Acheampong

Acheampong appears in the account at a decisive political turn: as the military leader who overthrew Kofi Busia after a currency devaluation triggered unrest in Accra, and who immediately reversed that policy. The episode illustrates the book’s central distinction between policy failure caused by ignorance and policy choices constrained by political incentives and institutions.

The crisis behind the overthrow

Busia came to power in 1969 and, like Kwame Nkrumah before him, pursued expansionary economic policies, maintained price controls through marketing boards, and kept the exchange rate overvalued. These measures served political purposes: price controls squeezed agricultural producers while delivering cheap food to urban constituencies whose support the government sought to maintain. They also generated revenue for public spending. But the arrangements proved unsustainable, contributing to repeated balance-of-payments crises and foreign-exchange shortages.

On December 27, 1971, Busia signed an agreement with the International Monetary Fund that included a substantial currency devaluation. The IMF, the World Bank, and the wider international community pressed him to implement the agreement’s reforms. Busia, however, understood that devaluation was a serious political gamble: the immediate economic adjustment brought unrest rather than political stability.

Overthrow and reversal

Discontent and rioting in Accra mounted uncontrollably after the currency was devalued. Acheampong, then a lieutenant colonel leading the military, overthrew Busia. His first action after the coup was to reverse the devaluation, undoing the measure at the center of Busia’s agreement with the IMF.

The account does not develop Acheampong’s motives or subsequent rule. It presents him in this episode through the consequences of his intervention: Busia’s government fell, and the currency policy was reversed. The sequence makes the political stakes concrete: a reform supported by international institutions could not be sustained when its immediate consequences destabilized the government.

Significance in the book’s argument

Acheampong’s role helps demonstrate why the book rejects the idea that poverty chiefly reflects policymakers’ ignorance of sound economics. Busia had been an opponent of Nkrumah and led a democratic government, yet he faced political constraints resembling those that had shaped his predecessor’s policies. The book argues that such choices are often made because they preserve political support, not because leaders mistakenly believe they are ideal economic policy.

The coup and policy reversal sharpen that argument. Advice about reducing market failures cannot, by itself, overcome the incentives and constraints produced by a society’s political and economic institutions. Acheampong’s intervention is therefore not presented as a detailed personal portrait, but as the turning point that exposes the fragility of reform when its political costs become immediate.