Legacy

$Nkrumah arrived in the Gold Coast on 14 November 1947. He immediately assumed his secretarial duties, offering to work without pay after he realised that the party had no funds to pay his monthly salary. Eventually, the leadership prevailed on him to accept a fraction of the salary. Nkrumah immediately drew up a detailed, radical plan which he presented to the leadership of the United Gold Coast Convention. He suggested that the party set up branches in every corner of the country and embarks on demonstrations, strikes and boycotts to press for independence.$ Op-ed

Kwame Nkrumah’s contested legacy

August 16, 2019 admin2 Africa, Legacy, Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah led Ghana to independence in 1957 – the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to achieve this feat. He’s still remembered for his unrepentant anti-colonial stance and strident Pan-Africanism. Above all, he is regarded as one of Africa’s ablest statesmen of the 20th century. Nkrumah has been ranked among leaders such as Vladimir Lenin, Mahatma Gandhi and Mao Tse-Tsung. All contributed significantly in shaping the course of history during the last five decades of the 20th century. Nkrumah’s rise in the anti-colonial movement in Ghana, then called the Gold Coast, began in the late…

News Politics

The brutal, glaring unforgiving truth has finally surfaced, and it is ugly

October 15, 2017 admin2 Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Legacy, Liberia

Finally the mask is coming off!For most of the last 12 years, contradiction has characterized the difference between the way the world has viewed Liberia and its highly esteemed leader, versus the view Liberians have of their own country, government and President. But that gap seems to be closing. Quite a rosy picture of peace, progress and development has characterized the outside world’s impression of Liberia, courtesy of lofty speeches and glowing reports, and evidenced no doubt by equally glowing accolades, beginning with the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize. Surely, the…

News Public Policy

Nyerere’s Legacy and Ujamaa in a turbulent era

October 15, 2017 admin2 Julius Nyerere, Legacy, Ujamaa

Assessments of Julius Nyerere, Tanzania’s first president, are conventionally focused on his quest for ujamaa, a just social order based on community solidarity. Whereas supporters hailed ujamaa as a creative adjustment of socialist thought to local realities, critics contemptuously dismissed it as a romantic and unscientific endeavour. Nyerere’s concern with social justice needs to be understood in the context of his overriding commitment to building a nation state. In his farewell address to the Tanzanian Parliament on July 29 1985, Nyerere recalled: “The single most important task, which I set…