Abstract

""Only Legally Authorized Dealers": Business Publics in Ghana's Economic Landscape, 1960s-1990s"

Christabel Agyeiwaa, University of California, Santa Barbara (agyeiwaa@ucsb.edu)

With Africa’s rich economic and business past, African business history has often focused on transatlantic slave economies, large European firms, and agricultural production. In recent times, Africanist have shown a new interest in African consumer history. However, discussions on secondhand business in Africa remain understudied. In 1969, at a moment of economic and political turmoil in Ghana, the Ghana National Association of Motor Dealers and Repairers called on the government to ban “aliens,” such as Syrians, Lebanese and Nigerians from trading in secondhand motor spare parts, used cars and running mechanical shops in the country. The association urged the government to recognize its members as “the only legally authorized dealers in secondhand vehicles trade in Ghana” (Daily Graphic, 1969). The call by the Ghana National Association of Motor Dealers and Repairers signifies the pressure mounted on the Ghanaian government to promote the indigenization of the economy. The dominance of foreigners in secondhand businesses marked the influx of secondhand goods in Ghana and controversies that characterized the secondhand business by the mid-twentieth century. Secondhand markets became spaces where ideas about race, citizenship, gender and cultural differences were constructed and reinforced.
This paper focuses on secondhand businesses in Ghana from the 1960s to 1990s. It argues that secondhand businesses and associations acted as economic and social networks that protected their members, while at the same time safeguarding the indigenization of the local economy. In promoting the interests of Ghanaian entrepreneurs, this paper shows how doing business with a public interest is shaped by questions of race, citizenship, gender, and power.