[Name of Writer]

[Name of Instructor]

[Subject]

[Date]

African Kingdoms of Ghana and Mali

Introduction

The continent of Africa enjoyed being the home of expansive and famous kingdoms from the earliest days until the medieval period. Africa was also considered the home of numerous empires and kingdoms known to be the earliest in the world. One of the kingdoms that developed during the Middle Ages was the Kingdom of Ghana. This kingdom afterwards declined with the attack that came from the north in the 11th century (Austin, p.290). Another famous Kingdom in Africa was the Kingdom of Mali which was founded in the 13th century and was known for its famous city of Timbuktu, a city renowned for trade in horses, salt, gold, and slaves. This kingdom, which developed during the 14th century, was later destroyed by the Songhai Kingdom in the 16th century. The Songhai Kingdom was also a Mali kingdom, on the Niger River, that developed in the 14th century and was doomed to destruction toward the end of the 16th century by the invasion of the Moroccans (Austin, p.291).

Discussion

Ghana and Mali, the two great West African Kingdoms developed on the crossing of trading routes. They have a very similar history (Ajayi & Espie, p.101). Thus, this paper we will discuss the peculiarities of the historical development of the states of Ghana and Mali.

The Kingdom of Ghana

Ghana has a total population of 23.4 million and an annual growth rate of 2.1 percent. Although it is a low-income country in sub-Saharan Africa, Ghana has lately attained remarkable gains in economic development and poverty reduction, with an economic growth rate of more than five percent ever since 2001. Income disproportion between men and women and across regions, however, stays high and has even boosted during the phase of economic growth commencing in the 1990s.

At the time of independence from Britain in 1957, Ghana was one of Africa's wealthiest former colonies. Ghana's economy and society were widely seen to embody characteristics that were considered advantageous for modern economic development, including: a high per capita income by the standards of Sub-Saharan Africa, an impressive number of existing and potential export commodities, and a good transportation system of roads and railways. With respect to human resources, Ghana's relatively well-developed educational system had by the 1950s produced a large number of educated people. The new state was endowed with an efficient, professional public service bureaucracy. In short, Ghana's developmental prospects were considered favorable.

During the late 1950s the economy grew quite rapidly, with over 5 per cent growth in gross national product annually between 1955 and 1960 (Berg, p.550). Prices were relatively stable and the cost of living was rising only slowly. Between 1960 and 1966, following an attempt at state-led, “socialist” economic growth, the economy performed much more poorly, while living standards for most Ghanaians declined. Led by Kwame Nkrumah and his Convention Peoples Party (CPP) government, the country's failure in this regard was attributed to the government's program of centrally planned economic and social development (Berg, p.552). This was ...