in the capital of Ghana, but the banks attached to them are ripe with financial fraud. Credit cards are accepted at many of the fancier restaurants, hotels and airlines here, but credit card fraud is endemic in Ghana so if you go this route, you take your chances.

If you were to come to town and use your bankcard to take out cash from a machine in Accra, there is a very good chance your account would be compromised or cleaned out. Last summer, an intern in my office dared to use the Barclay’s Bank cash machine in the Osu section of town to take out $50. A few days later, she was checking her account balance online at work and another $50 had been taken out of her account. She called her bank to report it, and the person on the line said she was happy to hear from her, as there had been multiple attempts to take out amounts over $3,000 from her account. The first $50 withdrawal was a test to see how much they could actually get their hands on. They didn’t know she was just a poor graduate student.

Credit card fraud is another huge problem for Ghana. The U.S. Embassy here advises all travelers to use cash for every transaction, even for big purchases at hotels, car-rental agencies and airlines. Very few vendors, if any, accept traveler’s checks. Credit card fraud typically doesn’t happen at the point of sale, but at the many transaction points afterwards. It's so bad that you can’t order and pay for things online anymore from Ghanaian cyber cafes. Most transactions don’t go through since the large majority of online sales generated from Ghana are fraudulent.

A few months ago, a cruise ship came to town full of Americans re-discovering their African roots. People on the cruise ship rolled off the boat on the coast by the hundreds with their plastic and travelers checks, ready to buy. But since they weren’t armed with cash, they didn’t end up buying much. What a loss for Ghana. Why the cruise organizers didn’t warn them about this, I have no idea. But maybe they did and no one listened. I know from experience this happens a lot with U.S. government travelers to Ghana. We warn them in advance with the "country clearance cables" about security issues to be sensitive to, what to bring to the country, and what not to do while in the country, but regardless of these warnings, inevitably someone shows up with no checks to cash at the Embassy's banks and only plastic, and then needs an Embassy employee to get them cash.

Antiquated banking and foreign exchange laws make it illegal to leave the country with more than the equivalent of 50 cents of local currency. It’s also not possible under current laws to transfer money out of Ghana, even though you can certainly bring it in. Apparently back during the Rawlings regime, anyone with a bank account was suspected of planning something bad, like a coup. The government also reportedly kept track of people’s bank accounts, especially those who had too much money. Sometimes the government would just expropriate the money and then kick the people out of the country. Not surprisingly, Ghanaians have a healthy distrust of the local financial system. Only an estimated 5% of Ghanaians have an account in a financial institution. Rawlings has been out of power for about four years, but Ghana remains a country without many savers, at least in the formal sense.

I often wonder how this country will ever accelerate its economic development with such an inefficient financial system. It’s an issue I think is critical to grow the economy, but I don’t have a lot of company in the development world. Others who work for Ghana’s development (including Ghanaians) are more interested in things like getting Ghana more money from the international community for budget support. Others think a reliable source of electricity would be more useful to Ghana in the long run, along with an improved telecom infrastructure. Then there is the need for better road transport and ports. Then there are the people who say what we really need to do is focus more on health and education, because without healthy and educated people, no economy can really grow. In the end, there is so much that needs attention, but only so much money and capacity to go around.

I am also starting to think that Western governments’ insistence on referring to Ghana as a West African “success story” compared to its neighbors is not helping Ghana in the long run. Our government tends to over-compliment Ghana’s government in official settings, saying it is doing all the “right things” (again, compared to its neighbors) to improve the country and its economic situation. Our intentions may be good, but when we do this, we are inevitably sending a message that all is great in Ghana. And if this is the case, why should Ghana's government do anything more to reform? Are we doing Ghana’s population any good by setting the results bar so low and expecting so little from their government? I think the people here deserve better. I say set the bar higher, demand results and be willing to pull our assistance if Ghana under-performs. But this opinion would be so unpopular with my agency I don’t even dare mention it publicly. One does not get ahead in the U.S. government by suggesting stricter standards and possibly less money for international assistance. And at the end of the day I know it is easier said than done, especially when there are politics to consider and basket-case countries next door. And we can't deny that Ghana is in far better shape than its neighbors (Togo, Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia, etc.)

I attended yet another mandatory training recently (your tax dollars at work!) with people working at USAID from all over the continent. As one of the ice-breaker exercises we were asked to identify our heroes. Lots of people mentioned Nelson Mandela, a few people said their parents, but notably a Nigerian participant said, “Bill Clinton.” I asked her why she felt that way, since it had been so long since I had heard anyone say anything nice about him. She said that she thought he was an excellent President, and she loved his foreign policies. “His policies helped so many people. He spoke so well, he was so smart—much smarter than the one now!” She also said that she suffered with him through his “difficult times” and that she didn’t think he did anything wrong, at least by Nigerian standards. It’s ironic how important the U.S. President is to the rest of the world, even if these days no one else’s president seems to matter to us. At least from what I can gather from watching the news these days, Americans seem to be more concerned about what is happening in the international hot spots. Given our country’s famously inwardly-focused reputation, I guess this is a start in the right direction.

Even though it doesn’t always seem like it from where I sit, deep down I know there are lots of Americans who care about what is happening in Africa. Many of them are here in Ghana, “doing good” during the day, and having a ball at night. Ghana’s many development challenges, and the fact that it is “Africa-light” (no war, no famine, no personal security nightmares) means there are loads of young, idealistic, twenty-something kids working here. Most work for non-governmental organizations, some are volunteers, and over a hundred are Peace Corps volunteers. A few weeks ago, these “Generation Y” kids held a raging bash in Accra complete with a female soup-wrestling event. I only saw photos, but it looked like something out of the movie "Old School". I guess the difference was that here the women kept their bikini tops on and just wrestled each other instead of men. Ok, I admit, initially I laughed at the photos, but afterwards I felt sorry for the girls. As a foreigner, after being here for a while you can feel so removed from the “real world”. I bet those girls never thought their less-than-idealistic adventures abroad would be documented and shared so widely. Development “Girls Gone Wild”--in Ghana!

Many American families working for the government bring their kids overseas to keep them away from the temptations in the U.S. (drinking, drugs, promiscuity, tight clothes, “urban values”). The fact is, no place is safe from these teen lures, and Africa may be worse in some ways than the U.S., given the higher standard of living many Americans enjoy living here. I heard through the grapevine that a high school student at the American school in Accra was recently busted for sending his parent’s driver out to purchase him weed. I also have heard that pot here is so cheap, American exchange students at the University of Legon put it on the grill in their dorms rather than waste the time rolling joints. Ah, Ghana. Never boring.