Abstract

"Herbapreneurs: Entrepreneurialism, Creativity, and the Rise of 'Modern' Traditional Healers in Ghana"

Richard Adjei, Johns Hopkins University (rich.lion1995@gmail.com)

This paper examines how Ghanaian herbalists sought legitimacy from the public beginning in the 1980s. It considers key innovations and adaptations that have characterized the work of traditional healers since this period. The early 1990s witnessed the proliferation of ‘herbapreneurs,’ private individuals who applied entrepreneurial and innovative skills to the practice of herbal medicine. I argue that these individuals precipitated the ‘commercial turn’ in the history of traditional medicine by establishing herbal centres, clinics, and hospitals. While rooting their therapeutic practices in indigenous healing, they embraced new ideas and methods that positioned them as both traditional and modern. These herbapreneurs also leveraged technological advances and innovations in the preparation, processing, and storage of their medicinal products to broaden their appeal and forge new forms of legitimacy. Through a microhistory of one of these facilities, this paper explores the factors that led to its establishment and changes in the moral economy of traditional medicine. Within the cultural and moral cosmology of the Akan, for example, traditional healers were not expected to directly exchange their services for money, even though clients were morally obligated to show gratitude to their healers. Accordingly, this paper examines how traditional medicine has evolved from a non-profitable institution to a highly commercialized one in the neoliberal era. Relatedly, I interrogate how this commercialisation is impacting access to traditional medicine and what it means for Ghanaians who are financially or systematically unable to afford biomedicine. Drawing on newspapers and the perspectives of founders, workers, and users of some of these herbapreneurial facilities, the paper highlights how ideas and technologies move across medical systems and how healers imbue these ideas and technologies with meanings, functions, and significance.