Country	Population	Infant (0-1) Mortality Rate/1000	Per-Capita Income (PPP US$)	Fertility  Rate (average children per woman)	Literacy rate (%, m/f)	% of Pop. in Rural Areas	Life Expectancy (%/m/f)
The Gambia	1.4 M	90	1,859	4.7	45.0/30.9	73.8	54.3/57.1
Sierra Leone	5.1M	166	548	6.5	39.8/20.5	61.2	39.4/42.1
Liberia
Ghana	21.2M	59	2,238	4.4	62.9/45.7	54.6	56.3/57.3
Nigeria	125.9 M	98	1,050	5.8	74.4/59.4	53.4	43.1/43.6
Niger	13.1 M	154	835	7.9	19.6/9.4	77.8	44.3/44.4
Burkina Faso	12.4 M	107	1,174	6.7	18.5/8.1	82.2	46.8/48.2
Mali	12.7 M	122	994	6.9	26.7/11.9	67.7	47.2/48.5
Senegal	11.1 M	78	1,648	5.0	51.1/29.2	50.4	54.5/56.9
Guinea-Bissau	1.5 M	126	711	7.1	55.2/24.7	66	43.2/46.2
Guinea	9 M	104	2,097	5.9	...	65.1	53.4/54.1
Benin	7.9 M	91	1,115	5.9	46.4/22.6	55.4	53.2/54.7
Togo	5.8 M	78	1,696	5.4	68.5/38.3	64.8	52.4/56.3
Mauritania	2.9 M	120	1,766	5.8	59.5/43.4	38.3	51.1/54.3
Cameroon	15.7 M	95	2,118	4.6	77/59.8	48.6	45.1/46.5
Cape Verde	0.5 M	26	5,214	3.8	85.4/68.0	44.1	67/73.2
Côte d'Ivoire	17.6 M	117	1.476	5.1	60.1/38.2	55.1	45.2/46.7

Source for data: Human Development Report 2005, United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

These countries are experiencing similar social conditions - spiraling inflation, economic stagnation, environmental degradation, enormous health problems, and a shift of rural inhabitants to urban areas, creating shanty towns and exacerbating tensions in the cities. In Ghana, for example, where there were only eight urban centres in 1900, there are now 180. If this trend continues, it is estimated that over half of the Ghanaian population will live in urban centres by 2020. Further aggravating the situation are civil wars and social disturbances that have destroyed much of the educational and community development infrastructure in Sierra Leone and Liberia and crippled aid agencies operating in Nigeria.

All of these nations are attempting to address the problems detailed above. One strategy is to strengthen the rural sector. In Ghana, the government implemented a program to transfer 12000 people a year to rural areas. The Gambia created the National Vocational Training Program to provide improved rural vocational training with the objective of providing rural primary school leavers with basic skills in home economics, horticulture, literacy, trades, and hygiene. As is often the case in such initiatives, no provision was made for the training of facilitators.

West African nations' priorities for rural development are hampered by a lack of trained staff able to deliver effective instruction and animation to adults living in rural communities. Field workers attached to aid agencies and NGO projects often require enhanced training. With the increased demand for facilitators able to operate in the areas of health care, literacy, agriculture, and community development, the need for a centre that can provide culturally appropriate and socially relevant training and curriculum development is enormous.

Women in Development
The development literature, whether from the World Bank or The New Internationalist, is clear on at least one point: the key to everything from sustainable economic development to population control is the education of women. Two major barriers to rural women's participation in adult education activities are the concentration of programs in urban areas and the relative lack of training of those educators and community workers operating in rural areas. The objective of the WARD program is to enhance the quantity and quality of rural programs in such areas as literacy, nutrition, health education, and community development and to target women at the village level. The emphasis on increasing access to programs that will strengthen women individually and collectively is absolutely key.

For the past seven years, we have worked with Gambian and Ghanaian women to identify obstacles to enhanced participation of women in their "triple-roles" - reproductive, productive and community management - and how to overcome these. These discussions will be extended and deepened as part of our WARD research, but we have already developed materials that address the changing roles of women in rural Africa and provide a basis for adult educators to identify with rural people the advantages, as well as the stresses, of these changes. With constant guidance from our African collaborators, we have created role plays, structured activities, and discussion topics that deal effectively with the issue of women in rural African society within a culturally appropriate context.

The purpose of WARD is thus to improve the quality of life of West African rural people on a sustainable basis according to their needs through the increased capacity of GTTI/UoTG to educate and train human resources to meet priority needs in the area of rural community development.