BREVE ANALISIS GENERAL DE LA LEGISLACION EXTRANJERA

The most outstanding physical features of Tamale include its relief, climate, and vegetation.

These features are relevant to understanding how nature has shaped the agricultural system of Tamale and. They also help one to understand where resources are situated and how they can be accessed and controlled. The physical characteristics of Tamale, points to possible access points for infrastructural services which are tied to the socio-political environment.

3.1.2.1 Relief and drainage

The Tamale Metropolitan Municipality has what Laryea-Adjei (2007) describes as a rolling topography. It is about 180 meters above sea level as indicated in Table 3.1 below. Tamale is poorly endowed with water bodies - notably few streams like the Pasam, Dirm-Nyogni, and Kwaha. There are about 91 dugouts according to Laryea-Adjei (2007) which provide water for domestic, agricultural, and industrial purposes. Reservoirs and dugouts have traditionally pro-vided water for free range livestock rearing, drinking, cooking, and crop irrigation. Urbanisation and population growth has increased the demand for water for household and agricultural use.

This need has partly been solved by the provision of additional dugouts and dams with assis-tance from international non-governmental organisations like the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GTZ) - or what is now known as the Deutsche Gesell-schaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) (Eguavoen, 2008).

Reservoirs and dugouts are the main sources of water for urban and peri-urban vege-table production (see Figure 3.3) as stated by Gyasi et al. (2014), even though the quality of these water sources are not considered safe for drinking or irrigating vegetables eaten raw (Abdul-Ghaniyu et al., 2005; Cobbina et al., 2010). Despite their importance, poor manage-ment and housing encroachmanage-ment in the different communities have often threatened their ex-istence. For example, the dugout in Kpenni collapsed due to poor management and presently the reservoir in Fooshegu is poorly being managed. Officials from the Ghana Irrigation Author-ity (GIDA) visited this site with this author on a tour to see what can be done to revamp it. The

Reservoir in Buipela is drying out and over the years the chief has allocated almost all sur-rounding agricultural land (around the riparian buffer meant to protect the reservoir) to real estate developers. A riparian buffer is generally a vegetated area around a stream or reservoir intended to protect it from the impact of adjacent land use. It also has environmental benefits such as increasing water quality and reducing water pollution. The construction of houses for any purpose along a reservoir will lead to the weakening of its walls and a possible future breakdown (Acheampong and Sekyi-Annan, 2014).

Figure 3.3: Different water sources used for vegetable gardening Source: Author’s fieldwork 2014/15

The topography of Tamale makes the region susceptible to floods especially in the Eastern part of the Municipality. Mr. Akwettey Samson, Head of Waste Management Unit stated in an interview with the author that storm drain and retention pond will be built around the Gumani area to reduce floods during the rainy season. This exercise will be carried out under the Ghana Urban Management Pilot Project (GUMPP) in Tamale. The GUMPP projects are expected to take place in several Ghanaian bankrolled by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MOFEP) thanks to a 40-million-euro loan and a 500,000 euro grant from

the Agence Française de Développement (AFD). The following section describes the climate and vegetation that shape Tamale’s agriculture.

3.1.2.2 Climate and vegetation

As shown in Table 3.1, Tamale lies in the semi-arid guinea savannah ecological zone in West Africa with a relatively dry climate. In recent times, farmers in the area have been worried by the later start of the raining season in July as opposed to May/June previously (Gyasi et al., 2014). A unimodal rainfall pattern is experienced in this area due to the moist South Western winds as opposed to a bimodal pattern in the South (Nkrumah et al., 2014). This has given rise to a single agriculture production season in Northern Ghana since most agricultural pro-duction is rain-fed. Given that farming is a major livelihood and irrigation infrastructure is lim-ited, underemployment in the dry season is high among the local populace and it is one of the reasons why dry season vegetable cultivation is promoted by civil society organisations. Fur-thermore, rain-fed agriculture is adversely impacted by climate change and variability. The harmattan period is getting drier and hazy, influenced by the North Easterly winds which blow across the sub-region from the Sahara Desert around October and February each year (Cob-bina et al., 2013). The mean annual temperatures are also rising according to Gyasi et al. grasses, and drought-resistant trees like Azadirachta indica, Vitellaria paradoxa, Parkia bi-globosa and Ceiba pentandra, with a ground cover of perennial grasses such as Andropogon gayanus. The four trees listed above form part of resources that women use in meeting their traditional provisioning responsibilities as explained in Nchanji and Bellwood-Howad (2016a).

Wood, especially Azadirachta indica, is used for charcoal production. Charcoal production is an important source of livelihood for women in the region, enabling them to provide for basic

household needs. Especially for the women who have no access to farmlands, charcoal pro-duction is one of the few economic activities to which they could turn (Nchanji and Bellwood-Howard, 2016a).

Shea nut gathering and processing (into butter) is another major source of livelihood and has been since colonial times (Sutton, 1989). Rising demands from oversea has led to the emergence of many processing mills in Tamale with the financial aid of non-governmental organisations like Urbanet (Naatogmah, 2015). Shea butter is used for a lot of things including cooking, fruit preservation, and cosmetics. Apart from the sheanut tree the seed of the Parkia biglobosa is an important spice used by women in preparing soup for their families (Nchanji and Bellwood-Howard, 2016a). The Parkia biglobosa in public spaces belongs to the sub-chief by virtue of his traditional status, it is a symbol of power and authority in the Dagbon chieftaincy institution. The next section examines the changing socio-economic activities in Tamale.