Download 12 INDUSTRY WORLD BANK JC ARTIC GHANA

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TWELVE: WORLD BANK INITIATIVE TO ASSIST THE GHANAIAN MUSIC
INDUSTRY BEARS FRUIT By John Collins (1650 word press report - 2006 )
The story begins in Washington DC on the 20th of June 2000 when a one-day workshop was
held by the World Bank and the Yale based Science Policy Center (Director Frank Penna) to
discuss the commercial growth potential of the music industry in Africa – focusing on six African
countries (including South Africa Nigeria, Senegal, Mali and Ghana,). The World Bank spends
between $265 and $300 million a year on loans and aid to aspects of culture, but none on the
African music industry – in spite of the World Music sector (that includes African music) having
expanded into a multi-billion dollar industry during the 1990’s .
At the meeting the World Bank was represented by Ms. Kreszentia Duer of its
Social Development Section and Michael Finger the leading economist of its Poverty Reduction
and Economic Network (PREN) department. Others involved included the following.: Gerald
Seligman of EMI, Coenrad Visser who is the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation)
representative for South Africa, Jerome Reichman of the Vanderbilt University in Nashville and
an expert on folkloric copyright, Phillip Hardy the founding editor of the UK Music and
Copyright magazine, the musician and musicologist Professor John Collins of the University of
Ghana, Scott Burnett the Marketing Executive for Global Media of IBM, and the economist
Keith Maskus of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Others were the Nigerian WIPO
representative Ms. Funkasi Koroye-Crooks, Jayashree Watal of the Institute for International
Economics and the economist and Nobel prize-winner Amartya Sen of Trinity College of
Cambridge University, UK. An indication of the World Bank’s interest is that the Bank’s
Director, James Wolfensohn attended the pre-workshop lunch.
Areas discussed were micro-credit loans for the musicians, bands, clubs and recording
studios in the six African countries; grants for music educational/archival organizations, the
setting up of digital studio-cum-websites in Africa for distributing locally produced music (by
MP3), the modalities for collecting royalties from them, and technical assistance for African
royalty collecting organisations.
The main point that Professor Collins made at the meeting was that even though Ghana
produced West Africa’s first distinctive genre of popular music, highlife (that goes back to the
1880’s) and at independence created first recording industry - highlife music is almost
completely absent in the lucrative World Music market that has emerged since the 1980’s.
Reasons for this include a series of problems that Ghana faced from the late 1970’s and 1980’s
that dampened local bands and the live night-club scene: economic mismanagement, a musical
‘brain-drain’, political upheavals and over two years of night-curfew, super-taxes on musical
instruments and the demotion of music in the school curriculum. the World Bank interest in the
commercial music sector would therefore help kindle a government interest in the local music
industry as it can potentially help Ghana obtain additional foreign exchange, by boosting the
tourist sector and creating an exportable form of local music that can tap the present lucrative
World Music market.
Since this meeting Senegal received about $5 million in soft loans, investments and
outright grants and a World Bank team has visited Mali and Kenya. Other counties showing
interest in the scheme are Cape Verde, Peru and Brazil. Interest has now turned to Ghana, and
how this happened is explained below.
On returning to Ghana from Washington little was immediately done as Ghana was
entering into an election period – but in 2001 Prof. Collins began to contact several of the Music
organizations in Ghana in connection with the potential World Bank package for the local music
industry. The first organization Collins contacted was The Ghana Old Musicians & Artistes
Welfare Association (GOMAWA) which in turn sent to Mr Jake Obetsebi Lamptey (then Chief
of Staff) in August 2001 a memo titled “Promoting Highlife Music – A Renewable National
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Resource and Potential Foreign Exchange Earner for Ghana”. Mr. Obetsebi Lampty referred the
memo to Mr. Edward Boateng who arranged a meeting at the Castle in September 2001
attended by Messrs. Boateng and Albert Mensah from the Chief of Staff’s Office, Messrs.
P.K.Yamoah, Fiifi Khan Agyarkwah and Stan Plange (GOMAWA Chairman, Secretary and
Treasurer respectively) and Collins. Mr. Boateng helped arrange a follow-up meetings between
Stan Plange and Prof. Collins with reps of the Ministry of Tourism and the National
Commission on Culture.
Prof. Collins also contacted David Dontor, President of the Ghana Concert Party Union
(and executive of the Actors Guild ) and Sidiku Buari President of the Musicians Union of
Ghana MUSIGA. On the 27th March 2002 Collins presented the World Bank idea to 28
executives and members of MUSIGA at the union’s Accra headquarters on High Street. The
members were excited by the idea, and as the event was covered by the press and TV and so
news about the World Bank initiative first began to find its way to the general public. Prof.
Collins then compiled a document of needs based on information from the four performance
unions.
Meetings and correspondences were also established between Stan Plange and Prof
Collins with the Minister of Tourism (Obetsebi Lampty), the Minister of Finance (Kwesi Nduom)
and the World Bank Desk (Kofi Tsikita ) and the idea of linking the World Bank initiative to the
Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS) was muted. In early 2004 President Kuffour’s own
interest in the Music Industry became evident when he reduced the import duties on musical
equipment that has crippled the music industry since the early 1980’s. The new Country Director
of the World Bank in Ghana Mats Karlsson (himself a musician ) expressed a keen interest in the
idea.
In early 2005 a team comprising Prof. Komla Amoaku and Korkor Amarteifio of the
Institute of Music and Development and Prof. Collins come together to conceptualize and
organize a workshop on the theme Mainstreaming Music in Ghana’s Poverty Reduction Strategy
Program. They met and discussed the matter with Dr. William Ahadzi of the University of Ghana
and member of the GPRS team. The two day workshop was held at GIMPA in Accra and the
Chances Hotel at Ho (in Ghana’s eastern Volta Region) on the 30/31st April 2005 and those
invited included thirty musicians, music producers, journalists, artistic managers, music union
representatives, the legal profession, academics, the government GPRS review team and
Development Partners.
At the conference Professor Collins introduced ten ways in which musical entertainment
can alleviate poverty. These are presented below:1 - MUSIC AS CENTRAL TO MANY TYPES OF INCOME GENERATION.
Local craftsmen, recording studios and music production, night-cubs, hotels, repair workshops,
music journalism, radio/TV/video music, advertising jingles, music therapy.
2 - MUSIC AS ROYALTY GENERATING: BOTH HOME AND ABROAD. Royalties from
home air-play, film syndication rights, the logging of hotels and from anti-piracy devices. Also
international royalties from African/World Music sales.
3 - MUSIC AND THE TOURISM BOOM. Ten percent of the foreign exchange spent in Ghana
by tourists is on entertainment.
4 - MUSIC FOR EXPORT ON THE INTERNATIONAL MARKET. Ghanaian music sales on
the World Music market as a non-traditional and renewable export.
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5 - MUSIC AND SPONSORSHIP. Ranges from ‘spraying’ of artists (i.e. with money) by
traditional patrons and chiefs to the commercial sponsoring of bands and music festivals by
football clubs, churches, embassies, political parties, businesses, etc.
6 - SOCIAL WELFARE AND LIFE-INSURANCE FUNCTION OF BANDS. Many bands
operate schemes related to mutual-aid, cooperative self-help, rotating micro-credit systems and
informal life-insurance schemes to provide sickness and funeral costs.
7 - DEVELOPMENTAL THEMES IN MUSIC LYRICS. Like theatre-for-development, song
lyrics can raise awareness connected with literacy drives, hygiene, family planning, health
matters and social peace. As they are usually sung in local languages they can reach even the
poorest and least educated members the general public.
8 - MUSIC AS A GENERAL EDUCATIONAL TONER .Recent research in the US and UK
have shown music improves physical coordination, mathematical ability, language and
communication skills, and is a general intellectual toner.
9 - MUSIC AS AN ECONOMIC AVENUE FOR WOMEN. Two areas that provide avenues for
professional women performers and recording artists are traditional folkloric groups that employ
both men and women, and local gospel-music that since the 1980’s has become dominated by
women singers.
10 – MUSICAL SOCIAL COMMENTARY BY THE UNDER-PRIVILEGED. Song lyrics can
provide a voice for marginalized social groups that are critical of corruption, government
mismanagement and the unequal distribution of power and wealth.
At the close of the April workshop in Ho a committee was set up that submitted the
conference recommendations to the government and subsequently the music industry sector was
officially added to the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy/ A second workshop was then held at
Ho on 22nd January 2006 under the auspices of the Institute for Music and Development, in
collaboration with the French Embassy, Goethe Institute and the Ministry of Tourism. This time
the theme was Shaping the Music Industry through Practical Solutions.
Participants at this second workshop included the academics Prof. Kwabena Nketia and
Dr. William Ahadzie, and the musicians Amandzeba (aka Nat Brew), Stan Plange, Carlos Sakyi,
Khodjo Aquai, Rex Omar, James Scott Bennin (aka Redcap), Dr. Edward Soga of MUSIGA and
Ms. Naa Anseley of GOMAWA. Others attendance were Francis Mensah Twum, John Mensah
Sarpong and Nana Kwaku Sarfo of the Ghana Association of Phonographic Industry , the music
lawyer Andrew Amegatse, Ebow Hawkson and Rev. Fiifi Khan Agyarkwah of DIY-AFRICA,
Faisal Helwani of Bibini Music and Hammond Odoom of the Copyright Society of Ghana,
COSGA.
In the light of the music industry having been just incorporated into Ghana’s Poverty
Reduction Strategy, this workshop recommended that the government should go on to facilitate
the formation of the National Music Council to represent the interests of musicians and music
producer, and also to reintroduce music into the education curricula having been demoted in the
late 1980’s, when the technically oriented Junior/Senior Secondary School System was
established.