The United Africa Company, Local Intermediaries, and the Making of Gold Coast Consumer Society, 1930s to 1950s

This paper argues that since the 1930s, United Africa Company (UAC) staff, storekeepers, and credit customers acted as important intermediaries between the company and its consumers.  While their practices obviously helped the UAC’s distribution and profits, these intermediaries also undercut the company by sharing commission and bonuses with consumers, ignoring company policies, as well as forwarding their own political and economic interests.  A case study on the career of Issac A. Ogoe, a UAC storekeeper turned manager, illustrates how intermediaries simultaneously bolstered and undermined the UAC.  Ogoe used his knowledge of local politics and his connections with prominent merchants, chiefs, and other local authorities to make demands on the company and secure material benefits for himself and his family. This paper also analyzes the role of women in shaping consumer markets and systems of distribution. While the UAC trained and hired men as managers, salesmen, storekeepers, and clerks, women dominated the company’s credit customer system.  Far from just “reselling goods,” numerous female passbook holders became successful entrepreneurs, building up their own clientele of smaller distributors and using profits to invest in other types of business, including cocoa farming and construction.  Not only did they deal with the majority of everyday customers in person, their activities often determined the availability of different types of goods and prices.