Creating an American Island: The Volta Aluminium Company (VALCO) in Ghana, 1964–2000

In the early 1960s, at the height of the Cold War in Africa, Ghana’s president Kwame Nkrumah launched the Volta River Project that included a hydroelectric dam at Akosombo and an aluminum smelter operated by the Volta Aluminium Company (VALCO). The Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Company, a subsidiary of Kaiser Industries, owned 90 percent of VALCO. The Volta project was at the center of Ghana’s modernization program. During the smelter’s groundbreaking ceremony Nkrumah and Edgar Kaiser, president of Kaiser Industries, exchanged speeches and made customary offerings. While Nkrumah had a libation poured, Kaiser served “American hot dogs and soft drinks.” The 5,000 hotdogs, imported from New York, stood for Kaiser’s attempt to create an American island in Ghana. The smelter was not only the largest U.S. investment in West Africa, but VALCO became a U.S. outpost in Ghana, economically and politically, socially and culturally. The paper explores how VALCO promoted labor regimes that emphasized efficiency, informality, and productivity, and offered incentives in the form of fridges, stereo systems, and other consumer goods. The paper argues that this American island was not only of great benefit to Kaiser but also to the VALCO “labor aristocracy” that embraced a “VALCO culture.” The losers were the Ghanaian state and most Ghanaian people, since VALCO received highly favorable electricity rates and consumed half of the power generated at Akosombo. In the 1980s, the military government of Jerry Rawlings, supported by public pressure, renegotiated the VALCO rates. Still Kaiser continued to operate its Ghana smelter for twenty years. After overcoming labor struggles, the VALCO smelter became one of the most efficient and profitably plants in the Kaiser system. In the 1990s, the management’s “new approach” rejuvenated and transformed the VALCO culture. The paper draws on extensive archival and oral research in Ghana and the U.S.