“Where nothing was before”: (re)producing population and place in Ghana's Volta River Project

Abstract

Significant infrastructural projects, and especially large hydroelectric dams, were envisioned and deployed by postcolonial governments to promote particular visions of industrialization, agriculture, democracy, and modernity. Newly independent states sought to annihilate formerly so-called backward and primitive landscapes and populations alike, promising to re-create both places and people as rational, economically productive entities. In this article, we re-examine such narratives as they related to Ghana's Volta River Project (VRP). Relying on archival and media sources between the 1950s and 1960s, we interrogate the Ghanaian state's pursuit of the VRP from a perspective rooted firmly in cultural geography and pay careful attention to the issues of population displacement/resettlement and landscape reconfiguration that permeated all dimensions of the project. We analyze the ways in which Ghanaian leaders used the VRP to translate a particular suite of cultural, economic, and political values into material reality, utilizing the techniques of displacement and population resettlement in efforts to enroll Ghana into a modern, global, industrial economic system. As such, this article augments the body of literature examining the modernist and state-building aspects of the VRP as well as studies critiquing the various processes of development that have unfolded in West Africa since the mid-twentieth century.

Keywords:

• dams
• development
• infrastructure
• place
• resettlement
• Volta River Project

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the staff of The National Archives of Ghana for their access and hospitality; Bernard Woma for his assistance in obtaining archival access; and Praise Atikpui Djabeng for revealing the lingering impacts of the Akosombo Dam. The authors also would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this manuscript and editor Alyson Greiner for their time and input.

Notes

1. Documents analyzed included those from the Industrial Development Corporation; Economic Planning Commission; Development of the Volta River Basin; Volta River Authority Magazine; the VRP: Statement by the Government of Ghana; Volta River Resettlement; State Opening of Parliament 1965 Session Address by Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah to the National Assembly; Ghana Seven-year Plan (1963/64–1969/70); and revised draft 10-year plan for the economic and social development of the Gold Coast 1950–1960.

Additional information

Funding

Research contributing to this publication was supported by various sources from Michigan State University, including the Department of Geography, the College of Social Sciences, and centers of International Studies and Programs.