Kwame Nkrumah Bio
Early Life And Education
Kwame Nkrumah was born in 1909 in Nkroful, in Ghana’s Western Region. From 1926 to 1930, he went to school at the Government Training College in Accra and Achimota. Before moving to the United States in 1935, he taught school. From 1939 to 1943, he went to Lincoln University and the University of Pennsylvania, where he got bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics, sociology, education, theology, and philosophy. In May 1945, he moved from the U.S. to the U.K. to get his Ph.D. at the London School of Economics.
In 1935, Kwame Nkrumah moved to the United States. There and in Britain, Kwame Nkrumah went to school. While he was in Britain, the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) asked him to come back home and be its full-time secretary. He accepted the offer after some hesitation.
POLITICAL CAREER PATH
On December 16, 1947, he got to Ghana. The UGCC had been going on for five months before he got there. Its goal was to make sure that “by all legal and constitutional means, the control and direction of the government shall pass into the hands of the people and their chiefs as soon as possible.” Even though the UGCC was only run by lawyers, businessmen, and intellectuals from the upper class, it was still able to stir up strong nationalist and anticolonial feelings across the country and open a number of branches.
Kwame Nkrumah was an instant hit, and he quickly got a lot of people to join the UGCC. But on June 12, 1949, he left the UGCC and started his own party, the Convention People’s Party (CPP). By the end of 1950, the CPP had surpassed the UGCC as the more active party, and its leader had become the most popular nationalist leader the country had ever seen. So, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that the CPP won the first general election in February 1951, when Kwame Nkrumah was in prison for the “positive action” he had called for on January 9, 1950.
The CPP won 34 of the 38 seats that were chosen by the people. Nkrumah was let go and put in charge of the government. During his first term in office, from 1951 to 1954, Nkrumah took a pragmatic and hands-off approach. He was able to promote social, economic, and political changes, such as building roads, railways, and communications, making primary school free and mandatory for children between the ages of six and twelve; opening a lot of primary and secondary schools, training colleges, and a new University College of Science and Technology, an institution for higher education.
Politically, Nkrumah put in place a new system of local government that greatly limited the power of the traditional ruling elite. This forced the British government to put in place a new constitution in 1954 that gave Ghana internal self-government by putting in place a parliament. After June 1954, Ghana probably would have gotten its independence within a few months if not for the sudden rise of the National Liberation Movement (NLM) and the Togoland question, which was about how the British-mandated territory of Togoland would be run after Ghana got its independence.
This was finally settled by a vote in 1956 that was organized by the UN. Most of the people who voted said that British Togoland should join the Gold Coast (the former name of Ghana). The motion for independence was passed by the new parliament in August 1956. On March 6, 1957, Nkrumah said that the Gold Coast was “free forever.” Nkrumah did a number of things to make the opposition parties weaker and the CPP stronger. The Deportation Act was one of them. It led to the deportation of a number of strong opposition party members who were thought to be foreigners.
The most well-known of these measures was the Preventive Detention Act (PDA), which was passed in July 1958 and gave the government the power to hold anyone who threatened the security of the state for five years without a trial. Between 1958 and 1960, 67 people in the opposition were jailed because of this law. From 1957 to 1960, Nkrumah’s career was a continuation of the pragmatic and hands-off style of the years before.
He let foreign companies keep controlling the import-export trade, mining, insurance, and manufacturing. In 1959 and 1960, there were no limits on sending profits abroad, and more goods from the dollar areas and Japan were added to the open general license. So, the economy of the country grew quickly, and many new industries were built, which made more jobs available. However, economic growth aided firms and companies based outside of the country. At the same time, the open door policy led to more money leaving the country than coming in.
This caused the country’s foreign exchange reserves to keep going down. Most people remember Nkrumah for his work in foreign policy. His policies in this area were based on three main goals: freeing all of Africa from colonial rule, uniting all independent African states, and bringing together and reviving the culture of all black people in Africa and around the world. In Accra, Ghana, in April 1958, he set up the Conference of Independent African States.
He then held the All African Peoples’ Conference in Accra in December 1958, the All-African Trade Union Federation Conference in Accra in November 1959, and the Conference on Positive Action and Security in Africa in Accra in April 1960. In addition to these conferences, Nkrumah took the first real step toward African unity by forming a union with Guinea in November 1958. In April 1961, he expanded this union to include Mali, making it the Ghana-Guinea-Mali Union. In June 1958, Nkrumah went on an official tour of the United States. He did this to further his pan-Africanist goals.
KWAME NKRUMAH DOWNFALL
From 1960 to 1966, things went downhill, fell apart, and ended in tragedy. In July 1960, Nkrumah changed the country’s constitution. This gave him more power and made him a constitutional dictator who could rule by decree, fire any public employee, and overturn the decisions of parliament. In 1964, Ghana became a one-party state, which was in line with his socialist beliefs. This was the second change to the constitution.
Instead of holding party elections in 1965, he went on national radio and told everyone the names of the new politicians he had chosen to represent the 104 constituencies. In the field of economics, Nkrumah gave up his laissez-faire approach in favor of the socialist approach, which required active state control and participation in all parts of the economy and the creation of a large number of state corporations. By March 1965, 47 state corporations were up and running. By the end of 1965, almost all of these companies were losing money.
This was because they didn’t have enough trained workers, didn’t plan well or do feasibility studies, were inefficient, or were run by family members or friends. The country also had a severe lack of food, goods made or imported, spare parts, and raw materials, and there was a lot of unemployment. By the start of 1966, the country had run out of money and was close to having its economy fall apart. Armed forces and police worked together to pull off a coup d’état on February 24, 1966. This led to the National Liberation Council taking over for Nkrumah.
Nkrumah went to Guinea to hide out. He was flown to Bucharest because he had skin cancer, where he died on April 27, 1972. His body was flown to Guinea, where a state funeral was held for him. But it was later dug up and flown to Ghana, where it was first buried in his village of Nkorful and then moved to the polo ground in Accra, where he had announced that his country had won the battle for its independence.
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