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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | 'Accra is changing, isn't it?': urban infrastructure, independence, and nation in the Gold Coast's 'Daily Graphic', 1954-57 |
Author: | Plageman, Nate |
Year: | 2010 |
Periodical: | International Journal of African Historical Studies (ISSN 0361-7882) |
Volume: | 43 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 137-159 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Ghana |
Subjects: | infrastructure urban development nation building newspapers 1950-1959 |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/25741400 |
Abstract: | From 1954 to 1957, the years immediately prior to Ghana's independence, the 'Daily Graphic', at that time Ghana's most dominant newspaper, contained a great quantity of articles, photo essays and editorials that discussed the state of the colony and the meanings of the increasingly imminent opportunity for self-rule. The present paper looks at the ways in which the newspaper's staff approached political possibilities or the nation-to-be. It clarifies their perspective and examines the ways in which the 'Graphic' writers imagined the new Ghana as a modern urban entity. The newspaper often extolled an enthousiasm for infrastructural development. From 1954-1957, the 'Graphic' published an expansive array of articles that focused on the physical environment of the colony's capital city, Accra. By writing about the city, 'Graphic' employees reclaimed development, long a project supervised by the colonial State, as a domain of local action and national importance. They presented their readers with a controlled narrative of historical change, material progress and nation building. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |