AWAM: Ghana’s Enduring Battle Against Economic Exploitation

The Origins of “AWAM”: From Cartel to Common Proverb

In contemporary Ghanaian parlance, to be called “AWAM” or “AWAM paaa!!” is to be labeled a fraud. This everyday insult, however, carries with it a deep and often untold history, rooted in Ghana’s colonial past and its struggle for economic justice.

By the mid-1940s, the Gold Coast, now Ghana, was a land of paradox. It was rich with cocoa wealth, a commodity that formed the backbone of the colonial economy, yet it seethed with widespread discontent. African smallholders, the backbone of this prosperity, saw little of the vast fortunes generated. The cocoa trade was monopolized by the Association of West African Merchants (AWAM), a powerful cartel of European firms. With the tacit approval of the colonial administration, AWAM systematically fixed producer prices for cocoa and manipulated import margins, masquerading as representatives of indigenous Ghanaian business interests.

The injustice was starkly visible across every village. Farmers toiled through arduous conditions, only to receive a pittance, while middlemen, shipping agents, and London brokers reaped the immense surplus. The colonial capitalist model was unequivocal: Africans were to produce and labor, but never to own or dictate pricing.

Nii Kwabena Bonne III and the Boycott of 1948

The resentment simmering beneath the surface found its voice in January 1948, when Nii Kwabena Bonne III, the Ga chief of Osu and a respected businessman, declared a boycott of European goods. His powerful message, first articulated in Accra’s bustling markets, resonated deeply with an entire generation:

“We cannot buy; your prices are too high. If you will not bring them down, close your stores and take your goods back to your own country.”

Bonne’s protest was not a call for isolation but a profound demand for fairness—a populist strike against monopoly capitalism. Alongside other organizers, he formed the “Consumers’ Association,” urging Africans across the colony to cease purchasing imported goods until prices dropped. For weeks, shops in Accra, Sekondi, and Kumasi remained eerily empty of customers, forcing British merchants into a panic and colonial officials into a scramble for mediation.

Bonne’s rhetoric, rooted in everyday morality rather than complex ideology, framed prices as a measure of justice. Economically, his movement struck at the very core of the colonial capitalist model: the assumption that African labor and consumption would endlessly fuel British profit. The tensions escalated further in February 1948, when police fired upon ex-servicemen protesting similar economic hardships, triggering riots that swept through the capital and shook the colonial state to its foundations.

The Birth of the Cocoa Marketing Board (CMB)

Out of this turbulence emerged a profound shift. London dispatched the Watson Commission to investigate the riots, and its report unequivocally linked the political unrest to “grievances born of economic exploitation.” The colonial government was compelled to acknowledge that unregulated capitalism, as practiced by the merchant houses, had become politically untenable. Visible and structural change was imperative.

This “something or interruption” materialized as the Cocoa Marketing Board (CMB), established in 1947, just months before the independence movement gathered full momentum. Officially, it was conceived as a price-stabilization agency; in spirit, it represented an act of economic decolonization. By inserting the state between the farmer and the exporter, the Board effectively seized control of the commodity chain that had for so long exclusively enriched European firms.

Under this new system, the CMB bought cocoa directly from licensed agents at fixed prices, meticulously stored and graded it, and managed its export through its own channels. The substantial profits that once flowed into the coffers of AWAM firms were now captured by the Board. For the first time, Ghanaian farmers were selling to an African-run institution rather than a foreign company. Yet, an ironic twist emerged; as some observed, it felt like it was “still AWAM except it was the state now fleecing its capitalist and business entrepreneurs.” As one colonial official described the transformation, it was like “placing a strong hand on the tiller of trade.”

CMB: A Tool for Economic Decolonization and National Development

Economically, the Board brought much-needed stability to prices and shielded farmers from the volatile fluctuations of the world market. Politically, it became a potent moral symbol: the colonial state compelled to act against the very capitalist logic it had meticulously implanted. The CMB transformed profit into public revenue; its surpluses became the financial engine for vital infrastructure, funding roads, schools, and hospitals across the Gold Coast.

For the radicals of the era, this was poetic justice; the profits of empire were, at last, being repatriated, even if through bureaucratic means. To conservatives, it was dangerous meddling with the “invisible hand” of the market. But to the ordinary people of the Gold Coast, it felt like the first decisive crack in the formidable wall of economic dependency.

When Kwame Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party ascended to power in the 1950s, the CMB was already operating as a semi-autonomous engine of redistribution. Nkrumah fully nationalized it, treating it as the indispensable financial backbone of his ambitious development plans. The CMB’s retained surpluses financed monumental projects like the Volta River Project, industrial estates, and extensive rural infrastructure. In this way, the Board became both a powerful symbol and an effective instrument of state-led socialism—capitalism tamed and purposefully redirected toward national upliftment.

The irony was exquisite: an institution initially conceived by a colonial administration to pacify discontented farmers evolved into a critical tool of revolutionary modernization. It stood at the crossroads between Bonne’s moral economy and Nkrumah’s planned economy—a unique hybrid of conscience and control.

The Enduring Legacy and Evolving Challenges

Yet, every system designed to redistribute wealth must inevitably contend with the question of who holds the levers of power. Over time, the CMB’s centralized authority, while effective, inadvertently created new hierarchies. Bureaucrats, rather than farmers, increasingly dictated prices; political priorities sometimes overshadowed efficiency. By the 1970s, the Board’s heavy levies on cocoa exports, while funding essential state projects, began to erode producer incentives. The ambitious anti-capitalist experiment risked reproducing its own forms of inequality.

Despite these challenges, its founding moment retained its profound symbolic power. For the generation that had bravely followed Bonne’s boycott, the CMB remained tangible proof that Africans could indeed discipline capital, and that economic systems could be made to answer to ethical imperatives.

Today’s COCOBOD, the modern successor to the old Board, navigates a liberalized global market, balancing international demands with domestic welfare. But its very DNA carries the indelible imprint of 1947: an unwavering insistence that cocoa—the precious fruit of millions of farmers’ labor—belongs first and foremost to those who cultivate it.

In retrospect, the creation of the Cocoa Marketing Board was far more than a mere administrative reform; it was a philosophical rupture. It boldly declared that capitalism, left unchecked, was fundamentally incompatible with colonial justice—and that the state possessed the capacity and the duty to serve as the people’s counter-market.

When Nii Kwabena Bonne III had urged his compatriots to “buy from your own and be proud,” he was articulating this very principle in the language of the street. The Board, in turn, institutionalized it in the language of policy. Between the bustling market stall and the official ministry ledger lay a single, unwavering moral thread: the inherent right of Africans to own the fruits of their labor.