Nkrumah, Cocoa, and the United States: The Vision of an Industrial Nation-State.

Abstract

Nkrumah’s vision of creating an industrialized Ghanaian economy hinged on the new Akosombo hydroelectric dam, which Nkrumah viewed as key to his industrialization scheme. The dam would be financed primarily by American interests, a country very much at the centre of Nkrumah’s formative experiences as an intellectual. The cost of this scheme was to be borne by the cocoa industry. While Nkrumah appreciated the cash cow that was cocoa, he was ambivalent about its pre-modern infrastructure and the dominance of small family farms, which he considered inadequate as a driving force for his industrialization schemes. The balance between agriculture and industry, and the role of smallholder farmers have remained perennial issues in Africa’s developmental agenda. Nkrumah’s policies undercut the cocoa industry, though the results would not be evident until the 1970s, as Ghana declined as the world’s leading producer of cocoa and the Ivory Coast emerged as the premier producer. Nkrumah’s state-led industrialization scheme was not successful either, leaving Ghana handicapped in both its agricultural and industrial sectors. What are the lessons for the present and future?