Kwame Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah (actually Francis Nwia Kofi Kwame Nkrumah, born September 21, 1909 in Nkroful, Ghana; † April 27, 1972 in Bucharest, Romania) was a Ghanaian thinker, politician and statesman. He was the first president of Ghana.

With the demand Independence now! Kwame Nkrumah led the British colony Gold Coast under the name of Ghana on March 6, 1957 as one of the first African countries to independence (see also decolonization of Africa ). During his stay in the U.S. and in London he came up with the idea of Pan-Africanism in touch and became one of the most important spokesman of the Pan-African movement.

• 5.1 writings of Nkrumah
• 5.2 Writings on Nkrumah

Childhood and education

Nkrumah came from those forming part of the Akan peoples ethnic group of the Nzema and was officially born on September 21, 1909 in the village Nkroful in the southwest of present-day Ghana, the son of a small trader and a goldsmith. His education career began in a Catholic mission school. With about 17 years Nkrumah was first assistant teacher before he attended from 1926, the Achimota College in Accra, where he graduated in 1930 its conclusion. He then worked as a teacher at Roman Catholic schools in Elmina and Axim before he was hired as a teacher at a preparatory seminary for Catholic priests in Elmina. 1935 moved Nkrumah with the help of a newly rich in diamonds and gold trade relations in the United States, where he a BA in Economics (1939) and a BA in Theology ( 1942) at Lincoln University and a Master of Science in Education and a Master of Arts in Philosophy (both 1943) at the University of Pennsylvania took off. 1945 Nkrumah studied briefly at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Political career

In London, he developed more and more political commitment and a lively journalistic activity. In 1945 he organized as Secretary-General under WEB Du Bois the 5th Pan-African Congress in Manchester. Back on the Gold Coast Nkrumah in 1947, Secretary General of the party founded by Joseph Boakye Danquah United Gold Coast Convention ( UGCC ). 1948 riots erupted, the so-called Accra Riots made ​​him a nationally known hero and led to his first short-term arrest. In 1949 he broke with the moderate UGCC and founded the more radical Convention People's Party (CPP ), which, with its call for the immediate autonomy was the strongest force in the parliamentary elections in 1951. Nkrumah, although detained since the riots organized by him in 1950, won in Accra 98.5 % of the vote and was subsequently released by the British. In March 1952 he was elected by the Legislative Assembly by secret ballot for prime minister of the crown colony of the Gold Coast, to which he gave the name Ghana at independence in 1957. Ghana became the first independent state in West Africa, aside from Liberia. In the same year, Nkrumah married Fathia the Egyptian Helen Ritzk.

President of Ghana

By 1960, Ghana was a member of the Commonwealth. Kwame Nkrumah led the office as prime minister. Following a referendum, Ghana in July 1960 for the Republic. In the presidential elections against JB Danquah, Nkrumah won clearly, the candidate of the opposition. As Nkrumah took over the affairs of state, he was faced with a large number of problems that resulted from the long exploitation and colonial history of the country in the first place. The economic structure of the country that had built up to that point to the unilateral interests of the British colonial power should be eliminated as quickly as possible. Nkrumah realized that the Ghanaian economy was not only dependent on the cultivation and export of cocoa and thus the development of the country was linked to the world market prices for this cash crop product. Throughout the country there was at the time of independence also no industry. Paradoxically, Ghana found, although the highest rates in the world cocoa export to, yet there was not even a single processing plant for cocoa in Ghana itself with the First Five Year Development Plan (1951-1956), the Second Five Year Development Plan (1959-1964) and the Consolidation plan (1957-1959) laid the Ghanaian government under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah, the basis for the modernization and industrialization of the country. A survey in 1964 revealed that the implementation of development plans been crowned with success. Ghana had the most modern road network in Africa. The ports of Tema and Takoradi had been enlarged and upgraded or rebuilt. Agricultural production was diversified and mechanized. In addition, great achievements and progress could be detected in the structure of education and health. The Volta River Project also ensuring future of Ghana's power supply was sought.

In March 1964, the government of Ghana introduced the Seven Year Development Plan, which, according to Nkrumah presented three main points in the center of the development of the country: a rapid increase in the growth of the national economy, a socialist embossed transformation of all economic sectors and the radical destruction of all remaining existing economic structures of the colonial period. Kwame Nkrumah gained great recognition for his political and economic efforts on intra- African level. He proclaimed the unity of Africa and called on all Africans to shake off the shackles of colonialism. In Africa Must Unite ( 1963) he pointed out that just as our strength on a consistent policy and progressive development is based, so the strength of the imperialists is based on our disagreement. We in Africa can only meet them effectively, if we do face a united front and the consciousness of our African mission. Due to its increasing popularity in the fight against injustice and for the liberation of Africa, the Ghanaian president developed for the western world to a growing risk. Particularly evident Nkrumah had the economic exploitation of African resources by transnational corporations in his book neocolonialism. The Last Stage of Imperialism (1965 ) pointed out. In this work, he stressed that even with the formal independence of African countries in the economic structures of exploitation of the colonial era, nothing has changed. In the context of neo-colonialism is now practiced power and influence of international oil and mining companies would like the Anglo - American Corporation, or American Metal Climax, in Africa manifest on.

One of the favorite projects Kwame Nkrumah was the gliding school in Afienya, 30 km from Accra, which was constructed by Hanna Reitsch, Täve Löhr and development workers from 1964. The project also model teacher were trained to pass on their knowledge in the classes of the secondary schools. At the gliding school Afienya well as local gliding teachers have been trained that should continue from mid-1966 the whole school on their own. With the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah on February 24, 1966, the gliding school for the local population was closed.

Fall

The views Nkrumah against the former British colonial power and its capitalist allies were ultimately doomed him. In the wake of the Cold War and with the support of Western leaders Nkrumah was overthrown during a trip abroad in the People's Republic of China in a military coup by pro-Western National Liberation Council (NLC ) in 1966. This coup was justified, Kwame Nkrumah, the government had led Ghana into economic chaos and the President himself have enriched themselves as a kind of socialist dictator in the state. Supposedly, Ghana would have had good starting after his release from British colonial possession ( in 1957 ) and Nkrumah had directed the country through bad decisions and mismanagement basis. Nkrumah went into exile in Guinea, where he received the honorary title of co- president until 1967. He disagreed with the allegations and accusations in his book The Big Lie ( 1968), in which he confronted the intrigues against his person or his reign with hard arguments. Died in 1972 at the time of the world's most popular advocate of Pan-Africanism in Bucharest.

Thinking

Paulin Hountondji has emphasized the breaks in thinking Nkrumah. During the early Nkrumah on the continuity of socialism in relation to, communalism 'of the ' traditional ' Africa insists, an idealized image of pre-colonial Africa draws ( no exploitation of man by man ) and sees itself as a disciple of Gandhi, the late Nkrumah sees the necessity of a violent break with the neo-colonial conditions of the struggle against imperialism and its African allies. In African Socialism Revisited Nkrumah therefore also rejects the notion of ' African socialism ' in the sense Nyerere, of an " ideology of continuity " ( Hountondji ) remains arrested from.

While the early work to emphasize that there was no class struggle in pre-colonial Africa, rejects the late Nkrumah from the fetishization of pre-colonial Africa. " Nkrumah is never re-imagine Africa as a special world, but he accepted that our societies are subject to the same laws as any other society in the world, and that the African revolution, when properly understood, is inextricably linked to the world revolution. "

In Africa must unite (1963 ) Nkrumah had called for the immediate formation of a pan-African government. Later, he sat on a unification movement, emanating from the base while there can be no common ground between anti-imperialist governments and the Western-backed " puppet regime ".