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I intend to correct one of the biggest untruths that has persisted for so long regarding the British colonial government leaving huge sums of money to the Kwame Nkrumah government to lead Ghana to independence, which they accuse of “wasting” before of the coup of February 24, 1966.. Most of the time, you will hear the cynics of Nkrumah referencing this false claim without any exact proof, but only to show the cause of their unrepentant hatred for him.
History is written for heroes, not villains. But in today’s Ghana, the problems of the elite few who were rejected long ago struggle to rewrite Ghana’s history in a way that suits their interests. Do we continue to allow these people to change our history to make villains look like heroes and reactionaries look like democrats under the guise of a multi-party democracy? Absolutely not. In this article, the aim is to clarify the income generated by Nkrumah’s internal self-government for the Gold Coast, as part of the funding from the 1951-1956 Five-Year Development Plan of the Development Funds and Cocoa Rights (Amendment) Act of 1954, and also explain a bit the formation of the National Liberation Movement (NLM) in November 1954 and the collapse of the British economy after WWII.
Development funds and cocoa rights (Amendment) Law
First, the Cocoa Marketing Board (CMB) was established in 1947. The purpose of creating the Board was to investigate a series of disputes between cocoa producers and their European purchasing partners. Initially, cocoa farmers used to sell their products directly to a cooperative of European buyers, but their dissatisfaction with prices offered them a new deal that was designed to give them more leverage against European buyers and insulate them from world market fluctuations. price of cocoa.
The main source of income for Ghana at that time came from the export of cocoa. And the world price of cocoa was constantly rising. In 1949-50, the country had received £ 178 for every ton of cocoa sold abroad. In 1950-51, the figure rose to 269 pounds sterling. In the next two years it was slightly lower. But in 1953-54 it cost 358 pounds a ton. And in 1954 it reached 467 pounds per tonne, the highest amount ever paid. Everything seemed necessary to spend money modernizing the Gold Coast economy. (Basil Davidson, Black Star)
But the real dispute over cocoa and the Cocoa Marketing Board (CMB) began when it became politicized after then-Finance Minister KA Gbedemah introduced the Cocoa Rights and Development Funds Act (Amendment) in 1954, he set the price of cocoa on the farm at 72 shillings (£ 3,112) per load of 60 pounds for four years.
This is what Gbedemah said in the final debate in parliament:
“[F]firstly, that it is not in the general interest of the Costa Dorada to be subject to significant or frequent fluctuations in the prices paid for its cocoa; second, that taking into account all the other circumstances in the Gold Coast today, the current price paid locally for cocoa is fair, reasonable and provides an incentive to increase production; thirdly, it follows that it is in the general interest that the cocoa tree receives a good and stable income over a period of years … and, finally, that the funds that can accrue to the Government through the fiscal policy that now it is establishing to concentrate as much as possible on the expansion of the country’s economy as a whole with special emphasis on its agricultural sector ”. (Ekow Nelson, Nkrumah Cocoa Policy and Economic Development)
In essence, cocoa stocks were held in London as an investment of the revenue generated from the cocoa tax in the hope of making the country a better place to live in the near future. Sadly, this development sparked upheavals in the Ashanti cocoa zone, especially Asantehene, which fueled the separatist movement while calling for a federal state to ensure that all cocoa export proceeds are transferred to the Kingdom of Asante and not to the central government. .
According to Richard Mahoney, political independence, in short, did not mean economic independence for Nkrumah. He noted that “the vagaries of world cocoa prices (which provided Ghana with around 70 percent of its foreign exchange earnings) placed development plans on a precarious footing and appeared to require substantial investment in the area of crop diversification. commercial. However, on British advice, Nkrumah had left Ghana’s $ 500 million reserves, accumulated during the colonial period, in long-term, low-interest British securities; therefore this large source of productive investment was unavailable (to the post-independence Nkrumah government) in 1959 “ (Mahoney, “JFK Ordeal in African”). Therefore, to a greater extent, this money was not made directly to Nkrumah. For example, in 1953, the Cocoa Marketing Board sold cocoa for a total of 74 million pounds. But the amount paid to Ghana was only £ 28 million. (Basil Davidson, Black Star)
Collapse of the British economy after World War II
It was obvious to Nkrumah that Ghana was, in fact, helping finance the British banking system. After World War II, the British economy collapsed for many reasons. It includes, firstly, the conversion of its industrial production to totally warlike. And also due to the severe destruction caused by Germany and Hitler’s forces, the economy could not sustain production for its citizens.
Furthermore, the destruction created the need to borrow massively and they lost much of their productive capacity, resulting in an accumulation of massive external debts, particularly to the United States. It was due to these and other devastations of war in other European countries that led to the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, whose Marshall Plan was an economic recovery program for the economies of Western Europe after World War II. (Michael J. Hogan, “The Marshal Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western Europe 1947-1952”).
Therefore, to conclude, the British colonial government on the Gold Coast (now the Republic of Ghana) was not a charity that had invested in raw materials (cocoa, gold, diamonds, manganese, wood and others) and the Generosity enough to have returned the profits back to the Gold Coast, let alone leaving huge surpluses for Kwame Nkrumah to “waste” at a time when Britain could find no feet to defend the Queen and her people.
By Michael Sumaila Nlasia
The author has a law degree from the Ghana Institute of Public Administration and Management.
Email address: [email protected]
