Placing Public Health at the Center of Neotraditional Festivals: The Pros and Cons of Godigbe Border Festival of Aflao, Ghana.
Abstract
Neotraditional festivals play crucial roles in preserving and transmitting the history and culture of Ghanaian communities, while crucially bolstering public health. Among the Ewe, health is a state of wellness in the physical, spiritual, environmental, and psychosomatic dimensions of society. One major festival celebrated by the Aflao Ewe people is Godigbe, a border festival which attracts both the Ghanaian and Togolese participants. Though Godigbe is critical to environmental, spiritual, social, and physical health, its celebration in recent times has raised concerns due to its adverse impacts on public health. Using qualitative methods, this study chronicles the effects of the Godigbe festival on public health outcomes. The study found that community clean-up exercises, communal exercise, sporting activities, cleansing rituals, and spiritual healing promote positive community health. Despite the benefits of the festival, increased substance abuse, open defecation, violent youth conflicts, environmental pollution, increased sex work, and indiscriminate sex portend the festival. This article argues that the Godigbe festival is a double-edged sword, contributing to positive health outcomes with unintended negative health impacts. This phenomenon calls for solutions to mitigate its negative impacts on society.
Women and Collective Resistance against Illegal Small-Scale Gold Mining, Galamsey, in Ghana.
Abstract
Environmental activism in the Global South is driven by diverse social, cultural, economic and political contexts. Historically, African women, as major custodians and consumers of natural resources, have never been reluctant or unable to fight for or defend their aspired futures. The Yaa Asantewaa War of 1900 in the Gold Coast, the Aba Women Rebellion of 1929 in Nigeria, and the late Wangari Muta Maathai’s exploits in Kenya are but a few examples of instances where African women have played crucial roles in advocating for heritage and land rights, sustainable practices, and the protection of natural resources. Though African women have often been confronted with gendered struggles as a result of patriarchal norms, unequal power dynamics and limited access to decision-making spaces, they have learnt to counter these challenges through collective resistance. African women’s activism is deeply rooted in community networks where protests are organised either radically, subtly, or through direct action in confronting the challenge or advocating for policy change. These acts of collective resistance provide resilience and create a safe environment for women’s advocacy. This paper historicises women’s involvement in environmental activism in Ghana, emphasising their contributions to the rural agrarian fight against land degradation and exploitation of such natural resources as gold. While the idea of environmental conservation may appear to be modern, there are practices among many ethnic groups, e.g. the Akan, that map onto traditional concepts of environmental conservation in their cultures. In Akan culture, and possibly elsewhere, the earth is believed to be feminine (Asaase Yaa ), a mother who produces for both human and animal consumption. Consequently, women in this culture have a recognised status in environmental conservation that are formalised in gender roles. For instance, while keeping the environment clean is assigned to females as a domestic chore, selecting the chief who will hold the land of the clan in trust for the clan is the prerogative of the queen mother (woman). Finally, the Akan woman is the true custodian of family lands – a child cannot inherit land from the father but the mother.
The paper draws on primary and secondary research, using Akyem Asunafo, a rural Akan community in the Atiwa West District of the Eastern Region of Ghana, as a case study to investigate the application of collective resistance which is rooted in history, by the women in fighting off prospective small-scale miners. The paper explores how this cultural position is exploited by the women of Akyem Asunafo to do advocacy against illegal small-scale gold mining in their community.
