Corruptions of development in the countryside of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, 1927–57

Much current development literature equates civil society with community and invokes both in the name of development. Using Northern Ghana as a case study, this essay argues that the colonial state considered civil society antithetical to community. That is, for colonial administrators African civil society represented the corruption of development. Driven by forces of political and economic change, civil society pressed against the colonial project of preserving community in the African countryside. In response, the colonial state invoked the idea of community, not to encourage civil society but rather to block its emergence in the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast.