Collapsing banks and the cost of finance capitalism in Ghana

SUMMARY

This briefing explains Ghana’s recent banking sector failures and renewed debt crisis as consequences of its uneven and deleterious integration into the global capitalist financial system, a situation that critical scholars in international political economy call international financial subordination.

KEYWORDS:

• Capitalism
• debt
• financialisation
• Ghana

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Professor Ray Bush for his kind editorial guidance, to the reviewers for their comments and to Dr Jörg Wiegratz for his comments on an earlier draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA) estimates (as reported in Africa Eye Report 2020) the figure to be 42,850 for both direct and indirect jobs. iWatch Africa only estimated direct job losses at 6000, a figure confirmed by Fact Check Ghana.

Additional information

Funding

This article is the outcome of research conducted within the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany's Excellence Strategy – EXC 2052/1 – 390713894.

Notes on contributors

Isaac Abotebuno Akolgo

Isaac Abotebuno Akolgo is a PhD candidate and junior fellow at the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, University of Bayreuth. He is currently completing his dissertation on the political economy of money and finance in postcolonial Ghana.