African Business Enterprise A Study of a Group of Traders in Kumasi Part II

Abstract

The Akan peoples, to which the Ashanti belong, are closely allied linguistically, share many common traditions, and are contained largely within the boundaries of Ghana, in the central and southern areas of the country. The matrilineal system embraces the Akans and sane other geographically proximate groups. Most of the business men covered in this survey were Akans and some of the problems of business development can be related to -their matrilineal system of inheritance. These are not problems which are shared by patrilineal tribes, so that in Gham they are largely peculiar to the Akans, who constituted over 40% of t re total population in the 1948 Census of Population. But since cocoa i s to a considerable extent in t he hands of matrilineal peoples, they are among the wealthiest sections of the nation, and a large proportion of Ghanaian business enterprise certainly springs from them.