World Affairs
Ghana celebrates sixty years of sovereignty.
It was the first sub-Saharan country to become independent after the Second World War, and would be succeeded by dozens of others in the decades to follow.
The British colony known as the Gold Coast adopted the name Ghana, for the ancient kingdom that flourished until the eleventh century, when it achieved independence in 1957.
It was a time of great hope for the future of a continent which, until then, had been almost entirely ruled as parts of European empires. Many of these hopes would be dashed over the next 60 years, and Ghana too would undergo periods of authoritarian rule.
As elsewhere in Africa, there were a multitude of different ethnicities and religions in the new state, many of them hostile to each other.
Some of this went back to the days of the slave trade, when some groups had been complicit in capturing and selling others to European slavers.
Ghana’s history is intricately tied to slavery, Kwadwo Opoku-Agyemang, an English professor from the University of Cape Coast, has noted.
There were large slave forts along the Atlantic coastline, built for the purpose of processing human beings awaiting sale to slave ships that would drop anchor along the coast. Barack Obama visited one in 2009.
Still, following the end of the slave trade, the Gold Coast came to be regarded as the showpiece of Britain’s colonies: it was the richest, and its people the best educated. Kwame Nkrumah, its first leader, had been educated in Britain and the United States. His Convention People’s Party formed the first post-independence government.
But he became a tyrant in the years following independence, suspending the constitution in 1964 and creating a one-party state. The economy rapidly declined and he was finally deposed in a coup d’état while on a visit to China in 1966. Decades of military dictatorships, one following another, ensued.
Not until 1992, with the drafting of a new constitution, did multi-party democracy return to the country. Under President Jerry Rawlings’ National Democratic Congress (NDC) rule, from 1992 to 2000, Ghana once again became the most politically stable and prosperous nation in West Africa.
In a free and fair election held in 2000, John Kufuor of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) won the presidency, beating Rawlings’ vice-president, John Atta Mills of the NDC. Kufuor was re-elected in 2004 for a second four-year term, again beating Mills. He retired in 2008. President Nana Akufo-Addo, Ghana’s current head of state, won the Dec. 7, 2016 presidential election on behalf of the NPP against the incumbent, John Mahama of the NDC. Akufo-Addo had lost twice before to the NDC, first to Mills, who finally won the presidency in 2008, and then to Mahama, who succeeded Mills after the latter died, in 2012.
This time, the 73-year-old Akufo-Addo, a human rights lawyer who comes from an eminent political family, won 53.8 per cent of the votes after a hotly contested race.
Gold, cocoa and, more recently, oil, form the cornerstone of Ghana’s economy and had helped fuel an economic boom. Until recently Ghana was hailed as a model for African growth.
But since 2013, its economy has endured a growing public deficit, high inflation, and a weakening currency. Gold, oil and even cocoa bean prices all dropped, resulting in its seeking a $918 million bailout from the International Monetary Fund in 2016.
This left Ghana with a restive population that spelled doom for Mahama’s re-election chances.
Akufo-Addo had gone into exile during the years of military rule. But from Europe, he could be heard on the BBC World Service, calling for a return to democracy. With the end of dictatorship, he returned home and became the first national organizer of the NPP.
He recently appealed to Ghanaians living in and out of the country to rally behind his administration, as he seeks to return the country onto the path of prosperity.
“What we need to understand and believe is that we can also make it in Ghana, and improve the standards of living of our people. We can do it,” he reiterated.
“Our mission is clear, to make Ghana the most successful and business friendly economy in Africa,” declared vice-president Mahamadu Bawumia. “This government will control the debt and get Ghana working again.”