Ghana on the Go: African Mobility in the Age of Motor Transportation [Paperback]

As early as the 1910s, African drivers in colonial Ghana understood the possibilities that using imported motor transport could further the social and economic agendas of a diverse array of local agents, including chiefs, farmers, traders, fishermen, and urban workers. Jennifer Hart's powerful narrative of auto-mobility shows how drivers built on old trade routes to increase the speed and scale of motorized travel. Hart reveals that new forms of labor migration, economic enterprise, cultural production, and social practice were defined by autonomy and mobility and thus shaped the practices and values that formed the foundations of Ghanaian society today. Focusing on the everyday lives of individuals who participated in this century of social, cultural, and technological change, Hart comes to a more sensitive understanding of the ways in which these individuals made new technology meaningful to their local communities and associated it with their future aspirations.

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Jennifer Hart is an Assistant Professor of African History at Wayne State University.

This well-written book deeply engages with the dynamics of African mobility and constitutes a major contribution to twentieth-century Ghanaian history.

Jennifer Hart's text sweeps triumphantly across a century of authomobility in colonial and post-colonial Ghana. . . sophisticated, clear and inspiring account. . .

There is much here for readers across a wide range of disciplines to learn and enjoy.

Jennifer Hart has an acute ear for listening to stories and noticing important themes in the narratives and archives. Such fascinating material.

Automobile technology was quickly and fluidly remade and redefined to suit local usesin ways that alter how we think about economy, society, and modernity, as well as modes of African inventivenls