A Little Ghanaian History Lesson

(Brady)Today is officially our one month anniversary of being in Ghana. In honor of our anniversary, I thought it would be nice to give you a little background on Ghana. Ghana is considered the gateway to Africa, and is currently one of the few democratic countries in Africa.

Ghana originally got its independence from Britain in 1957. At the time, Ghana was the world's leading producer of cocoa and their economy was relatively stable. However, the Ghanaian president decided to gamble and take the country in a different direction. Using cocoa revenues as collateral, the president took out massive amounts of loans to establish other industries that he hoped would boost the economy. Unfortunately, the price of cocoa collapsed in the mid-1960s, destroying the economy and leaving Ghana with massive debts they could not repay. Wide-scale corruption didn’t help either. The president was later overthrown, but the country was already basically bankrupt.

Since then, Ghana has been crippled with foreign debt. By the early 1980s, Ghana's economy was in an advanced state of collapse. Gross domestic product (GDP) showed negative growth throughout the entire decade of the 1960s and 1970s!! FYI – a recession is defined as 6 months of falling GDP. Can you image falling GDP for 20 years! That is far worse than the great depression that America experienced in the 1930's. In addition, the country production of precious minerals tanked and inflation averaged more than 50 percent a year between 1976 and 1981!!

Since then, things have gradually improved in the country, mostly due to aid from developed countries. The average income for a Ghanaian is still only about $500 a year! The majority of the country is very rural; as electricity and running water is rare. The education system is consider to be above average by African standards, and that says a lot about other parts of Africa.

Daily Update: We have arrived at the Cape Coast for our "vacation". We plan to stay for a few days and do some sight- seeing. We will try to post some good pics!