Abstrakt
At the beginning of sixties, just after Ghana gained its independence, the newly born state had to face many challenges; one of them was a weak economy. The first Ghanaian president, Dr.
Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972) started series of reforms. Nkrumah's economic program, which was presented after 1961, was based on development of water resources, which should mainly boost electricity production.
Economical development and Cold War politics were closely connected and river basins in states of "The Third World" often became places of their proliferation. Lack of finances, technologies and home experts caused that Ghana became one of the "playgrounds" of Cold War in "The Third World".
Development of the country brought an opportunity for states of western but also eastern block to supply lacking technologies and experts in exchange for reaching some of their political goals. Exploiting of these opportunities - strategy of planning, using or providing technologies, in this case water technologies, to reach political goals is something what Christopher Sneddon or Gabrielle Hecht call "technopolicy".
Czechoslovakia as an eastern block state was quite active in application of hydraulic technopolicy. During the era of Cold War, Czechoslovakian water engineers from the state company called Hydroprojekt successfully worked for governments of Iraq, Yemen, China, Cambodia, Ceylon, Tanzania and many others.
In 1961 a small group of Czechoslovakian experts was sent to Ghana. Their mission consisted of geological and hydrological survey in the south-western region of Ghana; finding and marking of suitable places for future dams was also a part of it.
Trust agreement about supply of machinery equipment necessary for hydro plants signed between Czechoslovakia and Ghana one year later was a direct legacy of this "expert mission" of 1961. Both governments also agreed that Czechoslovakian Hydroprojekt should prepare projects of Hemang and Tanoso hydro power plants.
This paper will focus on Czechoslovakian hydraulic technopolicy in Ghana, its goals and form and will prove, that technopolicy in a Cold War context was not just a domain of superpowers.