History, Culture, and the Power of Postcolonial Afterlives of Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), Leader of Ghana

FAIN: FT-248812-16

Jeffrey Scott Ahlman
Smith College (Northampton, MA 01060-2916)

Two months of field-work and archival research in Ghana for an ethnographic study on the legacy of Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), Ghana's first prime minister and president.

In death, few African politicians feature as prominently in their country’s and the continent’s political imaginings as Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah. Viewed as an icon of African liberation, Nkrumah not only led Ghana to its 1957 independence, but, more importantly, linked Ghana’s fortunes to Africa’s at large. This project focuses on the decades following the Ghanaian president’s 1966 overthrow and 1972 death as it interrogates competing secular and spiritual worldviews that center a deceased, yet active Nkrumah in broader Ghanaian debates over the “spirit” and integrity of the postcolonial nation. In doing so, the project presents an ancestral Nkrumah as a vehicle for reflecting on Ghanaians’ changing relationships to a postcolonial reality marked by the passing of decolonization’s promises.

Associated Products

Kwame Nkrumah: Visions of Liberation (Book)
Title: Kwame Nkrumah: Visions of Liberation
Author: Jeffrey S. Ahlman
Abstract: As the first prime minister and president of the West African state of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah helped shape the global narrative of African decolonization. After leading Ghana to independence in 1957, Nkrumah articulated a political vision that aimed to free the country and the continent—politically, socially, economically, and culturally—from the vestiges of European colonial rule, laying the groundwork for a future in which Africans had a voice as equals on the international stage. Nkrumah spent his childhood in the maturing Gold Coast colonial state. During the interwar and wartime periods he was studying in the United States. He emerged in the postwar era as one of the foremost activists behind the 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress and the demand for an immediate end to colonial rule. Jeffrey Ahlman’s biography plots Nkrumah’s life across several intersecting networks: colonial, postcolonial, diasporic, national, Cold War, and pan-African. In these contexts, Ahlman portrays Nkrumah not only as an influential political leader and thinker but also as a charismatic, dynamic, and complicated individual seeking to make sense of a world in transition.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: http://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Kwame+Nkrumah
Access Model: Book available for purchase
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-0-8214-245
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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