Commanding Heights : Kwame Nkrumah | on PBS Kwame Nkrumah (1889-1979) Kwame Nkurmah, the leader of the Gold Coast's movement toward independence from Britain during the 1940s and '50s, headed the new nation of Ghana following its independence in 1957 until 1966, when he was overthrown by a coup. Excerpt from Commanding Heights by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, 1998 ed., pp. 83-88. Profile In the period of [African colonial independence] the beacon country from Africa was Ghana, first to achieve independence in 1957. The new nation's most influential figure was its prime minister, later president, Kwame Nkrumah. When Nkrumah was born in 1910, Ghana was still the Gold Coast, a British colony known for its plantations and for being the world's largest producer of cocoa.

Its frontiers were the result of bargains among the colonial powers -- Britain, France, and Germany -- that did not correspond to the historical boundaries of the kingdoms that preceded colonization, particularly the once-mighty Ashanti empire. Nkrumah, who came from a modest, traditional family, received his early education at the hands of Catholic missionaries. He went on to train as a teacher and for a few years taught elementary school in towns along the coast. He was popular and charismatic, and earned a decent living. But exposure to politics and to a few influential figures sparked in him a greater interest -- to go to America. He applied to universities in the United States, and with money raised from relatives, he set out on a steamer in 1935. He reached New York almost penniless, and took refuge with fellow West Africans in Harlem. He then presented himself at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and enrolled; a small scholarship and a campus job helped him make ends meet. In the United States, Nkrumah saw alternatives to the British tradition of government. He also became suffused with an acute consciousness of the politics of race relations.

Unlike many new African leaders, who sought to emulate their European instructors, Nkrumah plunged into America's black communities. Founded before the Civil War, Lincoln University was America's oldest black college, and its special atmosphere inspired and comforted Nkrumah. In the summers, he worked at physically demanding jobs -- in shipyards and construction at sea. He studied theology as well as philosophy; he frequented the black churches in New York and Philadelphia and was sometimes asked to preach. He also forged ties with black American intellectuals, for whom Africa was becoming, in this time of political change, an area of extreme interest. Moving to London after World War II, Nkrumah helped organize Pan-African congresses, linking the emergent educated groups of the African colonies with activists, writers, artists, and well-wishers from the industrial countries. It was a time of great intellectual ferment, excitement, and optimism. India's achievement of independence in 1947 stirred dreams of freedom for the other colonies.

"If we get self-government," Nkrumah proclaimed, "we'll transform the Gold Coast into a paradise in 10 years." Returning to the Gold Coast in 1949, Nkrumah found that India's independence had set in motion a process of gradual transfer of power in Britain's other colonies. The terms and timing were highly unsettled, and indeed would provoke conflict and violent clashes, but the basic principle of self-government was becoming the consensus. Nkrumah was dissatisfied with the existing nationalist grouping, finding it staid and conservative, overly tied to colonial business interests. With several associates he set up a new party, the Convention People's Party (CPP), in the process demonstrating his supreme organizational abilities. Within two years the CPP had won limited self-rule elections, and Nkrumah became "Leader of Government Business" -- a de facto prime minister, responsible for internal government and policy. He set his sights firmly on independence. No amount of autonomy or self-rule, he argued, could match the energy, commitment, and focus of a government and people in a truly independent country. It was a precondition for growth.

He summarized his philosophy in a slogan that became famous and influential across Africa: "Seek ye first the political kingdom, and all else shall be added unto you...." Ghana's route to independence became the model for the rest of the continent. By the mid-1960s, over 30 African countries were independent and many had charismatic leaders, including Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya, Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, and Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia. Their economic views were very much those of the time, in line with the consensus among development economists. Here again, only the state could mobilize the funds and coordinate the activities of economic transformation if it was to be achieved in the leaders' lifetime -- let alone during their time in office. Indeed, pessimism about markets was even greater in Africa than elsewhere. After all, the colonization of Africa had come with little regard for local education, health, or infrastructure. It was tainted with racism and contempt. As a result, people were not equipped to participate in markets, or so it seemed. Instead, the new leaders hatched schemes for "African socialism" that could somehow combine modern growth and traditional values.

"Capitalism is too complicated a system for a newly independent nation," Nkrumah argued. "Hence the need for a socialistic society." Few disagreed. It was, after all, the received wisdom of the time. Ironically, the economic device in which Africa's new leaders invested their trust was itself a colonial invention -- the marketing board, a public agency responsible for buying crops from farmers and reselling them for export. Seemingly innocuous and indeed almost boring in name, marketing boards were in fact powerful tools of control for the new governments. They were born of necessity, when the Great Depression drove down world commodity prices and the wartime boom drove them up again. African farmers lived on a shoestring and were highly vulnerable to such volatile swings in world markets. They might overplant in times of high prices and abandon crops when prices fell. Meanwhile, the state would lose both tax revenue and its ability to plan ahead. The marketing boards were set up to correct this situation. They would purchase crops at stable prices. In times of high world prices, they would accumulate a surplus of money; in times of low world prices, they would use that financial surplus to support the local price.

This would protect farmers from the tumult of markets, over which they had no control. Because the marketing boards deliberately paid farmers prices other than the world-market prices, they could not function in a competitive market. Hence, they were granted monopolies. Virtually all crops for export had to go through the marketing board. This was the prevailing system at independence in almost every African country. All that varied from country to country was the exact number and range of crops concerned. For Nkrumah and his peers, retaining the colonial marketing boards seemed the expedient, indeed the sensible, thing to do. The boards would provide the mechanism both to capture the "surplus" generated by agriculture and to raise revenues. The resources levied this way could be combined with investment and foreign aid to jump-start industrial development and the "great transformation" away from rural-based economies toward industrialization. There were some problems, to be sure. When the marketing board imposed prices lower than world prices, how would it stop crops from slipping away into a black market or crossing borders into neighboring countries? Frontiers were artificial and porous, and there was, after all, a considerable history of long-distance African trade.

Moreover, if the marketing board did accumulate a cash surplus, who would oversee its sound management and investment? But amid the enthusiasm for independence and the overriding concern with market failure, these questions seemed of little import. Governments instead threw their energy into enlarging the existing marketing boards and creating new ones for commodities that were hitherto unregulated. They ran their economies through the boards. In Ghana, the Cocoa Marketing Board grew in size, staffing, and power. It was joined in short order by marketing boards for timber and diamonds, and a host of other state organizations aimed not only at exports but also at regulating local trade in foodstuffs, fish, and household goods. This pervasive, confident -- or, as some would say, intrusive -- involvement of the state in almost every aspect of investment and commerce made Ghana a case of "development economics in action." The same confidence extended as well to the other half of the process -- industrialization. Nkrumah very much believed that the "big push" was necessary and could be rapidly achieved. He harnessed his hopes to a dramatic plan for a huge multipurpose undertaking known as the Volta River Project. Ghana had large reserves of bauxite and hence the potential to become a major exporter of aluminum.

But this required building a smelter and a very large dam and power plant to feed it. That, in turn, would support a national electricity grid; and the cheap, abundant power would jump-start industrialization all over the country. It was a grand vision that accorded perfectly with development theory. The dam would set in motion the "forward and backward linkages" that the economists sought, and it would give Ghana economic independence. It would also create the world's biggest manmade lake, forcing the resettlement of tens of thousands of people. When it was all added up, the Volta River Project was the most ambitious and complicated development project of its day, and certainly one of the most prominent. It also gave rise to lengthy and arduous negotiations between the government of Ghana and its would-be partners -- the World Bank, the governments of Britain and the United States, and the aluminum firms Kaiser and Reynolds, which agreed to build the smelter. Several years of frustrating discussion culminated in a series of contract documents that one participant described as the world's "most complex since Queen Marie was selling Romanian bonds." But the deal was not yet done. As the negotiations dragged on, the stakes grew higher.

Nkrumah's views were hardening, reflecting an increasing attraction to "scientific socialism" and a mounting preoccupation with control. Already in 1960, he had made Ghana a republic and proclaimed himself its president. In April 1961, he delivered a "Dawn Broadcast" in which he lashed out at "self-seeking" and "careerism," and which he used to force the resignation of potential rivals. Soon there were political arrests. He also threw out the British officers assigned to train his army. . All this occurred shortly before Queen Elizabeth II was scheduled to make a state visit to Ghana in November 1961 to celebrate the new area of decolonization. But then, after several bombs went off in the capital of Accra, sentiment mounted in Britain's House of Commons that the trip should be canceled, because it was too unsafe. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan feared, however, that cancellation would provoke Nkrumah into leaving the Commonwealth and moving into Moscow's arms. To prevent such a turn, he appealed to President John Kennedy to confirm that the United States would help underwrite the Volta River Project.

When, on the eve of the queen's departure, it became apparent that the House of Commons might vote to cancel the trip, Macmillan made clear that he would resign that very evening -- even if it meant having to awaken the queen. The vote against the trip did not eventuate, and the queen took off. As it turned out, the trip was a great success. The local press in Ghana hailed the queen as "the greatest socialist monarch in the world." With the conclusion of the visit and the queen safely back in Britain, Macmillan immediately telephoned Kennedy. "I have risked my Queen," Macmillan said. "You must risk your money." Gallantly, Kennedy replied he would match the queen's "brave contribution" with his own. The United States signed on to the Volta River Project. In the same year, Nkrumah visited the Soviet Union and returned much impressed at the pace of industrialization there. He came back with a rigid Seven-Year Plan. "We must try and establish factories in large numbers at great speed," he argued. State-owned companies and public authorities mushroomed in all fields. So did mismanagement and graft.

The price was most painfully felt in the countryside as Nkrumah used cocoa revenues, controlled by the official marketing board, to cover the growing losses of public companies. The imposition of unrealistically low cocoa prices on farmers, combined with the bloated organization of the marketing board, devastated the industry. Many farmers switched crops altogether; others found ways to smuggle their cocoa through neighboring countries, where better prices were offered. Ghana lost its mantle as the world's largest cocoa producer. Its currency reserves depleted, it fell back on barter trade and loans from the Soviet bloc. Nkrumah became increasingly remote, preferring to focus on grand schemes of African unity than on running the country. He turned the country into a one-party state in 1964, and took to indulging in a sordid cult of personality, dubbing himself Osagyefo, "the Redeemer." It did not take long for resentment to set in. He evaded several assassination attempts. On January 22, 1966, he inaugurated the Volta Dam, proudly pressing the button that released power into the new national grid unaware that even this project would be only half a success.

Ghana's bauxite mines would never be developed; the smelter found it more economic to process bauxite imported from Jamaica. The inauguration would be his last moment of glory. On February 24, as he stopped in Burma on his way to China at the start of a grand tour aimed at solving the Vietnam conflict, army officers intervened at home and took power. "The myth surrounding Kwame Nkrumah has been broken," announced an army colonel on the radio. Nkrumah did not learn of the coup until he arrived in China. Premier Zhou Enlai, unsure of the protocol to follow, went ahead and hosted an eerie state banquet in his honor. Nkrumah ended up taking up exile in Guinea, where another experiment in "African socialism" was in progress. Guinea's president, Sekou Toure, his own rule increasingly repressive and arbitrary, endowed Nkrumah with the title of "co-president." Nkrumah made regular shortwave broadcasts to Ghana, published ideological treatises, and plotted a triumphal return to power until he grew ill and died in 1972, still in exile. The "political kingdom" had crumbled as fast as it had been built.

"The Redeemer," who had once inspired a continent, had fallen far from grace. From Commanding Heights by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw. Copyright © 1998 by Daniel A. Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc., N.Y. Kwame Nkrumah | president of Ghana | Britannica.com president of Ghana Ho Chi Minh Kwame Nkrumah, (born Sept. 1909, Nkroful, Gold Coast [now Ghana]—died April 27, 1972, Bucharest , Rom.), Ghanaian nationalist leader who led the Gold Coast’s drive for independence from Britain and presided over its emergence as the new nation of Ghana . He headed the country from independence in 1957 until he was overthrown by a coup in 1966. Kwame Nkrumah, 1962. Marc and Evelyne Bernheim/Woodfin Camp and Associates Early years Kwame Nkrumah’s father was a goldsmith and his mother a retail trader.

Baptized a Roman Catholic, Nkrumah spent nine years at the Roman Catholic elementary school in nearby Half Assini. After graduation from Achimota College in 1930, he started his career as a teacher at Roman Catholic junior schools in Elmina and Axim and at a seminary. Increasingly drawn to politics, Nkrumah decided to pursue further studies in the United States . He entered Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1935 and, after graduating in 1939, obtained master’s degrees from Lincoln and from the University of Pennsylvania . He studied the literature of socialism , notably Karl Marx and Vladimir I. Lenin, and of nationalism , especially Marcus Garvey , the black American leader of the 1920s. Eventually, Nkrumah came to describe himself as a “nondenominational Christian and a Marxist socialist.” He also immersed himself in political work, reorganizing and becoming president of the African Students’ Organization of the United States and Canada. He left the United States in May 1945 and went to England, where he organized the 5th Pan-African Congress in Manchester. Meanwhile, in the Gold Coast, J.B.

Danquah had formed the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) to work for self-government by constitutional means. Invited to serve as the UGCC’s general secretary, Nkrumah returned home in late 1947. As general secretary, he addressed meetings throughout the Gold Coast and began to create a mass base for the new movement. When extensive riots occurred in February 1948, the British briefly arrested Nkrumah and other leaders of the UGCC. When a split developed between the middle-class leaders of the UGCC and the more radical supporters of Nkrumah, he formed in June 1949 the new Convention Peoples’ Party (CPP), a mass-based party that was committed to a program of immediate self-government. In January 1950, Nkrumah initiated a campaign of “positive action,” involving nonviolent protests, strikes, and noncooperation with the British colonial authorities. From prison to prime ministry In the ensuing crisis, services throughout the country were disrupted, and Nkrumah was again arrested and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment. But the Gold Coast’s first general election (Feb. 8, 1951) demonstrated the support the CPP had already won.

Elected to Parliament, Nkrumah was released from prison to become leader of government business and, in 1952, prime minister of the Gold Coast. Britannica Stories Ringling Bros. Folds Its Tent When the Gold Coast and the British Togoland trust territory became an independent state within the British Commonwealth—as Ghana—in March 1957, Nkrumah became the new nation’s first prime minister. In 1958 Nkrumah’s government legalized the imprisonment without trial of those it regarded as security risks. It soon became apparent that Nkrumah’s style of government was to be authoritarian . Nkrumah’s popularity in the country rose, however, as new roads, schools, and health facilities were built and as the policy of Africanization created better career opportunities for Ghanaians. By a plebiscite of 1960 Ghana became a republic and Nkrumah became its president, with wide legislative and executive powers under a new constitution. Nkrumah then concentrated his attention on campaigning for the political unity of black Africa, and he began to lose touch with realities in Ghana.

His administration became involved in magnificent but often ruinous development projects, so that a once-prosperous country became crippled with foreign debt. His government’s Second Development Plan, announced in 1959, had to be abandoned in 1961 when the deficit in the balance of payments rose to more than $125 million. Contraction of the economy led to widespread labour unrest and to a general strike in September 1961. From that time Nkrumah began to evolve a much more rigorous apparatus of political control and to turn increasingly to the communist countries for support. President of Ghana and afterward Kwame Nkrumah at Penn: A Digital Exhibition from the of the Penn African Studies Center Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), M.S. in Educ. 1943, M.A. 1944, was born in Africa's Gold Coast (now Ghana). As a young man, he was a school teacher before leaving his homeland to further his education in American universities. He later traveled to England where he worked for the decolonization of Africa and in the Pan-African movement before returning to Africa to lead his country's independence movement.

After the 1957 British withdrawal from his country, Nkrumah became Prime Minister and then, in 1960, the first president of the modern nation of Ghana. Despite his early studies of Marxism, Nkrumah's political views tended toward socialism rather than to capitalism or communism. During his early years in office, Nkrumah did much to modernize his country. Despite high hopes, however, the difficulties of financing power plants and organizing armies in a poor African country led to corruption, police tactics and wide-spread dissatisfaction. In February 1966, Nkrumah was overthrown while on a state visit to China. He never returned to Ghana but from his exile in Guinea, Nkrumah gained worldwide recognition for his continued efforts on behalf of Pan-African unity. Kwame Nkrumah arrived in Philadelphia in 1935 to begin undergraduate study at Lincoln University. After completing a bachelor's degree in Sociology magna cum laude, Lincoln admitted him to its Theological Seminary in 1939 for an additional degree in Sacred Theology.

It was at this time, however, that Nkrumah began concurrent enrollment at the University of Pennsylvania in the hopes of acquiring multiple degrees simultaneously. Supporting himself through a precarious combination of scholarships and seasonal work in the segregated shipyards of Philadelphia, Nkrumah regularly visited Harlem and Washington to speak on anti-imperial themes in churches, on street corners, at political rallies, and in classrooms. In so doing, he managed to meet such prominent intellectuals of the African diaspora as C.L.R. James, Nnamdi Azikiwe, and Marcus Garvey. As he later recalled in his autobiography, "Life would have been so much easier if I could have devoted all my time to study. As things were, however, I was always in need of money." After receiving his Master's degree from Penn's Graduate School of Education in 1941, Nkrumah began another program of study with the Department of Philosophy on a University Scholarship. His advisor Glen Morrow noted that he satisfied the requirements for a Master's degree in Philosophy in 1943, and by 1944 it appears that he had passed his preliminary exams for a doctorate.

He then began working as a Twi instructor for Zelig Harris in a new African Studies graduate group, and in 1945 he left the United States for London and Manchester. He finally returned to the Gold Coast in 1947. We have some more tangible traces of his intellectual life during this time. While his theses in education and philosophy have unfortunately been lost by the University, he did publish two articles in Penn's Educational Outlook that give some indication of the extent to which he was already developing the Pan-Africanist challenge to colonialism that we now associate with him. His first article was in 1941, when he was most probably completing his education degree, and it is not surprisingly titled "Primitive Education in West Africa." In it, Nkrumah suggested that the traditional educational institutions of Africa conformed to the prevailing educational theories of the mid-20th century. He notes that ..the education of a child is largely a process of acquiring, in the first place, conditioned reflexes, and then, the more permanent associations and systems of conditioned reflexes that we call habits. The leaders of primitive West Africa, for a long time, consciously or unconsciously, have been aware of this psychological fact.

He also proposes that African teachers rightly understood the importance of early childhood in the learning process, and thus began education at a very young age, and he pointedly observes that the colonial-era need for African orphanages was a consequence of the destruction of traditional educational institutions, which unlike the European model, integrated "infant welfare" and schooling. His conclusion: West African education "gave efficient preparation for the activities of life and so it fulfilled its purpose," an implicit suggestion that it was the equal ofand in some ways superior toits colonial counterparts. His other article, which appeared in 1943, is a more explicit connection of colonialism and the struggle over African educational institutions. In " Education and Nationalism in Africa ," Nkrumah presents a focused discussion of the tensions between European colonial rule, education, and national emancipation. After referring his reader to the previous discussion of traditional education in West Africa, Nkrumah presents a short history of European mission schools in Africa, which he suggests were the primary educational institutions of colonial Africa.

After noting that their Eurocentric curricula carefully excluded African religion, culture, and history, he observed that ..under such a system of education the youth of Africa is not prepared to meet any definite situations of the changing community except those of the clerical activities and occupations for foreign commercial and mercantile concerns. In his view, ..any educational program which fails to furnish criteria for the judgment of social, political, economic, and technical progress of the people it purports to serve has completely failed in its purpose, and has become an educational fraud.

Pointing to the hypocrisy of a civilizing educational mission that permanently delayed graduation, the moment when Europeans would deem Africans capable of managing their own affairs, Nkrumah ultimately concluded that "Higher education is incompatible with colonial status." Two dissertation-length manuscripts from this period of Nkrumah's life can now be found in the Ghana National Archives, one entitled "The History and Philosophy of Imperialism with Special Reference to Colonial Problems," and another, "Mind and Thought in Primitive Society: a study in Ethno-Philosophy with Special Reference to the Akan Peoples of the Gold Coast, West Africa." While these texts are not readily available to the researcher, their titles suggest the Educational Outlook articles of Nkrumah's time in Philadelphia were closely tied to both his dissertation plans and his more general political development. We are pleased to make these Educational Outlook articles available to the general public through the links in the bibliography below. For inquiries about the University's archived materials relating to Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), M.S. in Educ. 1942, A.M.

1943, please contact: Kwame Nkrumah's Vision of Africa | BBC World Service Thursday 14 September, 2000 Kwame Nkrumah's Vision of Africa Last December, BBC listeners in Africa voted Kwame Nkrumah, the first head of an independent Ghana their "Man of the Millennium". But although Nkrumah triumphantly led Ghana to independence in 1957, by February 1966 he had been overthrown in a coup and spent the remaining six years of his life languishing in exile. Omnibus explores what lay behind the coup and Nkrumah's untimely death. Listen to the programme here Hero of Independence Nkrumah became an international symbol of freedom as the leader of the first black African country to shake off the chains of colonial rule. As midnight struck on March 5, 1957 and the Gold Coast became Ghana, Nkrumah declared: 'We are going to see that we create our own African personality and identity.

We again rededicate ourselves in the struggle to emancipate other countries in Africa; for our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent.' But over the next few years he was increasingly regarded as an authoritarian and remote leader. In 1964 he declared himself president for life and banned opposition parties. Justifying his actions he wrote: 'Even a system based on a democratic constitution may need backing up in the period following independence by emergency measures of a totalitarian kind.' Many Ghanaians celebrated when their former hero was overthrown by the police and military while he was on a visit to China in 1966. There was little response to Nkrumah's broadcasts calling for the nation to rise against the coup leaders. He died in exile in Romania in 1972. An End to Colonialism Nkrumah was born Kwame Francis Nwia Kofie in the south-west of the Gold Coast in 1909. In 1939 he left to study economics and sociology in America. There and in London he was active in the Pan African movement which was demanding freedom and independence for the colonies.

Nkrumah returned to his homeland in 1947 and became Secretary General of the United Gold Coast Convention which was campaigning to end British rule. However, in 1948 he was expelled from the organisation for leading a campaign of civil disobedience. He responded by founding the Convention People's Party in 1949, the first mass political party in black Africa. Imprisoned by the British in 1950, he was released the next year after the CPP's landslide election victory. In 1952 Nkrumah became the country's first prime minister. After independence in 1957 Ghana became a republic in 1960. But while Nkrumah worked to improve living standards at home his ambitions extended beyond national boundaries to the creation of a federal union of African states. 'Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent' All For One and One For All Explaining his vision in his 1961 book, I Speak of Freedom, Nkrumah wrote: 'Divided we are weak; united, Africa could become one of the greatest forces for good in the world.

I believe strongly and sincerely that with the deep-rooted wisdom and dignity, the innate respect for human lives, the intense humanity that is our heritage, the African race, united under one federal government, will emerge not as just another world bloc to flaunt its wealth and strength, but as a Great Power whose greatness is indestructible because it is built not on fear, envy and suspicion, nor won at the expense of others, but founded on hope, trust, friendship and directed to the good of all mankind.' However, few of the newly independent African countries were persuaded of the need to give up some of the power they had recently won, to a central parliament for the continent. Ghana was one of 30 nations that founded the Organisation of African Unity in 1963. But Nkrumah regarded it as inadequate as it was not the United States of Africa he longed for. Letters to Milne Contributing to the Omnibus report is June Milne, Kwame Nkrumah's British Literary executrix. She was the person who was closest to Nkrumah during his long, bitter years in exile, visiting him no less than 16 times.

They wrote intimate letters daily that covered every conceivable topic form Ghana to jam, from vests to Vietnam. She was by his bedside in Bucharest when he died. Immediately following the coup in 1966 Nkrumah wrote to Milne: '11th March 1966. You shouldn't worry about me now June. I am safe and well. I did not write earlier because I was trying to get myself sorted out. I know very soon I shall be back in Ghana and I don't think that you should bother about the criticism, abuse, vilification and the lies being told about me. The truth will out.' Nkrumah died in exile five years later. The CIA, Kwame Nkrumah, and the Destruction of Ghana Opinion/Feature | 28 November 2011 21:16 CET The CIA, Kwame Nkrumah, and the Destruction of Ghana By Black History Previous | Next Kwame Nkrumah (21 September 1909 – 27 April 1972) was the first President of the first free nation in Africa, and a founding father of the Pan-Africanist movement.

His dream was to turn Ghana into a modern industrial utopia – a society shaped by the power of science that would serve as a model for the rest of the African continent. At the heart of his plan was the Volta Dam, a hydroelectric power plant that would provide Ghana with all the cheap power that it would need to initiate an industrial revolution. Rise to Power In 1935 Kwame Nkruma left Ghana for the United States as a student, receiving a BA from Lincoln University, Pennsylvania in 1939. During that time, he was elected president of the African Students Organization of America and Canada. He was also exposed to the philosophy and teachings of Marcus Garvey, and the Communist teachings of a US based Trotskyist intellectual cohort. Nkrumah later credited these ideas with teaching him 'how an underground movement worked'. In 1947, Nkrumah returned to Ghana. Using the political mechanisms he saw there, he returned to Ghana and within two years created the country's first political party. Within two years after that, he was swept into power as the first Black Prime Minister in Africa under the British colonial system.

With the threat of uprisings abroad and financial crisis at home, Britain reluctantly set Ghana free on March 6, 1957. Nkrumah easily won election as the country's first President, and chose a flag with the Black star –inspired by Marcus Garvey's Black Star Line – at its center to represent the new nation. Nkrumah also launched a series of popular social projects on behalf of his people (who loved him), including The Organization of African Unity (OAU). The OAU was established on 25 May 1963. One year later, Malcolm X established the Organization for African American Unity (OAAU) modeled after Kwame's idea. The Volta Dam If Ghana was to become a modern industrial nation, it needed both industry and the power to fuel that industry and provide the continent with its first industrial revolution. The Volta dam was originally the brain child of Britain, but the colonial power was shrinking from the world stage and in doing so, began to withdraw its financial and project support from its former colonies.

During his campaign, Nkrumah's platform was founded on the idea of modernization, but without funding for the Volta river project, there was no way that dream could become a reality. Nkrumah set back out for America to sell the project to then President Eisenhower who took an immediate interest. Ghana at the time was literate, wealthy (as a result of its already profitable cocoa exports, and made a great business prospect for America. And the benefits to America as a young world superpower were two-fold: First, the manufacturing process for a new metal called aluminum had been discovered, and aluminum ore was abundant in Ghana. Second, the worlds energy prices were raising, and having access to a cheap source of electricity with which to process aluminum would have greatly increased the profit margins and reduced processing costs for the manufacture of the metal. President Eisenhower contacted California based Kaiser Aluminum, the world's largest aluminum manufacturer, to exploit the opportunity and fund the project. The assumption that America would mine Ghana's bauxite and use the Volta dam's electricity meant two new large income streams and industries that would assure Nkrumah's dream of an industrial revolution. However, Kaiser Aluminum had different plans.

They would only use Ghana's cheap electricity – importing aluminum ore from other places in the world, and then exporting the aluminum back to America. The thought was that if the operation became too profitable, Nkrumah could nationalize the dam project and cut America out completely. Nkrumah was crushed. The aluminum industry would have done for Ghana what the steel industry had done for the United States. Nkrumah ultimately had to agree to America's terms if he wanted the dam to be built, but as an additional stipulation, he had to raise $30 million on his own. He sought help from the World Bank, an operation initially set up to fund the recovery effort in post WWII Europe, but which later became a source of funding for the rest of the world. Nkrumah's young new country was now indebted to the World Bank, and the dam became a leash by which the United States could control Nkrumah and exploit the country. The exploitation of Ghana went into full swing; it became a haven for American and European industrialists who were interested in taking advantage of the country's desire to modernize.

White corporations would repeatedly dupe officials into purchasing whatever could be sold, no matter how inappropriate (a Belgian company sold the country snow plows¬. Yea, snow plows. In Africa). The Volta Dam was completed on January 22, 1966. One month later, Nkrumah was overthrown by a CIA backed coup. CIA Involvement On March 11, 1965, almost a year before the coup, William P. Mahoney, the U.S. ambassador to Ghana, participated in a candid discussion in Washington, D.C., with CIA Director John A. McCone and the deputy chief of the CIA's Africa division, whose name has been withheld. Significantly, the Africa division was part of the CIA's directorate of plans (AKA Department of Dirty Tricks) through which the government pursued its covert policies.

According to the record of their meeting (Document 251), topic one was the “Coup d'état Plot, Ghana.” While Mahoney was satisfied that popular opinion was running strongly against Nkrumah and the economy of the country was in a precarious state, he was not convinced that the coup d'état, now being planned by Acting Police Commissioner Harlley and Generals Otu and Ankrah, would necessarily take place. However, he predicted that one way or another Nkrumah would be out within a year. Revealing the depth of embassy knowledge of the plot, Mahoney referred to a recent report which mentioned that the top coup conspirators were scheduled to meet on 10 March at which time they would determine the timing of the coup. After the coup, Komer wrote a congratulatory assessment to President Eisenhower on March 12, 1966 (Document 260). “The coup in Ghana is another example of a fortuitous windfall. Nkrumah was doing more to undermine our interests than any other black African.

In reaction to his strongly pro-Communist leanings, the new military regime is almost pathetically pro-Western.” John Stockwell, a CIA officer in Africa at the time made the following statement: “Howard Bane, who was the CIA station chief in Accra, engineered the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah. Inside the CIA it was quite clear. Howard Bane got a double promotion, and was awarded the Intelligence Star for the overthrow of Kwame. The magic of it was that Howard Bane had enough imagination and drive to run this operation without ever documenting what he was doing and there wasn't one shred of paper that was generated that would name the CIA hierarchy as being responsible.“ But in this age of information and Wikileaks, we now know the CIA ties to the destruction of Kwame Nkrumah ran deep: See: Documents Expose U.S. Role in Nkrumah Overthrow John Stockwell elaborated on the coup in his memoir, In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story: “The Accra station was encouraged by CIA headquarters to maintain contact with dissidents of the Ghanaian army for the purpose of gathering intelligence on their activities.

It was given a generous budget, and maintained intimate contact with the plotters as a coup was hatched. So close was the station's involvement that it was able to coordinate the recovery of some classified Soviet military equipment by the United States as the coup took place.” According to Stockwell, Banes' sense of initiative knew no bounds. The station even proposed to headquarters through back channels that a squad be on hand at the moment of the coup to storm the [Communist] Chinese embassy, kill everyone inside, steal their secret records, and blow up the building to cover the facts. The Destruction of Ghana After the coup, the once wealthy nation of Ghana was milked dry. Kwame fled in exile to Conakry, Guinea never to return to his home country. After 19 years of prosperity under Nkrumah, Ghana slid back into the dark ages. After the coup, the Kaiser Dam project flourished, continuing to make payments to the World Bank and continuing to yield dividends to its parent corporation. The people of Ghana saw almost none of the benefit. Instead, the people got one military coup after another (7 total). In the 1950s, the world celebrated Nkrumah and Ghana.

After the coup, the American propaganda machine painted the country and its leader as corrupt, savage, and unstable. Kwame was called “the Communist Messiah” and Africa was said to be “unable to handle the pressures of modern industrialization. Kwame Nkruma's organization was hijacked by the United Nations, and is now a tool used to expand the program of African exploitation. But even in exile, Nkrumah continued to write and inspire Pan-Africanists. In Challenge of the Congo he wrote that the political economic situation in the world is one in which a tiny minority of the people grower “richer and richer, while the rest grow poorer and poorer” and elaborated by saying that the situation required world socialism as it was the only remedy, for “as long as capitalism and imperialism go unchecked there will always be exploitation, and an ever-widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, and all the evils of imperialism and neo-colonialism which breed and sustain wars.” Death and Rememberance The Kwame Nkrumah Tomb Kwame Nkrumah died of skin cancer in April 1972. He was 62 years old.

He was survived by Gokeh, Samia Yarba (who recieved the 2006 European Parliament Award for Journalism), and Sekou Ritz Nkrumah. Nkrumah was buried in a tomb in the village of his birth, Nkroful, Ghana. While the tomb remains in Nkroful, his remains were transferred to a large national memorial tomb and park in Accra. Over his lifetime, Nkrumah was awarded honorary doctorates by Lincoln University, Moscow State University; Cairo University in Cairo, Egypt; Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland; Humboldt University in the former East Berlin; and many other universities. In 2000, he was voted Africa's man of the millennium. So who was Kwame Nkrumah? He was Africa's Malcolm X. He was a true and benevolent leader and martyr. He was a visionary upon whom the hopes and dreams of a continent and a Black world rested. And he was a victim of the United States of America, capitalism, and the same program devoted to the destruction of the Black race that is still in existence today.

Kwame Nkrumah, President of Ghana - World Leaders in History - WorldAtlas.com Society Kwame Nkrumah, President of Ghana - World Leaders in History A powerful proponent of African unity and decolonization, the first president of postcolonial Ghana was also controversial for his treatment of his opposition. Kwame Nkrumah was the foremost figure in Ghana's successful effort to gain independence from Britain, and is as controversial as he was important. 5. Early Life Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president as an independent nation, was born in 1909. His birthplace is Nkroful in the western region of South Ghana. According to Public Broadcasting Services (PBS) records, Nkrumah came from a humble and traditional Ghanaian family. He received his early education from Catholic missionaries and, at the age of 17, became an untrained teacher and taught at the town of Half Assini. In 1926, he joined Achimota Teachers College in Accra, and earned a teaching certificate in 1930. Nkrumah taught at several Catholic elementary schools in Ghana following his attainment of this education.

He carried on teaching in his homeland until 1935, when he sailed to study at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. 4. Rise to Power Studying in the United States, Nkrumah saw the impact of politics and race relations, and experienced poverty and discrimination black Africans studying there suffered. He studied theology and philosophy, and forged ties with black American intellectuals. According to the Nkrumah Info Bank, he formed an African students' body, and became a speaker in the name of African liberation from European colonization. In 1945, after moving to London to study, Nkrumah convened the Pan African Congress in Manchester, which also brought black leaders like Kenyan Jomo Kenyatta and American W.E.B Du Bois. After returning to Ghana in 1947, he formed the Conventional People’s Progress (CPP) party, after leaving the United Gold Coast Convention. He was arrested in 1950, after leading a strike that nearly paralyzed Ghana’s colonial economy. That event caused the British to sway to the demands of Ghana’s independence. The British Governor released Nkrumah in 1951, as his CPP party was winning legislative seats by a landslide in Central Accra.

He was made leader of government business and, in 1952, the Governor named Nkrumah Prime Minister. He was reelected in 1954, 1956, and 1957, when he ultimately led Ghana to independence. 3. Contributions As the first leader of a post-colonial, independent Ghana, Nkrumah formed a strong central government, and quickly gathered national resources in an attempt at rapid economic development. He also sought to unify the whole of Ghana politically. As a staunch Pan Africanism devotee, he advocated for the liberation of the entire continent from colonial rule, and offered support to fellow African nationalists from all over. Nkrumah also pursued a policy of non-alignment with either the United States or the Soviet Union. In the early Sixties, when other African countries were gaining their own independence in rapid succession, he advocated for the creation of the United States of Africa, which would be a quasi-socialist confederation of independent African nations that would move the region beyond tribal conflicts for the greater good of the continent's people. 2.

Challenges In office, Nkrumah was accused of economic mismanagement in managing the Volta River Hydroelectric Project and other endeavors. He evolved into a strongman, implementing domestic programs and passing laws to unfairly convict his opposition. This made him unpopular with civil servants, judges, intellectuals and army officers in his country. Nkrumah also fell out with Western powers for seeking aid from the Soviet Union and other Communist countries. He was accused of cultivating a personality cult among the masses. After Nkrumah saw two attempts made on his life, in 1962 and 1964 respectively, he became increasingly paranoid. After the failed assassinations, he arrested numerous government critics. While visiting socialist republics in East Asia in 1966, an army coup overthrew his government back home, and he would be forced to live in exile. 1. Death and Legacy After his overthrow, Nkrumah was exiled to Guinea, and later died in 1972 in Romania while receiving treatment for throat cancer there. His remains were returned to Ghana and interred at Nkroful. Today, his legacy is viewed with disdain and admiration alike.

Nkrumah's zeal in guiding Ghana to independence is admired around Africa, and he was a vocal opponent against colonialism. Though his goal to form a United States of Africa never succeeded, it inspired the creation of the Organization of African Unity, which later became the African Union. However, he is also seen as among the first of Africa’s post-colonial dictators, and at times acted maliciously and unfairly. This page was last modified on January 19, 2016. On WorldAtlas.com BBC ON THIS DAY | 6 | 1957: Ghana celebrates independence About This Site | Text Only 1957: Ghana celebrates independence The people of Ghana have been celebrating the end of colonial rule and the dawn of their independence. Most workers have been given the day off - tens of thousands have gathered in the capital, Accra, to greet the independent country's first prime minister, Dr Kwame Nkrumah. The Duchess of Kent has been attending the celebrations. Last night, she opened the Independence Monument, erected near the spot where in 1948 members of the Ghanaian ex-servicemen's union were shot when marching to present a petition to the British Governor.

The Gold Coast Legislative Assembly was prorogued at midnight to cheers from the waiting crowd outside. This morning the Legislative Assembly building, now the building of the Ghana parliament was packed with members dressed in their national costumes. The first Governor-General of Ghana, Sir Charles Arden-Clarke has been sworn in. Message from the Queen The Duchess gave a speech, setting out the Ghana Government policy. She also read out a personal message from the Queen to the people of Ghana. In it she said: "The hopes of many, especially in Africa, hang on your endeavours. It is my earnest and confident belief that my people in Ghana will go forward in freedom and justice." In reply, Dr Nkrumah said: "My government fully realises both the advantages and the responsibilities involved in the achievement of independence. It intends to make full use of these advantages to increase the prosperity of the country." Earlier, the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, made a speech welcoming Ghana's move to independence. "The government and people of Ghana have set their hands to a great task. We are confident whatever may be the difficulties which will face them they will maintain and develop the principles of tolerance and freedom which are inherent in our parliamentary system.

We shall give them all the help we can." Nkrumah and Pan-Africanism Feature Article | 8 September 2009 00:22 CET Nkrumah and Pan-Africanism Previous | Next Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was not just the first President of Ghana but a very extraordinary man whose life and works contributed significantly to changing the world. He grew from a little village boy in Nkroful in the Western Region of Ghana to a world leader fully devoted to the struggle to free all black people from all forms of racism. He was also against everything which kept people irrespective of their colour in conditions of slavery. He opposed oppression and exploitation in all its forms. Many historians including Basil Davidson and F. K. Buah credit Nkrumah with the leadership of the struggle which led to granting independence to many African countries under various forms of colonialism. Indeed Nkrumah is placed in the same category as Einstien, Karl Marx, V. I. Lenin, Tousant O'Liverture and Mahatama Ghandi whose ideas and actions helped to make the world a better place.

Amongst the many things which make Nkrumah stand out as an extraordinary personality was his realization that Africans everywhere ought to unite in common effort to assert their dignity and use their resources for meeting their needs and realizing their aspirations. His ideas for the unity of all Africans has come to be known as Pan-Africanism and they have their roots in his experiences as a colonial subject, his sojourn in the United States of America and the racist experience he suffered there and his association with Pan-Africanist thinkers of the time including W. E. B. Dubious, Marcus Garvey, George Padmore and Makonnen. After completing his elementary school education, Nkrumah went to Achimota School from where he graduated as a teacher. He was still burning with ambition to excel academically and in 1935, he left for the United States of America where he enrolled at the Lincoln University, first obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree and later doing a masters course at the Philadelphia University. Given the fact that Nkrumah came from a poor background, he had to work to pay for his education. He worked as a waiter and sometimes as a dish washer.

He did anything which would put a few dollars in his pocket and help him fend for himself in a land which was obviously strange to a village boy from Nkroful. Nkrumah experienced racism at first hand. He saw that Africans were all victims of racism no matter where they came from. In searching for to questions about racism Nkrumah joined black students organizations and became acquainted with the ideas of such activists as Marcus Garvey. He read widely and was transformed into an activist. When Nkrumah moved to London in 1945, he joined other Africans and persons of African decent in implementing the ideas he had formed. They worked in the West African students Union and the West African National Secretarial for the sole purpose of accelerating the independence process in West Africa as part of the general struggle of emancipating the African wherever he may be. Nkrumah had established contact with George Padmore one of the key organizers of the 5th Pan African Congress before he arrived in the United Kingdom and it was indeed Padmore who found accommodation for him at the West African Students Union's hostel.

Padmore guided Nkrumah in his early days in London and together they plunged into work for the 5th Pan African Congress held in Manchester in October 1945. According to June Milne, a biographer of Nkrumah, the 5th Pan African Congress was a departure from earlier ones to the extent that there was a strong participation from the youth and students of Africa. In her book “Kwame Nkrumah, A Biography” she asserts that earlier Pan African Congresses were dominated professionals and members of the intellectual class. It is widely held that Nkrumah's own involvement with the West African students Union and Associations of African students in the United States of America contributed largely to this departure. The strong participation of youth and students in this congress was also a clear manifestation of Nkrumah's organizational ability. The 5th Pan African Congress was particularly important because it defined and clarified the ideology of Pan-Africanism. It defined Pan Africanism as an anti-imperialist concept and saw its prime movers as workers and the underprivileged. Pan Africanism was also seen as an enterprise at building socialism.

A resolution which was drafted by Nkrumah and adopted by the Congress read as follows; “We believe in the rights of all peoples to govern themselves. We affirm the rights of all colonial peoples to control their own destiny. All colonies must be free from foreign imperialist control, whether political or economic. The peoples of the colonies must have the right to elect their own government; a government without restrictions from a foreign power. We say to the peoples of the colonies that they must strive for these goals by all means at their disposal. “The object of imperialist powers is to exploit. By granting the right to the colonial peoples to govern themselves, they are defeating that objective. Therefore, the struggle for political power by the colonial and subject peoples is a first step towards, and the necessary pre-requisite to complete social, economic and political emancipation. “The fifth Pan-African Congress, therefore, calls on the workers and farmers of the colonies to organize effectively, Colonial workers must be in the frontlines of the battle against imperialism……” Nkrumah's success in helping to organize the 5th Pan African Congress and his activities in the West African Union spread way beyond England to all corners of the African world.

The leadership of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) heard of the exploits of this man at a time when their own organization needed rejuvenation. They quickly invited Nkrumah to take up the full time position of General Secretary of the Convention. By accepting to become the General Secretary of the UGCC, Nkrumah did not abandon the Pan African ideal. As a matter of fact when he returned to the Gold Coast in 1947, he recognized that he was only taking one step towards the unification of the African continent as a home for Africans everywhere. He kept his contacts with Padmore, Mahonnen, and all the others with whom he had worked on the Pan African project. It is significant that on the eve of Ghana's independence on 6th march 1957, he declared loudly that “the independence of Ghana is meaningless until it is linked to the total liberation of the African continent” The organization of the All African People's Conference in Accra only one year after the declaration of independence attest to the Pan-African Agenda of Dr Kwame Nkrumah. This conference brought together the newly independent states in Africa and the national liberation movement to strategize on how to speed up the decolonization process.

It was also the beginnings of what became known as the Organization of African Unity (OAU). One year after Ghana's independence, Nkrumah pushed for the Ghana-Guinea Union as the nucleus of the continental Union Government of Africa. In 1961, Mali was drawn into the Union which became the spearhead of the agitation for a continental government. The OAU was eventually formed in 1963. Whiles desperately forging the unity of the states in Africa, Nkrumah maintained his contacts with Africans everywhere in the world. He spoke out for the civil rights movement in the USA and met with Malcom X on more than one occasion. Malcom was even invited to visit Ghana and to hold discussions with the Ghanaian authorities on the links that existed between the struggle of African-Americans and developments on the continent. Nkrumah was also a keen inspiration for the Black Panther movement. He was also the most strident advocate of Pan Africanism in his days. Many of the books he authored advocated the unity of Africans from all over the world.

Some of these books were “Africa Must Unite' “Neo-Colonialism, the last Stage of Imperialism” and “Class Struggle in Africa” Nkrumah's strongest arguments for African Unity are made in his book “Africa Must Unite”. He writes “we in Africa who are pressing now for unity are deeply conscious of the validity of our purpose. We need the strength of our combined numbers and resources to protect ourselves from the very positive dangers of returning to colonialism in disguised forms. We need it to combat the entrenched forces dividing our continent and still holding back millions of our brothers. We need it to secure total African liberation. We need it to carry forward our construction of a socio-economic system that will support the great mass of our steadily rising population at levels of life which will compare with those in the most advanced countries” For Nkrumah the situation in which Africa remains the richest continent on the globe whiles its people are counted amongst the poorest is untenable. He saw Pan-Africanism defined loosely as the ideology and activism of Africans everywhere united in the battle against their under development as a redeeming force.

Pan Africanism was not just an intellectual exercise, for Nkrumah it was the ideology for the liberation of the African from the clutches of oppression and exploitation. Socialist Forum of Ghana

Question: Kwame Nkrumah was the first President of which African country?
Answer: GHANA