“Any Progressive Nation Requires a Financial Backbone”

Abstract:

In the 1940s Asantehene Prempeh II decided to establish a national fund to develop Asante. Even though his proposal targeted sectors such as education, healthcare, agriculture, and administration, naturally it also raised skepticism. Would this national fund be used for his personal causes? Was the fund a ploy to accumulate wealth for the Golden Stool? Would Asante’s powerful chiefs render open accounts? Why did chiefs need to initiate development independent of the colonial state? This article relies on newspaper publications, interviews, extant literature, and archival records to interrogate the place of national developmental funds in Asante history. It explores why such fund-raising programs were usually enthusiastically embraced at the start, but inevitably degenerated into questions over chiefs’ power and authority. It concludes that longstanding debates in Asante over power, accountability, and society’s expectations of officeholders lie at the core of this issue.