Takoradi: Did the oil bust come too soon? (VIDEO)

• Posted on January 19, 2016
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

With five years into commercial production oil, JoyNews reporter Justice Baidoo has been to Takoradi, the closest city at the heartland of the industry to find the winners and losers from Ghana’s new found wealth.

Kwame Adu Mante

Businessman, Kwame Adu Mante came from Kumasi to Takoradi in 1999 to study building engineering at the Takoradi Polytechnic.

“The Takoradi I came to meet then was smaller and easily boring for me because of where I was coming from and it was the first time I was seeing the sea so it was beautiful”.

Kwame was one of the businessmen who went into real estates, hoping to cash in on the influx of people into the town.

“Many of the things that have happened in this industry took us unaware. We didn’t know about this industry and so we couldn’t research deeper to make the most out of it”.

The initial influx of people into the Western regional capital meant a boom in housing and gave people like Kwame hope. But the industry has not lived up to the hype due to falling global oil prices.

Nana Kobina Nketsia

Nana Kobina Nketsia is Paramount Chief of Essikadu and professor of History.

He advocates for a fierce advocate for local development. “We were in a rush to get the industry started and we got so many things wrong”. As a key part of the hierarchy of traditional pushing for the return of development for the resources the western region produces, he believes five years of oil has benefited a privileged few.

Philip Osei Bonsu

Philip is a shining example of what good corporate social responsibility could mean for a country. Having completed the University of Ghana, he landed a job as a journalist in Takoradi.

“The history of this city is no something we can over-emphasize. This city was everything Ghana. The city went down until the discovery of oil”. He says.

In 2012, Philip won a scholarship to study in Britain under a scholarship scheme sponsored by Tullow Oil, the lead operator Ghana’s Jubilee oil fields.

The scheme seeks to take young Ghanaian graduates to some of the first class British universities to build capacities so they can take up key roles in an oil and gas economy.

The scheme has so far sponsored more than 200 Ghanaians till date. The western region has 10 slots every year.

“The oil has made young people like myself ambitious” he says. But he concedes opportunities need to be extended further so more young people can tap into the indirect benefits of oil.

Maame Efua

“We only hear of oil but we don’t see it”. For her the fact that most young people in Takoradi continue to have their applications for jobs turned down means the region hasn’t seen enough returns from oil.

Antie Efua is a trader at the Takoradi Market circle- the biggest in the western region.

Inflation figures, according to the Ghana Statistical Service, has largely been higher than that of the Western region since 2010 when oil production begun. This has caused spiralling cost of living and traders like Auntie Efua, with increased cost of trading, are the one feeling the pinch.

“I pay so many taxes and get very little in the things I sell”.

“If they employed our children, then we’d have had good things to say. But my children are home; they’ve all gone to university and yet, have no jobs”.

Issa Ouedrago 

The Western region is a resource rich landmass, producing a bulk of Ghana food. A 2013 report by the UNDP said the region has the majority of Ghana’s mineral deposits per square kilometre with 30 per cent of all of Ghana’s gold coming from the region.

The region has however failed to match the rest of the country in terms of development.

Issa Ouedrago is a farmer who is taking advantage of the increased numbers into the region since 2010 to pioneer improved agribusiness

Lordina Baidoo

Running after trains, all covered up in heavy jumpers and blazers in severe winter cold. Life in London, the rosy life notwithstanding, is tough. Really tough.

When Lordina Baidoo left the University of Ghana, he travelled to London, hoping to make a life there.

“There’s no green pasture anywhere. The things I heard before going to London was not what I saw when I went there”, she says.

Two years after Ghana’s oil discovery, she returned home, dreaming to land a job in the new industry.

It was not to be. Like many young graduates in the western region, it remained just that- a dream.

In 2010, she started Perez Kitchen, a catering service company which has grown to be a company that is now supplying food to companies working in Ghana’s oil in industry in Takoradi