Paper short abstract:

Global supply chains require mass infrastructure investment. This built environment was foundational to colonial projects; today it shapes these export economies through its impact on urbanization. We see this in colonial railroads’ continued influence on Ghana’s cocoa production and urban growth.

Paper long abstract:

The built environment in an under-explored mechanism through which patterns of colonial export specialization persist in the Global South.

By building only the infrastructure needed to extract resources, placing it strategically to influence labor migration, and limiting access to its use (and thereby the export market), the British colonial project established key limitations to economic diversity that worked to their advantage.

Today’s tropical commodity chains are still affected by this history, including cocoa production in Ghana. Colonial rail projects in the country not only facilitated the export of cheap goods to British markets; they influenced labor patterns then and now through their impact on urban growth and the local economy.

Urban centers formed along these lines to support this new trade; however, further infrastructure to foster growth was not built in the country (Bremmer 2016). Instead, the British cocoa cartel suppressed transport and labor costs for colonial producers, hindered Ghanian entry to the market, and reinvested their profits in post-production infrastructure abroad (Howard 1948).

As a result, chocolate prices soared, while cocoa prices remained cheap: the growth produced by Brong Ahafo’s farmers benefitted Birmingham, more than Sunyani, Techiman, or Kumasi.

This pattern is not unique to Ghana: transportation planning designed to create underdevelopment was a hallmark of the British colonial project. Ghana’s case shows us the framework for this pattern and sheds light on the mechanisms furthering today’s export dependance.