7th Call - Dr. Alhassan Sulemana Anamzoya
Project Title: Migrant Chiefs in Urban Ghana, Accra.
Principal Investigator: Dr. Alhassan Sulemana Anamzoya(Department of Sociology, University of Ghana)
Email Address: aalhassan@ug.edu.gh / asanamzoya@yahoo.com
Award Amount: GHC 24,938.00
Project Status: On-going
Summary:
As many migrants move to Ghana’s urban centres, they recreate their own communities based on a version of cultural values, ethnic sentiments and ethnic identity. By doing so, they have created chieftaincy titles and invested certain individuals with such titles co-existing with the indigenous chiefs and other traditional authority holders within the communities they have settled. These chiefs are popularly referred to as Zongo chiefs because the places migrants settle in Ghana are usually called zongo areas. In spite of the fact that a Kumasi High Court ruling in 1995 on a related matter concluded that such leaders cannot be accorded formal customary recognition as chiefs (Schildkrout 1996:596), the number of migrant chiefs emerging in Ghana’s urban communities continue to increase and they are increasingly being recognized as chiefs by the state. Apart from Schildkrout’s study in the mid-1990s which put the number of such chiefs in Kumasi alone to be thirty three, there has not been an updated record of their number, nor any academic writing on migrant chiefs that we are aware of. Admittedly, works such as Kleist and George-Milliar have touched on different aspects of migrants in relation to chieftaincy. Kleist focused on the appointment of traditional authorities (chiefs) with an international migrant background (Kleist 2011), emphasizing how such return chiefs describe themselves as development actors with international experience touring western European countries and collaborating with international development agencies for the purpose of development (p.632). George-Milliar (2009) on his part concentrated on how Ghanaian chieftaincy’s attempt to reincorporate people with African American descent. Ultimately, he analyzes the issue of development chiefs, the installation of African American as development chiefs in certain Ghanaian communities, and some of the challenges they are faced with. Nevertheless, once in a while in the media there is the installation/coronation of one chief of a migrant community or another. The formation of the National Council of Zongo Chiefs in 2012, and the subsequent congress the association held in July same year, all pointed to the ever increasing number of migrant chiefs in Urban Ghana. This creates a very interesting socio-cultural situation for investigation. Few studies Acknowledge the role of chiefs in development, and even with that few, the focus has been in the rural areas analyzing how chiefs partner with state institutions and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in infrastructural development for their various communities (Osman 2006; Gyampo 2006; Seini 2007). In the urban area where the machinery of the state prevails, it would be interesting not only to find out the role of migrant chiefs in development in urban Ghana, but also to establish what possible roles migrant chiefs can play in development. The study therefore sets of to achieve the following: 1.to identify migrant chiefs in largely migrant communities in Madina, Tema, Ashaiman, Nima/Mamobi and Old Fadama (Agbogbloshie), reasons of their existence, the extent of this phenomenon, and their various roles, 2. to understand the process of becoming a migrant chief and who the kingmakers are,3.to analyze their relation with each other, with that of their home towns, regions/countries, and with the indigenous Ga chiefs on whose lands they have settled,. 4. describe the kind of interaction that exists between migrant chiefs and state institutions such as the Ministry of Chieftaincy and Traditional Affairs, the Greater Accra Regional House of Chiefs, the National House of Chiefs, and, the National Council of Zongo Chiefs 5.lastly, we are interested in how these migrant chiefs delineate the boundaries of their communities and how they use their titles as chiefs in seeking the good of their ‘communities’. At the national level, this study will reveal how these migrant leaders (chiefs) can assist in ensuring peaceful co-existence between migrants and indigenous Ghanaians in urban Accra, and the kind of collaboration that can be created with indigenous Ga chiefs and state institutions to resolve difference between migrants and indigenes which otherwise can turn violent and lead to disastrous consequences. At the academic level, this research will extend the academic discourse on the relation between migration, migrants and chiefs.