The Ghana Case — Testing a Neo-classical Version

Until comparatively recently it was a commonly held view that West Africa in the pre-colonial period was a stagnant economy with a subsistence type of primitive agriculture totally dominating the pattern of output.1 Recent research has revealed instead that innovation and some technical change, extensive internal and external trade flows, and even an indigenous monetary system using local currencies with some of the attributes of ‘modern’ moneys, featured in pre-colonial West Africa.2 The forest regions of the south participated in long-distance trade even before the coming of the Europeans in the sixteenth century. Mande merchants from the Sudan were arriving to buy gold-dust and kola nuts as early as 1300. In exchange they provided the types of goods — horses, cattle, cutlasses, cloth and beads — which appealed to the rulers of the powerful kingdoms in the south, for long-distance trade at this time was essentially a ‘royal enterprise’ and most of the gold and kola nuts had been received by the chiefs in the form of tributes.