A dying nation? A historical review of foreign aid to Ghana, 1964 -1970
Résumé
This article examines the dynamics of foreign aid and development in Ghana between 1964 and 1970, a period marked by political transition, economic strain, and shifting international alignments. Drawing on qualitative historical analysis, thematic interpretation, and critical discourse analysis, it reconstructed how aid was mobilised, negotiated, and operationalised within the context of late Nkrumah-era governance and the post-1966 regime. The article argued that foreign assistance, while framed as a mechanism for economic stabilisation and development, functioned in practice within a constrained policy environment shaped by external conditionalities and domestic institutional limitations. Rather than producing sustained structural transformation, aid interventions often reinforced patterns of dependency and uneven development. By situating aid within its immediate political and administrative context, the article provides a historically grounded reassessment of the relationship between external assistance and state capacity in postcolonial Ghana. In doing so, it foregrounds the empirical and institutional dimensions of aid governance, highlighting how policy choices, bureaucratic processes, and international pressures intersect in shaping developmental outcomes. This article represents an earlier iteration of arguments subsequently developed by Nyarko (2025), who advances a more explicitly theorised account of foreign aid as a paradoxical development mechanism.
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