The available data show that the Gold Coast had achieved food self-sufficiency under subsistence economy before the establishment of colonial rule. What were then the reasons that contributed to its shift from subsistence economy to cash crop economy, and therefore from a food exporter to a food importer? Records confirm that before the colonial period, the local farmers used to sell their production surplus of cereals to the Europeans who were involved in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. The research attempts to find out answers to the reasons behind the failure of the agricultural sector to achieve food self-sufficiency in the Gold Coast despite the favorable geographic and climatic conditions. The choice of the Gold Cost for this research is not arbitrary. This former British colony represents a good sample through which answers to the failure of most of the former colonies to achieve food self-sufficiency can be found. This choice is based on the following considerations. First, this former British colony shares common features with most African countries, and this allows generalizing the findings. Second, it represents a country which enjoys favourable conditions for a prosperous agricultural sector, that is to say, it has excellent climatic conditions, in addition to the varied reliefs together with abundance of water. These factors together permit to exclude the natural conditions, such as desert land, lack of water, etc., which may negatively affect agriculture, as being the reason of this failure. The third reason lies in the fact that this former British colony has had much in common with the former French colonies in North Africa (Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria) during the pre- colonial, colonial and post-colonial periods. To put it differently, they almost went through similar circumstances. This enable, to some extent, to determine and then generalize the role and responsibility of the European colonial powers in this issue if any.
Keywords: The Gold Coast, Subsistence economy, Cash-crop economy, Food-dependency.