Credit Crunch

Last Tuesday, I took a tro to Asamankese, in the heart of the cocoa growing region, for a meeting with the Agric. Officer and the Municipal Chief Executive. It took, half an hour to fill and then set off towards Effidause. Almost immediately we stopped at a filling station for fuel. This may seem strange, but it is the usual course of action. Why do they not fill up with fuel before filling up with passengers? The simple answer is that the driver needs the fares taken to pay for the fuel. In the UK the bus companies have accounts with the fuel suppliers and presumably pay them on previously agreed terms and at some point after the fuel has been taken.
Credit does not feature large in the lives of most Ghanaians. Credit cards are virtually useless here, (although a debit card system using thumb print recognition as a security check is being launched and heavily publicised). Mobile phones are of the prepay variety, the electricity company is rapidly installing prepay meters with smart card technology. When VSO lease houses for volunteers they expect to pay a year, or more likely two, in advance. The nearest you get to credit with the local shops, is when they let you take a bottle of Coke home without making you pay a deposit on the returnable bottle. If you have very little money, the solution offered by stall holders is the availability of very small quantities. Nobody will object if you want to buy one onion or a twist of flour or herbs or even a polythene with a couple of spoons of cooking oil.
There are bank loans for those able to demonstrate the ability to repay and of course there is micro-credit, seen as one of the catch all measures that will lift Ghanaians and others out of poverty. However, borrowing is most likely to occur between family members.
At national level things are different. The government is, no doubt, indebted to various other countries and organisations. With very little in the way of state handouts or benefits, Ghanaians, however, know not to depend on the government. The only intervention seen as having significant impact is the degree of government subsidy on fuel and essential foodstuffs.
The news of AIG, Leaman Brothers, Iceland’s bankruptcy, nationalisation of banks, the “death of capitalism” and the speculation about what will come next dominates BBC World Service broadcasts at the moment. Occasionally mention is made of the potential impact of all this on Africa. It seems likely that there will be less money available to provide aid and that will present problems, but one advantage of being near the bottom of the heap is that when it all goes wrong, there’s less far to fall.
I pondered this on the return journey from Asamankese. I was on the back row with a goat under my seat. The goat was not particularly happy to be there, but sat still and behaved reasonably well. It got its own back on its owner when we reached Koforidua. It staged a sit down protest in the lorry park and had to be dragged away.