A Culture of Change in Africa

by Renee Loth for the Boston Globe

Accra, Ghana -- It isn't far from this bustling capital with its modern hotels and office towers, to traditional villages were there is no electricity or running water, much less the Internet or "Oprah." In most of this West African nation; traditional values and practices are yielding only slowly to the new ideas presented by foreign aid workers

Alhaji Amidu Sulemana, the government's regional health minister in the rural northeast district, crystalized his country's suspicion of change when he said that many people still believe family planning is "a conspiracy from the West" aimed at reducing the population of Africans. "A people without a culture is not a race, he said. "We shall guard our traditions jealously."

It was in response to such resistance that the 1994 world summit on population and development, sponsored by the United Nations, designed a broader approach to attaining stable populations than simply pushing birth control. The summit's Programme of Action, signed by 179 countries including Ghana, features better overall health care, education, and especially the empowerment of women and girls in a more holistic approach to keeping families small.

"We want to educate women and give them income-generating activities as an alternative to having children," said Ghana's first lady, Nana Agyeman-Rawlings. "If you just say, Distribute condoms, it goes in one ear and out the other."

The wife of President Jerry Rawlings is a true activist for women's rights in Ghana. Several years ago she formed the 31st December Women's . Movement, which has been sustained with help from the United Nations Population Fund. It provides loans, equipment, and training to women in small businesses such as a palm-oil extraction plant in eastern Ghana. She has pushed free compulsory education and prenatal care for pregnant women. And yet even she is sensitive to pressure from outsiders and the need to hold on to traditional values. "Christianize me, but don't Europeanize me," is the way she put it.'

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