“The Devil We Know”: Gold Coast Consumers, Local Employees, and the United Africa Company, 1940–1960

On January 31, 1957, about five weeks before the Gold Coast gained political independence from Britain, the country’s first Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah inaugurated the opening of Kingsway, Accra, the country’s largest department store.¹ Owned and operated by the United Africa Company (UAC), a subsidiary of the Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever, Kingsway Stores were well known throughout British West Africa as a chain of urban retail outlets. Although Kingsway Stores originally targeted the needs of European colonials and their families, they increasingly attracted elite and emerging middle-class African shoppers. Equipped with an elevator, a modern car park, and three floors of retail space, the new state-of-the-art Kingsway building would be the first of its kind in all of West Africa.² Invited to give the inaugural speech at the store’s grand opening, Nkrumah stated: “It is idle to pretend that the people of the Gold Coast . . . [have] always been on the friendliest terms with such a mighty financial power as Unilever. But . . . my government like myself and the people of the Gold Coast, does prefer the devil it knows to the devil it does not know.”³

He further argued that all distinguished visitors should “go back home saying that Accra had shopping facilities that were equal to anything in the world.”⁴ Nkrumah hoped that the consumerism on display would legitimize Ghana as a new independent nation, but it was, in his own words, a deal that had been struck with the “devil.” Nkrumah’s inauguration speech not only reveals the historical embeddedness of large foreign firms in African commercial life, it also points to the importance of investigating questions like, how have colonial legacies shaped the development of consumer societies in West Africa?

In the late 1930s, foreign trading companies became major targets of criticism among Gold Coast nationalists, businessmen, retailers, and consumers.⁵ Many accused large firms, particularly those associated with the Association of West African Merchants (AWAM), of conspiring with the colonial government, monopolizing trade, cheating customers, and cutting Africans out of wholesaling and retailing. To some extent, these accusations were accurate. Firms associated with AWAM had engaged in price-fixing and market-sharing agreements that restricted competition in the Gold Coast import–export trade.⁶ While AWAM had originally formed in 1916 as a means for European merchants to discuss problems relating to West African trade and produce with the British government, it had, by the mid-1930s, become a forum for consultation between large trading firms and the colonial government. Additionally, in 1937, AWAM firms participated in a Merchandise Agreement, which limited competition in the retail sector by setting minimum prices and other terms of sales, like commissions.⁷

During World War II, frustrations increased as large trading companies managed to maintain profits partly by increasing prices on scarce items. After the war high prices and shortages persisted and angry, African consumers took action. In January 1948, Nii Kwabena Bonne II, an Accra businessman and chief, organized a national boycott of European imports. Guided by the slogan: “We cannot buy; Your prices are too high. If you don’t cut down your prices then close down your stores; And take away your goods to your own country,”⁸ chiefs from various districts pledged their support and boycotters hoped that the campaign would persuade foreign firms to reduce retail prices.⁹ Although some companies agreed to cut profit margins, prices changed very little. Tensions escalated a month later when police opened fire on a peaceful demonstration of ex-servicemen in Accra. Angry crowds retaliated not by attacking colonial offices and administrators but by burning and looting European and other foreign-owned company stores.¹⁰ The 1948 disturbances, or what colonial reports called “the Accra Riots,” lasted two days and spread to other towns.¹¹

This article explores the social, cultural, and political implications of consumerism in the period leading up to and directly after Gold Coast independence in 1957. It concentrates specifically on one of the largest trading firms in twentieth-century...