Collective housing and infrastructural provision in Ghana

In the social life of indigenous communities in Ghana, commonality and reciprocity are deeply rooted principles for organising key resources such as land and housing. How can collective provision of essential goods contribute to sustainable transformations?
by Adrien Guisan

Towards sustainable transformations: Understanding the role of urban commons

As part of the Commonpaths project and my PhD research, I spent the last two months in Ghana for exploratory fieldwork. This project investigates how ‘urban commons’ can contribute to sustainable urban transformations in the Global North (Switzerland) and South (Ghana). We define urban commons as a set of arrangements among a community to govern the use(s) of an urban resource, and hypothesize that such arrangements can contribute to urban sustainability as they tend to be geared towards sufficiency – rather than profit.

The picture above depicts a weekly family/clan meeting in the indigenous quarter of Abese in Accra. The quarter is at the historical center of the land occupied by the ‘La’ ethnic group since the 17^th century, and presents a very good example of self-organization.

Providing for public goods beyond the state

For various reasons, including the imposition of structural adjustment programs, the state’provision of essential public goods (e.g. adequate infrastructure) is not meeting the needs of a rising urban population in Ghana’s major cities. Many communities, such as the La people in Abese, thus rely on themselves to provide for their needs. For example, the construction of an underground rain- and waste-water drainage system connected to all houses in the quarter was funded through the pooling of resources; each adult staying in the quarter is expected to pay monthly dues, which are consolidated in various funds for the collective interest of the community, e.g. for development in this case, but also maintenance and education/culture.

The factors driving collective action

Beyond this example, commonality and reciprocity are deep-rooted principles organizing social life in La communities and extend to other key resources such as land and housing. For example, traditional family ‘compounds’ – forms of housing mixing individual and communal spaces –  remain the norm in Abese despite their decline in the country. In my next field trip, I intend to investigate the factors influencing successful collective action, as is the case here, by contrasting it to cases where collective action is not as pronounced or nonexistent altogether.