Economies after Colonialism
Ghana and the Struggle for Power

Mapping Ghana's struggle to transform its economy after independence, this original interpretation highlights the economic difficulties associated with the political legacies of colonialism.

Lindsay Whitfield (Author)

9781108426145, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 June 2018

378 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.1 cm, 0.73 kg

'This book makes an exceptionally lucid and wide-ranging contribution to the literature the political economy of Ghanaian development, representing the distillation of over a decade of research by Whitfield on Ghana's puzzling lack of economic transformation. By examining the challenges to economic development in a country with a relatively positive trajectory of democratic governance, Whitfield's analysis resonates far beyond Ghana, raising crucial questions about how democracy and economic development might be achieved in tandem … This book is essential reading for all those concerned with understanding why structural transformation has proved such an intractable challenge in Ghana, and what this implies for the prospects for development in postcolonial African states more broadly.' Tom Goodfellow, University of Sheffield

Despite Ghana's strong democratic track record in recent decades, the economy remains underdeveloped. Industrial policies are necessary to transform the colonial trading economy that Ghana inherited at independence, but successive governments have been unwilling or unable to implement them. In this highly original interpretation, supported by new empirical material, Lindsay Whitfield exposes the reasons for why the Ghanaian economy remains underdeveloped and sets her theory in the wider African context. She offers a new way of thinking about the political economy of Africa that charts a clear path away from defining Africa in terms of neopatrimonial politics and that provides new conceptual tools for addressing what kind of business-state relations are necessary to drive economic development. As a study of Ghana that addresses both the economy and politics from early colonialism to the present day, this is a must-read for any student or scholar interested in the political economy of development in Africa.

1. Ghanaian political economy and the politics of industrial policy
2. Origins of competitive clientelism and weak domestic capitalists
3. Return to competitive clientelism in the fourth republic
4. Economic growth, but maintaining the colonial trading economy
5. Challenges to diversifying exports: accessing global markets and learning to learn
6. Challenges to modernizing agro-processing: struggles over inputs, organizing smallholders, and enforcing contracts
7. NPP government and the not so 'Golden Age of Business'
8. NDC II Government and managing the new oil wealth.

Subject Areas: Economic growth [KCG], Central government policies [JPQB], African history [HBJH]