Development Dreams and Economic Realities

Independence brought high hopes for rapid development. Many new governments pursued state-led strategies: building dams, roads, schools and universities, and promoting local industry by restricting imports, a policy called import substitution. Some kept colonial-era marketing boards that bought crops from farmers at low fixed prices and used the surplus to fund development, which critics argue discouraged farmers. Most new states depended on exporting a few commodities, such as cocoa, copper or sugar, leaving them vulnerable when world prices fell.

The oil shocks of the 1970s and rising interest rates led to a debt crisis in the 1980s, after which many accepted IMF and World Bank 'structural adjustment' programs requiring spending cuts and market reforms. Explanations for uneven results differ: some stress colonial legacies and an unfair world economy, others domestic policy choices and governance. Economists often note that Ghana and South Korea had broadly similar incomes per person around 1960, but very different paths afterward.