Culture and development: Indigenous structures, gender, and everyday life in colonial coastal Southern Ghana

The dynamic relationship between coastal communities of Southern Ghana and their environment did manifest in the culture as well. Men and women of coastal communities under the auspices of popular indigenous organizations proactively sought to continue their familiar ways of development and also used these same structures and institutions to demand their share or portion of the emerging colonial development dispensation. Indigenous cultural ideas and structures among the coastal communities of Southern Ghana underpinned local development efforts. In a sense, the culture provided a requisite pool of resources from which communities drew to make everyday life meaningful and fulfilling. Indigenous organizations were equally instrumental in the opposition of colonial policies deemed detrimental to everyday life and local development. Coastal communities in Southern Ghana in pre-colonial times had indigenous systems and institutions that facilitated and ensured the development of the individual and the society as a whole.