Informal Settlements in Ghana

by Mariama Awumbila and Priya Deshingkar

On Saturday 20 June 2015, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly bulldozed Old Fadama, the largest informal settlement in Accra. Roughly 50,000 people, mostly migrants from Ghana’s northern regions, as well as others from the West Africa sub region, are said to have lost their properties during the demolition exercise, and many became homeless overnight. This is the not the first time that slum clearances and forced evictions have taken place in Ghana and Old Fadama residents have faced numerous eviction threats since 2002. 

Many slum clearances are done in the name of the greater public good. This most recent destruction of Old Fadama was ostensibly to improve storm water drainage and prevent floods in the city. The need to do this was highlighted by the 3^rd of June floods and fire in the city which claimed over 150 lives. The argument was that unauthorised construction, partly due to the activities of the residents at Old Fadama, was hindering the flow of water and in particular had stalled the execution of the Korle Lagoon Restoration Project, which aims to improve the ecological functioning of the Korle lagoon and so to improve Accra’s drainage, flooding and sanitation problems. City authorities felt that the demolition was necessary to help prevent future flooding and destruction around the Odaw river. The authorities are planning to construct drains that will allow water to flow into the Odawna drains and Korle Lagoon and then finally into the sea.

 

However it is not clear whether any scientific studies were conducted to establish the causality between activities at Old Fadama and flooding in Accra, and doubts have been expressed in the press about the effectiveness of slum clearance in addressing the root cause of flooding. Critics have called for a demolition “with a human face”.

 

Those who favour the evictions have an unwavering conviction that their approach is correct. Such approaches are embedded in the overall negative policy stance related to the migration of the poor. According to the 2013 World Population Policies Report, 84% of less developed country governments want to reduce rural to urban migration, up from 73% in the previous round. Africa and Asia have some of the highest percentages of governments with policies designed to reduce the flow of rural-urban migration: 85% in Africa and 84% in Asia. There has been a hardening of negative attitudes in many parts of the world and it is not clear what the empirical basis for this is.

 

There are a number of concerns about poor migrants and informal settlements - most inadequately supported by evidence - including the overburdening of urban services, the spread of disease, worsening crime and exacerbating vulnerability of cities to environmental disasters. There is little recognition of the economic contribution of the residents of informal settlements to the city in the form of cheap labour, specialised services and products.

 

A 2014 study on rural-urban migration to urban informal settlements or slums in Accra conducted by the Centre for Migration Studies at the University of Ghana under the Migrating Out of Poverty research programme showed that most of the residents in Old Fadama are young migrants who are economically very active. More than 80% find work within a few days of arrival, mainly in the informal sector, doing jobs such as recycling electronic waste; food vending, street hawking, head load portering (kayeyei), petty trading, and hairdressing. All the respondents in that study reported a wider range and better paid employment options compared to their places of origin. More than 77% remitted money home and this money went directly to poor and disadvantaged rural households. For some, these remittances are the only source of income. When asked how their lives had changed as a result of migration to the informal settlement, nearly half said their overall situation had “improved a lot”, 38% said it had “somewhat improved” and the rest said that it had deteriorated or remained the same. 

 

According to Amnesty International, Ghana’s laws and constitution do not provide the residents of informal settlements with adequate protection against forced evictions. They are, for all intents and purposes, illegal settlers and the metropolitan authorities can file a case against them in court as was seen in 2002 when the Accra Metropolitan Authority filed an eviction notice against the residents of Old Fadama.

 

It is well known that forced evictions do not provide long term solutions; in fact the only long term impact they seem to have is to worsen the risks of already poor and vulnerable people. Very often there are inadequate resettlement plans for residents, as happened in this case, and even when offered, the alternatives do not replace what has been lost because the sites are located at a distance from civic amenities and established business and social networks.

 

Old Fadama residents have faced a constant threat of eviction and have tried to unite against it. In 2006 and then again in 2009, two organisations, the Ghana Federation of the Urban Poor (GHAFUP) and People’s Dialogue on Human Settlements organised a community enumeration of the residents to Old Fadama with Shack Dwellers International. This was seen as an important first step to show the civic authorities how many people lived here and what they do. It was hoped that such information would transform the attitudes of government towards informal settlements and prevent evictions. But unfortunately this has not happened.

 

By razing Old Fadama to the ground, countless poor, rural families will have lost an important source of support. It is therefore important that  informal settlements are recognised not only as a places of despair and misery, requiring social protection, but also as hives of economic activity providing services to urban areas and remittances to rural households dependent on them.

 

There is thus an urgent need to shape policy attitudes towards informal settlements away from forced evictions towards participatory relocations or rehabilitation.

 

 

Mariama Awumbila leads the Migrating out of Poverty West Africa team at the Centre for Migration Studies at the University of Ghana. Priya Deshingkar is the Research Director of the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium.

Migrating from the big cities for opportunities in smaller towns: The case of Brazil

by Eva Maria Egger 

While most of the literature on internal migration focuses on rapid urbanization and metropolitan cities as destinations filled with opportunities for migrants, little attention has been paid to those people who leave the big cities. Not only do migrants return to their places of origin in rural areas, but  many people decide to leave their place of birth in the metropolitan area to find opportunities in smaller towns. Recently, Christiaensen et al. (2013) have pointed out the importance of smaller towns for the economic development of African countries in contrast to the traditional standard two-sector development model. And considering all the discussions about the issues around urbanization, such as high unemployment, poor housing infrastructure, high crime etc., it should not be surprising that some people also consider leaving these difficult environments.

However, from an economic perspective, one of the main drivers for internal migration is the seeking of higher wages. As wages are on average much higher in metropolitan areas, leaving these areas comes at the cost of a wage loss. Despite this, Brazil’s 2010 census, the most recent demographic data, shows that net-migration into metropolitan cities[1] is negative for working-age male migrants. Between 2009 and 2010, 20% of all working age male migrants within Brazil moved out of metropolitan micro-regions to non-metropolitan micro-regions with on average less than 500,000 inhabitants. During the same period, only around 15% moved in the opposite direction. These urban out-migrants actually change jobs and are not just reflecting suburbanisation by commuters. Also, the migrants are a diverse group: a third of them have attained only primary education, while around 18% are college graduates.

Therefore, in my research I aim to use econometric methods to estimate which factors make  smaller towns more attractive compared to metropolitan cities, if not wages. My findings suggest, that one of the main economic drivers is the much lower living costs in smaller towns, such that migrants on average do not experience a wage loss in real terms. They prefer towns with growing economic opportunities rather than very small and remote areas. In terms of non-economic factors, the migrants appear to value the quality of provision of education. These findings indicate that the investments of the Brazilian government during the recent years into infrastructure development of smaller towns and former less developed and more remote regions is bearing fruit. As more and more Brazilians are attracted to these locations they contribute to a reduction in regional inequality. Thus it could be worth widening the focus of our migration research to include these destinations outside of metropolitan agglomerations and for policy makers, too, to acknowledge the potential of smaller towns.

Reference:

Christiaensen, L., J. De Weerdt and Y. Todo (2013), Urbanization and poverty reduction: the role of rural diversification and secondary towns, Agricultural Economics, 44, 435-447.

Eva Maria Egger is a doctoral candidate in Economics at the University of Sussex, funded by the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium.

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[1] Metropolitan areas are microregions with one million or more inhabitants. This definition follows the United Nations’ World Urbanization Prospects (UNWUP, http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/) (Christaensen et al. 2013). 

Migrating out of Necessity: A sad story from Indonesia

Endang Sugiyarto

We all know that poverty is multidimensional and people become poor for various reasons. It then follows that to break the vicious circle of poverty and to escape from the poverty trap, there must be many different ways too. Many have suggested that education (and human capital development) is one of the long term solutions while micro finance can help the poor to build up badly needed capital to earn extra income to have a chance building up economic capacity to break out of poverty. Migration is another such route, seen by many poor people as a golden opportunity to get a (much) better paying job and earn extra income in destination countries so that they can escape poverty now, or at least in the next generation. I must stress that this migrating out of poverty is NOT something new but it’s been practiced for hundreds of years in Indonesia. Migration to expand one's horizon and human capability is something that is encouraged and praised in the traditional culture decorated with success stories.

 

In the above context, Indonesia is currently one of major labour exporting countries in the world, sending hundreds of thousands migrant workers annually to the Middle East and neighbouring countries, and receiving a significant amount of remittances estimated around $7 billion annually or 1.3% of country’s GDP (World Bank, 2011). These are just official figures as the actual number of migrants and amount of remittances must be much higher due to the significant number of irregular migrants from Indonesia. They send remittances through informal channels that make them undetected and unrecorded in the official statistics.

 

International migration from Indonesia has a long history and currently labour exporting has been acknowledged as part of the government’s policy to reduce unemployment and channel the increasing number of labour force in the domestic economy. The government has developed programs to facilitate the migration and new institution to manage the migration process. As a result, about 3% of all households in Indonesia now have at least one person who has migrated. These rely on remittances as their main source of income which contribute around 30 percent of their total income.

 

My research is focusing on the reasons behind the choice to migrate and the effectiveness of policies to maximise the benefits of migration. I am using economic and other data available from the National Socioeconomic Survey (Susenas) 2007 to examine the underlying migration dynamics including their determinants and characteristics at household and region levels.

 

I started working on this in September 2012 . My results so far indicate that there are strong factors in Indonesia that push people to migrate internationally. They seem to be driven out by factors representing “burdens” to the household which are negatively associated with “better socio-economic indicators”. They seem to be driven to migrate out of necessity, in a desperate attempt to make a better life regardless of all obvious limitations, especially in relation to their human capital. For example, in rural areas, older and female headed households (associated with poor households), and households with a higher number of children and older people tend to have a higher number of members who have migrated abroad, while households with higher per capita expenditures, having more infant, productive age and educated members, tend to send less numbers of migrants. The finding that better-off and more educated households tend to send less migrants is further confirmed by the job status of migrant household heads, which are relatively more in non-employee categories with the main source of income from agriculture sector.

 

An analysis of different regions reveals a consistent feature. Agriculture as main source of household income is influenced by rural variable while the per capita expenditure and average length of study of household members are affected by region. The findings also suggest that migrant households are not among the poorest ones conforming to the results of previous studies that highlighted international migration cost is still relatively very expensive for the poor that reduces the likely of them to participate directly in the migration process. For example, placement fee for an Indonesian to migrate to Singapore would be S$3000-S$3600 (equivalent to approximately $2,391 – $2,870), which is very expensive and beyond the reach of the poor (Platt, M. et. al. 2013).

 

Therefore, my research will provide evidence to maximize the benefits of migration and remittances. I will help policy makers to develop more comprehensive and proactive policies, which have a stronger pro-poor impact. This includes addressing the dynamic factors driving migration, improving the human capacity of the migrants, and better facilitating migration as a free choice - not one of necessity- for migrant workers.

 

 

Endang Sugiyarto is a doctoral candidate in Migration Studies at the University of Sussex, funded by the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium.