Today, global reproductive health relies on funding and institutional networks that stretch far beyond the women and babies their policies impact. Political ideologies affect these networks, demonstrated as the US cut UNFPA funding and reinstated the “global gag rule” last year, a move that was extremely harmful to women and babies worldwide and specifically in Ghana (Pugh et al. 2017; Jones, 2015). The impact of international ideologies on mothers and babies is not new. Transnational population activism and discourse has been well explored by historians (Sharpless, 1997; Connelly 2008). In the mid-20th century, high fertility and improved public health in ‘developing countries’ were blamed for overpopulation, threatening economic development globally. Historians are yet to fully explore how this international phenomenon affected Africa.
Taking a historical view, this paper connects events in 1960s-70s Ghana to international networks concerning family planning and population control. It examines how national and international discourses of development interacted as the Ghanaian government launched its National Family Planning Policy in 1970 - becoming the first country in African to do so. This policy was sponsored by USAID and the Ford Foundation, and aimed to halt population growth in the name of economic development. This paper narrates international organisations’ and Ghanaian governments’ interventions into reproductive health in Ghana at this time, asking how they perceived women’s health as part of population control. It shows that development and modernity went hand in hand in the eyes of certain Ghanaians and the international world – it shows how this played out in women’s lives as new health provision was envisaged, contraceptives introduced and a gendered version of modern motherhood evolved. Ghana, at this time, was a relatively new nation, and the launching of the policy followed a coup, which saw Kwame Nkrumah ousted from government. In the context of decolonization and political upheaval, discourses of modernity and development were especially prominent. At the same time, internationally, among representatives of the United Nations (UN), Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), World Health Organisation (WHO) and numerous philanthropic and non-governmental organisations, population became a buzzword. Building on the work of scholars that look at this issue on a global scale, particularly Matthew Connelly (2008), this paper highlights how this global phenomenon played out in a local, African, context.
Gender and motherhood in Ghana during the colonial period has received important scholarly attention (Allman and Tashjian, 2000). Also, the place of women in the new Ghanaian Republic has also been looked at from a political point of view (Manuh, 2016). However, this paper contributes to historical research by showing how population became an issue in Ghana, and family planning was established. These areas warrant research, particularly in regard to how they affected women and their health, issues that are ongoing today. This paper is based on archival research in UK, Ghana and at the WHO, as well as oral history interviews in Ghana. I argue that women’s reproductive health in Ghana has long been affected by international discourses of development and global networks. Furthermore it argues that in the 1970s, when the population policy was launched, whilst improving women’s health was frequently cited as a rationale for family planning, the more powerful discourse, both in Ghana and internationally, was development discourse.