Bui Dam, Ghana

In Their Own Words:

Voices of Affected People
By Clement Otu-Tei
 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
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not tell usfont
when and
where they will resettle us. They may have good plans for us but
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will resettle
us. They need to discuss their plans with us. Maybe that will
reduceInsert
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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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Just make sure you are using Helvetica Bold, as close to size 20 as
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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?
•CanDon’t changeto
I continue this fontI need to be
fish?
resettled near the river where I can go
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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 cannot
harvest 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.”
 Stories of Already Resettled Villagers

“ 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.”
“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
Theybuilt
built aa 3-classroom blockfor
3 classroom block forour
our“day
nursery school
–nursery” and they
school
and
are they a abuilding
building a community
community center
center for us.” 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