Sankofa Series: How the popular Ghana-made fridges of the 1960s were sold

In 2022, Ghana is not particularly known to be a manufacturing country, as data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), an online data visualization and distribution platform focused on the dynamics of global economics activities, shows.

According to the OEC, in 2019, Ghana imported $18.4 billion worth of items, making it the number 81 trade destination in the

Read full articleworld, a situation that also changed from $238 million to $18.7 billion in 2014.

But in the early days of Ghana’s independence, the trajectory looked a lot more promising; Ghana seemed to have been on course to becoming a competitive exporter of its own manufactured products.

In this Sankofa Series article, GhanaWeb brings back a newspaper clipping that detailed how some Made-in-Ghana refrigerators and air-conditioners were to be sold.

With the headline, “Sale of Ghana-made fridges,” the article, written L. Therson-Coffie & Tess Kallon, described the plan for the electric products.

“The first locally-assembled refrigerators and air conditioners are to be put on the market by the end of this month.

“Mr. J. E. G. Dentu, Technical Manager of the Ghana Sanyo Electrical Manufacturing Corporation, who disclosed this at Tema yesterday said the corporation is at present assembling 100 consignment of air conditioners and ten refrigerators on trial basis,” the opening paragraphs of the report said.

The report added that beyond these two products, there was a plan to expand production to cover others like television and electric cookers.

“Mr. Dentu, who conducted the newsmen around the factory said the prices of the fridge and the air conditioners would be about those of the imported ones.

“The corporation would add electric cookers, and washing machines to their line of products soon. This, he said, would however depend on the market demand.

“Television and radio sets, electric fans, pressing irons and tape recorders are among the products of the corporation – a joint State and private enterprise,” it added.

On how to get Ghanaians at the time to buy into the idea and encourage others to promote it, the report said the corporation considered a hire-purchase system.

“Mr. Dentu said the corporation would consider introducing a hire-purchase system to enable workers to buy its products and pay the instalments at source,” he said.

See the newspaper clipping below: