Bio
Olisa Godson Muojama is a Reader (Associate Professor) in the Department of History at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He holds a PhD in Political Economy and specializes in economic history, with a particular focus on the cocoa industry in West Africa. His research examines the impact of global economic forces and historical events—such as the First World War and interwar price fluctuations—on cocoa farmers in Ghana and Nigeria. He is a member of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa and has been awarded distinguished fellowships, including the Global Encounters Fellowship from the University of Tübingen (2024) and a Fellowship in Global History from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (2020). With 9 scholarly publications, 5 citations, an h-index of 1, and an i10-index of 0, he continues to contribute to the historical understanding of economic dependency and agricultural commodity markets in Africa.
Educational Journey
PhD
Experience
Reader (Associate Professor)
2008 - Present • HistoryEditors Role
Reviewer
GJHSS
2016 -Affiliations
Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa
Membership
Member since 0Grants and Awards
Global Encounters Fellowship
University of Tübingen
Fellowship in Global History
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Amerika-Institut
Research
The First World War and Cocoa Industry in Ghana: A Study of the Hazards of Economic Dependency
This paper is about the impact of World War I (1914- 1918) on the cocoa industry in Ghana. Scholars have examined the impact of the Great War on African political and economic sectors, but have downplayed the War’s impact on African economies, most especially cocoa industry in West Africa. I examine the effects of the war-time trade restrictions on cocoa industry in Ghana (which by then was the world’s largest producer of cocoa) in order to show the impact of the international political economy on dependent economies as well as the consequences of economic dependence on external market. Although the quantity of cocoa exported from Ghana increased from 1915, there was no corresponding increase in value due to the restriction of trade and suspension of market as the logic of the economy. The result of this was the abandonment of cocoa farms and economic downturn of cocoa farmers.
