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From Nana Gyekeye’s Book “Tradition and Modernity”

There is, to my knowledge, no word in the Akan language that directly translates economy or economics, itself drive from the Greek white oikonomia, meaning household management. The Akan word “asetena,” however, may adequately do the job. According to a well-known dictionary of the Akan language, asetena means “life, livelihood, condition or circumstances of life.” when the Akan wants to say: “Living conditions are hard” or “The economic situation is hard” or “The economic situation is bad” or “simply livelihood is hard,” he would almost invariably say, “asetena mu ayɛ den” (“circumstances of life are hard”), or asetena mu nnyɛ, (circumstances of life are not good). Language, a vehicle of concept, not only embodies but also influences a philosophical point of view. If I said asetena can be used for economy, as I claim it can, it will imply a certain conception of economy or economics. The Akan word is clearly more comprehensive than the English, since the idea of “circumstances of life” surely means more than purely economics; but the Akan word includes the economic.

Implicit in the Akan word, then, is at least an adumbration of a conception that regards the economy not as a separate sphere of existence dominated by the profit motive but a sphere in the social order interrelated with law, politics, morality; it is a conception of economy that does not regard the goal of economic activity in terms merely of the production of material goods. A person’s livelihood depends to a large extent on how the economy of her society is managed. But, in as much as the management of the economy is greatly influenced by public policy and by considerations of human well-being, it cannot be isolated from the societies politics or law or Socioethical values. Economic activity is thus not conceived as divorced from the social and political order; the development of the human society is not to be conceived exclusively in economic terms but to be conceived as an integrated enterprise. This idea, embedded in the traditional culture, of not separating the economy from other aspects of life but seeing it as enmeshed with politics, morality, and the law is, in the light of complexities of the human being in society, a remarkable idea. The idea indicates that there is a normative dimension to economic activity, economic should be about how the state of the community can properly use economic means to enhance general welfare, the good life of each member of the society.