As part of our microfinance project in Ghana (Lumana), I’ve been looking into a report published by the Keta District Assembly on the progress of their Development Plan in 2000. Ghana is pretty tribal, so it’s expected that over 91% of the population in our area is Ewe (eh-way). Also typical throughout Africa is a young population, for our district over 81% of the population is under age 30 and 40% is under age 14. What is also interesting is that over 80% of the population is self employed without an employee. This closely matches my observations on the ground and actually results in oversaturation of the market and depresses prices below profitable levels (the point of a business in rural Ghana is not always for profit, but to maintain cash flow, so non-profitable ones don’t close down).
Part of what Lumana hopes to achieve this summer through our Open Data Kit project is to update and build on this information. We intend to leverage this demographic data in order to facilitate new international social business ventures, as well as invest in local “shovel ready” businesses so that industries can undergo some consolidation, processes can be improved, and economies of scale can be achieved.
Later, I’ll publish info on transportation, agriculture, schools, market revenue streams, etc.
*Click on any data point on a graph to see the numbers. 
No comments:
Post a Comment