Czechoslovak-Ghanaian Cooperation in Water Resources Development: Cold War Technopolicy of a Small Socialist State

Abstract

During the Cold War, great waterworks became iconic projects which played a crucial role in strategies of economic development of the states of Africa. In postcolonial discourse, these projects meant a key technological innovation bringing a modernization of society and the environmental changes.

Due to the lack of local experts, funding and technologies, postcolonial Ghana depended on the development of water resources and hydro-energetics on import of foreign know-how and finances from neither Western nor Eastern bloc countries. Kwame Nkrumah's ambitious economic development plans consisted of large-scale industrialization inspired by the Soviet pattern, for which enough (hydro) energy was a crucial condition.

Czechoslovakia - a small actor with advanced industry and great water works tradition has been interested in the development of Ghanaian water resources since the establishing of diplomatic relations in 1959. In 1961 the first group of Czechoslovak experts from the state enterprise Hydroprojekt visited Ghana with the goal to find and explore suitable locations for future Ghanaian dams.

This paper will focus on Czechoslovak assistance in development of Ghanaian water resources during the presidency of Kwame Nkrumah (1960-1966) as an example of technopolitics (using a technic and expertise to reach a political or economic goals) of a small, 'peripheral' socialist states towards Global South. On an example of Ghana, it will demonstrate that Cold War technopolitics in Global South countries was therefore not the preserve of the 'industrial giants' like the United States or Soviet Union.

In contrast to Hungary, Poland or GDR whose involvement in Africa was mapped quite extensively, the Czechoslovak involvement in the transformation of postcolonial African states was so far omitted by current historiography.