Member-only story
“Blood” Economic Recovery
By Nana Dadzie Ghansah
Sources: K. Ewusi, Statistical Tables on the Economy of Ghana, 1986
It was already evident towards the end of the Nkrumah government that the Ghanaian economy was struggling. The World Bank recommended a devaluation of the Cedi. If Nkrumah planned to, he never got the chance. He was overthrown in 1966. Busia was finally the one who got to order it in 1971. This 44% devaluing of the Cedi was his undoing. It was one of the reasons Kutu Acheampong gave for usurping the government of the 2nd Republic.
The Ghanaian economy continued its nosedive through the NRC and SMC eras. The blowback from Acheampong’s “Yentua” policy, droughts in the 1970s, drop in prices of our exports, the oil crisis, and Kalabule all helped to take the economy lower and inflation higher. The ever-expanding role of the government in the economy did not help.
By the time shots rang out in Accra on June 4, 1979, things were economically dire. Rawlings continued with the military habit of regulating the economy in his short reign of terror from June till September. Even worse, he saw the private sector as the enemy. The razing down of the Mokola market epitomizes this perfectly.
If the economic situation President Hilla Limann inherited when he took office on September 24, 1979, was nothing short of dire, it managed to get even worse over the next two years.
Among other things, due to overvalued…
