Christer Gunnarsson

Ghana’s Recurrent Miracle: Cocoa Cycles and Deficient Structural Change

Chapter 5 examines potentials and obstacles to productivity growth and structural change in an African “miracle” economy, Ghana. The focus is on an examination of long-term growth in the cocoa industry. The history of the cocoa industry exhibits a pattern of recurrent booms and busts with episodes of great economic success followed by long periods of stagnation and decline. This chapter investigates whether the structure of the industry in the current boom may be undergoing a process of change or if the drivers of growth are similar to those prevailing in an earlier expansion a hundred years ago. If the recent boom is driven by land expansion and increased use of labour rather than by productivity growth doubts can indeed be raised about the sustainability of Ghanaian cocoa production.