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Paper short abstract:

The paper interrogates state and market intersections in planning, financing and delivering social policy initiatives. It draws on literature and interviews to discuss state-philanthropy relations and social policy delivery through a philanthropic mapping of the Tongu Districts of the Volta region.

Paper long abstract:

The Akosombo dam has for the past 62 years, been a bedrock of Ghana’s development agenda. The dam contributes immensely to the country’s power generation stock, upholds the commercial freshwater fishing industry and facilitates transportation among other things.

However, state authorities’ failure to keep up with the times, extreme weather conditions and poor early warning systems ensured that the devasting flood of 1963 repeated 60 years on. The so-called “controlled spillage” of excess water from the Akosombo Dam led to extensive flooding in the Lower Volta Basin affecting all the Tongu districts of the Volta Region and beyond. This resulted in the displacement of thousands of residents and the destruction of livelihoods. In line with the famous African proverb that ‘you do not fold your hands when your neighbour's house is on fire’, we observe multilayered interventions of state and non-state actors in addressing the ensuing humanitarian crisis in the Lower Volta Area (LVA) animating a complex state-philanthropy relations in humanitarian situations. This article focuses on interrogating state and market intersections in planning, financing and delivering social policy initiatives with the Lower Volta Basin in focus. It does a philanthropic mapping of Ghana, spotlighting the Tongu Districts of the Volta region, where the humanitarian quandary induced by the infamous Akosombo Dam spillage is expected to persist beyond 2024. It draws on extensive desk reviews, document analysis, and some in-depth qualitative interview data to discuss state-philanthropy relations and social policy delivery in Ghana using the state fragility theory as a framework.