The Under-Told Story of Akosombo – The Gbedemah Factor (Part 1)

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Perhaps Sir Robert Jackson's “Foreword” to James Moxon's Volta: Man's Greatest Lake (Praeger, 1969), is the most disingenuous of its kind to be written on the subject. While as aptly and poignantly highlighted (in the previous chapter) by David Hart, the Volta River Project agreement ratified by Minister Kwame Nkrumah and his Convention People's Party (CPP) government, has been widely recognized by critics, worldwide, as the most exploitative of its kind, or even outright slavish, to the detriment of an emergent Ghana, Sir Robert Jackson preferred to cast matters in cavalierly vapid terms. To the preceding effect, this is what the extant Senior Consultant to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), a party to the Volta River Scheme, had to observe on this most critical question:

           
“For many years to come, the consumption of power by VALCO (the Volta Aluminium Company) will be the primary economic justification for the Volta Scheme. The agreement between the Volta River Authority and the company covers a period of thirty years, from 1967 onwards. What are the prospects of success, having regard to the endless and unpredictable forces which will continue to bear on the relations of African states with the outside world and to the never-ending debate on the role of public and private capital, especially in the developing countries? The first thing that can be said is that the Master Agreement, which records all the commitments and understandings between all the parties concerned with the VRP, represents the best thinking that could be brought to bear on the project, and takes into account experience with other great projects (including the Suez Canal and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company) in other parts of the world. The Government of Ghana was advised by international experts of high repute, the other governments and VALCO were represented by men of great experience, and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank) contributed its unique experience in these matters, as well as investing substantially in the project. From my personal experience, I know that these negotiations were conducted in a spirit of reasonableness and goodwill, and that there was always the common objective of creating a Master Agreement which would be fair to all concerned. Nonetheless, if past history is a guide, that Master Agreement is bound to be attacked at some stage or another in the future; when that happens much will depend on the honesty and reasonableness of the men then responsible for the project. If by good fortune, they possess those qualities they will need to keep in mind the conditions under which the Master Agreement was developed in 1961, and they will also need to take into account any new circumstances which have developed subsequently – changes in science and technology, for example. However, whatever the future may hold, nothing can now change the fact that Ghana has developed most successfully one of its most precious natural resources, the waters of the Volta, and that from now on it will have at its disposal some of the cheapest power in the world” (Moxon 16-17).

             
The preceding is only to be expected, for Sir Robert Jackson makes no apologies, whatsoever, for his conviction and perspective as an invested knight of the British Empire sedulously dedicated to the Manifest Destiny of the righteousness of British and European imperialism. The latter, of course, is in stark contrast to the Watson Commission's more constructive recommendations regarding the imperative need for an independent Ghanaian government to enter into the VRP in the offing with the utmost interests of the Ghanaian people at large (See Chapter 27 of this volume).

           
In the previous chapter, David Hart recounted the history of the Volta River Project. In this chapter, James Moxon highlights the historical achievements of Sir Albert Kitson, the British geological genius to whom the singular credit for actualizing the Akosombo Dam and, in fact, the entire Volta River Project (VRP) is owed. On this score, Moxon recounts at length:

           
“Albert – later Sir Albert – Kitson had been appointed by the Colonial Office [Circa. 1913] to establish a new department with the purpose of discovering what mineral wealth, in addition to gold, lay concealed beneath the forests and mountain tops of the still little known interior of the Gold Coast. He found the first traces of bauxite a hundred miles inland within a year of his arrival, and at a time when geologists in far more accessible countries were still walking over bauxite without recognizing it. Later he found the rich industrial deposits at Akwatia, which are still being vigorously worked, and the iron ore deposits of Shieni, now conveniently close to Lake Volta. Probably no other geologist has so many exploited discoveries to his name. ¶ On April 24, 1915 he was engaged on a rapid canoe voyage down the Volta, as part of a countrywide survey. 'I noticed on entering the narrow gorge below Ajena,' he recorded, 'that it was an ideal place for a dam. At the time there was no opportunity to make measurements but, during a geological traverse made along the Volta, this place – Akonsomo [sic], 2.5 miles below Ajena – was examined hurriedly, and a measurement made of the river at about half a mile above the gorge. There it proved to be 200 yards wide, with depths, at 10 feet intervals, across the middle 140 yards, of 60 to 90 feet.' He was also able to calculate that the volume of water passing through the gorge was 1,634 cubic feet per second on one day and that on the following day the river had risen about one foot. He conjectured what a huge increase in the volume of river water there must be 'when for fully 5 months of the year it is 10 feet deeper than when measured, and during several weeks 20 feet deeper.' ¶ Indeed, writing ten years later in an official bulletin outlining the mineral and water-power resources of the Gold Coast, Kitson, using the most conservative of calculations, estimated that a 100-foot dam at 'Akonsomo' would generate 180,000 horse-power or 134,000 kilowatts, which is a little less than the output of the four generators installed at Akosombo. He envisaged the consequent lake being at least extensive enough to provide water transport down the Afram stretch for the movement of bauxite deposits, estimated at some 4 million tons, that had been located on the Kwahu plateau. These appeared to be the most accessible of many other known deposits of bauxite in the country, calculated then as amounting to more than 60 million tons, sufficient to manufacture some 12 million tons of aluminium. It was this juxtaposition of raw bauxite and potential water power that pointed to the possibility of an economic project. ¶ During his leave in 1917 and while the war in France was still on, Kitson took the opportunity of visiting bauxite mines in the South of France, as well as a hydro-electric project in Scotland, so as to understand clearly the technical problems involved in all stages of aluminium production. Armed with the necessary data he returned to the Gold Coast and prepared a detailed proposal for the use of Volta hydro-electric power to process bauxite into aluminium, and in 1924 additional proposals were added to canalize the Lower Volta and irrigate the Accra Plains. This might have emerged as one of Governor Guggisberg's greatest triumphs. But he was already committed to such memorable development projects as Takoradi Harbour, Achimota College and Korle Bu Hospital as well as a widespread motor road construction program for the movement of cocoa, and consequently the project remained in the drawer…. ¶ Kitson's proposals for harnessing the Volta were not confined to Akosombo. He pointed also to the suitability of constructing a 100- or 200-foot dam on the Black Volta at Boie (Bui), of which we shall hear more later. He saw this as the means of electrifying a future railway in the north. He also had proposals for using power from the coastal rivers, the Tano, the Pra and its tributary the Ofin, and from several plateau rivers such as the Pawmpawm and the Asuboni. Some, at least, of these early proposals are still very much alive as possible additional sources of power for the future. And his suggestions for a 440-mile national transmission line for Volta power to service Cape Coast, Sekondi, Tarkwa, Dunkwa, Sefwi, Obuasi, Kumasi and the Kwahu area are only in minor detail different from those that have now been installed” (Moxon 49-51).  

           
We expansively recount the foregoing in view of fanatical and embarrassingly regressive attempts by ardent followers and sympathizers of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president, in the postcolonial era, to flagrantly shortchange the country's history, by pretending as if prior to the emergence of their icon on the modern Ghanaian political landscape, very much in the vein of nineteenth-century European imperialist historiography, almost nothing existed that is worthy of recognition, by way of substantive material development in the country.

           
As the preceding vividly attests, at best Nkrumah could be described as a dynamic innovator, albeit hardly the most astute or even pragmatic, in the ongoing process of Ghana's development. His remarkable contribution notwithstanding, it is Dr. J. B. Danquah who occupies the unique and preeminent position of “Doyen of modern Ghanaian politics and culture.” But even Danquah, himself, would have been quick to emphasize the fact that any credit for his pioneering achievements would have to be squarely predicated upon the phenomenal achievements of his predecessors.

           
The preceding notwithstanding, to signally appreciate the fact of President Nkrumah having had little to do with the ultimate implementation of the Volta River Project, one needs to read the following account by James Moxon regarding the man (Duncan Rose) who was actually responsible for the pre-Nkrumah Gold Coast's government's serious consideration for the construction of the Akosombo Dam:

           
“By an interesting coincidence this is the same house that Duncan Rose occupied during his survey of the Volta between 1939 and 1949 which was to bring the Volta River Project one stage nearer reality. Duncan Rose – tall, handsome, weather-beaten South African pioneer – seemed to have stepped straight out of the memorable pre-war advertisement for Barney's tobacco, which had usually been carried to some lonely outpost for several hundreds of miles on the heads of bearers. ¶ A Yorkshire man by birth, Rose had emigrated to South Africa soon after graduating at Cambridge. During the 1930s he had been one of the early enthusiasts of aluminium as the metal of the century, and at one time had bauxite interests in Nyasaland. He is said to have first been fired with the idea of a hydro-electric aluminium scheme for the Gold Coast by Kitson's 1925 bulletin, which he came across in the public library in Johannesburg in November 1938. Sensing that war was imminent he could see the advantage to the Commonwealth of a sterling source of aluminium. Within four months he had paid an exploratory visit to the Gold Coast and returned to Johannesburg to report back to his financing partner, T. W. Charles. Together they interested the Anglo-Transvaal Consolidated Investment Co., a leading South African mining finance house, which agreed to sponsor a full-scale investigation of the combined bauxite and power potential of the scheme. Their next move was to form the African Aluminium Syndicate in which they were joined by Christopher St. John Bird, a partner in a Johannesburg firm of consulting engineers. By May 1939 St. John Bird was in the Gold Coast preparing a preliminary report whilst Rose himself was also back in the country negotiating concessions. ¶ During his first visit in February, Duncan Rose had already presented to the Gold Coast Government what he described as 'tentative proposals' for a hydro-electric scheme. At this stage his proposed dam was only 120 feet and the resultant lake a mere 20 miles long by 2½ miles wide with an area of 80 square miles. Even so he was quick to point out that payment of heavy compensation to the people affected by the flooding might jeopardize the whole scheme and he adds that the lake itself would be of great public value for water transport. He talked of a possible aluminium smelter at Koforidua and of using surplus electric power to electrify the Accra to Kumasi railway line. At this stage he was thinking in terms of a £ 2½-3½ million scheme” ( Volta: Man's Greatest Lake 52-53).

             
In other words, it is our incontrovertible contention that had any Ghanaian leader other than Kwame Nkrumah been elected first prime minister or president of independent Ghana, the Akosombo Dam, as well as the Bui Dam (currently under construction by the Kufuor government of the Danquah-leaning New Patriotic Party) would have been, in all likelihood, constructed. This observation is, of course, in no way to cynically detract from Nkrumah's quite courageous and admirable decision to execute the Volta River Project, as some fanatical Nkrumaists would have their sympathizers believe, but merely and honestly to register a significant historical fact.

           
The original intention was to site VALCO, the aluminium-smelting plant at Ajena or as close to the dam site as possible, so as to capitalize on the easy and cheaper access to the power generated – this would later be abandoned in favor of Tema, with the bauxite largely being imported by Kaiser from its Jamaican concessions:

           
“At the same time they had now formulated firm views as to the site for the smelter. Gone was WAFAL's dam site smelter at Ajena, and gone (at least for the present) was the Joint Mission's smelter at Kpong. After careful calculation Halcrows decided that the smelter and alumina plant should both be at Tema. This recommendation in its turn made others on the siting of new roads and railways easier. With the rejection of the dam site aluminium factory there was no longer any advantage in carrying the raw bauxite by lake and it followed therefore that it should travel by rail” (Moxon 65).

           
While, indeed, the British colonial government of the Gold Coast transitional period (1951-1957) had meant for the construction of the Akosombo Dam to primarily serve the needs and development interests of postcolonial Ghana, in reality, the Volta River Project aimed to serve as a veritable supplement to the battered post-World War II British economy:

           
“What then was the 'scheme' presented in the white paper? Although sited in the Gold Coast and planned for the general benefit of the country, the scheme was justified to the British Parliament as first and foremost a means for Britain to escape from the dollar-based monopoly of the post-war aluminium producers from whom she had to procure more than four-fifths of her supplies. It was argued that by 1975 the world would be using four to five times as much aluminium as in 1950. With her very limited resources of hydro-electric capacity Britain had already reached an effective limit in aluminium production and, as we have seen, the Joint Mission had selected the Gold Coast as the manufacturing base with the most potential in the Commonwealth area” (Moxon 69).

           
For Moxon, Nkrumah's decision to punitively sanction Mr. K. A. Gbedemah in April 1961, during his famous dawn broadcast, thus forcing Ghana's Minister of Finance to flee the country for personal safety in exile, may well have doomed Ghana's chances of negotiating a sound monetary deal for the construction of the dam:

           
“Later Minister of Finance, Gbedemah was one of the two Ministers particularly charged with responsibility for liaison with the Preparatory Commission and subsequently with the extremely complicated international financial negotiations that ultimately made the Volta River Project possible. Mr. George Woods, later President of the World Bank, who in 1958 was invited in his then private capacity to advise the Kaiser Corporation on the complex problems of financing the Project, said that Gbedemah, more than anyone else, sold him the Volta River Project. So when Gbedemah amongst others was carpeted by Nkrumah in his now-famous dawn broadcast of April 8, 1961 (Ian Smith copied the technique) and chose to go into exile, Ghana lost the services of a very able negotiator. Gbedemah returned to Ghana as a private citizen after the February 1966 coup” ( Volta: Man's Greatest Lake (Footnote 70-1).

           
Thus in assessing the success of the implementation of the Volta River Scheme/Project, Nkrumah's personal quirks may well have to be factored in, particularly where such idiosyncratic personality trait remarkably impacted Ghana's growth and development. On the preceding score, it would not be totally out of order to suggest the re-naming of the Volta River Project/Akosombo Dam the “Gbedemah Scheme,” for there clearly operated what might be aptly termed as the “Gbedemah Factor” vis-à-vis the history of American intervention and indispensable participation in the actualization of the Volta River Project that made an otherwise doomed project – for the British, with their colonial interests uppermost, in terms of priority alignments, had by the late 1950s lost interest in the project – gain a new lease on life. This is how James Moxon tells the Gbedemah story in his classic treatise on the subject titled Volta: Man's Greatest Lake :

           
“Then suddenly the scheme moved into gear again. The sequence of events which helped to bring this about possibly illustrates the philosophy that there is good in everything. In October Mr. Gbedemah, who had been attending the meeting of Commonwealth Finance Ministers in Ottawa, followed it with a short visit to the United States. Dropping in for a glass of iced orange juice at one of the Howard Johnson roadside restaurants just outside Dover, Delaware, Gbedemah was told by the waitress, who was supported by her manager, that coloured people could not be served at the counter though he would be permitted to buy something to take away. The story leaked to the press who gave it a puff of unwelcome publicity. Seeking to make amends, President Eisenhower and Vice-President Nixon invited Mr. Gbedemah to breakfast at the White House, and there the President, interested at [sic] what he heard of the Volta Project, asked for more background information about it. Dr. Nkrumah, writing a few days later to President Eisenhower, said that he and his colleagues regarded the Volta River Project as being of supreme importance to the future of Ghana and that they were determined to do all in their power to implement it. He added that his Government was completely free to negotiate with any Governments and/or other prospective commercial partners. He sent them copies of the Preparatory Commission's report to study. A friendly and constructive correspondence followed between the President and the Prime Minister in the course of which Dr. Nkrumah acknowledged that the interest shown by the U.S. Government in the project had 'given us all fresh heart'” (Moxon 88).

             
Furthermore, James Moxon vividly recalls: “Now the door was open for Dr. Nkrumah to accept the President's dual offer of help: an offer first to try to act as a catalyst in bringing together potentially interested companies who might finance the aluminium smelter and bauxite mines; and then, if this was successful, to consider making a substantial loan towards the power project itself. Small wonder that Prime Minister Nkrumah felt heartened. ¶ Nkrumah's first step was to see that the U.S. Government, through its International Co-operation Administration (ICA) agency in Ghana, was in full possession of all the facts concerning approaches already made to the Ghana Government. Some sixteen different organizations had at one time or another since Ghana's Independence expressed the wish to become involved in the Project. Some were still pressing very hard: Leith's Consortium, for example, which was anxious to have a further two years' option on the whole project, confident that in that time it could finance the scheme completely without drawing upon a single penny of Ghana's. Though illustrative of the new interest and confidence being shown in the Project this was scarcely the sort of proposal that would commend itself to the Ghanaian public, and its sponsors were now told that they would have to put their proposals to the U.S. Government, whose offer to coordinate the early stages of practical participation had already been accepted. ¶ The man charged with this task, Carl Flesher, describes himself as 'one of a very small number of ICA executives who believed in using private enterprise in our foreign-aid program' and this was an occasion to put his theory into action. His was the idea that the U.S. Government should help to lend Ghana the necessary money to build the dam and power station whilst private enterprise, with or without government assistance, could build, own and operate the aluminium smelter. Then, with revenue from the sale of power to the smelter, Ghana could repay the U.S. loans. There it was in a nutshell – the key, as it turned out, to the successful completion of the project” (Moxon 89).

           
As to what made the Volta River Project, predicated as it was on the massive production of aluminium, the risky venture that it ultimately became was due, in large part, to the fact that in the wake of World War II, the aluminium market, particularly in the United States, was glutted: “This decision to review the 1955 engineering reports represented the only possible solution to what had emerged as the main stumbling block to the otherwise exemplary Preparatory Commission proposals; the frightening overall cost of the Project. For at the time that Ghana was pushing her scheme for a new world source of aluminium, the American aluminium companies had a substantial surplus capacity. They had asked the President to assist them by means of a new stockpiling programme. Indeed, it was this temporarily saturated market for aluminium that had obliged Alcan to step down when they did. This put President Eisenhower in a difficult position. But equally he was sensitive to the political necessity of responding to Ghana's appeal for help. He recognized that Ghana as the first of the new African states, represented the shape of the newly emerging Africa in which the United States had an undoubted role to play. The UAR [Egypt] was still smarting from the Aswan Dam project and a second such rebuff could have grave consequences. The obvious solution lay in a very thorough re-examination, amongst other things, of that seven-year timetable for building the Dam. This was a major factor raising the overall costs. There was absolute agreement on this matter between the U.S. and Ghana officials, and the U.S. Government agreed to pay half the estimated £ 40,000 cost of the reappraisal” (Moxon 90-1).

           
In essence, had the feasibility studies on the construction of the Akosombo Dam been predicated on any mineral resource other than aluminium, the capital/fiscal history of the project might likely have been very different; and the primary cost involved would have been drastically reduced. Another problem that gravely contributed to the phenomenal expenditure involved in the execution of the Volta River Project, had to do with what may fairly aptly be described as unhealthy work/occupational culture of many a Third-World nation and its people. Thus, for example, the same scheme/project that could have taken approximately 3 years to complete in Canada, as well as other countries in the West, was scheduled to take at least 7 years, thus automatically guaranteeing that the projected expenditure would unnecessarily double. For a poor country like Ghana, such unsavory lassitude to the execution of a massive project like the Volta Scheme clearly militated against infrastructural development.

           
The role of the World Bank in the construction of the Akosombo Dam, and the Volta River Project in general, was colonialist in orientation. The Bank primarily envisaged the VRP as a classical venture in which the sole objective was to maximize profits for its Western investors, rather than also simultaneously facilitating Ghana's development. On this score, it is quite instructive to read the following observation from James Moxon:

           
“Secondly, there was still a gap of £ 10 million to be filled and this required careful negotiation. Kaiser had for some time insisted that the World Bank report's exclusion of the national transmission network which was designed to distribute Volta power throughout southern Ghana was a false economy and that the network should be reinstated. Ghana supported this argument for political and social, as well as for economic reasons. After further investigations the World Bank had relaxed its objections, but, whilst not opposed to the network, was anxious that the timing for it should be right. The estimated cost was about £ 10 million and this now raised the overall cost of the project to £ 70 million. Thirdly – and this only concerned Ghana indirectly but it was important – the U.S. Government had to be encouraged to meet VALCO's needs for a substantial loan in order to bring their part of the project to life” (Moxon 110).

           
Nkrumah's left-leaning, stentorian politics of West-baiting (his so-called anti-imperialist stance) also significantly obstructed the smooth execution of the Volta River Project: “Then a hitch did occur. The trouble had started, in effect, more than a year previously whilst Nkrumah was in New York, together with nineteen other heads of state and government and fifty foreign ministers, attending what is remembered as the biggest meeting ever of the United Nations General Assembly. He had a private meeting with Eisenhower in New York when, on the following evening at a Foreign Press Association dinner, America's Secretary of State, Christian Herter, was quoted as saying that Nkrumah had by his United Nations address, 'marked himself as very definitely leaning towards the Soviet bloc'” (Moxon 111-2).

           
On the practical political front, Nkrumah's fiery socialist rhetoric made him appear to envisage himself as the resident of either a geopolitical vacuum or a proverbial fish tank, rather than being a bona fide denizen of an inextricable global community economically, albeit unsavorily, dominated by the West, and which for the “missionary” purpose of steering Ghana towards the sphere of rapid industrial and technological development, necessitated a savvy and pragmatic stance of deft neutrality, at least publicly.

           
But that Nkrumah's pontifical and stentorian pro-socialist rhetoric pathetically paled into hypocritical insignificance when confronted with reality on the ground, as it were, is eloquently captured by the author of Volta: Man's Greatest Lake : “As a township Akosombo can basically be divided into two distinct parts. The upper part, nearest to the dam site, includes the hotel on its hill top overlooking the dam itself. In a fold in the wooded hills below the hotel is a pretty little residential area of about 700 houses for professional, administrative and overseas staff connected with the Project; for lack of any other name, it was called 'the Italian village,' which at peak occupation was almost wholly correct. ¶ The other part of Akosombo lies in the valley about half a mile away as the crow flies, but because the connecting road is obliged to go round the steeply wooded slopes in between, it is almost two miles away by road. It is this distance that divides Akosombo into its two parts. In the lower town there is the market and shopping area; Main Street, Akosombo, which has an atmosphere of improvisation like a gold-rush town, with the same amazing conglomeration of business interests – bookshop, football pools office, First Ghana Building Society premises, Frank Sinatra Barbering Shop, tailor, photo studio and Akosombo's own drinking saloon, Djaba's Bar, where they sign off at closing time, appropriately enough I have always felt, with the touching ballad 'Goodbye, Jimmy, Goodbye.' There are several residential areas for differing wage groups, ranging from pleasant two- and three-bedroom houses for foremen, junior executive and supervisory staff to the simpler single room quarters of unskilled labour. Unlike earlier days they are now comfortably shaded by groves of plantain and banana trees, many with their own gardens and allotments, and today blend pleasantly into the valley landscape” (Moxon 146-7).

             
On the Volta Resettlement Scheme (VRS), Moxon notes that the rather rigid, one-style-fits-all communistic housing policy ensured that the dirt poor would find their new one-bedroom landcrete houses to be a remarkable improvement on their previous lifestyle, whereas families with substantial old architectural edifices found themselves woefully shortchanged, as the difference in the value of their original homes could only be made up through its rough equivalent in cash, rather than having houses of equivalent value constructed for them:

           
“Though for many reasons this broad solution was not wholly satisfactory it was the best that could be achieved in the time and was successfully carried through. There were slight variations in design and conception, reflecting the ideas of different architects and planners, but basically the rule was 'one family, one room,' irrespective of the type of house that the family had lost. These had varied from thatched shelters worth a few pounds to substantial premises of £ 1,000 or more. But whilst, at the bottom of the scale, the poorest family would be fortunate enough in exchanging a worthless pile of grass and sticks for a £ 350 house, families at a higher level had to be compensated in cash for the difference in value between their old property and the new core house. Thus, no one would be worse off, and many, of course, would be considerably better off” (Moxon 162).

           
In recent years, some ardent supporters of Nkrumah and the CPP have not hesitated to boast about their patriarch's dubious creation of the largest artificial lake in the world, without even slightly pausing to take account of the countless victims whose lives were claimed by the creation of the Akosombo Dam. In sum, in the flagrantly materialist imagination of the Nkrumah fanatics, it appears that all that matters are architectural structures or landmarks, with little regard for the fundamental question of human development. Regarding the latter, this is what James Moxon has to say:

           
“Probably the worst hardships occurred during the unforeseen floods of 1963 before the lake had started to rise and before there was much housing completed: 'The true picture of untold hardships suffered by these people,' a Ghanaian welfare officer's report reads, 'cannot be vividly described here but imagining how some of them are sleeping on tree tops can throw some light on the seriousness of their present situation.' He goes on to describe how '400 people find comfort in a school of only two rooms' and adds with a touch of self-satisfaction that 'it needs a high degree of technique to control and keep the settlers quiet during this time'…. It was not the houses for those 70,000 settlers who had elected to stay in the valley that were any longer the worry. By 1965 the families had either grown used to them with all their limitations, or they had set about improving and enlarging them, and that, after all, was what had been intended. Far more serious was the fundamental problem of the farming lands. Could the resettled farmers flourish or even survive on the land set aside for them?   Speaking to an international audience of specialists in March 1965 Kobla Kalitsi, the resettlement chief, in a remarkably down-to-earth address, laid bare some of his anxieties. 'Soon after evacuation into the first township had been substantially completed,' he said, 'a survey showed that the people were already leaving that town for other villages or drifting back to the water to set up fishing camps. One hopes that this drift will be seasonal and that the people will farm the lake for fish and also farm the land being supplied to them and make the settlement towns their permanent homes. It is possible that they may not, and if they don't we cannot plant it on them…. If that ever happens we would have wasted over £ 8 million of Ghana's valuable investible funds and we would also have ruined the lives of 80,000 people and shattered the country's finest opportunity to introduce into society cells of change to activate the whole rural population of Ghana. The spectre of a ghost town hangs over every settlement we have built!'” ( Volta: Man's Greatest Lake 178-9).

           
For many Ghanaians, Nkrumah's credentials as a development czar remains inviolable; interestingly, however, James Moxon has a quite different perspective. Remarking on the Assucuari (Asutsuare) sugar factory's maiden processing of sugarcane into sugar proper, for instance, the author of Volta: Man's Greatest Lake throws a not-so-subtle hint at Nkrumah's unsavory dictatorial regime, especially how, in the opinion of the author, the overthrow of the CPP had auspiciously coincided with the beginning of sugar processing at Asutsuare, almost as if to suggest the inextricable involvement of Providence in the very details of the 1966 military putsch:

           
“The first campaign of harvesting and processing into sugar 1,000 acres of cane took place by coincidence on February 24, 1966, the very day when, fifty miles away in Accra, the armed forces' coup was overthrowing the Nkrumah regime. How much sweeter the sugar must have tasted. It is a happy augury for the future that amongst the useful by-products of the sugar factory will be not only pulp for making paper, fuel for the steam turbines and rich black molasses, but also rum. Originally imported in exchange for slaves, it will now by an irony of fate mature on the banks of the very river from which so many thousands were sent into slavery for it” (Moxon 187).

           
Over and over again, the author of Volta: Man's Greatest Lake emphasizes the incontrovertibly significant fact of both the Akosombo Dam (or Volta Scheme) and VALCO, the giant aluminium plant located at Tema, and the modern industrial township of Tema, itself, being seminally predicated upon Western business interests rather than having anything organically meaningful to do with the interest of Ghana in both conception and functional thrust. To this end, Moxon observes:

           
“The Volta Aluminium Company had started its life in No