Page 44 - Afrika Must Unite

COLONIAL PATTERN OF ECONOMICS 29
Income tax was kept at a deliberately low level, when it was
steadily rising in the United Kingdom. Worse than that, the
British companies operating in the Gold Coast were registered in
England, which received the tax benefits from the enormous
profits made out of our wealth and labour. It was not our farmers
and workers who shared the profits made, but the British share­
holders to whom dividends were exported. It is estimated that
during the last thirty years of British colonial administration,
British trading and shipping interests took out of our country a
total of £300,000,000. Just imagine what might have been done
by way of development if only part of these gigantic transfers of
profit had been retained and used for the benefit of our
people.
I have already referred to the grim emptiness that faced us on
our assumption of independence, the gaps and deficiencies.
Behind it all was the refusal to use our wealth for our develop­
ment. Not only were our natural resources extracted but the
benefits of their exploitation came, not to us but to the m etro­
politan country. This is the answer to those economists who
m aintain that imperialism should be judged not on what it takes
away but on what it leaves behind, as well as to those who parade
the heritage of the schools and hospitals and roads that the
missionaries and our colonial rulers left to us. They have no case
against the actualities that I am describing.
U nder the British there was no poultry farming to speak of;
there was no proper dairy farming, and the ordinary Gold Coast
family never saw a glass of fresh milk in its life. There wras no
raising of beef cattle. There were no industrial crops. Climate,
plant and cattle disease, are the least of the reasons for this
deplorable neglect, for the Ghana Government is going ahead
with precisely these agricultural projects, with considerable
success. The British sent out a few good veterinary doctors and
botanists, who carried out a certain am ount of field work and
experiments. These, however, were isolated, and rem ained
mostly unapplied at the practical level. Somehow or other,
useful and necessary knowledge seldom seemed to percolate
down to the local farmer.
The administrators who should have used their scientific results
as the basis of a thorough-going agricultural development policy