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The Ghana Reader by Kwasi Konadu and Clifford C. Campbell
The Ghana Reader by Kwasi Konadu and Clifford C. Campbell
The Ghana Reader by Kwasi Konadu and Clifford C. Campbell
GHANA
READER
Hi story, Cultur e, Poli t ics
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
xiii
Introduction
“We put ourselves under the protection of . . . the [local] king and the vice-
roy, and the next day . . . we set about to begin our sales. . . . The mer-
chants in this country were alerted to our arrival, and then we saw [them
make] their way down from the hills and came to buy our goods,” wrote a
Flemish-speaking merchant who traveled to the Gold Coast (present-day
Ghana) around 1479–80.1 Unlike in most of the Americas, the encounter be-
tween the region that became Ghana and Europe was not one of conquest
and colonization; rather, it was one where European nationals competed
with each other for the good favor and “protection” of indigenous leaders
and merchants at a time when the commerce that brought Europe to West
Africa was based on gold. Europeans found a vast territory of forests and la-
goons connected by the politics of commercial and social networks, peoples
residing in sophisticated social and cultural orders and skilled in the arts of
trade, agriculture, and gold mining. Gold, in the minds of the interlopers,
become shorthand for the region, hence, the Gold Coast. Centuries later,
the global trade in gold would be eclipsed by the trafficking in human cap-
tives and then a cash crop economy centered almost exclusively on cocoa
and other commercially viable resources. Today gold is still a valuable com-
modity as one of Ghana’s largest exports, but the nation of Ghana is also
known throughout the world by another commodity that shines—their na-
tional soccer team, the Black Stars.
The name “Black Stars” comes directly from pan-A fricanist Marcus Gar-
vey and his well-intentioned but ill-fated Black Star Line shipping enterprise,
which sought to demonstrate, against the prevailing racism and economic
injustice of his time, that (diasporic) Africans could manage their own affairs
and compete with others on the world economic stage. Inspired by Garvey,
Ghana’s first prime minister and president, Kwame Nkrumah, not only con-
solidated local unrest into a nationalist movement for independence from
British colonial rule, but also sought to strengthen its pan-A fricanist posi-
tion and unify the various peoples of emergent Ghana through a national
soccer team—the Black Stars. Soccer, therefore, has not so much surpassed
the commercial and cultural endowments of Ghana as it has consolidated
1
2 Introduction
the identity and resources of a nation that increased its global stock with
each Black Stars victory in the team’s widely noted performance in the 2010
world cup of soccer.
In the world of sports and for an event that occurs every four years, 2010
is old news. So why invoke Ghana’s performance in the 2010 fifa World
Cup? We use soccer, which both unifies and divides Ghana, as an appropri-
ate metaphor for the larger hopes and disappointments a continent and the
world outside of it has and continues to invest in Ghana and its resources,
and to foreground Ghana’s pan-A frican legacy, its partnership with the
United States and Eurasia, and its relations to diasporic groups within and
outside its borders. The 2010 World Cup brought all these factors into focus,
precisely because it was the first time an African nation hosted the “world’s
game” since 1930 and because the host South African team was eliminated
in the first round, allowing African and world spectators to shift their atten-
tion to the Black Stars—not as Ghana’s national team, but as Africa’s team.
En route to the quarterfinals, the Ghanaian team defeated the U.S. national
team for the second time and looked poised to be the first African team to
reach the finals—with all of (diasporic) Africa behind it! But this moment
was not entirely new: Ghana has served, on several critical occasions, as
a barometer for Africa and an inspiration to Africa’s and Ghana’s diaspora
in the Americas and in Europe. Ultimately, two European teams advanced
to the finals, but the important point here is not Ghana’s disastrous exit
from the competition after a blown penalty kick; rather, it is that Ghana
achieved global visibility on the geopolitical map, highlighting her estab-
lished status as a strategic international partner of Europe, India, China,
and the United States. Barack Obama’s much-publicized first presidential
trip to Africa—or Ghana, to be exact—further projected Ghana as a “model
democracy,” and thanks to its relative political stability, Ghana has served
strategic military interests for the United States and as a West African base
for a myriad of multinational corporations and nongovernmental organiza-
tions. In addition, North American– and European-based oil prospectors
continue their search for and consolidation of oil resources discovered off
the Ghanaian coastline, while Chinese entrepreneurs seek out new markets
in Ghana for “African” textile products and engage in (illegal) gold mining.
Both its stability and its oil have once again placed the Gold Coast / Ghana
in a global economic order not of its own making or choosing, with all of
Africa and the world watching their performance.
Since the days of the trans-Saharan trade network from West and North
Africa to the lands bordering the Mediterranean and the commerce cen-
tered on the Atlantic, the Gold Coast / Ghana has been an active participant
Introduction 3
in international commerce, politics, and culture, whether the contribution
is gold, human captives, cocoa, kente cloth, or pan-A fricanism, diasporic
culture and politics, or the former secretary general of the United Nations,
Kofi Annan. In short, the overarching theme throughout Ghana’s history
and more or less throughout The Ghana Reader is the enormous symbolic
and pragmatic value Ghana continues to have in global relations relative
to its size and place. Of course, taken together, the snapshot of Ghana as a
democratic, oil-bearing, and soccer-playing power in West Africa has an ar-
ray of uneven consequences. For one, many in Ghana view the possession
of oil (“black gold”) as both a blessing and a burden that regional states like
Nigeria have managed poorly, and much of the potential profits from oil
would find a home in North America and Europe—a historical condition all
too familiar to the former Gold Coast, when gold and human captives were
the principal commodities between Europe, West Africa, and the Americas.
Whether their country is a potential oil or soccer giant, Ghanaians view
their histories and themselves in diverse ways, and their hopes invested in
the Black Stars are no less conflicted than those invested in offshore oil, Pen-
tecostalism, diaspora tourism, or the “elite” tendency to send their children
to U.S. and European universities. Like most postcolonies, Ghana has had to
grapple with becoming a nation with many histories—indigenous, Islamic,
European, migrant African, and Asian—and the different meanings those
histories hold in a republic that has yet to adequately balance local, conti-
nental, and global concerns. Unlike most postcolonies, Ghana captures the
ills and aspirations of Africa; it has done so since 1957, when it became the
first sub-Saharan African nation to receive its political independence and
its leader, Kwame Nkrumah, articulated a continental vision of a unified
and sovereign Africa. But the abrupt end of Nkrumah’s tenure as president,
the coups that followed, the decline of Ghana’s pan-A fricanist tradition, and
the evolving self-understandings of its people underscore the fascinating yet
conflicted nature of the former “model colony” of Britain and the current
“model democracy” of the Western world. With all its cultural wealth, en-
dowed ecologies, and historic value, Ghana continually attracts scholars,
multinational corporations, Peace Corps and Fulbright participants, a bevy
of nongovernmental organizations, and study-abroad and postgraduate stu-
dents from Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Yet most who are transients
may not fully appreciate the intricate subtleties of Ghana’s peoples, their
cultural histories, or how their dialogue with global and local perspectives,
forces, and hopes unfold in their worlds. The editors hope The Ghana Reader
will facilitate that fuller appreciation for those who come to Ghana through
study or travel.
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area of detail
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