Local and Global

Abstract

Early one morning I am travelling to one of the eight villages in which the Wenchi Natural Resource Management Project (WENREMP) is being implemented, accompanied by Stephen (Box 4.2), the project coordinator, and a civil servant from the Ministry of Farming and Agriculture (MOFA). The road is unpaved, heavily potholed and largely devoid of motorized traffic. Raised windows keep the dust out and the air conditioning in. After two hours driving, we arrive at Akenyakrom, parking the pickup under a shady mango tree before climbing out into the humid heat of the day. Small tsetse flies bite us incessantly and force us to borrow long-sleeved shirts from the villagers. ‘It’s a different world,’ Stephen remarks, alluding to what seems a self-evident gap between ‘our’ world of development and the ‘world’ of the village we have entered. But is this distinction as absolute as it at first appears?