Preliminary Programme

This paper has three aims. (1) To describe the kinds of evidence available for quantifying the changes of occupational structure in what is now Ghana since the emergence of agricultural exports in the early nineteenth century, to the eve of the beginning of (offshore) oil exports in 2011. After reviewing the very limited indicators we have for the pre-census era, the paper will summarize the gradual improvement – from a very low starting-point in 1891 and 1901 – of the censuses, in both general reliability and the detail of their coverage of occupations. For the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries the censuses are largely comprehensive, with detailed data on occupations.
(2) To discuss both the problems and uses (and potential uses) of the evidence. The former include the over-simplifying treatment of women’s often multiple occupations by the census takers; the latter include the question of the scope for developing plausible guesstimates where data are lacking, for example on by-employment. A general issue is the fit between the figures in successive Ghana censuses and the systems for coding occupations developed in Cambridge and Amsterdam. On such matters especially, feedback from the discussant and audience will be greatly appreciated.
(3) To summarise the information obtained and coded so far, and offer a tentative discussion of their implications for such specific issues in Ghanaian economic history as: a) the reallocation of labour to export agriculture and mechanized mining, including at the expense of dry-season handicraft manufacturing, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; b) the transition from head porterage to mechanised transport; c) the growth of new forms of artisanal activity, such as motor repair and, in the late twentieth century, the manufacture of spare car parts in small workshops; d) the growth of the total population after 1918 and particularly after 1945, and the still greater growth of the urban population, especially during the post-1983 economic recovery and subsequent boom: raising the question of how far all this was associated with a diversification of occupations, e) the impact of successive – and contrasting – government policies, especially since Ghana achieved independence in 1957, on the respective size of the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors; and f), the recent expansion of small-scale mining, legal and illegal. The general question is what the evidence on changing occupational structure can tell us about the forms and extent of economic development and social change over the last two centuries.
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This paper forms part of the session proposal entitled A Comparative Historical Analysis of Occupational Structure Across Sub-Saharan Africa.
In this paper we will explore the major shifts in occupational structures from the emergence of the Congolese mining-complex up until the disintegration of the Zairian economy in the 1980s and 1990s. We explore the sources available to measure occupational structures and relate these to existing accounts of demographic development. We deliver some preliminary calculations of industrial and plantation sector growth has changed the employment structure of the colonial economy. We also aim to look into processes of urbanization and migration into and out of the major mining areas.
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This paper is part of the session proposal: A Comparative Historical Analysis of Occupational Structure Across Sub-saharan Africa.
The paper explores the nature and quality of the sources available on the occupational structure of Tanzania and Kenya from about 1920 until 2012. The sources surveyed include: Housing and Population censuses (for Kenya: 1948-1962-1969-1979-1989-1999-2009; for Tanzania: 1921-1931-1948-1967-1978-2002-2012); Annual Reports of the Tanganyika Labour Department (from 1927), Labour Censuses (for both countries starting from 1947); colonial reports, including the Reports of the East Africa Commission (1929: 1955); Child Labour Reports (Kenya 1998/99; Tanzania 2000/2001). The paper considers both the potentialities of these sources and the methodological problems that they present. With reference to the colonial period, this study also explores the methods employed to conduct censuses and labour surveys, in order to understand the demographic and social processes they purport to measure.
The paper provides preliminary data on the changes and continuities in the occupational structure of Kenya and Tanzania from 1921 to 2012. At the same time, it identifies possible ways of highlighting and quantifying the practice of combining labour relations, that general surveys tend to conceal. Finally, the paper provides data on the shifts in the urban population of both countries, as a way to ground an understanding of the major structural changes in the occupational structure in the framework of the major shifts in the economic history of Kenya and Tanzania in the 20th century. (Show less)