ABSTRACT
The importance of the existence of large numbers of small towns in Africa is that such towns have continuing traditional links with the surrounding countryside. For plantation and mine workers the loss of employment means hunger, since few will have access to land for growing their own food. In Ghana, Jeff Crisp, a historian of the mine workers, reported: the state sought to control this workforce by means of co-option and by eroding the power of the union leadership. The National Union of Tanganyika Workers had been one of the strongest workers’ organizations in Africa up to the mid 1960s, but was first incorporated and then marginalized in the monopolization of political and economic power by Tanganyika African National Union, the ruling political party. Small marketing organizations have been formed in towns and cities to collect and sell produce from village societies.
