Kwame Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary. He was born Francis Nwia Kofi Ngonloma on 21 September 1909 and died on 27 April 1972. Nkrumah first served as Prime Minister of the Gold Coast from 1952 until 1957, when the colony gained independence from the United Kingdom. He then became Ghana’s first prime minister and later its president, holding office from 1957 until 1966. A strong supporter of Pan-Africanism, he helped found the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and received the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union in 1962.

Nkrumah spent twelve years abroad for higher education, developing his political ideas and organizing with other Pan-Africanists in the diaspora. He returned to the Gold Coast to push for national independence, forming the Convention People’s Party. The party gained rapid success by appealing directly to ordinary voters. He became Prime Minister in 1952 and led Ghana to independence in 1957—the first sub-Saharan African country to do so. In 1960, Ghanaians approved a new constitution and elected him president.

His government was both socialist and nationalist. It funded industrial and energy projects, built a strong national education system, and promoted Pan-African culture. Nkrumah wanted to unite African countries under a single socialist leadership, with himself as head of that bloc. Under him, Ghana took a leading role in African international relations and the decolonization movement, backing many liberation struggles. Western nations opposed to socialism saw the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute (KNII) as a base for military support to African nationalists and therefore a threat.

After an alleged assassination plot and worsening economic conditions, Nkrumah’s government became increasingly authoritarian in the 1960s. He repressed political opposition and held elections that were neither free nor fair. In 1964, a constitutional amendment made Ghana a one-party state, with Nkrumah as president for life of both the nation and the party. He built a personality cult, creating ideological institutes and taking the title “Osagyefo.” The KNII spread propaganda and his version of scientific socialism, called Nkrumaism. He was overthrown in a 1966 coup by the National Liberation Council. Some former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency agents have claimed the agency was involved, but this has never been fully verified. Nkrumah spent the rest of his life in Guinea, where he was named honorary co-president. In 1999, he was voted BBC African of the millennium.

Nkrumah was born on 21 September 1909 in Nkroful, a small village in the Nzema area of the Gold Coast, near the border with the French Ivory Coast. He was his mother’s only child. His father, a goldsmith, did not live with the family but worked in Half Assini until his death. When Nkrumah was three, he and his mother moved to Half Assini to join his father. He attended a Catholic mission elementary school there and proved an adept student.

In the United States, he was known as Francis Nwia Kofi Nkrumah, with Kofi being the Akan name for males born on Fridays. He changed his name to Kwame Nkrumah in 1945 while in the UK. According to one study, the name “Nkrumah” is traditionally given to a ninth child, suggesting he may have held that place in his father’s household, as his father had several wives. His father, Opanyin Kofi Nwiana Ngolomah, came from Nkroful and belonged to the Asona clan of the Akan tribe. He stayed in Tarkwa-Nsuaem working as a goldsmith and was respected for his wise counsel on traditional and domestic matters. He died in 1927. Nkrumah’s mother, Elizabeth Nyanibah (1877–1979), later said his birth year was 1912, but Nkrumah himself wrote that he was born on 21 September 1909. She came from Nsuaem and belonged to the Agona family, working as a fishmonger and petty trader before marriage. Eight days after his birth, his father named him Francis Nwia-Kofi after a relative, and later his parents called him Francis Kwame Ngolomah.

He completed the ten-year elementary program in eight years. In 1925, he became a student-teacher at the school and was baptized into the Catholic faith. He later recalled having to stand on a box to teach his classmates. There, Reverend Alec Garden Fraser, principal of the Government Training College (later Achimota School) in Accra, noticed him and arranged for him to train as a teacher at that school. At Achimota, deputy headmaster Kwegyir Aggrey, a Columbia graduate, introduced him to the ideas of Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois. Aggrey, Fraser, and others at Achimota believed in close cooperation between races to govern the Gold Coast, but Nkrumah, influenced by Garvey, soon concluded that only when black people governed themselves could there be racial harmony.

After earning his teacher’s certificate from the Prince of Wales’ College at Achimota in 1930, Nkrumah taught at a Catholic primary school in Elmina starting in 1931. During his time at Achimota, he was known for his debating and leadership skills.