Ghana

To understand the cause and root of poverty is to understand the interrelationship among different bases for it. .
             The Gold Coast Colony was officially established in 1874 by the British, but long before that the Europeans had started to exploit this land. In 1471, the Portuguese first arrived in the area where it is known as the Gold Coast today, and at the beginning they were more interested in trading for gold, ivory and pepper. Later, as the Europeans found slave trade more profitable, it became the principal export of this area. Therefore, when Ghana gained its independence in 1957, it had actually suffered from the economic exploitation of colonialists for nearly five hundreds years, although it had been under the colonial rule for only eighty-three years. Colonialism is a political system based on economic exploitation and domination; it puts the profit of the colonist country in the first place regardless of the profit of the region under colonial rule. Thus, it has had a negative impact on Ghana's economy due to its exploitive nature. Three basic factors form the assumption that the colonial development method is one of the roots of Ghana's poverty today. .
             First, Ghana's underdeveloped economy today can be greatly attributed to the regionally skewed distribution of colonial development. When developing the colonial region, the colonists had little consideration for the development of the country itself; thus, the region outside of the colonial region was totally disregarded. This can be illustrated by the infrastructure that was built during colonial period. Infrastructure, notably roads and railways, was only opened to satisfy the need of the export/import activities. All of them led down to the sea. There were only some exceptions that were built to move troops to make oppression easier. There is little transportation between the region that is not under colonial development and the coastal trading centers.