Dr. Nkrumah, President of the Republic of Ghana, First Citizen and Founder of the State, was born in a small village in Western Ghana in 1909. He was educated in a Catholic Mission school, and became a pupil teacher.
Later on, he joined Achimota College and received his teaching diploma. His belief in education never betrays him. When he could have taken a money-bringing job, he taught his people in the hours of their need, as he is still doing.
Then he went to the United States and joined Lincoln University, where he received his degree, majoring in Economics and Sociology. In the University of Pennsylvania, he received his Master of Arts degree in Philosophy and Education. For some time, he also lectured in political Science at the Lincoln University. In 1945 he went to London to read Law and write a thesis.
The Giant of Africa, as a man of remarkable qualities, has won the respect and admiration of the world by his meteoric and dramatic assent and unwavering strength. President Nkrumah, the symbol of a sincere and dedicated African, true to his pledge said once: “Bury me alive, if I do not give Ghana her independence.” When Ethiopia was devastated by the Italian Vikings of the 20th century, indeed when they came to civilize Ethiopia with bombs and poison gas, he earnestly prayed to God, that “the day might come, when he would play a part in the liquidation of colonialism.”
Wherever he went, he never forgot his burning love for Ghana and Africa at large. Even in his capacities as a student, he organized conferences and unions – the main purpose being the freedom of Mother Africa, the blood stream of agricultural riches – and yet, a continent where her sons and daughters lived in poverty, indignation and maltreatment. In Manchester, with the help of the Honorable Jomo Kenyatta, George Padmore, T.R. Mekonnen, and the half-blooded Ethiopian novelist Peter Abrahams, he organized the Pan African Conference.
In 1946, he went to West Africa and became the General Secretary of the United Gold Coast Convention’s Party. Though, the then British government kept him twice in prison, on charges of sedition, and of his so called, “communistic tendencies”, that was not the end of the rising tide of Africa’s liberation movement. He fought for what he believed was right, and for what he was dedicated to perform. Through his writings, his personal magnetism, and patriotically inspiring oratory, he instilled in the minds of his people, the sacrifices to be made for freedom’s sake, and the lasting rewards to be achieved from it.
To say that the party which he organized triumphed in the elections that -were held, that he became a prime minister, that through a universal election he became a President, that he made Ghana partly what it is “forward ever, backwards never,” to a glorious era of liberty, peace, honor and prestige, is not much to a man of his caliber and capacity.
President Nkrumah is a mouth-piece of Mother Africa, and a devoted Panafricanist .In one of his autobiographies he says: “I have never regarded the struggles for the independence of the Gold Coast, as an isolated objective, but always as a part of a general world historical pattern.”
In one of his memoirs again he says: “Ghana’s independence is meaningless, unless it is linked with every inch of African territory.” In order to promote the cause of Pan-Africanism, “Conferences of Independent African States,” and “all African People’s Conferences” have been held in Accra. The Ghana-Guinea-Mali Union has been achieved. When President Kwame Nkrumah paid an official state visit to Ethiopia in 1956, exchange of diplomatic missions, trade pacts, and air service agreements were signed. Among other things, His Imperial Majesty the Emperor, and President Nkrumah also agreed to continue their fights for African liberation and world peace.
When the imperialists attempted to revive the dead fashion of colonialism such as in the Congo, Dr. Nkrumah suggested that an African Military High Command should be organized. When he found out that the European Common Market is designed to enslave and exploit Africa economically, using the continent as dumping grounds for European surplus mass production, he suggested an African Common Market.
Many African leaders think of the United States of Africa as a distant goal for the far future. Instead of political unity, they suggest economic unity. But President Nkrumah believes that unless political unity is formed first, “Africa may be Balkanized, divided permanently into dozens of small states, some leaning towards the West, some to the East, and others neutral in the international struggle.” Even economic unity may not be effective, since the materials produced by African States are in the majority of cases, basically the same.
President Nkrumah stands for the entire liquidation of colonialism and imperialism, in all of their manifestations, and last but not least, for peace, prosperity and happiness of the human race.
As far as Ghana is concerned, under his leadership, the country has become “dynamic, alive and bursting with energy,” a country fully prepared to emancipate Africa, and will never rest until the last “vestiges of colonialism and discrimination have been obliterated” forever from African soil. The Ghanaians live today better, happier, and fuller life, than ever before.