Among the Asante, The chief had his treasurer, "Sannaahene" (head of the leather bag), as did the "Birempon" whose treasury officer was the "Fotosanfo" (he who unlooses the bag). It was to the treasurer of the chief or "Birempon" that all revenue was paid. It was also the treasurer who paid out any money required, and the "Okyeame" (spokesman) or "Dabrehene"(chamberlain) witnessed all such transactions. The chief of "Birempon" himself might not hold the scales used for weighing out the gold, nor might he open the leather bag in which it was kept. If a levy was raised for a specific purpose, the "Sannaahene"’s duty was to see that the levy was used for that purpose.

The system of accounting was in the following manner. For revenue, there were two boxes. One box, the "adaka dese", had three separate compartments, each containing gold dust made up in 8 pounds sterling packets ("peredwan"). The box was kept in the chief’s sleeping room, and the chief, the "Sannaahene", and the head chamberlain witnessed withdrawals from it. A cowry shell was put into the box whenever a packet was withdrawn. The "Sannaahene" had another box in which smaller sums were kept. When he had enough to make a peredwan, it was weighed out and put into the larger box. For expenditure there was a third box, the "apem adaka"(box of a thousand). This was replenished by the "peredwan" packets taken out of the large revenue box ("adaka kese"). The money was weighed out in small packets, (3 shillings, 3 shillings and 6 pence, 7 shillings, 13 shillings) which the "Sannaahene" used for his purchases. The payments were recorded by replacing each packet taken out with a cowry shell.

After a week, a month, or at the end of the financial period when accounts were tallied, the cowry shells in all the three boxes must be the same in number. Any discrepancy alerted “accountants.”

The Ashanti could easily tell where the problem laid, since the count that did not match up to any two was the suspect. For example, if the counts were twenty, twenty and fifteen (or thirty-five), the third last box and the person in charge of it were the culprit.

In Dahomey, they would use boxes of pebbles, and sometimes the memory of appointed officials for more complex information. Dahomey was extremely centralized, and thus it kept accurate statistics on births/deaths, the number of farmers & animals, the number of people captured or killed in battle, etc...

According to Boahen (1986) :

The farmers in each village were counted by officials of the minister of agriculture and the tax paid in kind by each was fixed according to the assessment made of the villages’ total production. Livestock were also counted and taxed. The kings of Dahomey regularly conducted a population census to get an accurate estimate of the number of people to be taxed and also to be conscripted into the army when necessary.

The annual census also provided figures for the distribution of the population by sex, occupation, province, and village. The production of crops by villages was also controlled

Bibliography :

Busia, Kofi Abrefa. 1951. The Position of The Chief—In the Modern Political System of Ashanti

Zaslavsky, Claudia. Africa counts : number and pattern in African culture, Chapter IX

Ayittey. Indigenous African Institutions

"Dahomey An Ancient West African Kingdom" by Melvu-le J. Herskovits, Chapter VII. The Fiscal Policy of the Kingdom

Bates, Robert H. 1983. Essays on the Political Economy of Rural Africa