Narratives on Health Policies in Northern Ghana: A note on British Colonial Policy and Local Knowledge Systems, 1902–1945

This chapter examines the colonial campaigns against various epidemics and diseases in northern Ghana during the first half of the twentieth century. The Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, now northern Ghana, came under British colonial rule in 1902. In addition to its lack of exportable colonial resources, northern Ghana had the added misfortune of being hyper-endemic to many public health diseases, including yaws, malaria, onchocerciasis, cerebrospinal meningitis, and sleeping sickness. In the 1920s, diseases caused extensive mortality in many communities across the Northern Territories, which had a shattering impact on the southwards labour supply for the Gold Coast’s mines and cocoa farms. In response, the administration invested in short-term control measures against the outbreak itself, but more expansive efforts were directed towards a campaign against the diseases and their vectors. Examining the origins and actual implementation of these measures, the chapter analyses the indigenous and colonial knowledges, and the strategies and experiments employed to control various forms of diseases. By focusing on the first half of the twentieth century, the study reveals not only the wider patterns of colonial public health policies, but also shows how disease control was integral to the colonial project of economic exploitation and social control. Through the qualitative method of historical research, and the use of oral, archival, and secondary sources, this chapter suggests that the colonial administration’s public health policies present a viable window for understanding a range of colonial subjects, from purely medical to political and economic issues. I argue that colonial health policies were tailored towards British imperial interests.