It would have been difficult to retain the name Gold Coast after independence in 1957. You would expect a place named that to be prosperous. If it wasn’t, you might wonder where the money/gold/ in this case manganese went. Shipped out by camel? So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
I like this stamp with the later independence overprint, even though the stamp’s value drops 20 cents. What I like is including the name change to Ghana without the crossing out that usually happened in say Yugoslavia on old stamps when the rulers changed. The inclusion of the date was enough to announce the change in a forward looking, optimistic way.
Todays stamp was the old 1952 A14 Gold Coast 3 penny issue. The Ghana post independence overprint was still valid for postage in independent Ghana. There were independence overprints on nine of the original 12 stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether used or unused.
The name Gold Coast made sense for the colony. Coastal colony administered cities grew up around trading posta where Africans traded gold and slaves to the European outposts. The biggest trading was in gold that Africans panned for.
With a new name needed for independence. Ghana was chosen as it was the title given the warrior kings of the old Wagadou Empire that existed from 300-1100 AD. The story put forward was that Wagadou became very rich when camels were introduced into the area and then used on trade routes trading salt and gold with Morocco. There are of course two problems with this in relation to a country with the Gold Coast borders. Wagadou lied inland in modern Mali and Mauritania with no overlap with Ghana/Gold Coast. Also the main beneficiaries of old camel trade would have been Arabs and Sephardic Jews, not black Africans. The Wagadou Empire was eventually made a vassal state of the neighboring Mali Empire. Wonder what the African term is for camel mounted warrior vassals?
Manganese was discovered near Nsuta in 1914. Manganese is mainly used in a cheaper grade of stainless steel where manganese substitutes for nickel in higher grades of stainless steel. The mine during the colonial period got a road, trainline to dedicated port facilities in Takoradi, the old Dutch trade station Fort Witsen. With the mine being online so long, it is still believed that only three percent of reserves have been mined.
The mine went though changes post independence, though not as quickly as might be expected. 16 years after independence, Ghana nationalized the mine. In 1995, the mine was partially privatized as the Ghana Manganese Company GMC. To make it more attractive to investors, in 2001 GMC was granted an exclusive 30 year lease on all manganese mining within 100 miles of the Nsulta mine. In 2007-2008 Consolidated Minerals, a Jersey based holding company, bought 90 percent of GMC with the government of Ghana still holding 10 percent. In 2017 Consolidated Minerals, having unfortunately modernized their name to Consmin was acquired by a Chinese company Tian Yuan Meng Ye. They still operate out of tax haven Jersey and use the Consmin name to actively raise money in British markets. Perhaps the governments of Ghana and Great Britain should join forces to renationalize it as Gold Coast mining and get back to square one?
Well my drink is empty. Come again tomorrow when there will be a new story that can be learned from stamp collecting.