Small town development in the Ghanaian cocoa frontier

Abstract

This chapter deals with urbanisation processes in a predominantly rural area of Ghana, far from the major urban centres. For more than a century, cocoa production has been one of the most important factors determining migration patterns and settlement development in rural Ghana. As cocoa production expanded through the forest areas of southern Ghana, migrant farmers and labourers followed cocoa to its new sites. In the new cocoa frontiers, old settlements expanded and new settlements were established to house the migrants. The same process has also occurred in Ghana’s current cocoa frontier in the Western Region. The Western Region emerged as the new Ghanaian cocoa frontier in the 1960s and 1970s, and since the 1990s it has accounted for around half of Ghana’s total cocoa output (Fold, 2004; Gockowski, 2007). Over time, some of the frontier settlements have reached a population size qualifying them to be regarded as urban areas or small towns. Other settlements, however, have stagnated, hardly changing in size or function.