Abstract

This paper contributes to the discussion on community competence by focusing on thirteen communities near Bui dam and Bui National Park, Ghana to address the impacts of Bui Dam construction and related resettlements through analysis of community competence. For each of these questions, further analysis was undertaken to assess the role of resettlement, ethnicity, age, livelihood type and gender. Data was gathered through multiple methods. In the design of a survey, administered to 339 respondents across the thirteen communities, document analysis and interviews were conducted to provide inputs for the survey. Community competence for this study was defined to have 4 dimensions: governance training; sustainability training; training to plan and implement; and training for participatory enabling strategies. Overall, respondents indicated low level of support for each aspect of community competence training.  Villages not relocated tended to perceive these impacts less negatively, as did people of Nafana ethnicity, and people relying mainly on a farming livelihood. Age and gender had little impact. Further analysis through regression analysis was undertaken to determine the relative influence of each of these predictor variables on community competency. The multiple regression analysis indicated that regarding governance training, only one predictor variable was significant: “livelihood type” (beta = 0.296), and the overall R squared was low (0.080), but significant. Regarding sustainability training, only “livelihood type” was a significant predictor (beta = 0.310), and the overall R squared was low (0.085) but significant. Regarding capacity to plan and implement, two predictor variables were significant: livelihood type (beta=0.167), and relocate (beta=0.213). R squared was low (0.048) but significant. Regarding participatory enabling strategies, only livelihood type was significant (beta=0.070), and the overall R squared was low (0.086) but significant. It is concluded that training opportunities provided for dam impacted communities did not meet the core needs and focus of the impacted communities; because the number of training modules were few; training modules failed to focus on the core skills domains (e.g. governance, sustainability, capacity to plan and implement, and participatory enabling activities). The study showed that people perceive community competence to be decreasing on many spheres, but there is variability between households in the perceived impacts.

Key words: Community, competence, dams, resettlement, gender, age, livelihood, ethnicity, training, stress, shock.