Bui Dam, Ghana

By Clement Otu-Tei

In Their Own Words: Voices of Affected People

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Ghana suffers from erratic electricity supply due to its over-reliance on hydropower from large dams.

Yet with China’s help, it is now building another dam – one that is drowning part of a national park,

villages and fishing grounds. (Photo: Ghana’s Akosombo reservoir, seen from space. When it was built in the 1960s it flooded 4% of Ghana’s landmass.)

The Bui National Park is home to 350-400 rare black hippopotami, antelopes, monkeys, birds, rare lizards, and other wildlife. More than half the park (their habitat) will be flooded by

Bui Dam. This means that most of the wildlife the park was created to protect is once again vulnerable to hunters.

“They were sacred to our ancestors, they became our totem. Don’t let them vanish from our forests”

Photo: Courtesy Edmond Akoto-Danso (iwmi, Accra)

The dam is flooding out some 2,500 people. Affected villagers are mostly subsistence farmers and fishers.

Clement Otu-Tei is from Ghana. He wrote his Master’s thesis on resettlement issues at the Bui Dam. Clement spent many weeks in the area talking to communities that have already been resettled and some that have not yet been moved.

Here are some of the stories he heard.

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“They said they will move us but we don’t know when and where. The project is going very fast, but they could not tell us when and where they will resettle us. They may have good plans for us but we have sleepless nights worrying about where they will resettle us. They need to discuss their plans with us. Maybe that will reduce our fears.”

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“I don’t know how long it would take to grow and eat fresh coconuts again. I will miss my home.”

“How can we take care of our families, pay for the education of our children in secondary school if they stop us from fishing? Stopping us from fishing is like taking our food out of my mouth.”

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“We hope our children will have good schools at the new settlement.”

“What happened to the people affected by Akosombo dam scares me. I feel like crying for my grandchildren, because this dam will take away all we have worked hard to keep for our future generations. It is like uprooting a big tree and trying to replant it. You cannot guarantee that it will survive. We are going to start all over again; getting to know the land, the people, the culture.”

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“Would they settle us near the river? Can I continue to fish? I need to be resettled near the river where I can go fishing because that is the only work I have done all my life.”

“The Chinese contractors burnt my cashew farm. They said they will compensate us but I cannotharvest cashew this year to take care of my family.”

“Whatever they give me cannot compensate for my life here in this village. We understand and accept that we have to move. We cannot refuse to move even though we are not happy. All we ask is that, whatever they do, they should not make our lives miserable. We don’t want to be like the people of Akosombo 30 or 40 years from now. I am an old lady; I am not fighting for myself. It is our children and grand-children we fighting for.”

“ Life here is good but our husbands can no longer go fishing. That is our major problem.”

“ I had 3 rooms at my village but they gave me only two small rooms here. Now we cannot fit in the room so some of my children sleep in the kitchen.”

Stories of Already Resettled Villagers

“I am a fisherman and I cannot stop fishing.We sneak to the dam site to make and set fish traps.”

“They closed our main access route so we cannot visit our relatives who live across the river or go to the market across the river.”

“They are going to construct a hand-pump well for us.”

“Our new settlement is too far from the river and that is bad for me as a fisherman.”

They built a 3 classroom block for our “day –nursery” school and they a building a community center for us

“They built a 3-classroom block for our nursery school and they are building a community center for us.”

“We are not against the dam. We want it because there are benefits for the whole nation. However, we don’t want to be victims of a development project. Most of my people are fishermen, so some form of extensive vocational training, initial capital, and equipment would be a more reliable alternative livelihood. This will help reduce the negative effects of the dam on my people.”

Togbi E. Kpakpa, Chief of Bator Akanyakrom

China is the biggest builder of large dams in Africa. China’s African dams too often suffer from poor attention to social and environmental impacts, and from lack of transparency. International Rivers is calling on Chinese dam builders to strengthen the social and environmental standards in their projects.

More information: www.internationalrivers.org