After coming back from Ghana, I spent the rest of the spring cleaning and harmonizing the data that I had gotten from the Ghana Statistical Service. A lot of spreadsheets, numbers, maps, logging of cleaning procedures. Sitting in front of the computer and staring at my two screens.
You have to start enjoying the little things. Like, there is a village in northern Burkina Faso that is called Sika. Sika means pig in Finnish. Or quite close to it lies Arbete. That means job in Swedish. Or why not the districts Jaman North and Jaman South in western Ghana. I imagine it being full of Rastafarians (although, in reality, it is a district with 70% farmers – maybe not the most typical Rastafari occupation).
I know Sweden supports decentralization reforms in some African countries. Sweden wants to export our model of democracy in which most political decisions that affect people’s everyday lives, like schools and physical planning and social welfare, are taken as close to the people as possible, in municipalities, rather than in the national government. The idea is that this allows for higher involvement by citizens in the democratic process. And I agree. I believe a decentralized government is better than some faraway all-powerful state.
Ghana is also going through a decentralization process, including a number of district reforms. This has, for example, meant that the 110 districts that existed in 2000 have increased to 275 in 2016. Great for the Ghanaian citizens! …but, my god, what a tedious job for me, during my very lazy and selfish moments, to have to harmonize all the data to make time-series comparable. It felt like it would never end, the spreadsheets left to prep never decrease in number. It was a long month of May.
Lucky, then, that I work in an office where the time between parties never is very long. In early June, there was a food fest, with seminars and photo exhibitions and food and beer tastings. I found a new favorite: a raspberry ale, organic and locally brewed on Södermalm. Delicious!
Katja Malmborg 