The Intermediate Technology Transfer Unit (ITTU) at Tamale in the Northern Region of Ghana was an outpost of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), based in Kumasi. Its mission was to assist small-scale urban and rural industries to upgrade their production technologies and introduce new and improved products. It saw itself as a gateway to a better future based on science and reason. However the world of the occult is ever present in Africa, and the university engineers were not surprised when some of their clients turned out to be witches.

In the early 1980s, while the university and Ghana’s Ministry of Industries, Science and Technology were struggling to construct the permanent building to accommodate the ITTU, preparatory operations were started by the USAID Adviser, Frank Robertson. An Afro-American from Texas, Frank was a natural appropriate technologist, ready to tackle any practical challenge and solve it with whatever tools and materials were to hand. He made a study of numerous traditional craft industries and tried to devise ways to improve their methods and products.

One of the first rural craft industries to be studied by Frank and his small team of helpers was involved in cotton spinning. Undertaken by women, mostly passed middle age, using a simple hand tool, the production was slow and the product of variable quality. The yarn had many weak points and narrow loom weavers complained of frequent breakages. So Frank turned his attention to trying to introduce something like the traditional European spinning wheel. Soon he had designed a wooden wheel that could be made by local carpenters and he set up a small production unit under a neem tree in the garden of his bungalow.

Ladies long-practised in the craft were invited to come and try the new spinning wheel. At first they found it difficult to treadle the machine, but those that succeeded in mastering this unfamiliar skill were delighted with the results. Yarn produced twice as quickly as by the traditional method was found to be much stronger and more consistent in quality. Soon there was a considerable demand from aid agencies for traditional spinners to be trained and for spinning wheels to be supplied.

News of Frank’s innovation spread beyond the borders of Ghana and a request came from the Catholic Church in Burkina Faso to send sisters to Tamale to see for themselves. The nuns came and learned the spinning technique and prepared to return to their base with samples of the spinning wheel. When asked about their mission they said that they were engaged in rehabilitating witches.

On his next visit to the Regional Secretary, Frank mentioned helping the witches in Burkina Faso. ‘Why don’t you help our own witches first?’ he was asked. ‘Tell me where they are and we will certainly help them,’ said Frank. Then the Regional Secretary explained that formerly, when they were driven from their home villages, the old ladies wandered in the bush until they died, usually from starvation. So the government had established three villages where the witches could gather in safety. The authorities were always on the lookout for ways of helping the women to become more self-sufficient. It was likely that many of them already spun cotton for a living and many more might like to learn the new technique.

Frank asked how the women became witches. It was explained that older women were always in danger of being accused of witchcraft whenever bad fortune struck a rival family or when the witch’s own family were blessed unexpectedly by good fortune. Once accused, condemnation usually followed and the woman in question was driven from the village. Changing people’s beliefs is a slow process and belief in witchcraft is still strong. In the meantime, Ghana extends to her witches whatever state aid can be afforded.