Why is Africa poor? - History of Ghana

With a per-capita income 50 percent less than that of the next poorest region, sub-Saharan Africa is the poorest place on earth, by some margin. But why? Over the next few weeks this blog will turn from a photo intensive look at modern Ghana to a philosophical debate about the evolution of wealth in this country, and the region as a whole.

The general consensus is that sub-Sarahan Africa is poor because it has been mis-managed, by it’s leaders, and by those providing big-money aid from abroad. We will examine these issues, but also look at how the culture of the people here impacts their wealth, as well as the impact of religion - both local beliefs and those imported from abroad.

But first, the question ‘why is Africa poor today’ can be answered very simply. Because it was poor yesterday. Change takes time, and we will open our discussions with a look at the history of Ghana and how the colonial period set it up very badly for the 20th century.

Why is Africa poor? - History of Ghana

The ancestors of today’s Ghanaian residents are said to have arrived in the 9th or 10th century, forming what we call today the medieval ‘West African Ghana Empire’. The empire was named after its then emperor, ‘the Ghana’. It is this empire which first became known to Europe and Arabia.

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to arrive in 1471. By then the area was known as the Gold coast, and the Portuguese came to trade in gold, ivory and pepper. Having held the area by force against other European nations for over a century, by 1598 the Dutch had joined the Portuguese and also begun trading in the region.

By the mid 17th century other European nations had arrived and the coastline was peppered with forts, which were regularly attacked, captured, sold and exchanged. The area developed the highest concentration of European military architecture outside of Europe. Throughout this period alliances were frequently made with local tribes, notably the Ashanti and the Fanti peoples, whom were often drawn into the battles, or attacked by rival European factions.

In the late seventeenth century the Gold Coast shifted from being a gold exporting economy to being a slave exporting economy. In exchange for guns and other imported goods, the local tribes were encouraged to make war further afield and bring back slaves to sell to the Europeans.

(The triangular slave trade. European ships laden with slaves were shipped from Africa to America, where the slaves worked to harvest the cash crops grown on the vast open plains. These crops were shipped back to Europe for consumption, and the ships then set sail for Africa with the goods required to purchase the slaves for the next run.)

Beginning in 1850, the coastal regions increasingly came under control of the governor of the British fortresses. British authorities adopted a system of indirect rule for colonial administration, wherein traditional chiefs maintained power but took instructions from their European supervisors. Indirect rule was cost-effective, minimized local opposition to European rule, and guaranteed law and order.

By the mid 20th century, as with most African countries, nationalism was on the rise and Ghana looked to be free of it’s colonial noose. The social and economic developments seen in the region throughout the  20th century were thought to be possible without British colonial masters, and on March 6, 1957 the former British colony of the Gold Coast became the independent state of Ghana, and the British withdrew.

With the formation of the National Assembly, and the beginning of self rule, our brief history of Ghana ends. What happened next will be discussed in a future piece on ‘Police, Government and Corruption’.

The past five centuries of history of sub-Saharan Africa are a tale of manipulation, exploitation, and constant warfare under the direction of Europeans. While the West went through the industrial revolution and grew rich on mass production and cheap imports, the Gold coast region was repeatedly torn apart and the pieces controlled in a giant game of ‘Risk’ by European masters.

Why is Africa poor today?  Because it was poor yesterday. But the debate does not end there, next week we will look at how culture plays a significant role on individuals’ wealth in the region.

- My thanks to the authors of the ‘History of Ghana’ page on Wikipedia, without whom this would have been a short and rather fact free blog entry.