Nkrumah: Ghana Is Free Forever

The setting

The Gold Coast, Britain's West African colony, had been led towards self-government by Kwame Nkrumah, whose Convention People's Party won elections in 1951 while he was still in prison for organising strikes. At midnight on 5–6 March 1957, before a crowd at the Old Polo Ground in Accra, he proclaimed the independence of Ghana, the first British colony in sub-Saharan Africa to win its freedom.

Key passage

Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent.

Independence speech, Old Polo Ground, Accra, 6 March 1957. Quoted briefly: the full text is still under copyright.

What followed

Ghana's example helped speed decolonisation: seventeen African countries became independent in 1960 alone. Nkrumah championed Pan-Africanism and helped found the Organisation of African Unity in 1963, but at home he banned opposition parties, and he was overthrown in a military coup in 1966.

Connected