From caravans to lorries: Shifting patterns of mobility and colonial roadmaking in Northern Ghana (1896–1936)

This article analyses the history of the road network in the Upper East Region of Ghana, showing how travelling traders and the local population contested and appropriated the colonial infrastructure in the early 20th century. It integrates the study of mobility with the history of transportation, showing the ways they affected each other in the making of the road network. Resting on a diachronic analysis that questions the travellers' choices and colonial projects, it traces the historical continuity and discontinuity of the African traders' itineraries. It assesses the shifts in the regional mobility pattern through the study of the changing routes of trade and their transformation into motorable roads. The article argues that the regional road network is the result of the re-routing of commercial networks and the matching of different political topographies, both elements resting on a shared effort between colonial intentionality and African agency. The way people moved and chose their itineraries affected the colonial road network, the introduction of motorized transportation, and trade development. To demonstrate this, the article reconstructs the shifts in the position of the town of Bolgatanga in the trade routes. The centrality the town acquired over the years was indeed not planned by the colonial administration but was increasingly influenced by travellers who wanted to avoid colonial controls on trade.