Inadequate Human Resource Capacity

Local economic development promotion thrives very well in areas where there is available and capable human resource capacity to drive it. But this is not the case in most District Assemblies in Ghana, including Berekum Municipal and Bongo District. Currently, District Planning officers are the main technical personnel in the districts who facilitate the formulation of District Medium-Term Development Plans. With the introduction of the local economic development approach, they remain the main technical experts facilitating the LED planning process. Although the District Development Planning Officers have over the years spearheaded the formulation of district development plans, they are not sufficiently trained in local economic development planning. As Meyer-Stamer (2003: 7) points out, local governments in developing countries could have the necessary financial and human resources, but they may not have what it takes to “strategise and plan something which is hard to imagine.” With reference to developing countries, Meyer-Stamer (2003: 7) argues that “it is unusual that a local government has personnel which is adequately skilled and available” to effectively analyse the local economy and formulate effective LED strategies. Similarly, as Rodriguez and Tijmstra (2009: 21) note “where sufficient powers and resources are available, capacity constraints at the local or regional level often form an obstacle to the successful formulation and implementation of policies.” The difficulty is “how to ensure that all local governments in a country are able to recruit qualified officials and how to ensure that these officials are properly motivated” (Olowu, 2003: 45). In Ghana, District Planning Officers have been recruited from diverse backgrounds, many of whom have not even received training in development planning, business planning or strategic planning and management.

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Aside their inadequate academic training, their orientation or experience in district development planning has largely focused social planning since the District Assemblies in Ghana have over the years focused largely on planning for the provision of social facilities than on economic development. The economic development component of district development planning did not go beyond issues of agricultural production and some sort of minimal support for small scale enterprise operators. But LED has a clear economic focus and is also driven by an economic-oriented strategy. Local economic development planning is largely embedded in the notion of strategic planning. This differs from the conventional development planning approach employed in the formulation of District Medium-Term Development Plans in the country. Local economic development planning is strategic in nature aimed at promoting the competitiveness of localities and economic ventures or enterprises, (Meyer-Stamer, 2003; Swinburn, et al, 2006; Blakely and Leigh, 2010). This strategic planning competence cannot readily be found in most existing planning officers of the District Assemblies. This is a constraint as far LED planning and promotion in the districts is concern.

A related human resource problem in the districts is the frequent transfer of technical staff like the District Planning Officers. District Development Planning Officers like other core staff of the District Assemblies are transferred at the discretion of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development. In the course of my research in Berekum, I realised that starting from 2007 when the main local economic development initiative was designed in the Municipality (the Berekum Light Industrial Zone) to 2011 when this research commenced in the area, the Assembly has had three different planning officers. These frequent transfers could have implications for LED promotion and district development planning as a whole as it affects continuity in planning among other things. For instance, in my attempt to get to the genesis of contemporary LED planning in Berekum, the Planning Officer at post indicated that he was not in the district at the time the process started, and could not provide information regarding the early stages. Being curious, I collected the phone number of his immediate predecessor who is currently the Planning Officer for Asunafo North Municipal (Goaso). When I contacted him on phone, the storyline was the same – “the exercise started before I assumed office as Planning Officer in Berekum.” My quest for a chronology of planning events as far as local economic development interventions in Berekum is concern was thus prematurely terminated. This clearly demonstrates how discontinuities can be created in the planning and knowledge flow cycle when technical personnel like District Planning Officers are frequently moved from one district to another.

The situation was not different in Bongo District. The planning officer at post in Bongo who participated in LED stakeholder workshops in Accra, and acquired some skills and exposure to start the first ever local economic development planning in the Bongo District was transferred to Tamale, the Northern Regional capital at the crucial period when the LED plan for the Bongo

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District was being finalised. The poor timing of transfer of technical officers like District Planning Officers as happened in Bongo, could also impact negatively on the implementation of local economic development action plans in the pilot districts. The situation is compounded or worsened by the poor knowledge transfer from one planning officer to another as happened in the Berekum Municipal Assembly. Essentially, the absence of critical staff in the districts does not only affect the quality of LED plans produced, it also affects LED promotion as a whole. This is so because, there are actually no key technical personnel in the districts to champion LED promotion. The District Planning Officers have simply added LED to their normal district development planning exercise. This has the tendency of making LED a sub-set of the district development plan which has a more social than an economic orientation. Development issues get prominence when they have advocates and competent personnel to drive their promotion. Local economic development is an emerging development strategy in the districts, but has no advocates and the skilled personnel to drive its promotion.