Population Control, Development, and Ghana's National Family Planning Programme, 1960–1972

Abstract

The National Family Planning Programme (NFPP) was launched in Ghana in May 1970. It was a tool to implement the 1969 Population Policy Paper, which the military government, the National Liberation Council (NLC), had written with the aid of Ford Foundation advisers. The policy paper reiterated international ‘overpopulation’ discourses that pushed for national planning to stem population growth, especially in ‘developing’ countries. Indeed, it constituted an example of development planning. It discursively linked Ghana's prosperity, and modernity, to stemming rapid population growth through fertility limitation. When the NFPP was launched by the Progress Party (PP) government in 1970, its focus was to implement the population policy by limiting population growth through curbing fertility. International discourses of development and population, as well as the specific interventions of organizations such as the Ford Foundation, the Population Council, and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, shaped Ghana's family planning story. However, choices over the implementation of family planning were ultimately linked to governments’ modernization and development projects and ideologies. Different approaches to family planning by the Nkrumah, NLC, and PP governments highlight the fact that family planning was ultimately political, but legitimized by development discourses of global and local origin.

Race, class, caste, disability, sterilisation and hysterectomy

“…the second half of the nineteenth-century, along with the development of anaesthesia medications and antiseptic techniques (Marshall 1955). They were thus contemporaneous with another phenomenon which has been well described by historians and social scientists: The growth of eugenic ideas and populationcontrol measures in the global formation of modern national and colonial regimes (Stern 2005;Bashford 2014;Bashford and Levine 2010;Broberg and Roll-Hansen 2005;Ashford 2019).…”

The global proliferation of radical gynaecological surgeries: A history of the present

“…From the 1940s onwards, the proliferation of gynaecology into West Africa and India was enabled by imperialist medical networks and later the influence of international entities such as the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, the Population Council, the WHO, the League of Nations and the International Planned Parenthood Federation which all contributed to the global economic discourse of ideas about the need for contraception, including sterilization, to limit population growth, pressuring aid-recipient and debtor nations to undertake population-control measures (Bashford 2006;Bashford 2014;Ashford 2020a;Towghi and Randeria 2013). These entities were responsible for embedding 'family planning' institutions into the so-called 'developing world' (Sharpless 1998).…”

“…In Ghana, Africa's first national population control policy was announced in 1969, followed by the National Family Planning Programme which quickly spread through Ghana's existing hospitals and clinics in the 1970s. Although the provision of family planning offered women and men more choice over their reproductive lives, the Programme's principal aim was political: It promised to promote economic development in the country (Ashford 2020a(Ashford , 2019. The programme also included coercive elements such as monetary incentives for family-planning fieldworkers (Ashford 2020b).…”

Attitudes and Practices of Healthcare Professionals and Clinical Medical Students on Contraception: A Cross-Sectional Study in Cape Coast, Ghana

“…Ghana was the third African country to adopt a comprehensive population policy in 1969, after the declaration on population by world leaders in 1968 [ 10 ]. A year later, in May 1970, The National Family Planning Programme (NFPP) was launched [ 11 ]. The long-term aim was to reduce the population growth rate of approximately 3% in 1969 to 1.7% by the year 2000, by ensuring the provision of information and making contraceptive methods safe and available to all [ 11 ].…”

“…A year later, in May 1970, The National Family Planning Programme (NFPP) was launched [ 11 ]. The long-term aim was to reduce the population growth rate of approximately 3% in 1969 to 1.7% by the year 2000, by ensuring the provision of information and making contraceptive methods safe and available to all [ 11 ]. Fifty years down the lane, Ghana has made only minimal progress in this feat, with a current population growth rate of 2.15% and a projected achievement of target in the year 2035 (“Ghana[ 12 ] (Demographics, Maps, Graphs),” n.d. [ 13 ]).…”