Who Knew the Minds of the People? Specialist Knowledge and Developmentalist Authoritarianism in Postcolonial Ghana

‘And the Oscar Goes to… Daybreak in Udi’: Understanding Late Colonial Community Development and its Legacy through Film

“…Thus, alongside the provision of rural services, community development emerged as a way for the British to claim that they were responding to demands (from the USA and USSR, for example) that the old powers should be moving faster towards granting independence to their colonies. The argument was that community development accelerated this process by mentally preparing African subjects for self‐government (Skinner, : 307). Much colonial community development (particularly as conceived by Chadwick) was preoccupied with the minds of villagers rather than with the material benefits of specific initiatives.…”

“…For many people, their interest in this topic (as for example in this article) is precisely in understanding the legacy of this colonial policy to the current era of development practice, but historians are quick to remind us that this is problematic because it means we are viewing the past through the lens of contemporary concerns. To avoid this danger it is vital to treat each case with care, drawing out its specificities and placing it in the context of the time and place in which it emerged (Skinner, : 299). Furthermore, despite the fact that identical instructions were issued to different African colonies from the metropolitan centre of empire in Whitehall, the story of community development varies significantly from place to place.…”

“…A number of historians have examined this colonial moment looking either at the colonial community development policy in general (Abloh and Ameyaw, 1997;Holford, 1988;Smyth, 2004) in Ghana (Skinner, 2009(Skinner, , 2010(Skinner, , 2011, Kenya (Lewis, 2000(Lewis, , 2001a(Lewis, , 2001b(Lewis, , 2011 and Tanzania (Burton and Jennings, 2007;Jennings, 2003Jennings, , 2007. This article adds to the existing case studies by drawing attention to the previously neglected example of Eastern Nigeria and Cameroon (but see Kwo, 1984;Omolewa, 2008).…”