‘The Modern Shopping Experience’: Kingsway Department Store and Consumer Politics in Ghana

Abstract

<jats:title>ABSTRACT</jats:title><jats:p>Despite the perception that department stores are a recent phenomenon in West Africa, modern indoor retail spaces have existed in its major cities since the mid-twentieth century. This article uses the history of Kingsway Department Store in Accra as a lens to understand emerging political, economic and social tensions in post-colonial Ghana. Drawing on United Africa Company (UAC) records, staff reports and inspection findings, as well as local newspapers, advertising and oral interviews, I demonstrate how legacies of colonial capitalism, struggles for political independence and negotiations over what constituted the ‘modern’ fuelled both local and foreign support of the project. For the UAC, investment was an opportunity to legitimize its activities in a newly independent Ghana and a means to shed its image as a colonial merchant firm. While local authorities were divided on whether large-scale retail developments should be part of an expanding post-colonial city, Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah thought the store might provide a key component in constructing his vision of a new modern nation. However, the presence of white-collar working women, young managers supervising older employees, and the mixing of white expatriate and African shoppers exacerbated social conflicts – challenging local and colonial notions of authority based on race, gender and age.</jats:p>

Malls, modernity and consumption: Shopping malls as new projectors of modernity in Accra, Ghana

“…Secondly, since shopping malls were first developed, they have assumed an important part of contemporary urban development (Harvey, 1989) and global flows (Salcedo, 2003) because they offer access to basic commodities, space for cross-class social interactions, recreation and jobs (Stillerman and Salcedo, 2012). Also, through the media, malls are used to project modernity by investors, developers and politicians (Murillo, 2012).…”

Solid intentions: An archival ethnography of corporate architecture and organizational remembering

“…In the looting and destruction that ensued, the UAC was noticeably singled out as a target (John Holt & Co, 1948-1953. In response, the company committed itself to a review and subsequent changes to its business practices (Fieldhouse, 1994: 337-343) but political pressure led the firm to retrench its significant network of stores and agents, and focus on wholesale and related activities, as well as the upmarket Kingsway department stores (Decker, 2007: 109-112;Murillo, 2012) The company's other major construction was the Kingsway Department Store, opened in 1957, the year of Ghana's independence, and this was a distinctive and uncompromisingly modernist building (figure 123). As a department store, it offered a self-contained consumption space that did not have many equals in the capital, and counted the first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, as one of its customers (Murillo, 2010: 11).…”

“…In the looting and destruction that ensued, the UAC was noticeably singled out as a target (John Holt & Co., 1948–1953). In response, the company committed itself to a review and subsequent changes to its business practices (Fieldhouse, 1994: 337–43), but political pressure led the firm to retrench its significant network of stores and agents, and focus on wholesale and related activities, as well as the upmarket Kingsway department stores (Decker, 2007: 109–12; Murillo, 2012). Hence, both symbolically and physically (at least in the case of Swanmill), these new buildings replaced the old corporation that had been too colonial.…”

“…The company’s other major construction was the Kingsway Department Store, opened in 1957, the year of Ghana’s independence, and this was a distinctive and uncompromisingly modernist building (Figure 12). As a department store, it offered a self-contained consumption space that did not have many equals in the capital and counted the first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, as one of its customers (Murillo, 2012: 376). Even though there were only 7 years between the openings of these two landmark buildings in Accra, their stylistic references are clearly very different.…”

“…The Swanmill, for example, still featured wooden interior décor with the company’s unicorn logo (Figure 13), even though the UAC abandoned it in its visual communications in favor of a much starker and geometric sign. Kingsway, in contrast, became renowned for its modern shopping experience and service, and its role in creating the modern ‘African consumer’ (Murillo, 2012: 371, 376-377) made it a very special elite urban space.…”