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A Conglomerate in Africa: Public-Sector Manufacturing Enterprises in Ghana, 1962-1971
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 May 2014
Extract
After gaining their independence, African countries followed various industrialization policies. Kenya and Tanzania, up to the Arusha Declaration in February 1967, pursued industrialization via private enterprises. Uganda and Nigeria followed a mixed pattern, that is, investments by both private and public enterprises; Ghana, since 1961 and up to the coup in February 1966 by the National Liberation Council (NLC) that ousted Nkrumah, relied primarily on public-enterprise investment (see also Grayson 1970, 1971ab, 1972).
Ghana started out along the Kenya and pre-Arusha Tanzania pattern, both before independence, with Nkrumah already in power, and after independence (in 1957) up till 1961. During that period Nkrumah set out to create an investment climate favorable to both private foreign and local capital. It was only after 1961 that Nkrumah embarked on large-scale public investments in manufacturing. (For an account of the political climate in the early 1960's, see Genoud 1969.) Aside from ideological leanings and a desire for prestige, the main economic considerations motivating Nkrumah were (1) his judgment that Ghanaian entrepreneurs were unable or unwilling to enter the modern manufacturing sector and (2) to break the economic power of the large foreign firms operating in Ghana.
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- Copyright © African Studies Association 1973
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