Ghana

By: Mark O'Malley

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Ghana

Known as the Gold Coast until it achieved independence in 1957, the area that is now Ghana was one of the richest in Africa before its conquest by the British. By the early 1800s the wealthy and powerful Asante empire controlled most of the country’s modern territory. During the colonial period, Ghanaians led the struggle against British colonialism. As the first European colony south of the Sahara to gain independence, Ghana inspired nationalist movements throughout Africa and the world. Yet despite its wealth and proud traditions, Ghana, like other African countries, has struggled with persistent poverty, mounting debt, and political instability and repression. The African socialism espoused by its independence leader, Kwame Nkrumah, brought political and economic disaster. In recent years, the country has seen economic recovery and democratization, but a dependence on foreign capital still keeps Ghana from reclaiming its former power and prosperity.

Early History

Archaeological evidence demonstrates a human presence in modern Ghana for at least the past 35,000 years. Agriculture reached the region by 2000 B.C.E., and iron production began by the first century C.E.. A mix of Pastoralism and cereal cultivation has predominated in the northern savanna region, while the cultivation of roots, tubers, and palm tree crops, supplemented by hunting and fishing, has prevailed in the southern forest zone.

Many Ghanaian ethnic groups have traditions of migration from outside the region before the arrival of Europeans. For example, the Dagomba supposedly came from the northeast, while both the Ga and Ewe have traditions of an origin to the east. The name Ghana refers to an ancient empire centered in modern Mali and Mauritania whose descendants, according to legend, migrated to modern Ghana after the empire collapsed in the thirteenth century. Archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests, however, that existing groups have continuously inhabited the country for at least 2,000 years. Traditions of migration may refer to relatively small groups of newcomers who achieved hegemony over existing populations.

Ghana

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Traditionally, lineages, or clans, have held land communally and commanded the loyalty of their members. The Akan peoples are matrilineal, while the Ga, the Ewe, and most northern groups are basically patrilineal. By the fourteenth century, Muslim Mande traders (known also as the Dyula) had arrived in the region to exchange cloth and metal wares from the Sahel for kola nuts and gold from the Akan, ultimately destined for North Africa. The earliest states in the region, the Akan kingdom of Bono and the northern Mamprusi Kingdom, arose during the fourteenth century to control this rich trade.

The arrival of Europeans selling superior weaponry shifted the focus of the Akan gold trade from the Muslim north to the southern coast during the sixteenth century and probably stimulated an Akan expansion toward the coast. Portuguese explorers arrived in 1471 and established trading posts soon afterward. The Portuguese traded firearms and slaves from other parts of Africa for gold dust. Slaves labored to increase the wealth of the Akan states, and firearms enabled the states to expand. By 1642 the Dutch had displaced the Portuguese from the region, and by 1670 Great Britain and Denmark had established additional coastal trading posts. Because the Dutch, British, and Danes sought slaves to meet a growing demand in the New World colonies, slaves replaced gold as the region’s main export, while firearms remained the main import.

The growth of the slave trade provoked wars of conquest. Firearms facilitated the capture of prisoners who could be sold as slaves for more firearms. By the late seventeenth century, the powerful Akan kingdom of Akwamu had conquered the coastal Ga and Ewe, who subsequently adopted Akan state institutions. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, Asante, an Akan empire based in the interior, had conquered Akwamu and parts of the coast, though the coastal Fante (another Akan group) resisted Asante. Asante also conquered large areas of the north, including the kingdoms of Gonja and Dagomba. Conquered regions had to send slaves each year to Asante as tribute. Asante maintained trade connections not only with Europeans on the coast, but also with Muslim regions to the north and northeast. By the eighteenth century, Hausa traders had taken over the interior trade formerly carried by the Dyula. Their demand for slaves, kola nuts, and other Asante exports helped sustain the empire even after the British banned the coastal slave trade.

On the coast, the slave trade transformed traditional social relations. An indigenous but increasingly westernized merchant class arose, including the “merchant princes” who controlled the slave trade. Merchants organized plantation agriculture and manufacture to provision the slave traders, and a working class developed to provide the necessary labor. An influential “mulatto” stratum arose through the intermarriage of European merchants and local women. Members of this group often had the advantage of a Western education and served as mediators between European merchants and local elites. When European states banned the slave trade, as did Denmark in 1802, Great Britain in 1807, and the Netherlands in 1814, a political economic crisis ensued. Coastal states lost their main source of income and weaponry and became vulnerable to Asante, whose gold exports financed a steady supply of firearms.

Gold Coast Colony

Attempting to replace the slave trade with “legitimate trade” in British-manufactured goods, Great Britain increasingly intervened in the affairs of coastal African states. In 1821 the British government assumed control of Gold Coast possessions from the private African Company of Merchants. Because Asante incursions in the coastal region threatened commercial interests, Great Britain initiated the First British-Asante War (1824–1826). A peace treaty in 1831 ended Asante claims to the coast and brought an upswing in trade, missionary activity, and British power on the coast. In 1844 Fante rulers agreed to British legal jurisdiction; in 1850 Great Britain purchased the Danish coastal possessions and established an informal colonial government.

Great Britain’s efforts to extend its power and gain control of the gold trade led to the Second British–Asante War (1873–1874). After Great Britain ceded its western coastal possessions in 1867 to the Dutch, who remained passive allies of Asante, Fante leaders formed the Fante Confederation, with a constitution based on European models, to resist the Dutch and Asante. When the Dutch abandoned their possessions in 1872, the confederation dissolved. In 1874 the British burned the Asante capital of Kumasi, forced Asante to accept a humiliating treaty, and declared the Gold Coast (south of Asante) a crown colony. British victory ended the power and prestige of the Asante state, which suffered a series of crippling succession struggles, while Asante’s northern vassals, including Bono, Gonja, and Dagomba, broke away from the empire.

As the Germans and French seized interior regions to the east, north, and west of the Gold Coast in the Scramble for Africa, British merchants sought to extend Colonial rule over the interior to protect markets for British goods and exploit the rich Asante gold fields. In 1896, after Asante refused to accept a British protectorate, Great Britain sent an expedition to Kumasi to demand full payment of the reparations stipulated in the 1874 treaty. When the Asante king failed to meet this demand, the British sent him into exile. An Asante noblewoman, Yaa Asantewa, organized a national struggle to resist British rule in the Third British–Asante War (1900–1901), also known as the Yaa Asantewa War. After heavy losses on both sides, Asante surrendered for the last time and the British exiled Asantewa, along with the entire Asante leadership. Between 1896 and 1910, Great Britain gradually conquered the peoples to the north of Asante, many of them former Asante tributaries. In 1902 the British annexed Asante and the Northern Territories. When Great Britain acquired the western third of German Togoland after World War I as a mandate, the colonial government at Accra ruled the entire territory of modern Ghana.

During the 1890s, the British government attempted to claim uncultivated lineage land to lease to British lumber and mining firms. In response, the Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society, composed of the coastal elite in alliance with interior chiefs, successfully defended lineage land rights. Thereafter, mining firms were required to secure leases from chiefs and lineage heads, whose wealth and power grew as a consequence. During the colonial period, British firms mined not only gold, but diamonds, manganese, and, beginning in the 1940s, bauxite. British firms also exploited the Gold Coast’s forests for timber.

The coastal elite’s resistance to land alienation formed part of a larger and less successful effort to resist economic displacement by better-financed European rivals. As foreign competition undermined their commercial strength, members of the coastal elite acquired a western education in mission schools or Great Britain. Increasingly, they found employment as professionals and midlevel civil servants, since British appointees monopolized the top posts.

After European powers banned the slave trade, Gold Coasters sought other commodities to exchange for European manufactures. While Asante could rely on the export of gold until the British conquest, residents of the coastal region turned to the production of cash crops. Until the 1890s, the most important of these was oil palm, tended by indigenous cultivators. By the turn of the century, peasants in Eweland (then largely part of German Togoland), Akwapim, and Asante were turning to the production of Cocoa. By the 1920s, the Gold Coast produced more than half of the world’s cocoa.

The cultivation of cocoa further transformed social relations. In Asante and neighboring regions, cocoa production increased the income and power of the chiefs and lineage heads who controlled the land. In the southeast, however, among the Akwapim and Ewe, cocoa production sustained a rural middle class of small farmers, some of them wealthy enough to employ migrant wage laborers. Migrant laborers traveled to the cocoa-growing regions, mainly from the interior Northern Territories and northern Togo.

The Northern Territories remained largely undeveloped, mostly because its distance from ports made the transport of cash crops uneconomical. Its inhabitants relied primarily on subsistence farming, supplemented by migrant labor in the mines and cocoa groves of the south. British authorities viewed the north as a labor reserve and relied heavily on northern forced labor (until the 1920s) or coerced labor (for which chiefs received a per capita fee) for the operation of mines and the construction of transportation infrastructure. This export of labor probably perpetuated the north’s underdevelopment.

The colonial transportation infrastructure facilitated the export of minerals and cash crops. The Gold Coast’s first railway connected coastal Sekondi with interior gold-mining districts in 1898 and was extended to Kumasi in 1903. By the 1920s, the network connected Accra with the interior, including cocoa-producing regions. In 1928 workers completed the Gold Coast’s first deep-water harbor at Takoradi, and during the 1920s and 1930s the government commissioned new roads in cocoa-growing districts.

A nationalist opposition began to form during the 1920s, when Great Britain introduced indirect rule, delegating local administration to “traditional” authorities. In the Asante region and most of the Northern Territories, where chiefs retained political and economic power, this policy met little opposition. On the coast, however, members of the powerful mercantile and professional class— who had long since displaced “traditional” chiefs as the regional elite—resented their continued exclusion from real power, despite educational and professional qualifications that equaled or exceeded those of British officials. Members of this group, together with representatives from the Gambia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria, founded the National Congress of British West Africa, demanding majority rule. In response to these demands, Great Britain agreed to limited, minority representation for the local elite in the Gold Coast’s legislative council.

During the 1940s, the movement toward independence gained momentum. As the Gold Coast suffered economically to support the British war effort, and Gold Coast recruits fought alongside British soldiers in the name of “democracy” and “liberty” denied them at home, many perceived the moral bankruptcy of colonialism. Meanwhile, the successful independence struggles of Ireland, India, and Pakistan inspired Gold Coast nationalists. Joseph Danquah and other leading nationalists founded the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) in 1947 and invited Kwame Nkrumah to lead the group’s campaign for representative self-government. When British troops fired on demonstrators in 1948 and riots erupted, the British jailed Nkrumah, Danquah, and other leaders for “incitement.”

The young Nkrumah’s radical populism proved threatening to the coastal elite and Asante chiefs who dominated the UGCC, however, and when they ousted him in 1949, he founded the Convention People’s Party (CPP). The CPP organized workers and farmers for the first time in a mass movement for independence and staged strikes and other actions. British authorities again imprisoned Nkrumah for “subversion” and “sedition.” The British governor convened a committee of the elite, who drew up a new constitution in 1951 providing for internal self-rule and a legislative assembly that reserved large blocks of seats for chiefs and British officials. However, the CPP won an overwhelming majority of elected seats in 1951, and British authorities released Nkrumah from prison to serve as prime minister. In 1954 Nkrumah’s government introduced a new constitution providing for direct election by universal suffrage. As prime minister during the mid-1950s, Nkrumah advocated a mixed economy, sought to attract foreign capital, and focused on the modernization of agriculture and rural development.

Nkrumah and the CPP faced increasing internal opposition. The National Liberation Movement (NLM), led by Kofi Busia and based in the Asante region, opposed Nkrumah’s government in the 1954 elections. The NLM criticized the CPP for its perceived dominance by southerners, its slighting of the Asante region in legislative representation, and its limitations on the powers of chiefs. The NLM pushed for the establishment of a federal state with regional governments, while the CPP advocated a unitary state. Meanwhile, Ewe activists, concentrated in the southern part of the British Togoland mandate, pushed for unification with the Ewe of French Togo.

In separate 1956 plebiscites, however, a majority of British Togoland residents voted for unification with an independent Gold Coast (though a majority in Ewe districts opposed this), and 70 percent of voters in the remainder of the Gold Coast territories voted for independence according to the CPP’s unitary (nonfederalist) platform. In 1957 Great Britain granted independence within the British Commonwealth to the Gold Coast, now renamed Ghana.

Republic of Ghana

As the first African colony south of the Sahara to gain independence, Ghana became a model and an inspiration for movements throughout the continent seeking an end to colonial rule. Under Nkrumah, Ghana espoused nonalignment. Nkrumah advocated political unification of Africa under his own leadership and played an instrumental role in the creation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1963.

Domestically, Nkrumah espoused “African socialism.” Strong export earnings during the late 1950s provided the basis for nationalization of private firms, the creation of a large parastatal sector, an attempt at industrialization, and infrastructural expansion. Projects completed under Nkrumah’s leadership included the large modern port at Tema, expansion of the road and rail network, and Akosombo Dam, which created Lake Volta, the world’s largest artificial lake. The dam supplies hydroelectric power to much of Ghana, as well as to neighboring Togo and Benin. Road construction in the north facilitated the production of food crops for sale in the more urbanized south. The government expanded health and social services, and Ghana became the first African nation south of the Sahara to provide free and compulsory primary education. By the early 1960s, however, a drop in cocoa prices undermined the financial viability of these ambitious programs, while Nkrumah’s use of development programs as patronage for often unqualified favorites escalated costs. By the mid-1960s, Ghana’s debt threatened its financial stability, and living standards declined.

After independence, Nkrumah moved to suppress opposition. Nkrumah and the CPP drew support mostly from farmers, workers, and market women in the southern coastal region, while the regional elite and their clients, both on the coast and in the interior, opposed the government. Shortly after independence, the Avoidance of Discrimination Act (1957) banned all regional parties. Consequently, the opposition merged to form the United Party, led by Kofi Busia. In 1958 the Emergency Power Act and the Preventive Detention Act gave the government sweeping powers to detain dissidents without trial. Many suffered torture or even death in detention. Meanwhile, Nkrumah assumed increasingly autocratic powers. With the establishment of a republic in 1960, Nkrumah became head of both government and state. Nkrumah assumed sole control of the CPP and banned all opposition within the party. In 1964 the government secured majority approval for a referendum that declared Ghana a one-party state under the CPP.

With opposition to Nkrumah’s corrupt and increasingly unpopular government effectively outlawed, a joint military-police junta seized power in a 1966 coup that in Ghana was widely believed to have been backed by the CIA. This junta, known as the National Liberation Council (NLC), suspended Nkrumah’s major development projects, released political detainees, investigated official corruption, and proclaimed a market economy. Trade liberalization and reductions in taxes won favor among small proprietors and market women, and chiefs enjoyed the restoration of many powers Nkrumah’s government had removed. The NLC’s austerity program won it financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank but caused widespread unemployment and hardship. As strikes escalated in 1968 and 1969, the junta created an assembly to draft a constitution for a return to civilian government.

In a 1969 election from which Nkrumah’s supporters were banned, Kofi Busia became prime minister. Backed by a coalition of the southern elite and Akan chiefs, Busia’s government continued the NLC’s economic conservatism. When another drop in the price of cocoa precipitated a financial crisis in 1971, his government raised prices and interest rates, cut government spending, and devalued the currency. A wave of unrest culminated in Busia’s removal from office in a 1972 coup staged by troops unhappy with cuts in military spending.

The new military government, known as the National Redemption Council (NRC) and led by Colonel Acheampong, excluded the leadership of the earlier NLC and reversed many of its policies. The NRC nationalized several private companies in 1972, including the largest gold-mining firm, and declared a moratorium on debt payments, which led the IMF to suspend its credit. The NRC suppressed opposition with a Subversion Decree and a Protective Detention Decree. In 1975 Acheampong transferred power to a new Supreme Military Council (SMC), which excluded his rivals in the NRC. Although the military government enjoyed brief popularity when rising cocoa prices revived the economy in 1972, ongoing economic mismanagement, corruption, rising oil prices, and a persistent drought only deepened Ghana’s economic woes in the long run.

In the late 1970s, professionals and students held a series of nationwide strikes to demand an end to military rule. In 1977 the SMC agreed to a transition plan for the establishment of an elected government. When the SMC rigged a referendum in 1978 approving continued military rule, another wave of strikes moved the SMC to replace Acheampong with General Akuffo, who appointed a constitutional assembly and scheduled elections for 1979. On the eve of the 1979 elections, a group of junior officers, led by Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings and backed by popular opinion, overthrew the SMC and formed the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC). Elections took place as scheduled, while the AFRC purged state offices of corrupt SMC appointees and executed Acheampong and Akuffo. After three months, the AFRC yielded power to an elected government headed by Hilla Limann.

Limann’s government inherited a ruined economy and failed to respond effectively when a drop in cocoa earnings led to rampant inflation and severe food shortages. Corrupt government officials made deals with black market profiteers. The government’s popularity plummeted when it responded violently to strikes and demonstrations by workers. By 1981 Ghana was approaching famine and bankruptcy, and Rawlings again led a group of soldiers in a successful coup.

Rawlings, who enjoyed widespread support among workers and the poor, pledged to eliminate corruption and profiteering and to give the masses a voice in the government. Declaring that “bourgeois democracy fosters social inequality,” he dissolved parliament, banned parties, established the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) in 1982, and appointed civilians, many of them radicals, to head government ministries. He encouraged Revolutionary Defense Committees (RDCs) to assume the powers of local government. By 1983 another drought and a wave of fires had deepened Ghana’s economic crisis and again brought the country to the brink of famine. Rawlings became disenchanted with leftist ideology and dismissed his most radical ministers. By 1987, after several coup attempts against Rawlings, his PNDC had consolidated its control over the military and the RDCs.

During the mid-1980s, Rawlings negotiated a structural adjustment plan with the IMF and began a program of austerity and economic reform, including privatization, a reduction in the size of the state sector, renewed investment in infrastructure, and incentives for cocoa producers. His government sought foreign investment in the country’s mining sector. By the late 1980s, Ghana’s fifteen-year economic decline had been reversed, and both economic output and real income were rising.

But austerity measures provoked protests by workers and students, and Rawlings faced pressure from international donors to implement democratic reforms. In 1988 Ghana held nonpartisan elections for local government, and in 1989 Rawlings promised to restore parliamentary democracy. The government announced a timetable for multiparty elections in 1992, and voters approved a new constitution. Rawlings’s National Democratic Congress (NDC), with widespread support in the south and parts of the far north, won a substantial victory over the opposition National Patriotic Party (NPP), which was based in Asante and neighboring regions. Despite alleged irregularities, outside observers judged the election “free and fair.”

Democratization has brought new challenges. Critics charged Rawlings with abandoning economic discipline and lavishing patronage on voters. Since the 1992 elections, increased government spending has produced budget deficits. A removal of import controls won the favor of market women but led to a growing trade deficit. However, Rawlings and the NDC won a majority again in 1996 in elections accepted as fair by the NPP, and renewed economic reforms have since attracted increased foreign investment. An improved economic and political climate and the 1997 appointment of a Ghanaian, Kofi Annan, to head the United Nations have been sources of pride for many Ghanaians. These developments, along with U.S. President Bill Clinton’s historic 1998 visit to Ghana, restored Ghana’s prominence among African nations.

Ghana’s constitution prohibited Rawlings from running for another term in 2000. In the elections that year John Agyekum Kufour was elected president in a contest regarded as free and fair. This marked the first peaceful transfer of power from one president to another in Ghana’s history. Under Kufour, Ghana sought debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) program. His government’s policy goals included tighter monetary and fiscal policies, increased privatization, and improved social services. In the elections of 2008, John Evans Atta Mills of the NDC was elected to the presidency. Mills had served as vice president from 1997 to 2001.

See also Colonial rule; Ghana, Early Kingdom of; Gold Trade; Hunger and Famine; Slavery in Africa; and Structural Adjustment in Africa.

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