Changing land and labour relations on cocoa farms in Sefwi, Ghana: Continuity and change

Abstract

Ever since the late 1880s when cocoa began to be grown commercially in Ghana, land and labour has been mobilized to expand the area under cocoa trees and cultivate the crop. The first cocoa farmers ingeniously used and adapted existing social norms for land acquisition and recruitment of labour from both the extended family and from migrants. The resulting development of cocoa was a remarkable story of African innovation and enterprise that made the then Gold Coast one of the most prosperous parts of Africa by the mid-twentieth century. We look at how land and labour has been mobilized for cocoa in Sefwi, western Ghana, from the start of cocoa growing in the region in the 1940s through to 2019. We ask what current norms are, how they have evolved, and why changes to them have been made. Changes in land and labour relations in the area have not followed the linear evolutionary theory of land tenure change neither have they remained as unique immutable customary structures. We note a flexible, reversible and highly pragmatic logic in tandem with the ruling exigencies that account for patterns of change over time.