Ghana

Social Capital and Diffusion in Ghana

An important canon in network analysis is the role of social capital in determining who knows or gets to hear (about) what. In the 1950s, James Coleman and his colleagues showed that the more integrated a physician was in his local medical community, the more likely he was to be an earlier adopter of a new drug. Mark Granovetter later argued that it is acquaintances (weak ties) and not necessarily stronger network of friends who are instrumental in providing information about job opportunities. Social capital as measured by the size, diversity, and quality of interpersonal ties is crucial in filtering access to information and resources in networks. Three studies employed social capital in understanding entrepreneurial and peer education programs in Ghana.

Abigail M. Barr studied the flow of technical information in a manufacturing sector in Ghana. She found that those entrepreneurs with large, diverse, interpersonal contacts tend to have more productive enterprises. Moreover, entrepreneurs also benefit from maintaining contacts with other entrepreneurs who themselves have large, diverse sets of contacts. Similarly, in his study of female entrepreneurs and their networks, John Kuada showed that female entrepreneurs were able to compensate for the difficulties they encountered in accessing credit through strategic social relationships that allowed them to leverage their access to social capital. These studies show that entrepreneurs were able to leverage their social capital to overcome some of the challenges entailed in starting and running their businesses. Apart from the benefits of having access to diverse social capital, the relationship between a person and his/her social ties can affect that person's perceptions, beliefs, and actions. Wolf Cameron and his colleagues investigated the relationship between (personal) risky behaviors among youth and the perception of their ties (friends) in Ghana. They found that youth who believe their friends are protecting themselves from human immunodeficiency virus and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) are significantly more likely to have taken such protective action themselves. Programmatically, the study is relevant in that it draws attention to the paramount role of targeted peer educators in HIV/AIDS prevention programs.

[Page 325]In addition to social capital, an additional process by which social networks affect behaviors is through diffusion. Diffusion is a process in which an individual's decision—either to buy a product, adopt a technology, use a contraceptive, or have a child—is influenced by those with whom they are directly or indirectly connected. Mark Montgomery and his colleagues also investigated the role of diffusion processes in contraceptive decision making in southern Ghana. They found that respondents actively communicated about contraceptives within their social networks, and those who have had such conversations had an increased likelihood of having used modern contraception. Richard Udry also showed that a Ghanaian farmer's decision to adopt a given technology such as fertilizer is partly influenced by whether their close associates and friends have used the same technology and found it beneficial. In both studies, individuals who are strongly connected (central) to others in the village tend to be in a better position to adopt newly emerging technologies such as contraceptives or fertilizers.

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