Dixcove

This weekend some friends and I visited the magnificent Busua beach, apparently the finest beach in west Africa. After spending a day playing football with hundreds of children, drinking beer and getting horrendously sun burned, we decided to venture out the following day to the nearby village of Dixcove.

Back in the day Dixcove was the site of the first fort constructed in what was then the Gold Coast. It served its purpose as the first of many points of power built by the British in order to suppress the local population and ensure dominance over the slave trade for many years.

Today the fort still stands and towers over the small fishing village beneath it. It is striking that despite the centuries that have passed, the fort remains the most developed site in Dixcove. The village itself is an astoundingly poor place. Those people fortunate enough to even have shelter reside in tin shacks; the rest sleep under wooden boats along with chickens, goats, and all manner of other animals. Our visit aroused huge interest with the local children and it must have been around thirty kids who occupied themselves by holding our hands and accompanying us up to the fort. Many of these children were without clothes and looked as if food and water were luxuries rather than everyday necessities.

Climbing the steep stone staircase up to the fort, one could not help but notice the young girl lying face down in the dirt. The image of a British man climbing over an African child en route to higher ground can hardly be new to this part of the world and it happened once again yesterday.

Our trip got me thinking about who should bear the ultimate responsibility for the sorry situation in which places like Dixcove find themselves. Without doubt, the British (and in other parts of Africa, the French and the Belgians) must take serious blame. When a country is ruthlessly exploited by rich powers for its people and resources, the impact on human development must be huge. There can be no ‘organic’ progression in these societies – they start with less than nothing and have to work out how to be modern liberal democracies from scratch.

Saying this, most colonial rule in Africa ended some time ago now. Ghana, for example, was the first of the governed African states to become independent and has ruled itself for almost 60 years. It has significant natural resources, an honest and educated population, and decent infrastructure. There must come a time when countries like this start looking after their own and taking responsibility for the staggering levels of poverty I have seen so far on this trip.

In the end, however, it is only going to be a partnership between the developed economies and the nation states themselves that is going to improve things for people in these countries. While the west maintains harmful and self-serving programmes like the EU Common Agricultural Policy, the potential for African states to compete fairly in world markets is artificially limited. Equally, while African governments (democratic and autocratic alike) consistently fail to eradicate the systemic corruption that has curtailed opportunity and meritocracy for years, there can be no real development.

I look forward to a time when I can return to Dixcove and observe that the old fort has become more of a quaint relic than the continuing dominant presence in this village.