Economy and Health in the Gold Coast, 1902–1957

Abstract

The economy and health of populations have had inextricable relationships over time. Prior to colonisation, the environment of the Gold Coast like other places within the tropics of Africa was tagged as the “graveyard of the White man” due to its environmental vulnerability to diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, dysentery and sleeping sickness among others. In this regard, scholars have argued that colonisation did not only lead to the exploitation of the resources of Africa and the Gold Coast in particular, but it also led to the enhancement of public health. Essentially, the British Colonial Administration put measures in place to check common diseases that disturbed the people of the Gold Coast. The study therefore pays attention to the extent of disease burden on the adult working population in Gold Coast. The paper also examines how same colonial occurrences influenced the post-independence government of Ghana and Nkrumah’s administration in particular. Secondly, tying economic status to health and well-being, the study concludes with an analysis of how such public health interventions had the propensity to impact on the social and economic well-being of the people of Gold Coast, with specific emphasis on Accra and Kumase during the 1950s.