Ghana Nkrumah (continued)

Nkrumah attempted to rapidly industrialize Ghna' economy. he set up state owned companies and public utilities, ostensibly to providesome basic needs of the the people.But the lack of democratic management and control of companies by working people bred mismanagement and corruption that crippled the initiatives.These state run compnies not only failed to largely achieve their objectives, they became a curse rather than a blessing.

Nkrumah took much more promising economy and basically destroyed it. because he adopted the policy that the British had initiated for their colonial interest. Not only that he, himself, created many worst attempts to maintain his overall powers, and gradually became a dictator.

In the economic sector , a prosperous industry, production of cacao (cocoa) was grown since 1870 by the utmost labor of the farmers. Since the amount of cacaothat was out on the market at any time was the result of uncoordinated decisionsof small-scale farmers , the price fluctuated substantially. The government marketing board could buy the cacao from the farmers and carefully control when it was marketed and thus maintain a steady price.

when Nkrumah came to power he had large reserves of funds and a cacao industrythat was generating more funds. He decided to undertake a programme of industrialisation on a massive scale and took the cacao industry as the big push for industrialisation.

Multi-year plans were drawn up and investments undertaken.For example, a shoe industrywas to be created. This required a leather industry which required adequate levels of productionin the cattle industry. The only problem was that the economic planning got muddledup with political decision making .The leather production plantswere located at great distance from the cattle industry of the north.The shoe production plants were not located where the supplies were available.

Another most outrageous economic blunders of Nkrumah's industrialisation plan was the building of a plant to can mangoes. The plant had the capacity to process 7,000 o=tonsof mangoes a year but after it was built at a cost 80 % over the original budget it was found that there were hardly any wild mango trees near the plant and it would take seven years to grow bearing mango trees.Soon the whole effort was bogged down in blunders and mistakes and the economy was collapsing. Corruption was rampant. Finally the total presure came on the shoulder of the cacao farmers, their payments were cut and reduced when the global market for cacao was high, causing great dissatisfaction amongst them.

Nkrumah joking with Bandaranaike, The prime Minister of Sri Lanka. Both leaders implementd olicies which destroyed the economies of their countries.