BOLGATANGA, Ghana (PANA) - In Ghana's three northern regions, the donkey is slowly replacing the bicycle as the most important means of rural transportation and agricultural development.

Its usefulness as a versatile domestic animal is becoming more profound in the rural communities where there are no tractors, intra-city buses, taxis, trucks and buses.

Here, the donkey is the obvious alternative as a means of transport, both for persons and for conveying of agricultural produce from the farm-gate to market centres.

It also serves a number of domestic purposes including carrying water and firewood for the home.

Many years ago, the bicycle held sway and its price kept soaring. Many people are turning to the wisdom of the rural dweller in Ghana's northern neighbour, Burkina Faso, from where the idea of using donkeys has travelled to Ghana.

A bicycle now sells for 500,000 cedis or more. (1 US dollar = 4,800 cedis).

The donkey makes a lot of economic sense. It is not only affordable and has no spare parts problem or need to buy district assembly licences, but it does more work.

"Without it life would be impossible for me and my family", acknowledges Akologo Azubila, a 68-year-old resident of Goori, village near Bolgatanga, the capital of the Upper East region.

Like all the residents of the village, Azubila undertakes farming for his livelihood. He grows millet, groundnuts and guinea corn on his two-acre farm during the rainy season and cultivates tomatoes on a half-acre plot in the dry season.

According to Azubila, he bought his donkey four years ago (1996) at 170,000 cedis. Today, a healthy adult donkey, whether male or female, sells at between 300,000 and 360,000 cedis in Bolgatanga.

"Before I bought it I used to ride a bicycle to my farm. But I realised that a donkey would be more useful to me, so I sold two of my goats and five bags of unshelled groundnuts.".

The 'Phoenix' bicycle he had parked cost 100,000 cedis in 1993.

At the beginning of the farming season, when every farmer in the village is anxious to prepare his fields for cropping, bullocks are in high demand.

There are only three sets of bullocks in the whole of Goori, owned by three well-to-do local residents.

Farmers hire them to plough their farms at 50,000 cedis per acre.

In fact, they virtually wait in a queue to be served in turns. For those who are not lucky, half the season would have gone by the time the bullocks come their way.

"Using my donkey, I plough with the first rain without having to beg for someone's bullocks", continues Azubila who claims that ridges made by the donkey are straight and reach deeper into the soil, compared to those ploughed by bullocks.

Before he acquired his donkey, Azubila used to encounter a lot of difficulties at harvest time. He could only tie a basketful of millet at a time on the carrier at the back of the bicycle. His two wives could not carry much either.

"Sometimes it took us a whole week to cart the harvested crop from the farm to the house, but now I do it in two or three days because I have a large cart attached to the donkey."

With a barrel placed in the cart, he also uses the ass to fetch water from the local dam to irrigate his tomato plot during the dry season.

In many parts of the world today, the exigencies of the deteriorating economic environment have taught people the wisdom of "going back to basics" as it were.

Mallam Haruna Zingaro, a 47-year-old lotto agent at Bawku in the Upper East region is a strong advocate of this philosophy.

In his view, government should save its resources rather than waste them on family planning campaigns.

"Sooner than later, people will be compelled by economic hardships to curtail their family sizes voluntarily", he contends.

Zingaro has two wives and eight children, five of whom are in elementary school. He saw the light when at the beginning of the school term he had to provide a chair and a writing desk for each of the five children.

After struggling to purchase four sets from his meagre lotto income, there was no more money to buy one for the fifth child.

"To keep the boy in school I had to give away the centre-table in my room for him to be using in class," Zingaro told PANA at Bawku.

"No more children for me. If the women don't agree, they are free to go," he said.

Just like this gentleman saw the need to forego the luxury of continuing to have more children, Azubila found it expedient to abandon the use of a bicycle, which is regarded as a prestige symbol in most rural communities, in favour of a donkey.

He advances a number of reasons for this choice. "In addition to all the heavy work (like ploughing and carrying) which a bicycle cannot do, a donkey is also cheaper to maintain.

" I don't have to worry about spare parts or a punctured tyre in the bush". One has to ensure, however, that the ass is well fed at all times, he adds.

The donkey has been of good use to man for ages and Azubila recalls it was a donkey that carried Jesus Christ to Jerusalem during his triumphant entry 2,000 year ago.

Asked whether the donkey falls ill at all, Azubila admitted that there was a time it nearly died from chewing some poisonous leaves on the farm.

It kept running watery dung for days, but was eventually treated with a potion of boiled herbs he forced down its throat. He has since made it a point to tie the animal to a tree and feed it regularly so it doesn't go about consuming unwholesome objects.

"The only other times I have trouble with it is when a female passes by", he chuckles, maintaining that he intends to get it a mate when he sells his harvest at the end of the next farming season.

He explains that the plan will be to their mutual benefit - the animal will have its pleasures, while he as the owner stands to profit from the offspring.

That would be a good compromise. Otherwise, when a stubborn donkey goes on strike, no court can settle the issue.