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The Forum: Kwame Nkrumah: Ghana’s Pan-African idealist

Black and white photo of Kwame Nkrumah addressing the General Assembly of the UN, 1960.

14/04/2022 GMT

Kwame Nkrumah: Ghana’s Pan-African idealist

BBC World Service - The Forum, Kwame Nkrumah: Ghana’s Pan-African idealist

Assessing the complex legacy of a man who campaigned for a United States of Africa

As leader of the first black African nation to achieve independence from British colonial rule, Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah was hailed as a hero by some but criticised too as a despot.

Kwame Nkrumah was considered by some as a visionary hero who urged would-be leaders in Africa to embrace the idea of unity for the continent, and led Ghana to independence from British colonial rule in 1957.

But in becoming Ghana’s first prime minister, and then president, he was criticised for his autocratic style of government and the way in which he pursued his Pan-African ideology seemingly at the expense of his own people. In 1966 Nkrumah was removed from power in a coup, and never returned to Ghana. 

Bridget Kendall’s guests include Ghanaian journalist-turned-historian, AB Assensoh, who interviewed Nkrumah in exile. Assensoh is emeritus professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, and Courtesy Emeritus Professor in the History Department of University of Oregon. He’s the author of many books on Nkrumah, including a collaboration with his wife Yvette entitled Kwame Nkrumah’s Political Kingdom and Pan-Africanism Reinterpreted, 1909–1972. Joining them are Kwasi Konadu, Professor in Africana & Latin American Studies at Colgate University in the US. He’s published widely on African history, including The Ghana Reader: History, Culture and Politics; and Matteo Grilli, senior researcher at the University of the Free State in South Africa. He’s the author of Nkrumaism and African Nationalism: Ghana’s Pan-African Foreign Policy in the Age of Decolonization.

Produced by Fiona Clampin for the BBC World Service. 

(Photo: Kwame Nkrumah addresses the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York, 1960. Credit: Underwood Archives via Getty Images)

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