WHAT was once a beloved everyday treat for many of Ghana’s 33 million people, Kofi Brokeman, a popular streetside snack of roasted plantains and peanuts, has taken on a new name: Kofi Richman. The reason? Soaring prices, nearly doubling in some areas to 5 Ghanaian cedis ($0.43 cents) per slice.
Lovelace Ayittey, a 59-year-old vendor who sells this snack on Lagos Avenue in the affluent East Legon enclave of Accra, is feeling the pinch. ‘The price of the plantain bunches has risen sharply from 10 to 50 cedis,’ she lamented to Al Jazeera. ‘I cut them the same size, but I have to squeeze my hand and suffer the loss.’ Last week alone, Ayittey had to discard plantains worth 800 cedis ($69) that went unsold.
As Ghana grapples with a spiralling economic crisis, the cost of living is reaching unprecedented heights. Despite positioning itself as a stable economy and a land of opportunity, recent data tells a different story.
A World Bank report from July revealed that 850,000 Ghanaians had fallen into poverty, joining the six million already in that category. Inflation skyrocketed from 14 to 54 percent between January and December 2022, reaching levels not seen since the early 2000s. Furthermore, the Ghanaian cedi has depreciated by over half its value against the dollar.
Many low-income households are now forced to allocate more than half of their earnings to food expenses. Even in trotros, the popular mode of transportation, passengers and drivers’ mates are grappling with sudden fare hikes.
The Kenkey Index, which tracks the changing prices and sizes of kenkey (dumplings), a staple carbohydrate food, has revealed that prices are rising while portion sizes shrink. The most common price for kenkey now stands at 4 cedis ($0.34), up from 3 cedis ($0.26) a year ago.
Comfort Asamoah, a vendor of toiletries near the Tema Station market in Accra, can no longer afford kenkey and fish. She has resorted to consuming one meal of banku (boiled dough) and soup daily. ‘I have to mentally persuade myself that I am satisfied [with my food choice],’ she admitted. While the government provided some food distribution during the Covid-19 era, the costs of transportation to access it often outweighed the benefits.
While she appreciates the government’s free senior high school programme, which has reduced education costs for her children, Asamoah still required approximately 4,000 cedis ($345) for supplies and pocket money for her two daughters. The economic challenges of the Covid-19 era depleted her savings, compelling her to keep one daughter at home.
Last May, President Nana Akufo-Addo’s administration sought assistance from the IMF for the 17th time in the country’s history.
Dorcas Ansah, Accra coordinator of the nonprofit organisation WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising), believes that more people have fallen into poverty than official statistics indicate. WIEGO works with informal sector workers who constitute half of all employees in Greater Accra and 89 percent of employment nationally. Unfortunately, these workers often lack pensions, cash transfers, and access to poverty relief programmes.
She told Al Jazeera: ‘Informal workers are also essential workers. During Covid-19, markets across the country had to be open, and their workers were placed at risk, yet they received little support.’
In 2021, a WIEGO study found that only five percent of workers had received food relief from the government, with over half of workers reporting skipping meals or reducing the variety of foods they consumed.
The government attributes the economic woes to the Covid-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine, which has driven up food, fertilizer, and fuel prices. However, the World Bank’s report highlighted that the economy had entered a full-blown crisis in 2022 after rebounding from the Covid-19 slowdown in 2021. The report noted that the authorities had ‘failed to implement significant and sustainable reforms.’
Most Ghanaians view government corruption as a primary cause of the crisis. According to Afrobarometer surveys, 83 percent of people believed there was misappropriation of pandemic-related funds, citing instances such as the expenditure of $80 million on vaccines that never arrived and unapproved risk allowances paid to Ministry of Information officials.
The government’s allocation of funds tells a similar story. Ghana’s expenditure on debt servicing is four times higher than that for education, eight times more than health, and a staggering 14 times more than social protections.
Philip Alston, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty, noted during his visit in 2018 that Ghana invested only 1.4 percent of its GDP in social protections, compared to regional peers who spent 50 percent more. He highlighted that existing programmes often favoured the well-connected over those in poverty.
For the working and middle classes, the situation is equally challenging. Despite economic growth in the years leading up to the Covid-19 crisis, much of the gains were concentrated among the affluent, leading to one of the fastest-growing rates of inequality in Africa.
Financial analyst Jerome Kuseh’s online survey found that more than half of respondents earned less than 5,000 cedis a month ($440), with at least half having less than 10,000 cedis ($860) in total savings.
Kwesi Obeng, accountable governance lead for Oxfam Africa, emphasised the need for change, stating, ‘Stemming the tide of austerity and addressing poverty should be top priority for the government.’ Analysts agree that Ghana must enact policies that favour its most vulnerable citizens to tackle the recurrent economic crises that have been driving up the cost of living every few years.
(with Al Jazeera)
