INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the Study Ghana’s Economy has left an indelible imprint on the country’s social and political structures. Just as the presence of gold gave rise to the Asante confederacy and empire and attracted European traders and colonial rulers. Endowed with gold and oil palms and situated between the trans- Saharan trade routes and the African coastline visited by successive European traders, the area known today as Ghana has been involved in all phases of Africa’s economic development during the last thousand years. As the economic fortunes of African societies have waxed and waned, so, too, have Ghana’s, leaving that country in the early 1990s in a state of arrested development, unable to make the “leap” to Africa’s next, as yet uncertain, phase of economic evolution. As early as the thirteenth century, present-day Ghana was drawn into long-distance trade, in large part because of its gold reserves. The trans-Saharan trade, one of the most wide-ranging trading networks of pre-modern times, involved an exchange of European, North African, and Saharan commodities southward in exchange for the products of the African savannahs and forests, including gold, kola nuts, and slaves. Present-day Ghana, named the Gold Coast by European traders. When Ghana gained its independence from Britain in 1957, the economy appeared stable and prosperous. Ghana was the world’s leading producer of cocoa, boasted a welldeveloped infrastructure to service trade, and enjoyed a relatively advanced education system. At independence, President Kwame Nkrumah sought to use the apparent stability of the Ghanaian economy as a springboard for economic diversification and expansion. He began process of moving Ghana from a primarily agricultural economy to a mixed agricultural-industrial one. Using cocoa revenues as security, Nkrumah took out loans to establish industries that would produce import substitutes as well as process many of Ghana’s exports. Nkrumah’s plans were ambitious and grounded in the desire to reduce Ghana’s vulnerability to world trade. Unfortunately, the price of cocoa collapsed in the mid-1960s, destroying the fundamental stability of the economy and making it nearly impossible for Nkrumah to continue his plans. Pervasive corruption exacerbated these problems. In 1966 a group of military officers overthrew Nkrumah and inherited a nearly bankrupt country. By the early 1980s, Ghana’s economy was in an advanced state of collapse. Per capita gross domestic product (GDP) showed negative growth throughout the 1960s and fell by 3.2 per cent per year from 1970 to 1981. Most important was the decline in cocoa production, which fell by half between the mid-1960s and the late 1970s, drastically reducing Ghana’s share of the world market from about one-third in the early 1970s to only one-eighth in 1982- 83. At the same time, mineral production fell by 32 per cent; gold production declined by 47 per cent, diamonds by 67 per cent, manganese by 43 per cent, and bauxite by 46 per cent. Inflation averaged more than 50 per cent a year between 1976 and 1981, hitting 116.5 per cent in 1981. Real minimum wages dropped from an index of 75 in 1975 to one of 15.4 in 1981.