POPULATION AND PRINCIPAL ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF KONONGO, ASANTE -AKYEM.

The people are mainly engaged in mixed cropping for the production of staple foods like plantain, cassava, coco yam, water yam, and more recently maize.

Even though the town's farming activities are geared towards domestic consumption, surpluses are usually marketed for other necessities.

The economic breakdown of the area are, 92% (made up of 25% migrants) are farmers, 87% engaged in subsistence farming and the remaining 5% in cash crop farming.

This became the case after the 1983 bush fires which destroyed most of the town's cocoa farms. The destruction of cocoa farms in 1983 saw the emergence of large scale maize, cassava etc production in Konongo.

The central government with assistance from China recently completed an irrigation project on River Anuru to boost rice production in the area.

Pilot farms began in Nnobowam, near Konongo-Odumasi in 1991.

Asante-Akyem area is also notable for its brisk commercial activities. Particularly, in the time past, Konongo (pre-colonial days), was very important in palm oil production (though it has lost it now to Juaso, where a goevrnment Oil Palm Plantation was established in the early 1960s).

It is believed that the name of the town, which literally means "go drink palm oil" is derived from the palm oil trade.

The area sharing borders with over four districts and serving as the gateway of Ashanti (the commercial nerve centre of Ghana) to the Eastern Region, and also strategically located on the main Accra-Kumasi highway and railway, over 5% of the people are engaged in retail trade.<

Mining, is another major economic activity in Konongo-Odumasi.

European mining operations formally began in the town in the early eighteenth century.

By 1927, the Konongo Gold Mines was established to mine the ore reputed to be the finest gem in Ghana.

After Ghana's independence in 1957, it was renamed Konongo Goldfields Corporation, under the State Gold Mining Corporation (SGMC) employing over 10,000 people at its peak.

Its gold production level was third in the country, behind Tarkwa and Obuasi.

However, in the late 1970s the mine was shut down for what was termed exhaustion of mineable ores.

The mine has recently been resuscitated by an Australian/Ghanaian joint-venture company, the Obenimase Gold Mines (OGM), which operates surface mines at Konongo-Odumasi and Obenimase with an annual output of over 20000oz.

It must be noted that Asante-Akyem as a rural area in Ghana, lacks any industrial infrastructure despite the availability of electricity from the national grid.

At the time of this publication, the town, as well as its surrounding communities had no pipe-borne water.

The main sources of water are unsafe streams and rivers, hand-dug wells fitted with hand pumps and open wells.

The per capita income of the town (as an average of that of rural Ghana) is less than $200 per annum.

UPDATE

The Pipe-borne Water project for Konongo and its surrounding communities has just been completed.

The opening ceremony was performed by the President John Jerry Rawlings at a rally in Konongo [October 28, 1996].