Kwame Nkrumah
Kwame Nkrumah led the Gold Coast to become Ghana in 1957, the first sub-Saharan African colony to gain independence, and made himself the leading voice of pan-Africanism before being overthrown. Born in the western Gold Coast around 1909, he trained as a teacher and then studied in the United States for a decade at Lincoln University and the University of Pennsylvania, working as a labourer and preaching on Sundays to survive. He moved to London in 1945 and helped organise the fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester with George Padmore and W. E. B. Du Bois. Recalled to lead the United Gold Coast Convention in 1947, he broke away in 1949 to found the Convention People's Party with the demand for self-government now. His Positive Action campaign of strikes and boycotts got him imprisoned in 1950; his party won the 1951 election while he was in a cell, and the governor released him to form a government. Independence followed on 6 March 1957. He invested heavily in education, health and infrastructure, above all the Akosombo Dam on the Volta, which still supplies much of Ghana's electricity. He argued that political independence was worthless without economic independence and that Africa had to unite or be picked apart — the thesis of Neo-Colonialism in 1965, which cost him American aid. His rule closed. The Preventive Detention Act of 1958 allowed imprisonment without trial, Ghana became a one-party state in 1964, and a personality cult grew around him as Osagyefo. Cocoa prices collapsed and the projects ran out of money. The army and police deposed him in February 1966 while he was in Beijing. He died in exile in 1972.
- Lived: 1909 CE – 1972 CE
- Nationality: Ghanaian
- Roles: head_of_state, independence_leader
