SAGA Progress Report-2004-Annex-Research-Ghana

SAGA
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SAGA PROGRESS REPORT (12/03-12/04) &
UPCOMING WORKPLAN (1/05-12/05)

ANNEX

II. RESEARCH
A. GHANA

The objective of SAGA-Ghana is to help the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), Ghana’s SISERA Institution, to build its capacities to conduct research in the broad areas identified in the SAGA proposal, refined and specified further in collaboration with ISSER itself.

Ghana: Previous Activities

The last six months have seen the culmination of a number of activities to support our partner institution, ISSER, raising even further its profile in national and international circles.

Conference on Ghana at Half Century

Much of ISSER’s effort and our effort in the last six months went into preparing for this major conference. Papers were selected from submissions in response to an international call for papers. Approximately 45 papers were presented.

The event was reported in the local press (an article from the Accra Daily Graphic is attached here. See Attachment 1.), and had high level policy maker participation throughout, listening to the research papers by young and old researchers, from inside and outside Ghana.

Previous reports have discussed progress of the Understanding Poverty volume, for which papers have gone through a couple of drafts. Most of the papers commissioned were also presented at the conference. After the conference, we were so impressed by the overall pool of papers that we decided to prepare two volumes on Ghana, under the titles:

Analytical Perspectives on the Economy of Ghana. Volume I: Macroeconomics, Trade and Finance

Analytical Perspectives on the Economy of Ghana. Volume II: Microeconomics and Poverty

These volumes will be edited by Ernest Aryeetey of ISSER and Ravi Kanbur of Cornell. The second volume will contain the best of the commissioned papers for the Understanding Poverty volume, together with the best of other papers in the area presented at the conference.

Economy of Ghana Network

We have been working with ISSER to launch this network. It will be a virtual network of those working on Ghana, whether located inside or outside Ghana.

The launch meeting coincided with the Conference on Ghana at the Half Century. A steering committee was formed, chaired by Ernest Aryeetey, and with Ravi Kanbur as one of the members. Over the next year, the operational details will be worked out, and new activities launched. While SAGA effectively provided the seed money for the early work, ISSER has now received a grant from the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) of $300,000 over three years to establish and manage this network.

Land Tenure

From the start of the SAGA process, ISSER has been working with USAID-Ghana to define a project on Land issues, commensurate with USAID-Ghana’s high priority for this topic. We have now learned informally that USAID-Ghana has approved a $600,000 grant over three years in support of ISSER’s proposal. Work on this project will start over the next six months.

Panel Data Sets

In January, the ISSER/CEPA (Center for Policy Analysis) team responded to referees’ comments on the proposal submitted to SISERA. We have now learned that while the proposal has been approved the basis of its quality, SISERA’s current status means that they can only support one year of research. One year of a panel data set is, of course, not useful, so we are searching for other sources of funding. We face the possibility that, because of this SISERA debacle, our efforts may not yield an end result—although, the ISSER-CEPA team have certainly benefited from the process of developing a proposal).

Ghana: Planned Activities

The next six months will see movement forward on all of the activities identified above. Some specific possibilities are listed below.

Editing of Ghana volumes

Ernest Aryeetey and Ravi Kanbur will shepherd the two Ghana volumes through editing and to the publishers. Actual publication will probably be in late 2005.

Economy of Ghana Network: “Northern Road Show”

The EGN committee will continue to work on finalizing arrangements for the operation of the EGN.

A major activity that is being planned is a “Northern Road Show.” The idea behind this is quite straightforward. Almost all technical seminars and conferences in Ghana occur in Accra. Our intention is to take a group of prominent Ghana experts, from inside and outside Ghana, for a week of seminars in the poorer northern part of the country, to engage researchers and policy makers in their home institutions on questions of growth and poverty reduction.

Land Tenure and Panel Data sets

On the issue of Land Tenure, in the next six months, implementation activities will be underway, with the approval of the ISSER proposal. We will plan a conference for the following six month period, to get early feedback on the research.

On Panel Data sets, the efforts will not so much be substantive but rather fundraising in nature, to try to salvage the Panel Data sets project from the disaster of SISERA’s collapse.

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