Education in Northern Ghana, 1906-1940: A Study in Colonial Paradox

Abstract

Colonial rule in Africa commonly featured different administrative policies pursued toward different areas within a particular territory. In West Africa, the boundary was usually between the coast, which had a long history of direct contact with Europe, and the hinterland areas, which had been annexed late in the nineteenth century and had experienced little such contact. Often the latter seemed to the colonial administrations to offer opportunities for controlled change through the agency of supposedly unspoiled traditional institutions. In the Protectorate of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, this was the theory that prevailed.2 The Northern Territories was an area which offered little in the way of profitably exportable crops or minerals, not least because of transport difficulties. In the absence of profound economic pressures, the major potential force for social change became the activities of missionaries in proselytism and education, and the government's own provision for education. Throughout the period under consideration, however, the government kept a tight rein on educational development and general missionary activity in an endeavor to maintain the power of traditional institutions. This policy meant that the protectorate suffered, as it has continued to suffer, from serious educational disadvantages compared with Ashanti and the Colony to the south.3 Administratively, the protectorate was regarded as a separate unit, with a distinct rate of social and political development. The government failed to foresee the possibility that the protectorate would become part of a national unit involving the need for the development of a national educated group whose members could

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