historyanalysisMIT News1897–1957 · Ghana
In postcolonial Ghana, a fresh start but not a blank slate
When Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African state to win independence, in 1957, it inherited a civil service that was already far from merit-based. Researchers matched the names of 11,702 colonial civil servants from 1897 to 1955 to ethnic groups, using 13.8 million modern voter names and census data. The Ga and Fante, together 14 percent of the population, held over 70 percent of public-sector jobs, roughly five times their share. Civil service exam results barely predicted who was hired, and education did not explain the gap: by the 1930s other groups had caught up in schooling yet still got far fewer posts.
Names carry ethnic signals. By mapping which surnames are common in which areas today, researchers estimated the likely ethnicity of historical employees listed in British archives, then compared group shares of jobs with shares of the population, exam scores and school access.
Many historians have blamed patronage in African states on post-independence leaders. This evidence suggests the first president, Kwame Nkrumah, inherited a system already run on ethnic and social ties rather than destroying a neutral one. It helps explain why competition over state jobs became ethnic politics from the start.
Colonial states elsewhere also left institutions that new governments adapted rather than rebuilt, from India's civil service to Nigeria's. Historical continuity in how states hire and distribute jobs is a recurring finding in political science.
Ghana took its name from the medieval Ghana Empire of West Africa, though that empire lay far to the northwest of modern Ghana.
