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Topic

How Communities Thrive and Foster Sustainable Livelihoods – An Exploratory Community-based Research with Koforidua Zongo

Department of Geography

Date & location

• Tuesday, December 3, 2024

• 10:00 A.M.

• David Turpin Building

• Room B215

Reviewers

Supervisory Committee

• Dr. Crystal Tremblay, Department of Geography, University of Victoria (Supervisor)

• Dr. Jutta Gutberlet, Department of Geography, UVic (Member)

• Dr. Francis Adu-Febiri, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, UVic (Non-Unit Member) 

External Examiner

• Dr. Walter Lepore, School of Public Administration, University of Victoria 

Chair of Oral Examination

• Dr. Megan Ames, Department of Psychology, UVic

   

Abstract

Zongo communities in Ghana are diverse, yet with unique shared characteristics forming the Zongo identity. Traditionally emerging as migrant, temporary settlements, Zongos today, across Ghanaian urban and rural spaces, are well established permanent communities. While the dominant narrative on Zongo communities focuses on socioenvironmental challenges and issues of poverty and marginalization, it overlooks community strengths and Zongos’ vital socioeconomic and cultural roles, historically to now. Drawing on the community-based participatory research (CBPR), Indigenization of research, and the co-production of knowledge theoretical frameworks, I use mixed methods (conversations and photo-narratives) to explore with participants factors that foster health, wellbeing, and sustainable livelihoods in their community. – conducting a place-based case study, the inquiry focuses on working with members of the Zongo community in the city of Koforidua, Ghana. 

Participants’ insights demonstrate the community’s vibrancy, and its multidimensional sociopolitical, economic, and cultural wealth. Participants offer narratives of mutual aid and mutual empowerment, by discussing examples of how the community operates, and mobilizes, to support one another. The study helps highlight communal assets and to show how Koforidua Zongo’s social cohesion – facilitated by a shared identity, and shared values – enables people to meet their needs and to cultivate quality of life. Research findings contribute to the literature on CBPR, on Zongo communities, and on decolonizing community development. 

African socialization, guided by principles of Ubuntu (reflecting ethics of communal living and being), shines in the multiple examples participants discuss when sharing their perspectives on, and experiences of, positive characteristics that help people thrive. The research explores the relational worldview and way of being which offers a direct contrast to Eurocentric ideas of community development. Participants insights emphasize human dimensions that tend to be overlooked yet are fundamental to fueling social transformations towards a common good. These includes cultivating constructive social values, a sense of responsibility and accountability in how one relates to others and the world.