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Ghana Historical Setting
Ghana - Unavailable
A pectoral of cast gold (Akan)
MOST ETHNIC GROUPS constituting the population of Ghana
(formerly the British colony of the Gold Coast) had settled in
their present locations by the sixteenth century. Prior to British
control in the nineteenth century, political developments in the
area largely revolved around the formation, expansion, and
contraction of a number of states--a situation that often entailed
much population movement. Some people, however, lived in so-called
segmentary societies and did not form states, particularly in
northern Ghana. According to tradition, most present-day Ghanaians
are descended not from the area's earliest inhabitants but from
various migrant groups, the first of which probably came down the
Volta River in the early thirteenth century.
Early states in Ghana made every effort to participate in, or,
if possible, to control, trade with Europeans, who first arrived on
the coast in the late fifteenth century. These efforts in turn
influenced state formation and development. Much more important to
the evolution of these states, however, were their responses to
pre-European patterns of trade. This was particularly true of
commercial relations between the Akan states of southern Ghana and
trading centers in the western Sudan. Competition among the
traditional societies ultimately facilitated British efforts to
gain control of what Europeans called the "Gold Coast." Traditional
authorities, who with their elders had hitherto exercised
autonomous control over their territories, became agents of the
British colonial government under the policy of indirect rule.
As was the case in many sub-Saharan African countries, the rise
of a national consciousness in Ghana developed largely in the
twentieth century in response to colonial policies. The call to
freedom came from a few elites, but it was only after World War II
that the concept of independence captured the imagination of large
numbers of people and gained popular support. Differences existed
between the two leading political parties, however, on such issues
as the timetable for independence and the powers to be vested in
the modern state.
Ghana's first independent administration was inaugurated on
March 6, 1957, with Kwame Nkrumah as prime minister. On July 1,
1960, Ghana was declared a republic with Kwame Nkrumah as its
president. Earlier, parliament had passed the Preventive Detention
Act of 1958, which granted authority to the head of state to detain
without trial those who were considered a threat to the nation. By
means of such measures, Nkrumah and his party intimidated leading
members of the opposition. Some opponents were co-opted; others
were either exiled or jailed. As leader of Ghana at the time of the
Cold War, Nkrumah forged alliances that increasingly placed him in
the camp of the Eastern Bloc. Western governments understood
Nkrumah's agenda to be socialist and worried about his influence on
other African leaders. Some observers believed that Nkrumah's
obsession with what he called the "total liberation of Africa"
compelled him to create an authoritarian political system in Ghana.
Critics of the regime accused Nkrumah of introducing patterns of
oppression into Ghanaian politics and of tolerating widespread
corruption among party leaders. The regime paid too much attention
to urban problems at the expense of the more productive rural
sector, they felt, and it embraced unrealistic economic and foreign
assistance policies that led the nation to accrue huge foreign
debts. The Nkrumah administration was overthrown by the military in
February 1966. Many analysts maintain that the political
instability and economic problems faced by the country since the
mid-1960s are by-products of the Nkrumah era.
By 1981 Ghana had undergone seven major changes of government
since the fall of Nkrumah. Each change was followed by alienation
of the majority of the population and by military intervention,
touted to end the rule that was responsible for the country's
problems. Each time, the new government, civil or military, failed
to stabilize the political and economic conditions of the country.
As its fourth decade of independence began in 1987, Ghana was
under the administration of the Provisional National Defence
Council, a military government led by Flight Lieutenant Jerry John
Rawlings that had come to power in December 1981. Like the Nkrumah
administration three decades earlier, the Provisional National
Defence Council and Rawlings were criticized for their populism and
desire for radical change. Despite the difficult early years of the
Rawlings regime, Ghana's economy had begun to show signs of
recovery by the late-1980s, and preparations were underway to
return the country to some form of democratic government.
Data as of November 1994
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