Kwame Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah  (1909 – 1972) led Ghana to independence from Britain in 1957 and was its first prime minister and president. He was tertiary-educated in the USA. He was imprisoned by the British. Nkrumah first gained power as leader of the colonial Gold Coast until he was deposed in 1966. He described himself as a “nondenominational Christian and a Marxist socialist”. An influential 20th-century advocate of Pan-Africanism, he was a founding member of the Organization of African Unity and was the winner of the Lenin Peace Prize in 1962. Though he became increasingly authoritarian and generated much debt for his country through grand projects, he was very influential in the wider movement for independence for colonial Africa. At his peak, he exemplified courage, vision, system thinking, initiative and persuasion.

Freedom is not something that one people can bestow on another as a gift. They claim it as their own and none can keep it from them.