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This chapter recounts, for the first time, the twentieth-century history of intellectual disability in Ghana. the first sub-Saharan British colony to achieve independence in 1957. It outlines the stark clash between the relative recently introduced beliefs of Western individuality and the long-standing beliefs of a more community-based society. In traditional rural Ghanaian society, the mildly or moderately intellectually disabled persons could integrate with relative ease into a labour-intensive agricultural economy, where literacy was not at a premium. For the severely or profoundly disabled person, life was less predictable. Seclusion or even infanticide could arise from both spiritual beliefs about the influence of evil forces or punishment from the gods, and the view that such an individual might not be fully human. Additional factors were economic concerns about families bearing the load of an unproductive person, allocating precious financial resources to the education of a person seen as unlikely to benefit from it, and anxieties about employment and marriageability. Current life stories indicate how some people with intellectual disabilities in Ghana are learning to manage and resist these cultural complexities and assert their own humanity.

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