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FREDERICKSBURG LINK SPARKS HOPE

August 27, 2007 12:35 am

BY FRANK DELANO

Click here to read DAY 1.

VIDEO: Scenes from Ghana: a multimedia presentation

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PRINCE'S TOWN, Ghana--Its sister-city relationship with Fredericksburg has kindled hopes of a better future for this town-by-the-sea in Africa.

"I wish to see Prince's Town like Fredericksburg was some 10 years ago," said Alfred Kaku Aluade Acquah [AH-kwa], president of the town's sister-city committee.

He and other town leaders know that the relationship will not solve all of the town's problems, but the tie with Fredericksburg and the prospect of more American visitors has sparked interest and plans for improving the town.

"Prince's Town has never really attempted development before. I want to see actual developments here," Acquah said.

He and three other leaders of Prince's Town came to Fredericksburg last December for the ceremonies that established the sister-city relationship between the city in Virginia and the town in Ghana.

Acquah is now president of the Prince's Town branch of the Fredericksburg-Prince's Town Sister City Association. The group formed in Fredericksburg this year to forge educational, cultural and economic ties between the two, very different places.

The great distance between Acquah's dream and its realization became clear one day in July when he stopped in front of one of the few, two-story concrete buildings in Prince's Town.

He said its builders used sea water to make the concrete. The salt water corroded the steel reinforcing rods. Now the once proud house is falling apart.

A big hole is in the roof. Pillars, walls and floors are crumbling. Windows and doors are missing.

"One day, we will repair this building to become the headquarters of the sister-city association," he said. "But at present we don't have the funding."

Funds are also lacking for a host of projects that the Prince's Town Sister City Committee has identified to improve the economy of the town and the lives of the 7,000 people who live there and in nearby villages.

Ranging from major to minor, the committee's goals include:

Persuading the government of Ghana to finish paving the 11-mile-long, often-impassable dirt road that connects Prince's Town with Ghana's main coastal highway.

Building a secondary [high] school to teach vocational and technical trades.

Improving health care, water supplies and sanitation.

Creating new jobs.

Changing the traditional practice of agriculture from subsistence to market farming.

Protecting the environment and natural resources.

Preserving and enhancing the town's rich culture and history to attract more tourists.

Equipping two teams with balls and uniforms to play neighboring towns in this soccer-obsessed nation.

The themes of the plan--transportation, education, health care, economy, environment, history and recreation--are the same for many community-development plans in the United States. As in U.S. communities, there is no magic bullet, no one solution to cure all of the problems and achieve all the potentials.

"The demand of my people is jobs," said Roland Kakra Acquah, Alfred's brother and Prince's Town's delegate to Ahanta West District Assembly.

The assemblyman said Prince's Town is rich in natural resources: seafood, farmland, bamboo and sand and gravel. New deposits of gold might also be found nearby, he said.

The town's spectacular seashore and lagoon, its historic fort and a nearby national forest reserve also might make Prince's Town a destination for tourists, surfers, sport fishermen and birders.

But seafood needs ice. Market farming and mining require machines. Sand, bamboo, and crops must be shipped. Tourists have to be able to get to their destination and need places to stay once they arrive.

Where will the public and private investment come from to improve the town and provide jobs for its people?

"We rely on the central government for everything. We are not prepared to help ourselves. I think that is a general character of the whole African society," Acquah said.

Oil revenues may help one day. A British company announced in June that it had discovered 600 million barrels of oil beneath the sea off Prince's Town.

Oil production is still years away, but Assemblyman Acquah hopes benefits in the form of royalties and taxes may eventually help fund major improvements in Prince's Town.

Until then, aid has dribbled in from different sources:

The German government donated money for a secondary school, but it was not enough. The project languished.

The European Union paid for new wells, a new drainage system, a rubbish incinerator and public latrines.

A German charity pays school expenses for some needy children. (It costs less than $200 to send a child to school for nine years in Prince's Town, the German Web site says.)

A Kiwanis Club in Austria built a school. (Prince's Town has an immediate need for six more primary classrooms, the assemblyman said.)

A native of Prince's Town, now a doctor in Texas, built a handsome new building this year that houses a library, a dormitory and may one day contain the town's first post office.

Alfred Acquah said his committee's plan is just the first of many steps the town needs to take to achieve its potential. The people of the town are the key to its future, he said.

"To develop a place, you must first develop the people. You can write the words for the music, but the people themselves must provide the tune."