Progress in Kojokrom was directed by Sean Graham, the head of the Gold Coast Film Unit, and was widely exhibited throughout the Gold Coast as a pedagogical tool for promoting the recent changes in local government. A government report in 1954 explained that teams ‘of six or seven’ travelled around the Gold Coast in cinema vans to screen the film. The report explained that the film – ‘which members of the Trusteeship Council saw during the Council’s 14^th session’ – would be shown in the evening, and the next morning ‘all the people of the village’ would be invited to a meeting, usually attended by the local councillor, at which the team would explain ‘using visual aids’ how they collect and spend the rates (Report on Togoland, 1954, 35). A further report in 1954 noted that ‘in the early part of the year, a vigorous and prolonged campaign was launched to educate the people in election registration and voting procedure. In this campaign, the Gold Coast Film Unit’s films “Salute to the Queen” and “Progress in Kojokrom” were widely shown’ (Report on the Gold Coast, 1954, 120).

Ghana Today, published by the information section of the Ghana Office in London, emphasised the widespread distribution of these films. ‘The work of the Department of Information Services has been ubiquitous’, it wrote, ‘and the most important campaigns which it has undertaken have been in respect of the general election of 1954 when over 1 1/2 million people saw the film on election procedure, and in support of the battle against swollen shoot’, a disease affecting crops (Ghana Today, 25 December 1957). An earlier report included a picture of a cinema van visiting a local area during preparations for the elections of 1954, while a commentator told the locals, ‘in the language of the areas they are visiting’, ‘how to register on electoral rolls and the procedure for voting’ (Gold Coast Today, 11 April 1956).

African Affairs also recognised Progress in Kojokrom’s role within local communities, when writing that, by October 1953, ‘265 out of the scheduled 284 councils had been established’ in the Gold Coast. It noted that a new bill reorganised the Police force, while another ‘introduces trial by jury into Ashanti, with women on jury service for the first time’. ‘All this work’, the journal explained, ‘is accompanied by propaganda, like a film, Progress at Kojokrom, and a pamphlet, Your Council and Your Progress’ (African Affairs, July 1954, 195).

Despite its widespread use as a tool for governance within the Gold Coast, the production of Progress in Kojokrom was a fraught affair. Sean Graham, in correspondence with noted British documentary maker Basil Wright, complained in July 1952 that ‘I am still stuck with Local Government, which has now come down to about 1 1/2 reels. To date I can’t wriggle out of it. The script has been revised several times, but the more we mess about with it, the worse it gets’ (Letter dated 28 July 1952, BCW 1/16/1). The script was a source of constant anxiety to Graham. Writing a few weeks later, he explained ‘I am going ahead with the picture. I have neither the enthusiasm nor time to re-write from scratch, and am more concerned to tighten the script, cut down in length, and make the film as brief as I can’. ‘It may be morally wrong to go ahead on a bad script’, he added, ‘but I have so much more to do, and so little time to do it in’ (Letter dated 18 August 1952, BCW 1/16/1). Graham’s criticisms of the scriptwriter Montgomery Tully were based primarily on Tully’s failure to relate to the local population; ‘he has little interest in this place, and has failed to make any friends among the Africans’. Graham sought to train and employ a local crew and travelled the country, meeting and socialising predominantly with local Africans. ‘I cannot push him [Tully] out into a village, as I want to, and tell him to make friends with the locals’, he wrote, ‘yet I cannot see what good it will do our scripts for Tully to swap confidences with the Europeans in the club’ (Letter dated 28 July 1952, BCW 1/16/1).

The completed film addressed changes in local government, which followed the success of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), led by Kwame Nkrumah, in the Gold Coast’s first general election in 1951. Richard Rathbone argued that the success of the CPP, which was ultimately committed to the ‘expulsion’ of the British, enabled it to ‘exercise something very close to full self-government in matters of local government’. Rathbone suggested that the British were relieved to hand over the ‘wretchedly complicated task of unravelling and controlling rural areas to Africans’ but the CPP sought ‘the radical re-ordering of Ghanaian society’ and this, according to Rathbone, ‘included the complete ending of chiefly authority’ (Rathbone, 2000, 54).

The new local government structure, approved by the assembly in December 1951, denied the chiefs direct access to their old sources of income, with the rents and taxes now collected by the councils. The new system of taxation was seemingly no more successful though, with Rathbone suggesting that ‘the local revenue was either not collected or so poorly collected that central government was required to subsidise local expenditure from central funds in increasing amounts’ (Rathbone, 2000, 55). Edward Asafu Adjaye, the Minister of Local Government, also hinted in 1952 that the change of power in local areas ‘had not been going very well, with an active spoils system and axes wielded vigorously’ (African Affairs, October 1952, 277).

This change of power was discussed in The Times in January 1952. ‘The object of the bill’, the paper wrote, ‘is to do away with the old system of indirect rule through district commissioners and predominantly traditional authorities, and to substitute a system of local government councils, democratically elected’. ‘A cadre of African executives would’, according to the paper, ‘act as agents for the minister of local government’ (The Times, 3 January 1952, 3). This minister, Edward Asafu Adjaye, who addresses the camera at the end of the film, was Minister of Local Government from 1951 to 1955 and would subsequently become the first High Commissioner to the United Kingdom after Ghana gained independence in 1957.

Progress in Kojokrom also played internationally. The Malayan Film Unit dubbed 35 and 16mm versions of the picture into Malay, Mandarin and Tamil, while the picture was also offered for exhibition in Britain by New Realm Distributors. Film User noted that while the film was intended ‘to accustom African audiences to the idea of civil responsibility’, the film ‘is well worth showing to groups interested in colonial development; it is also suitable for the upper forms at school’ (Film User, November 1955, 569). The British reviews emphasised ‘the simple humour to rub in the lesson’ (KW), ‘the simple propaganda message’ (To-Day’s Cinema), ‘the very direct and simple story telling technique’, and the ‘gauche charm’ of the performers (MFB).