OCANSEY, ALFRED JOHN

Alfred John Ocansey (1879-September, 1943) was a pioneer businessman, newspaper proprietor, and nationalist politician. The first to introduce the cinema, and other innovations, to the Gold Coast, he also strove to organise the cocoa industry in such a way that Africans might market their own produce and control their own trade.

He was born in Ada, on the west bank of the Volta at its mouth, in 1879. Completing elementary schooling at the Basel Mission schools in Accra in 1895, he worked as a clerk with the firm of F. & A. Swanzy for 14 years, during which time he acquired a thorough knowledge of commerce.

Intelligent, resourceful, and possessing a pioneering spirit which was lacking among many of his contemporaries, he established in 1910 a successful business enterprise, unaided. His business operations were first established at Somanya, then a flourishing trade center, about 40 mi (64 km) northeast of Accra, and then subsequently were extended to other places north and east of Accra, including Ada, Akuse, Dodowa, Nsawam, Huhunya, and Osiem.

He also opened a branch in Accra itself, which he made his headquarters in 1918. It is said that the latest merchandise was always available at competitive prices in the “Ocansey Stores.” He dealt in all types of merchandise, including motor-cars, tires, and other automobile accessories, and held the franchise for several overseas firms, including the Commonwealth Motor Company of Michigan, and the Commonwealth Motor Company of Chicago. He introduced the cinema to the Gold Coast, and operated a chain of cinema theaters. He was also the first in the country to use an electric generator, to deal in record players and radios, and to introduce an organised transport system.

He was also a prominent Accra cocoa merchant and had a close association with Winifred Tete-Ansa, the “Napoleon” of West African commerce. Tete-Ansa was a businessman from Krobo, some 50 mi (80 kin) northeast of Accra, who in 1928 established the Industrial and Commercial Bank Ltd. in Accra and Lagos, and in 1930 established the West African Cooperative Producers Ltd. in the Gold Coast and Nigeria. Both enterprises sought to enable Africans to use their money and the money and expertise of Americans to market their own produce and to control their own trade.

Subsequently Ocansey became an executive member of the working committee of the Gold Coast Economic Conference on 1930. This conference was convened to discuss the position of the Gold Coast producer in relation to the European producer, unemployment, cooperative societies, land tenure, and the difficulties confronting farmers, merchants, middlemen, and clerks.

Through the efforts and initiative of Ocansey, the Gold Coast and Asante Cocoa Federation was formed in 1930 “for the protection of the cocoa industry generally, having reference, particularly to control of the output of the crop and improvement of quality and price”. He attributed the big drop in the price of cocoa in the late 1920s and early 1930s not to overproduction, nor to the general depression all over the world during that period, but to the “free gambling with our labour” by irresponsible speculators and greedy pools of expatriates.

As president of the federation, Ocansey wrote to Herbert Macaulay, the “Father of Nigerian Nationalism”, on October 27, 1930, urging him to form a similar federation in Nigeria, adding that “unless we stand up and fight for our rights, the end will find us in economic slavery.” The cocoa hold-up which took place in 1930-31 was organised by Ocansey’s federation “as an economic strike for higher prices.” and was partially successful. The hold-up, however, made the colonial administration aware of the fact that its colonial subjects in the Gold Coast had become “more than usually suspicious” of their government, and “more critical” of its value.

Ocansey was also active in newspaper publishing. He published the Gold Coast Spectator, and was the proprietor of the African Morning Post. He invited Nnamdi Azikiwe (later to become first president of Nigeria) to come to the Gold Coast from the United States to edit the Post, which he did. Prominently featured in the Post were the columns of Wallace Johnson, the radical nationalist politician from Sierra Leone.

The Ocansey newspapers were renowned for their venomous and scurrilous attacks on the colonial government and the European race generally. Ocansey himself belonged to the radical anti-government wing of Gold Coast politics. He was an influential executive member of both the West African Youth League, formed by Wallace Johnson, and of the Mambii (Peoples’) Party in Accra, led by Kojo Thompson .

A member of the Committee of Twelve, appointed to coordinate the Gold Coast agitation against the 1934 Sedition and Waterworks Bills, both of which were opposed by educated African opinion, Ocansey was suspect in official circles because he was alleged to be in frequent communication with several “American agitators”. He was also said to receive numerous copies of a prohibited journal, Negro World, published in the United States by Marcus Garvey, the charismatic Jamaican who organised the “Back-to-Africa” movement.
A man of many interests, who exercised a significant influence upon national life, Alfred John Ocansey died in September 1943.

S.K. B. ASANTE