In 2007, Ghana started a new chapter with the strike of oil. John Kufuor, the president at the time,
saw Ghana change into an ‘African tiger. He told the BBC: ‘Even without oil, we are doing so well...
With oil as a shot in the arm, we’re going to fly’.1 Ghanian’s growth rates are expected to double as
a consequence of the new oil industry.2 The management of such a rich natural resource is a great
challenge for the government. The big question is what the consequences will be on the long
term. Will the transport industry improve because of the workers who need to be transported to
the new industry? Will the agriculture grow because of the workers who need to eat? Will market
women profit because of the new flows of money? Or will the consequences be more negative?
Traffic jams are already growing, houses are more expensive and only the young educated people
get jobs in the oil industry. The coming years will have to tell whether Ghana will be able to deal
with the richness of oil, or whether it will fall into the resource curse.
The questions above are all closely related to the development of Ghana and
globalization. Different parties are involved, such as the local people living in harbor cities, the
regional governments and international companies. All these forces have their own interests and
need to be organized in a sustainable way. In order to do this, political, economic and socialcultural
issues need to be addressed. Good governance is needed to unite the different interests
and to assure that the local people profit from the oil revenue’s. The oil industry is likely to become
an important part of the GDP, which will probably take off pressure from other industries. The local
people are in a dualistic position where on the one hand they can profit from the growing
economic activity, but on the other hand they can become victim of increased prices and
environmental damage. Again, the government has the important task to make sure that the whole
country profits from the industry. The local people should be reached in order to prevent extreme
inequality. This can be done through social projects such as schools, health clinics and hospitals
and a better infrastructure.
Not only the present policies are of great influence, the historical development is equally
important. If the oil was found soon after independence the expectations would presumably have
been far more pessimistic. In the unstable political situation of the 1960s and 1970s the resource
curse would have been almost inevitable. This paper will further assess the historical development
of Ghana since independence. This will be done by means of the main question:
To what extend can Ghana’s development process be placed in the theoretical framework of
development studies?
This question will be answered through four chapters. The first chapter will address the different
development theories. Within development thinking there are four main models which determine
the debate about policy-making. The first of these models is the classical-traditional approach
which is mainly based on a top-down structure in which developing countries can make up
arrears by imitating developed countries. The second model is the historical approach, it focusses
on the mercantile model which goes back to the period of colonialism. The third model is thedependency approach, which puts an emphasis on the gap between developed and developing
countries and on how developing countries should not just copy the developed-countries-model.
The last model, the alternative approach, examines a variety of approaches which are relatively
new and focus on bottom-up development and participation of the local people.3
The second chapter will examine the history of Ghana. A combination of political and
economic issues have caused some crisis, but Ghana has developed into a stable democratic
country. This chapter will look more closely to the elements which have made Ghana the country it
is present day. The third chapter will treat the factor endowments and comparative advantage of
Ghana. The factor endowments, capital, labor and land, play an important role in the actual
development process since they determine the strengths of the country. The presence of capital
to invest, educated people to work, and natural resources to export, determine to a great extend
the possibilities of the country to develop. The comparative advantage of Ghana will further help
the country to focus on its strengths in order to achieve economic growth. The final chapter will
discuss the development policies that have been followed, the ideas behind those policies, how
these policies have been executed and the results of these policies.
All these different components of Ghana’s development will lead to a better
understanding of Ghana’s development process and how this process can be fitted in the
theoretical framework.