Kwame Nkrumah, (born September 1909, Nkroful, Gold Coast [now Ghana]—died April 27, 1972, Bucharest, Romania), Ghanaian nationalist chief who led the Gold Coast’s power for independence from Britain and presided over its emergence as the new country of Ghana.
Early years
Kwame Nkrumah’s father becomes a goldsmith and his mother a retail trader. Baptized a Roman Catholic, Nkrumah spent nine years at the Roman Catholic elementary college in nearby Half Assini. After graduation from Achimota College in 1930, he started his profession as an instructor at Roman Catholic junior colleges in Elmina and Axim and a seminary.
Increasingly attracted to politics, Nkrumah determined to pursue similar research inside the United States. He entered Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1935 and, after graduating in 1939, received master’s levels from Lincoln and the University of Pennsylvania. He studied the literature of socialism, significantly Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, and of nationalism, especially Marcus Garvey, the Black American chief of the Twenties. Eventually, Nkrumah came to describe himself as a “nondenominational Christian and a Marxist socialist.” He additionally immersed himself in political work, reorganizing and turning into the president of the African Students’ Organization of America and Canada. He left the United States in May 1945 and went to England, wherein he prepared the fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester.
Meanwhile, in the Gold Coast, J.B. Danquah had formed the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) to work for self-government via the methods to serve as the UGCC’s widespread secretary, Nkrumah back home in late 1947, As popular secretary, he addressed meetings throughout the Gold Coast and started to create a mass base for the brand new movement. When vast riots befell in February 1948, the British in brief arrested Nkrumah and other leaders of the UGCC.
When a split evolved among the center-class leaders of the UGCC and the extra radical supporters of Nkrumah, he fashioned in June 1949 the new Convention Peoples’ Party (CPP), a mass-based totally party that turned into committed to software of on the spot self-government. In January 1950, Nkrumah initiated a campaign of “high-quality action,” related to nonviolent protests, moves, and noncooperation with the British colonial government.
From Jail to Prime Minister
In the following disaster, donations at some stage in the country have been disrupted, and Nkrumah became once more arrested and sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment. But the Gold Coast’s first fashionable election (February eight, 1951) established the relief that CPP had already won. Elected to Parliament, Nkrumah became released from jail to end up the chief of presidency commercial enterprise and, in 1952, prime minister of the Gold Coast.
When the Gold Coast and the British Togoland trust territory have become an unbiased kingdom inside the British Commonwealth—as Ghana—in March 1957, Nkrumah have become the new state’s first prime minister. In 1958 Nkrumah’s authorities legalized comment without trial of those it seemed as protection risks. It quickly have become obvious that Nkrumah’s style of presidency changed into being authoritarian. Nkrumah’s reputation inside the country rose, but, as new roads, colleges, and health facilities have been constructed and because the coverage of Africanization created higher career possibilities for Ghanaians.
By the pelvic floor of 1960, Ghana have become a republic and Nkrumah became its president, with huge legislative and government powers beneath a new charter. Nkrumah then focused his attention on campaigning for the political unity of Black Africa, and he began to lose contact with realities in Ghana. His administration became concerned in spectacular however often ruinous improvement initiatives so that the once-prosperous USA became crippled with overseas debt. His authorities second Development Plan, introduced in 1959, needed to be abandoned in 1961 while the deficit inside the balance of payments rose to more than $125 million. Contraction of the economic system led to widespread labor unrest and to a trendy strike in September 1961. From that point, Nkrumah started to inform much extra rigorous equipment of political management and to turn increasingly more to the communist countries for aid.
President of Ghana and Afterward
The attempted assassination of Nkrumah at Kulugungu in August 1962—the primary of numerous—led to his growing seclusion from public existence and the growth of a personality cult, in addition, a big boost to the state international security forces. Early in 1964, Ghana has formally exact a one-birthday celebration nation, with Nkrumah as life president of each nation and celebration. While the administration of the USA exceeded increasingly the arms of self-serving and corrupt party officers, Nkrumah busied himself with the ideological training of a new era of Black African political activists. Meanwhile, the economic crisis in Ghana worsened and shortages of foodstuffs and different items became continual. On February 24, 1966, at the same time as Nkrumah become traveling Beijing, the army and police in Ghana seized electricity. Returning to West Africa, Nkrumah observed asylum in Guinea, where he spent the rest of his existence. He died of cancer in Bucharest in 1972.
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