Between African planning and colonial intervention: the process of urbanization in Bolgatanga, Ghana (1896-1939)

The thesis analyses the urbanization of Bolgatanga, the regional capital of the Upper East Region of Ghana, identifying the main forces that shaped this process. The main argument is that the commercial and political prominence that the town acquired in the region at the beginning of the 20th century created the conditions for its urbanization. The thesis explores the changes in the settlement pattern, economic trends and political organization that affected the urban landscape of Bolgatanga in this period. The thesis intends to present endogenous changes in the actual production and conceptualization of urbanity. It focuses thus on the processes that led to a radical change in the town’s settlement pattern from the end of the 19th century up to the moment in which people began to commodify their land and ceded their compound farms to new settlers in the late 1930s. This moment represents a rupture with past land tenure practices and, at the same time, the start of a new way of conceptualizing and occupying space. The study of Bolgatanga’s urbanism is framed in the thesis through three broad, and interrelated layers of growth of the town. The first of these layers concerns spatiality and indigenous concepts of belonging. It is devoted to the study of historical changes in the settlement pattern of the people who lived in Bolgatanga. The second layer takes into consideration the dynamism of the town’s political landscape, analysing how the local figures of power interacted with colonialism. The study of the economic networks that connected Bolgatanga with the rest of West Africa represents the third layer of town development. The thesis demonstrates thus that by following the three layers interrelations, it is possible to create a solid analytic outline to explain the urban process that transformed Bolgatanga in the 20th century.