07/08/2022
The Development of Kwahu Business Enterprise in Ghana since 1874 - An Essay in Recent Oral Tradition.
Peter C. Garlick
Abstract:
The Kwahu, an Akan people living on the eastern border of Ashanti in Ghana, are well known for their business activities. An enquiry into the reasons for their predominance among the largest shopkeepers by turnover in Accra traced the history of Kwahu business activities back to the British-Ashanti War of 1874, when the Kwahu broke away from the Ashanti Confederacy.
The Kwahu trade with the north in slaves was replaced by the rubber trade, which continued until 1914. Rubber was carried to the coast for sale, and fish, salt, and imported commodities, notably cloth, were sold on the return journey north. Other Kwahu activities at this time included trading in local products and African beads.
The development of cocoa in south-eastern Ghana provided opportunities for enterprising Kwahu traders to sell there the imported goods obtained at the coast. Previously itinerant traders, the Kwahu began to settle for short periods in market towns.
In the 1920s, the construction of the railway from Accra to Kumasi, growing road transportation, and the establishment inland of branches of the European firms reduced the price differences which had made trading inland so profitable. In the 1930s the spread of the cocoa disease, swollen shoot, in the hitherto prosperous south-east, finally turned Kwahu traders' attention to Accra.
Trading remained the most prestigious of Kwahu activities, and young men sought by whatever means they could to save the necessary capital to establish a shop. But Kwahu traders very rarely developed beyond one-man businesses.
Profits were siphoned off into buildings and farms which would provide security for times of sickness and old age (In this respect the Kwahu are typical of Ghanaian entrepreneurs, with some exceptions). There is little evidence that this enterprising group of people can provide the new entrepreneurial organization or capital required by a developing country.
(The Journal of African History, 1967, 18 pages
Published By: Cambridge University Press.)
Photo credit: Yaw Pare Photography.
