Michael Tribe

What could Development Studies be

Over the past 10–15 years there has been an expansion of interest in the subject of Development Studies (DS). There are now significantly more taught courses focused on DS, and research funds are booming. However, over the same period, DS has faced sustained critiques about its essential nature. This has led us to ask: what is Development Studies? And what could or should it be?

Poverty and Inequality

While issues of resource allocation are important as regards to economic growth, how income is distributed among the people is also a matter of concern. In particular, following the period of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which ended in 2015, the UN has now adopted a new set of agenda called the “Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” to be achieved during the years 2015–2030, specifically aiming to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all as part of a new development initiative. Each of the 17 goals adopted identifies a specific target to be achieved over the next 15 years. While the UN expects everyone including governments, the private sector and civil society to play their part in achieving these goals, there is a particular pressure on the governments of developing countries, especially those with high levels of poverty, to deal seriously with the issues of poverty and income distribution.

Energy and Water

This chapter will focus particularly on the energy and water sub-sectors in the industrial sector of the economy. The discussion will not delve deeply into the economic characteristics and performance of the sub-sectors due to limitations of space, but it will aim to review their development over the last few decades. In the sections dealing with the energy sub-sector the focus will mainly be on woodfuel/charcoal and electricity which means that oil/gas will be excluded except in the introductory overview. It is clear that oil/gas developments are of the utmost importance to the Ghana economy, but the issues involved are so complex that it was decided to omit detailed consideration. Some aspects of the oil/gas industry are included in Chap. 8 dealing with mining and the minerals sub-sector, and others are included in Chap. 12 covering international trade. There will be some overlap with matters which are also dealt with in the chapter covering environment (Chap. 17) but this will be kept to a minimum. There is an appendix to this chapter which provides some historical background to the Akosombo hydroelectric project and its links to bauxite and alumina mining and processing operations.

A General Overview

This book aims to make a further contribution to our study of the development of the economy of Ghana. The earlier volume—The Economy of Ghana: The First 25 Years Since Independence (Huq, 1989)—examined the economic progress of the country since independence in 1957 up to the early 1980s. This volume takes forward the story to the present, thus enabling us to cover a period of over five decades.

Industry: A Broad Overview

The term ‘industry’ has a number of different meanings, not least when contrasting colloquial or conversational meanings with more precise economic definitions within national income accounting conventions. The ‘industrial sector’ in national income accounting terms, according to the United Nations International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC), refers to manufacturing, mining and quarrying, construction, electricity, gas and water supply (including waste management) (UN, 2008, pp. 275–276, Table 4.2). However, within discussion of ‘industrialisation’ the meaning often tends to be restricted only to the manufacturing sector.

Transport and Communications

The development of infrastructural facilities in the form of transport and communications systems, energy, water supply, health and education is a necessary precondition for investment in directly productive activities such as agriculture and manufacturing. The importance of social and economic overhead capital was emphasised by Adam Smith, who argued that it was the duty of the state to erect and maintain those public institutions and those public works which, though they may be in the highest degree advantageous to a great society, are, however, of such a nature, that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, and which it therefore cannot be expected that any individual or small number of individuals should erect or maintain (Smith, 1976 and 1950, p. 244).

Policies and Reforms: A Historical Overview

Over the last several decades of Ghana’s economic development, as considered in this study, two distinctly different economic strategies have been pursued by the government of the country. There existed some form of economic planning even before Ghana’s independence in 1957 and, over the years, government controls in resource allocation became marked, particularly so during the late 1970s and early 1980s. But, with the Economic Recovery Programme (ERP), initiated in 1983, a diametrically opposite policy regime was instituted. With the ERP, there began implementation of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) under close supervision by the IMF and the World Bank.

Banking and Finance

Money and credit have many functions in an economy, but from the point of view of economic development, their role in financing agriculture, industry, commerce and other activities is vital. Working as intermediaries, the banking and finance institutions play a major role in raising savings and investment and this role is, obviously, of great importance in developing countries, where both these functions need to be strengthened for faster economic growth.

The Services Sector

For several decades the world has been witnessing a major structural change in economies with the services sector expanding rapidly as a proportion of both GDP and employment. This change can be observed in virtually all countries, both developed and developing, although the change is particularly marked for developed countries. This raises the question of what precisely the services sector consists of and what role it has in the economy and in economic growth and development.

Achieving Macroeconomic Stability

Following the preceding two chapters which focussed on economic policy and reform and on the growth and structure of the economy, this chapter considers core macroeconomic issues in the Ghanaian economy, with particular attention to the period after April 1983 when the first Economic Recovery Programme (ERP) was launched. This period has seen a remarkable recovery of the economy and the establishment of what appears to be sustained economic growth at levels historically high (for both Ghana and sub-Saharan Africa).