Unused concrete slabs, meant to be the base of latrines. Wantugu, Northern Region, Ghana. Placed in 2008, photographed in 2013 and 2014.

The photographer as a Peace Corps Volunteer, center, with local health care worker Abukari Mahammadu. Wantugu, Northern Region, Ghana. 2008. Photo by Sarah Uziel.

Abandoned tractors. Kpachaa, Northern Region, Ghana. Left behind in approximately 2009, photographed July 5, 2013.

Norwegian company Solar Harvest (formerly Biofuel Africa Ltd) came to Kpachaa in 2007 with a plan to farm the jatropha plant, used as a fuel alternative, and provide employment to the region. Amidst economic downturn and a corruption scandal, they lost their investors. They left in 2009.

Unused library, built with funding from a Peace Corps Volunteer. Mpaha, Northern Region, Ghana. Built in approximately 2004, photographed July 7, 2013.

Unused nutrition center. Asafo, Ashanti Region, Ghana. Photographed July 13, 2013.

Destroyed library. Abrafo, Central Region, Ghana. Built in 2000, unused since approximately 2004, photographed May 14, 2014.

The library was built by American college students as a part of the Ghana Design/Build program at the Department of Architecture and Interior Design at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, USA. The roof was made from a plastic material that melted in the hot sun, is completely destroyed.

Samuel Asante, a local man who helped facilitate the project:

“The community stopped using the library because there was a man taking care of the library, Mr. Anthony. He was getting paid by the professor. He was given something every year from the professor. And the professor also went on pension, no more work, so Anthony was not getting anything, so the library ended. That was before the problem with the roofing sheet started.

The problem of the community is that everybody thinks it if it was built by the university, they are supposed to come and fix it. So the community didn’t do anything to help to renovate. But I tried to go to the District Assembly. We went to the District Assembly, the chiefs went there with the committee chairman to inform the Chief Executive. They came and then saw it. They even made us to do some estimate for the roofing. But they never attended or say anything again up to now.

If somebody gives you something, builds something, or gives you a phone and the phone spoils, you cannot take the phone to the person to repair it for you. You have to repair it yourself. That is my opinion. But I don’t know what others will say.

The professor, the one who comes with [the students] has seen it. But what happens is, every semester, when they are coming, they bring in new students with new ideas or new projects they are coming to do and they cannot use the money they are coming to use for their project work to do this.”

Library under construction. Abrafo, Central Region, Ghana. Original photograph circa 2000, copy photograph May 14, 2014.

Professor J E Elliott, Miami University faculty, who has run the Ghana Design/Build program since 2005:

“[The library] was built before my involvement with the program began in 2005 though, and I have very little detailed knowledge of it. 

Our program runs every other summer and since I became involved has completed in addition to the community center, three "teacher's cottages", a large classroom with an attached office adjacent to the school, and a guest house. This past summer [2018] the students designed and built a maternity ward next to the clinic in the village. We have also completed another community center in the village of Essiam a bit south of Abrafo. All of the projects have been successful in varying degrees.

Having done these various projects since 2005 I can say that there has been a definite lack of effort to maintain the projects on the part of the village. As a result this past summer [2018] we worked with the Chief and others to put in place a process whereby a small percentage of the income earned from the use of some of the facilities will be put aside to be used for maintaining the structures.

The first two and half weeks (+/-) of the trip are spent exploring Ghana to gain a fuller understanding of the country and people while designing the project. The group will have met with the village at the beginning of the trip to discuss the nature of the project and to visit the site in preparation for the design phase of the program. Upon completion of our road trip the student groups present their designs for review by the Chief, his committee and villagers. Once a design is agreed upon, often with modifications done on the spot, we begin building. We work with a group of villagers including 3 carpenters, 3 masons and about 5 or so other members of the village. All of whom will have been selected by [Samuel] and all of whom we pay. They teach the students what they need to know to be integrated fully into the construction process and we then build the structure in roughly 19 to 22 days. The Miami students  assist with all tasks including digging the foundations, making the block, mixing, hauling and pouring concrete, woodworking for window and door frames as well as doors themselves, block laying, finishing the walls, roof framing and sheeting the roof.”

Unfinished school building. Gbale, Northern Region, Ghana. Built in 2014, photographed June 10, 2014.

A foreign white woman and a Ghanaian man from Accra appear in two very remote villages, Gbale and Toligu. They offer to build a school building in each community. No one in the villages knows which organization the white woman was from (if any) — the Ghanaian man is their only point of contact. But as the contractor, Abdulai Abubakari, gets to work, he hears less and less from the man, and he is never paid. The work ceases. As the buildings were not completed before the rainy season, they have since been washed away completely.

School building in process. Toligu, Northern Region, Ghana. 2014. Photo by Abdulai Abubakari, carpenter for the project.

Abdulai Abubakari:

“I got to know about the schools through my cousin there who is one of the voluntary teachers in Gbale. One day he called me and said these people wanted to build a school for them and the guy who was in charge of it wanted a carpenter.

It it has been about four months now, we’ve been trying to sort everything out, but it’s not going through as expected. He keeps postponing the time, the date that he will send money, and then right now we don’t know what is going on because he’s not been talking to us. I tried to contact him so many times, and then he will not take my calls. Now we are in the rainy season, and I know it’s only because of the delay of the rain this year that the buildings are still standing. Normally by June, the whole building that the communities have put up might have collapsed, as a result of heavy rain fall.

So far I have not been paid anything. He was supposed to pay for the three weeks that I have spent, and for the chainsaw man. He was supposed to pay that, but he didn’t, I paid for it.

He’s the main guy that the donors or the sponsors know. I have no idea who he is, because I don’t know him personally, but my cousin, who is a voluntary teacher there, knows him. He was there when he brought the sponsors over there, and then they promised them that they would build a school for them. So he told me initially that he is with that organization, but I think the organization has left back to United States or something like that. So, he’s the main person, he’s the resource person in Ghana who, when the resources come, will pass it through to me, and then the work can continue, but he’s not telling me anything anymore.

I wanted to say, ok, should we sign a contract that will be relevant in case there’s a misunderstanding or it’s not going to happen anymore, then we will know what to say. But my cousin convinced me that he knows him very well, and he also knows my cousin very well, so, he thinks this guy was a good guy. But now I realize you cannot put your trust on people like that.

Now I see the whole problem. How could someone say he’s going to come and build a school for you, like an organization, and there’s nobody in the community who has to find out who those people are? Right now, you know, I think it’s going to make us learn a lesson for the next time something like that happens. You follow the necessary channels, then in case anything like this is going to happen, you know the right thing to do.”

Carpenter Abdulai Abubakari, left. Toligu, Northern Region, Ghana. 2014. Photo courtesy of Abdulai Abubakari.

Unused grinding mills. Zuarungu, Upper East Region, Ghana. Photographed June 12, 2014.

The history of the grinding mills in Zuarungu is longer and more convoluted than one might expect — it involves five years of incremental steps in the project, and the help of four foreigners. Two foreign women initiated the project on behalf of a local women’s group in 2009. They gave funds for the grinding mills, so that the local women, who already produce shea butter, could do so more efficiently. They also gave funds to build a structure to house the machinery. All of the money went to the local District Assembly. A Peace Corps Volunteer came and at his insistence the work continued — until the contractor for the job took the money but stopped doing the work. Another Peace Corps Volunteer came and managed to get a roof on the building and the machines installed, but the building is still not finished, and the machines are missing vital parts.

The women and their families provided the labor behind the building, molding cement bricks, digging the foundation, performing other tasks.

Amoah Adongo, a leader of the women’s group: “It’s very disturbing for us [that the work only continues when foreigners advocate for it]. It’s painful. Our own people have not treated us fairly.”

Women’s group with foreign volunteers who helped to provide them with shea butter grinding mills. Zuarungu, Upper East Region, Ghana. Top left original photograph circa 2012; other dates unknown. Copy photographs June 12, 2014.

Four unused water towers. Chirifoyili, Northern Region, Ghana. Photographed June 13, 2014, before UNICEF considered the project to be complete.

In an effort to solve Chirifoyili’s water shortage and to counter the rise of Guinea worm disease – and to spare the community members (particularly women) from walking long distances to fetch dirty drinking water – these four water fetching points were installed in Chirifoyili in 2006, along with a piping system meant to pump water from a distant dam. The original funders and NGOs involved are unknown, though the community believes Rotary Club International was involved. Eventually, the project changed hands to UNICEF and the Tolon District Assembly, who feel they completed it in October 2015. The project, however, still does not pump water, and the community does not use it.

Joseph Neindow Amadu, Secretary of Chirifoyili’s Water & Sanitation Committee (note that this interview was in 2014, before UNICEF’s supposed completion of the project):

“The community, we dug [a trench for the pipes] up to Chirifoyili here. Imagine the dam, how far it is. About three kilometers. Some farmers, we had to uproot their foodstuffs to dig that gutter, in order to store the pipe to this community. Yet no compensation was paid them because they knew they were the beneficiaries.

It came to a standstill. I wrote a letter, which was given to the then District Chief Executive, and he forwarded it to UNICEF, and on first of March 2013, [the contractors] resumed work, and promised the community, and I in person, that within a week the water project would be finished, and Chirifoyili would then have access to potable drinking water. But unfortunately, we are in 2014 and this thing has not been done. So indeed we are suffering. If not for a small rain has just rained some couple of days ago, you would have seen many women and even school children — when they are supposed to be at school they are not at school, because they have to walk to the dam then carry back and then get to school.”

Four unused water towers. Chirifoyili, Northern Region, Ghana. Photographed May 21, 2016. At this point, UNICEF considered the project to be successfully completed, but the system was still not pumping water from the dam to Chirifoyili.

Letters written by Joseph Neindow Amadu, Secretary of Chirifoyili’s Water & Sanitation Committee, to UNICEF, advocating for the completion of the water system. Chirifoyili, Northern Region, Ghana. Written July 4, 2005 and September 16, 2012, photographed May 17, 2014.

Joseph Neindow Amadu, Secretary of Chirifoyili’s Water & Sanitation Committee. Chirifoyili, Northern Region, Ghana. Original photograph date unknown, copy photograph May 17, 2014.

Mr. Amadu:

“We are always trying to get other people who may help us. I contacted World Vision, so that they would contribute or finish up our project for us. And the question that was asked me that, should they finish, who will bear the name? Should it be New Energy, or World Vision? Hence, they said they can’t come to finish our project for us [as they could not be guaranteed the proper credit]. So any other NGO interested in giving a community potable drinking water, because of New Energy’s previous presence, they will get scared away. 

We never knew the cost of the project. The beneficiary should automatically be in the know. So that whatever happens, he will also bear witness. But nothing of that nature happened.”

Laptops in an unused computer room. Gbeogo School for the Deaf in Tongo, Upper East Region, Ghana. Photographed July 9, 2013. The computers were donated by a Peace Corps Volunteer in approximately 2007.

Unfinished classroom building. Gbeogo School for the Deaf in Tongo, Upper East Region, Ghana. Photographed May 21, 2015.

When Lauren Corke, a Peace Corps Volunteer teaching at the Gbeogo School for the Deaf, realized that — even after finishing school — her students had very little opportunity for employment, she tried to build a vocational classroom where recent graduates could learn practical skills. She raised a bit less than half the money needed from a Canadian NGO, under the condition that the local District Assembly would provide the remaining funds. A representative from the District Assembly agreed, a contractor was hired, and work began in December 2012. Now, the NGO has paid their share, the contractor — Alhaji Rauf Salami — has finished 80% of the work but has been paid for less than 50%, but the district government has changed hands and, claiming that no official agreement was put in place, refuses to pay the remaining amount.

Mr. Salami feels he was misled and has, in his words, “really suffered.” He claims he was never told that the District Assembly was involved, and was instead led to believe that the project was fully funded by an NGO. He took out loans in order to do the job, assuming he could pay them back after his job was complete and he was paid in full. Instead, once he realized he wouldn’t be paid, he sold everything in his store in order to pay the loans back and avoid interest. He blames both the Peace Corps Volunteer and the school’s headmaster for misleading him, and the district for refusing to pay for the project’s completion.

“If I knew the District Assembly was involved, I never would have agreed to this," he says.

Remains of an incomplete World Bank funded sewage system. Wajir, Wajir County, Kenya. Photographed May 3, 2018.

Sign advertising a hotline for people to call and report gender based violence related crimes. Wajir, Wajir County, Kenya. Photographed May 4, 2018. The toll-free hotline, implemented by NGOs including Mercy Corps and the International Rescue Committee, with funding from the United Kingdom Department for International Development, was to be staffed by gender experts who would receive reports and, in the case of physical violence, immediately alert the health department and police.

In our reporting, we found that the hotline was out of order for months at a time, and at times when it was working, at least one of the people manning the hotline was not passing reports onto the police.

Mercy Corps supported publicization of the hotline from its launch through early 2017, including on local radio, billboards, banners, and fliers. Since Mercy Corps handed the hotline over to the government, the health department has been promoting the hotline through radio talk shows about gender violence, according to Aden. But multiple local police officers who specialized in gender based violence crimes told us they were unaware of the hotline’s existence, as well as numerous local people whom we asked on the street.

“Our understanding is that the hotline has been well received and police records have shown a steady increase in the number of convicted rape cases since it was launched in 2015, from zero in 2014 to 31 in 2017, which have been attributed to the hotline,” said John Burns,  Mercy Corps Kenya program director.

At the Wajir law courts, Rashid Ishmael, a paralegal, is following up on cases of gender-based violence, which is his specialty. Between February-May 2018, he said that there had been an increase in the number of cases that were taken to court. He is upbeat that in the past few months, the conviction rate for gender-based violence has increased to 90 percent, which he attributed to more proactive efforts to educate victims and follow up on their cases.

Ishmael, however, has never heard of the hotline, and said he isn’t aware of any case that was reported through the hotline.

Christ Miracle Church, center, originally built as a public toilet facility. Kibera, Nairobi, Nairobi County, Kenya. Photographed May 13, 2018.

The building the church now occupies is one of the dozens of public toilet facilities built by the government in 2014 in a bid to improve sanitation in Kibera. But the facilities failed to become fully functional due to inadequate sewage systems and lack of access to water. Youth groups, meant to manage these facilities for income, lacked sufficient resources to address repair and equipment issues that arose soon after construction.

The project ran smoothly for a few weeks, but then the youth groups started experiencing problems. First came the water shortages, forcing them to buy water from vendors and eroding their profit margins.

“They [the government] did not even provide a water tank for storage of water,” said Kioko Ndolo, a resident of Laini Saba.

Soon, the youth groups realized that a blockage was preventing the toilet from draining all the way to the main sewer line. Joseph Mulwa, a resident of Laini Saba whose house was nearby, said the toilet’s drainage system was not adequately inclined to allow the effluent to flow into the main line. The youth needed to replace the pipe connecting the toilet to the main sewage line, which was also faulty.

“The main sewage line is also [damaged], and even if the toilet line was flowing well without a blockage, the sewage would still drain to the open trenches along the roads in front of people’s houses and businesses,” Mulwa said.

The youth group could not afford to buy a pipe and therefore closed the public toilet. At that point, they decided to rent the building out for another purpose.

“We had five toilets here in Laini Saba … Two have been converted into churches, but the other three are working,” Mulwa said.

Electricity meters. Kibera, Nairobi, Nairobi County, Kenya. Photographed May 11, 2018. The meters were provided by Kenya Power, funded by World Bank, however, an alternative and illegal connection to electricity is provided by cartels who force residents of Kibera to use their electricity instead of the official connection.

“What the contractors did was not a good job. They didn’t finish their work, and so we try to solve the issues that we can. Things like a CIU [customer interface unit], or a communication cable, a meter or a disconnection,” said William Ongule, the leader of a community organization that assisted in removing illegal connections and connecting the meters.

The incomplete work gave the cartels an opportunity to get back to their business. The cartels reconnected their cables where Ongule’s organization had disconnected them,. It then became a cat and mouse game, Ongule installing legal connections during the day and the cartels reconnecting theirs later in the evening. As this continued, the cartels started issuing threats to Ongule in person and by phone, he said.

Inside many houses in Kibera, there are now two connections: illegal and legal. The Kenya Power meter boxes hang unused in many houses, and residents say the illegal connection is often what is available to them. Many of the Kenya Power connections have no power. In some parts of Kibera, the meter boxes were installed but the power was never switched on, according to residents.

Water infrastructure. Kibera, Nairobi, Nairobi County, Kenya. Photographed May 9, 2018. The brown pipe in the bottom left is part of the official infrastructure provided by  Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company, funded by World Bank, and is not operational. The colored plastic pipes in the top right are supplied by illegal cartels who control the water supply in Kibera.

Unfinished section of Kenya Railway housing project. Kibera, Nairobi, Nairobi County, Kenya. Photographed May 7, 2018.

A project started by Kenya Railways in 2015 — with 7 billion Kenyan shillings ($70 million) from the World Bank — was marred by corruption in allocation of finished houses, according to residents. The project sought to construct houses and commercial buildings for people living along the railway line that cuts across Kibera, but has been impaired by delays.

The plan was to build 3,129 single-room houses, of which 1,490 would be residential units, in order to secure a 60-meter buffer from the rail line. That meant displacing thousands of families who reside or have businesses in that area. The new buildings would have space for businesses on the ground floor, and residences above.

Vera Rosauer, communications officer at the World Bank, said that the housing units were to be constructed with water and electricity connections: “We are aware of significant delays to the remaining connections, as they were due to be supported by different projects which, due to project delays, are now closed. Units will, however, not be considered complete until connections have been made. The bank has been in discussions with relevant parties to help address this issue.”

In Kibera, however, construction of the houses along the railway line stalled in 2017, residents said. Left unattended, the incomplete constructions have since been vandalized. Vandals remove the steel rods, used in construction, and sell them to scrap metal dealers.

Collince Onyango, 27, left, and his brother, Raphael Oduor, 24, both university students, in the home they rent from a resident who received housing built under the Kenya Slum Upgrading Program. Kibera, Nairobi, Nairobi County, Kenya. Photographed May 10, 2018.

The Kenya Slum Upgrading Program is a a multimillion-dollar initiative implemented by the Kenyan government with support from UN-Habitat. The project launched in 2004 with big ambitions: to provide 5.3 million urban slum dwellers across the country — 1.6 million households — with access to good and affordable housing by 2020.

The plan was to move people out of a section of Kibera and into temporary apartments, then to destroy the section of the slum they had cleared, build brand new apartments, and move people from the temporary apartments into the new apartments. But some people have been stuck in limbo in the temporary apartments for 15 years as much of the new housing went to different people.

“The process was corrupted by officials and houses [were] sold out to people who weren’t from Kibera,” said Jane Migare-Miluka, a 52-year old mother of six and resident of Soweto East in Nairobi’s Kibera slum. In May 2009, together with 600 other households, she and her family were moved to a new location on a hill across the river as her house and those of her neighbors were demolished to build high rises.

Seven years later, the houses were finally ready, but when the list of people to be moved was released, Migare-Miluka’s name was not on it. The majority of people at the temporary site were relocated to the new buildings, which now stood in place of the old, mud-walled settlements. Migare-Miluka said she wasn’t given an explanation as to why she and many others — Migare-Miluka estimates 300 families — were not given houses, but she has drawn her own conclusion.

Housing for the Kenya Slum Upgrading Program overlooking Kibera. Kibera, Nairobi, Nairobi County, Kenya. Photographed May 10, 2018.