The Role of Cocoa in the growth and Spatial Organization of Accra (Ghana) Prior to 1921

Extract

At the present time, Accra--eighty years the seat of Gold Coast administration, and fifteen years the capital of an independent Ghana--stands atop an urban system that is relatively well developed by Black African standards. In several years the municipal population will reach the million mark, notwithstanding the fact that less than 5 per cent of the labor force is employed in modern manufacturing industries. Unlike most large cities in the West which expanded in response to the needs of industry, Accra grew despite a dearth of secondary industries. Foremost among its competitive advantages during the colonial period were its traditional role as a port, its administrative importance as a political capital, and its fortuitous location vis-à-vis the earliest cocoa-producing districts. It is proposed that this latter advantage was the primary determinant of the urban growth and spatial organization of Accra during the second decade of the present century, a seminal phase in its commercial development.

In this paper I would like to discuss the impact of the early years of the cocoa trade, first, on Accra in relation to the emerging urban system and, second, on the changing pattern of commercial land use within the town. Most of the discussion refers to those years between 1908, when the first significant cocoa exports occurred, and 1921, by which time the townscape of Accra clearly displayed the impress of the cocoa trade. During this brief but eventful period the economic shock waves released by the revolutionary new crop set up a condition of disequilibrium within the colonial space-economy. Centers, such as Accra, which serviced the cocoa trade flourished, while many other languished. The paper focuses, then, on cocoa as a primary influence on the economic geography of Accra, at a time when its leadership in the urban hierarchy was being consolidated.