Less than an empire and more than British:Foreign investor competition in Ghana and Nigeria in the 1960s

Abstract

The post-war British Empire has been described as ‘more than British and less than an imperium’. Once decolonisation began, it was ‘nationalized and internationalized as part of the Anglo-American coalition’. This process continued after independence in Ghana and Nigeria, which experienced economic booms that attracted different international investors, sometimes with political motivation and frequently with home country support in terms of risk guaranties. These investments favoured contracting, turnkey factories and suppliers’ credit, which created a political economy of favouritism and corruption that saddled newly independent countries with significant amounts of debt when economic conditions deteriorated. Substantial competition between Western foreign investors, such as West Germany, the UK and the USA, were the result of a shared economic vision of Western economic dominance around the world.