Ethnic patronage shaped Ghana's civil service before independence

Researchers from MIT and the London School of Economics and Political Science analyzed historical records to show that Ghana's civil service was dominated by specific ethnic groups before the country gained independence in 1957.

The scholars examined employment records for 11,702 bureaucrats from the colonial era to determine how jobs were distributed under British rule.

The study found that the Ga and Fante ethnic groups held over 70 percent of public-sector positions in the 1950s, despite making up only 14 percent of the population. This suggests that the colonial bureaucracy operated through patrimonialism, where jobs were assigned based on social ties and patronage rather than individual merit.

Noah Nathan, a scholar at MIT, notes that this meant the first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, inherited a state already captured by specific groups rather than a neutral, merit-based system. The researchers ruled out education or geography as the primary reasons for this imbalance. While the Ga and Fante had early advantages in schooling, other groups caught up in educational attainment by the 1930s but still did not receive a proportional share of government jobs.

The team believes local bureaucrats used social connections to secure positions for their own groups, often with the indifference of British colonial rulers who lacked the incentive or information to stop the practice.